"Ceiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with his hands pressed together before him, was looking at the fresco of Commerce upon the ceiling; his ponderous right-hand neighbor was stumbling feebly over an addition that one of the bookkeepers had made upon one of the papers—he hoped to find it wrong; his left-hand neighbor was doubling his under-lip with his stout ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... of plastering fell from the ceiling and hit him squarely upon the head. Whereupon he jumped up, looked confused and said: "I—er—I meant I'll give fifty dollars!" then again resumed ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... in the temple, Brattahlid, the source of light and good cheer, was dark and gloomy. In the great hall there was no illumination save the flickering firelight. Black shadows blotted out the corners and stretched across the ceiling. The long benches were emptied of all save Leif's followers and Thorhild's band of women. The men sat like a row of automatons, drinking steadily, in deep silence, with furtive glances toward their leader. Leif leaned back in his high-seat, neither speaking nor ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... stretched himself upon the pallet assigned to him, clasped his hands under the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling. The Count sat upon the edge of his board, crossing one knee over the other and looking at his nails, or trying to look at them in the insufficient light. In some distant part of the building a door was occasionally opened ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the music came to him. He spoke no word, but laid a hand on David's arm and led him toward it, while Bateese and Joe Clamart remained standing at the entrance to the hall. David's feet trod in thick rugs of fur; he saw the dim luster of polished birch and cedar in the walls, and over his head the ceiling was rich and matched, as in the bateau cabin. They drew nearer to the music and came to a closed door. This Black Roger opened very quietly, as if anxious not to disturb ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... a half dozen men in the room playing cards or merely idling in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp swung from the ceiling, men of the saloon-keeper's breed to the last man of them. Their eyes, the slumbrous, mystery-filled orbs of their kind, had lifted under their long lashes to regard the sheriff with seeming indifference. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... and pulled him to a corner. There she pushed aside the dingy hanging and Orme saw that the wall was covered with a wainscoting that ran from floor to ceiling. ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... closet, with several shelves almost to the ceiling; the topmost of them so high as but just to be reached by me, when standing on a chair. I swept my hand along the shelves, and found them as I ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... good of that? We can't converse unless you sit on the floor. I work too hard to spend my evening shouting banalities at the ceiling." ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... Lights on, and the room must be explored for the lurking foe. Scratching themselves vigorously, the fun of the chase assuaged the smart of those red welts. Gissing, wise by now, knew that after a forager the mosquito always retires to the ceiling, so he kept a stepladder in the room. Mounted on this, he would pursue the enemy with a towel, while the children screamed with merriment. Then stomachs must be anointed with more citronella; sheets and blankets ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... orders came. The only sound in those extremely unmarried quarters was the steady drip of water into a flat tin bath that the servant had put beneath a spot where the roof leaked; the rain had ceased but the ceiling cloth still ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... quiet country house where that phenomenon rarely occurs, you feel not the least curiosity to know who is there. You can look for a long time quite contentedly at the glow of the fire on the curtains and on the ceiling. You feel no anxiety about the coming in of the post; but when your letters and newspapers arrive, you luxuriously read them, a very little at a time, and you soon forget all you have read. You turn over and fall asleep for a while; then you read a little more. Your reviving ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the roarer and threw him almost up to the ceiling. "Hurrah for Dave!" he said, and to the best of his ability Crimie "hurrahed" while Mistake joined in enthusiastically. The hubbub at last penetrated the slumbers of the twins, who added to the uproar to such an extent that Mammy Betty hurried ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... don't care two whoops about anybody there. Here you are free—free in every sense of the word. You have no responsibility except what you impose on yourself; no board bills to pay; nobody to please but your own little self. You've got the clean, wide land for a bedroom, and the sky for its ceiling, instead of a stuffy little ten-by-ten chamber. Do you know that you look fifty per cent better for these few days of living in the open—the way every normal being likes to live? You're getting some color in your cheeks, and you're ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... with a pencil-case. "The—what do you call?—obus, ah, shells! fell, so and so and so." Across here he had fled on his becane, and along here and here. He had carried off his rifle, and hid it with the rifles of various other Belgians between floor and ceiling of a house in Zeebrugge. He had found the pirate steamer in the harbour, its captain resolved to extract the uttermost fare out of every refugee he took to London. When they were all aboard and started ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Egbert and Edmund followed the king and his brother was spacious and lofty. The walls were covered with hangings of red cloth, and a thick brown baize covered the floor. The ceiling was painted a dark brown with much gilding. Round the sides of the room stood several dressers of carved oak, upon which stood ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... his feet with great alacrity, and warmly shook hands with the departing stranger. Then, when the door was shut, he went through a pantomimic expression of bringing down innumerable pheasants from every corner of the ceiling—with an occasional aim at the floor, where an imaginary hare was ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Dutch cleanliness of the vessel. The captain's cabin, and that of the lieutenant, one on the port, the other on the starboard side, were fitted up with a narrow berth, a cupboard anything but capacious, an arm-chair, a fixed table, a lamp hung from the ceiling, various nautical instruments, a barometer, a thermometer, a chronometer, and a sextant in its oaken box. One of the two other cabins was prepared to receive me. It was eight feet in length, five in breadth. I was accustomed to the exigencies of sea life, and could do with its narrow ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... Europe and Asia as a target for foreign direct investment. The coalition government faces tough choices in its attempts to boost Portugal's economic competitiveness and to keep the budget deficit within the 3% EU ceiling. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... are nearest to the river, and those at the other end are for gentlemen, the entrance to them being from the two wings. The entrance to the pump-room, which is extensive, lofty, and of exact proportions, is through folding doors at each extremity of the central building.—The ornaments of the ceiling, the cornices, and in fact, the whole interior embellishments, are chaste and simply elegant. On one side the light is introduced through seven windows, and on the opposite side by one window of large ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... is a garret," said the landlord. "But there's a trap-door in the ceiling, leading out on to the roof—and a little lower down the street, there's an empty house under repair. Do you think, Sergeant, the blackguard has got off ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... her account of what she had seen at the poor-house, and what had passed between her and the great proprietor, Mr. Snow cast his eyes up to the ceiling, pursed his lips, and somewhere in the profundities of his nature, or in some celestial laboratory, unseen by any eyes but his own, prepared ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... large one, or seemed so to me. It was draped entirely in black, hiding whatever windows there might be. The polished wood floor was bare. The ceiling was painted with a number of sprawling Cupids, some of them scattering flowers, others weaving leafy chaplets, presumably to crown the inane-looking goddess reclining in their midst on a bank of impossible cloud. But both Cupids and goddess were dingy with age, and seemed to have grown too ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... occupants, more luxurious than the others, had paneled the walls of this now irregular-shaped apartment with a dark wood running half way to the low ceiling badly smoked and blackened by time, and had built two fireplaces—an open wood fire which laughed at me from behind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English grate set into the chimney with wide hobs—convenient ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and odds-and-ends in the room would have proclaimed him an inventor. As the walls were hidden by his library, and as the floor, also, was littered with tomes and pamphlets and periodicals, a quantity of miscellaneous gear was hung by hooks from the ceiling. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... gives tokens of increasing splendor in the richer decorations of the walls and the more elaborate mosaic of the floor. We next entered the receiving saloon, in which the Court Marshal receives the guests. The ceiling is of arabesque sculpture, profusely painted and gilded. Passing through a little cabinet, we entered the great dancing saloon. Its floor is the richest mosaic of wood of different colors, the sides are of polished scagliola ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... late, he found that the storm had finished its work and gone and that the weather had settled stinging cold. The heavens were hyacinth, the ground white with snow; and the sun, day-lamp of that vast ceiling of blue, made the earth radiant as for the bridal morn of Winter. So ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... from Nottingham, in order to have something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room. If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... physical proportions that Roman popular wits asserted that when she wished to go for a drive she had to divide herself between two cabs. This lady had a great talent for music. I never saw her, but I became aware of her in more ways than one: whenever she crossed the floor on the third story, the ceiling shook, and the boards creaked, in a manner unbearable to an invalid. And just when I had settled myself off, and badly wanted to sleep, towards eleven o'clock at night, the heavy lady above would sit down at her grand piano, and make music that would have ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... being formed into cups—the middle part being cut, and then bent and arched over the fire; the perch being formed of a straight piece of bamboo, which joins the two cups below. A hook fastened to the top of the arch enables the owner to suspend it from the thatched ceiling of his hut; and thus the parrot swings about, listening to his master's pious ejaculations. At dusk, many of these men may be seen parading through the bazaar, with their pets in their hands, the latter loudly vociferating ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... stable-doors were thrown open, and the crowd pressed through a long, narrow white-washed stone corridor into a barn-like compartment, with a white-washed ceiling traversed by wooden beams. Within this compartment, and leaving but a narrow, circumscribing border, was a sort of cattle-pen, into which the paupers crushed, awaiting amid discomfort and universal jabber the divine ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... frightfully pale. Dick began to fill his pipe. The Senator looked earnestly out of the window. Buttons looked at the ceiling. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... Murderer had hardly picked her last bone when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots and screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o'clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer's house (beginning with ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Come children, come down! The hoarse wind blows coldly; Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door; She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing: "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she! And alone dwell for ever The kings ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... to say, and which, in spite of myself, I am obliged to relate. I am, at the same time, under the necessity of being mysterious and subtle, of endeavoring to impose and of descending to things the most foreign to my nature. The ceiling under which I write has eyes; the walls of my chamber have ears. Surrounded by spies and by vigilant and malevolent inspectors, disturbed, and my attention diverted, I hastily commit to paper a few broken sentences, which I have scarcely time to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... London you have many beautiful ceilings. Artists paint them and stud them with lights. But I have seen a ceiling more beautiful than any ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... 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 ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light of a circular lamp of oriental alabaster, suspended from the ceiling by three silver chains, spreads a faint lustre through the bed-chamber ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... them round the old goat, and began to drag it gently down the mountain-side. He dragged it all the way up the ladder of his barn, when the goat disappeared, but showers and showers of money came tumbling through the ceiling. He collected them all together, and they filled two large coffers. Then the poor man made the most of his money, and in no very long time he was well-to-do. Then he sent some of his people to his rich brother, and invited him to come and live with ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... bend his head to enter, and his shaggy hair pressed along the ceiling. He pulled some by their legs from under the table, and one from a bench in a dark corner by the hair, whom he left suddenly, for it was a woman, and the two others he ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... like this. It was the front kitchen; the cooking and most of the house-work was done in the back one, a big barn-like place with doors in all corners. The front one was half a kitchen and half a sitting-room, warm-coloured, with red-tiled floor and low ceiling, heavily cross-beamed and hung with herbs and a couple of hams, in great contrast to the whiteness of the kitchen at the bulb farm. There were brass and copper pots and pans such as he knew, but they ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... daughter, a girl from out the barracks and the prison of Foray, was here!—A strange light, so strange that it seemed not natural, broke from these reflections of Elizabeth, and illuminated the library. It fell on the great bookcases that were filled from floor to ceiling with books which cost a fortune, on the great easy-chairs black with age, on picture and on bust, on the old writing-stand, the more modern centre-table piled with newspapers and pamphlets, on the curious clock that told ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... Ignorant Rich. Make their houses liveable-in. They tell me what they want—I get hold of it for them. Turn them out an Italian drawing-room—Della Robbia mantel-piece, Florentine fire-irons, Renaissance ceiling, tapestries and so on. Things they haven't energy to find for themselves or intelligence to know when they see them. I love finding them, and I'm practised at cheating. One has to cheat if one's poor but eager.... A poor trade, but ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... a noble place! He heard the trickle of the little stream, like a jet of water flowing over marble, and into a marble fountain. Above him was a stone ceiling, carved by the ages, and beneath him was a stone floor made by the same master hand. The leaves were very soft to one so thoroughly hardened of body as he, and the blanket was warm. The roaring of the wind outside was turned to music here, ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... blindfolded." I placed a bandage over his eyes, and sent him upstairs, having told him to walk quietly across the middle of the chamber floor. I had suspended the beam of a warp-dressing frame from the ceiling. Tom walked against this beam, which swung back upon him, and, apparently, greatly frightened him, for of all the screaming I ever heard, it took place that night in that chamber. Tom was blindfolded, and, in addition to that, the room ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... and to observe his nod, in order to serve him with what he wanted. There were ointments and garlands; perfumes were burned; tables provided with the most exquisite meats. Damocles thought himself very happy. In the midst of this apparatus, Dionysius ordered a bright sword to be let down from the ceiling, suspended by a single horse-hair, so as to hang over the head of that happy man. After which he neither cast his eye on those handsome waiters, nor on the well-wrought plate; nor touched any of the provisions: presently the garlands fell to pieces. At last he entreated the tyrant ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... him, and him alone. The summer afternoon droned at the windows, the house grew quiet, and Billy felt as if in this sleepy hour she were quite alone with her excitement in a world that would not hear of excitement or of events. So she too kept still, her eyes raised to the ceiling. It seemed as if she had lain there an endless time before the sound came at last, the sound for which she had waited. She sat up. The rumbling of a carriage which stopped in the courtyard below, voices, the banging ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... resemble the ballad as compounded by Percy from The Drunkard's Legacy. In most of these—Tartar, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, etc.—the climax of the story lies in the fact that the hero in attempting to hang himself by a rope fastened to the ceiling pulls down a hidden treasure. There is, of course, no such episode in The Heir of Linne, but all the stories have similar circumstances, and the majority present the moral aspect of unthriftiness, and of friends deserting a man ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... the visitor finds himself in a tetrastyle atrium (a thing not common at Pompeii), of ample dimensions, considering the character of the house, being about thirty-six feet by thirty. The pillars which supported the ceiling are square and solid, and their size, combined with indications observed in a fragment of the entablature, led Mazois to suppose that, instead of a roof, they had been surmounted by a terrace. The impluvium is marble. At the end ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... on the left and opened it. Again it closed behind her noiselessly. She realised that she was in one of the principal reception rooms of the house, dimly lit as the hall from a dome-shaped globe set into the ceiling. She moved a yard or two across the threshold and stood looking about her. Here again there was an almost singular absence of furniture. The walls were hung with apple-green silk, richly embroidered. There were some ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... around, once painted white, were now also stained and splotched with great blotches of green and russet dampness. The only light that lit the place came in through a small, narrow, slatted window close to the ceiling, and opposite the doorway which he had entered. It was ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... mother-of-pearl. There are sombre carved wood chairs set back against the wall. It is all very costly, but to us it seems uncomfortable and funereal. The chief things that attract us are rows of little red pieces of paper of odd lengths hanging over strings from the ceiling, as if they were drying after a washing-day. The Englishman explains that the Chinaman is very proud of these, for they are all New Year's greetings from his friends, and the number of them shows what a popular man he must be. As the Chinese New Year's Day is on April ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... must have affected Dirkovitch, for he lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing special in the ceiling beyond a shadow as of a huge black coffin. Owing to some peculiarity in the construction of the mess room this shadow was always thrown when the candles were lighted. It never disturbed the digestion of ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... which, both Francois and Jean maintain, produces the best wines of Vaud, and, though now reduced to the condition of a dilapidated farm-house, has still some remains of its ancient state. There is a ceiling, in the Ritter Saal, that can almost vie with that of the castle of Habsburg, though it is less smoked. The road, more resembling the wheel-track of a lawn than a highway, runs quite near the house on one side, while the blue ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the junctions. The trunk of the tree had also been cut off rather clumsily at the base and fitted badly to the cabin floor, while the branches had been cut through in places where the beams crossed the ceiling, and had been nailed on again in such a way as to make them look as though they had grown through the beams. Then again the cushions to the lockers were of different sizes, colours, and materials, ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... at each extremity of the long table, the maid-servants spin as in olden times, and relate to each other a thousand marvellous legends. On the right, in a lodging of three rooms, so low that one can touch the ceiling, a man of some thirty years, brown, with vivacious eyes, the face closely shaven." This man was of course Nicholas Chopin. I need hardly say that Count Wodzinski's description is novelistically tricked out. His accuracy may be judged by the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... parts of a room that we have to think of, they are wall, ceiling, floor, windows and doors, fireplace, and movables. Of these the wall is of so much the most importance to a decorator, and will lead us so far a-field that I will mostly clear off the other parts first, as to the mere arrangement of them, asking you meanwhile to understand that the ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... evidently left empty for his use. A fire was burning cheerfully in an old high grate; but its light, though assisted by that of two wax candles on the table, failed to show the outlines of the room, it was so large and dark. The ceiling was rather low in proportion, and a huge beam crossed it. At one end, an open door revealed a room beyond, likewise lighted with fire and candles. Entering, he found this to be an equally old-fashioned bedroom, to which his luggage had been ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Dirk had been already two hours at his factory and Lysbeth was buying provisions in the market place, was that accomplished and excellent officer, Captain the Count Juan de Montalvo. For a few seconds after his dark eyes opened he stared at the ceiling collecting his thoughts. Then, sitting up in bed, he burst into a prolonged roar of laughter. Really the whole thing was too funny for any man of humour to contemplate without being moved to merriment. That gaby, Dirk ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... floor had been "done" in peacock blue and gold when Miss Enid made her debut twenty years before, and it had never been undone. An embossed dado and an even more embossed frieze encircled the walls, and the ceiling was a complicated mosaic of color and design. The stiff-backed chairs and massive sofas were apparently committed for life to linen strait-jackets. Heavy velvet curtains shut out the light and a faint smell of ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... of which was visible in parts where the dirty yellowish-grey paper was torn away, there were several stands covered with old cardboard boxes, parcels and discarded patterns under a thick coating of dust. The gas had left what appeared to be like a daub of soot on the ceiling. The two windows opened so wide that without leaving the work-table the girls could see the people walking past on the pavement over ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... part of the ship, descended a noisome-smelling funnel by an iron staircase, and found ourselves on the troop-deck, very similar to that of the Montfort, only likely to be much more crowded; the same low ceiling, with cross-rafters for kit and hooks for hammocks, and close-packed tables ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... 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 ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... separate staircase from the first landing of the principal one; for his lameness made it difficult for him to go up-stairs, and the entresol, a half-story between the ground floor and the first story, when, as was the case here, high enough in the ceiling, is one of the freest and pleasantest parts of a French house. His apartments comprised five rooms on a line,—an antechamber, a dining-room, two parlors, and a bed-room, with windows on the street,—and the same number of smaller rooms on a parallel line, with their windows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of decorations on the walls and of marble casings to the doors, like those in the castle of Urbino, which fill the beholder with wonder, show how limited were the means of the ruling dynasty of Pesaro. The rich ceiling of the salon, made of gilded and painted woodwork, dates from the reign of Duke Guidobaldo. All mementos of the time when Lucretia occupied the palace have disappeared; it is animated by other memories—of the subsequent court life of the Della ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the low-ceilinged back room, which was empty, and sat down at a table. Over a bottle of Albano's famous California "red ink" we sat silently. Kennedy was making a mental note of the place. In the middle of the ceiling was a single gas-burner with a big reflector over it. In the back wall of the room was a horizontal oblong window, barred, and with a sash that opened like a transom. The tables were dirty and the chairs rickety. The walls were bare and ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... plant more useful than the Callitricke, or Brook Star-wort. It is necessary to get a good supply, and pick off the green heads, with four or six inches only of stem; wash them clean, and throw them into the tank, without planting. They spread over the surface, forming a rich green ceiling, grow freely, and last for months. They are continually throwing out new roots and shoots, and create abundance of oxygen. Whenever desired, they can be got rid of by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... were dancing around him. His eyes fell upon the rich and varied spoils overhanging the Hall; broken swords were wrought into the walls like mosaics; the flags of the conquered nations were draped in their varied hues across the vaulted ceiling; but as he looked on all these trophies of power, I saw him suddenly turn pale with rage, and bite his lips until the blood followed the pressure of his teeth; but then the whirling crowds caught him in their midst—violins, harps, flutes and horns poured the reeling air into ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... ceiling after the manner of individuals who desire, or who do not desire, as the case may be, to call a subject to remembrance. "No," he answered, after a long pause; "certainly not. I never hear ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... same thing is done yet more boldly in the large composition of the ceiling; the plague of fiery serpents; a part of the host, and another sky horizon are seen through an opening in ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... pushed away his untasted breakfast and lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest meditations. "I wonder!" said he, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. "Perhaps there are points which have escaped your Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light of pure reason. This man's reference is to a book. That is our ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... capitals of the columns and piers have a square abacus, and, generally speaking, are of the cushion-shaped sort, commonly known as basket-capitals, and are profusely carved. The larger churches have the nave roofed with a timber roof, and at Peterborough there is a wooden ceiling; in these cases the aisles only are vaulted, but in some small churches the whole building has been so covered. Buttresses are seldom required, owing to the great mass of the walls; when employed they have a very slight projection, but the same ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... 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 one ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on high pillars at either side. That was the gate of the Convent of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, the gate of Mary's home-to-be: and in a big, bare parlour, with long windows and a polished oak floor that reflected curious white birds and dragons of an escutcheon on the ceiling, Reverend Mother had received them. She had taken Mary on her lap; and when, after much talk about school and years to come, the child's father had gone, shadowy, dark-robed women had glided softly ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the glow of excitement in her great big eyes, inspired him. He would not ride for those horrid people who were crowding all the seats in front, those horrid, terrible people who seemed to rise from the floor to the ceiling. He did not care anything about those faces, those cruel, staring eyes, those smiling lips; but he did care for Diana. He would ride his ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. "How could I say such cruel things ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... house without a balcony, and have only now found out how inconvenient it is. The whole establishment consists of two rooms on each side of a passage as wide as the front door; and as it has a very low ceiling, with no opening, and no shade near, it is decidedly the warmest spot I ever inhabited. We all sleep on the floor and keep our clothes in our trunks—except Lilly, who has an armoir without doors. Knives and forks for dinner to-day, though the table still ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... table-clock ticked merrily on, seeming to hasten its ticking as the hand crept around closer and closer to midnight. The mosaic shade of the lamp mingled reds and blues and greens upon the white ceiling above and poured golden light upon the pages of manuscript strewn about beneath it. This was a typical work-room of a literary man having the ear of the public—typical in every respect, save for the fur-clad figure outstretched ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... weak; so I rose, glad to hear the silence broken, and followed the sound until I reached a closet whose door stood ajar. Then peeping through a chink I considered the place and lo! it was an oratory wherein was a prayer niche[FN311] with two wax candles burning and lamps hanging from the ceiling. In it too was spread a prayer carpet whereupon sat a youth fair to see; and before him on its stand[FN312] was a copy of the Koran, from which he was reading. I marvelled to see him alone alive amongst the people of the city ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... is as interesting, except to connoisseurs. Two I particularly remarked, of James I. and Charles I. eating in public. The old part of the palace, built by Wolsey, is extremely fine. Two handsome halls are still preserved: one, the ceiling of which is garnished, at the crossing and combining of the arches, with the recurring heads of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn—great stinginess in Henry, for these ornaments must have been put up after Wolsey's fall. He could surely afford ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... cupboards. On the front of the table was the tea service, with the little lamp under the kettle already lighted. There were, beside these, many, many other things, some of them very queer. From one side of the hall to the other ran three beams, dividing the ceiling into sections. From the front one was suspended a ship under full sail, high quarter-deck, and cannon ports, while farther toward the front door a gigantic fish seemed to be swimming in the air. Effi took her umbrella, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... about thirty guests in the big breakfast apartment, which had been built to accommodate five times the number—a charming, luxuriously furnished place, with massive white pillars supporting a frescoed ceiling, and lighted by numerous bay windows opening on to the North Sea, which was sparkling brightly in a brilliant October sunshine. The thirty people comprised the whole of the hotel visitors, for in the year 1916 holiday ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... reached to the ceiling. As it lengthened, it grew bright and luminous. A time passed, and a shadowy appearance showed itself in the center of the light. Little by little, the shadowy appearance took the outline of a human ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... was only for a few minutes that they were in the worst danger. Soon, to their infinite relief, they had reached their "ceiling." They were now 15,000 feet up—almost three miles,—and below them lay the vast sea of troubled cloudland, dark and forbidding, rolling tumultuously like an ocean of curdled ink. It was a novel experience to be running in the clear air over ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... temple of the Lord; wherefore, as he saith, it was garnished with them; he saith it was garnished with them for beauty. The line[16] saith, garnished; the margin saith, covered. 2. Wherefore, I think, they were fixed as stars, or as the stars in the firmament, so they were set in the ceiling of the house, as in the heaven of the holy temple. 3. And thus fixed, they do the more aptly tell us of what they were a figure; namely, of the ministerial gifts and officers in the church. For ministers, as ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lying with vacant eyes fixed on the ceiling, turned and glanced at the boy, and into his empty gaze crept a faint intelligence. It was not much. He seemed to question with his eyes. That was all. As the little procession moved on, however, he raised ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... second story of a dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the battery-room in the rear; behind which was the office of the agent of the Associated Press. The plastering was about one-third gone from the ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches square. The brass connections on it were black with ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... is one of the principal ones of Kermanshah, an important frontier town of Persia. "It was entered by a porch, extremely clean, and neatly ornamented by painting and other devices on its ceiling and walls. This remarkable contrast to the low, dark, and foul passages which generally lead to Turkish baths, was a presage, upon the very threshold, of greater comfort and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... and what a surprise! He could see all the way around him without moving his head! And he could look at the ceiling of his room! His room? Was it his room! No— It just couldn't be. Where was he? What were those queer machines before him? They moved on four legs. Six tentacles curled outward from their cubical bodies. One of the machines stood close before him. A tentacle shot out from the object ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... assembled the small company was unlit, save from the glow from the embers in the stove. The upper grating had been opened, and in the furnace a handful of half-dry wood sputtered and crackled, rising sometimes to a momentary flame, in whose glow four persons threw strangely contorted shadows on the ceiling. But for this, and a faint, uncertain light which crept through the windows, the room was entirely dark. When the wood flared, a lady seated to the left of the stove cast a caricature-like shadow slantwise on the ceiling, her head seeming gigantic in ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... opposite to him. A little to the right, on one side of the bookcase, was another door, opening into the cabinet which led directly to the state bedchamber which I have mentioned. Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis XIV. A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention. Lastly came the hall ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... firm grip. It was usual to color the ornamental parts of a temple and the open spaces that served as a background for sculpture. The Greeks did not employ the principle of the arch, in order to cover large spaces with a vaulted ceiling. Their temples and other public buildings had only flat ceilings, resting on long rows of columns. The column probably developed from the wooden post or tree trunk used in timber construction. The capital at the top of the column originated in the square ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... at my ceiling, Mrs. Percival," said Mr. Early. "It is a reproduction of the beautiful fan-tracery in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster. Doubtless you recognize it. But, alas, it is impossible to attain the spiritual beauty of the original until age has laid its sanctifying hand on the carving. ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... honey-ant hangs by its legs from the roof of its home. The little workers go out and visit the oak-trees and hunt around for balls called oak galls. From these they get honey, which they carry home and feed to the little fellows hanging on the ceiling by their heels. The honey is stored away in their crops. All day these honey-jar ants are fed, until the abdomens are as big as a currant, and the sweet, yellow honey shines through the skin. When any of the family gets hungry it crawls up to one of these fat little fellows ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... at the wardrobe. Bright, confused lines going straight up, its feet in darkness. The ceiling, the reflection of the ceiling in the glass, and the pale window like a human ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... lass; and they brought home a fair haul," said the purser, throwing back his head, and shooting smoke at a fly on the ceiling. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... up and down, went everything about him. Now he felt sinking through the floor, then gently rising towards the ceiling. Mr. Gammon seemed getting into a mist, and waving about the candles in it. Mr. Titmouse's head swam; his chair seemed to be resting on the waves of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... with heartfelt devotion, to the ceiling. "Thank God, Richard!" he said, in tones of the deepest feeling. He rang the bell. "Tell Miss Graybrooke Mr. Turlington is here." He turned again to Richard. "Lavinia is like me—Lavinia has been so ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... Adam's ceiling radiated in graceful lines from a central medallion, and before a statue of the Sacred Heart a light was burning. Evelyn remembered how the poor lay sisters laboured to keep the stone floor spotless, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... Gothic windows, the soft music from the pipe organ, the dignity of the high, oak-beamed ceiling, all this to Judith's beauty-loving mind was curiously satisfying. The service was short but reverent; a hymn, the reading of the lesson, the prayers for the day, and then the Head Mistress was reading out the promotion ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... exception of Senator Wadleigh, I seemingly had. He however took special pains to show that he did not intend to listen. He alternately looked over some manuscripts and newspapers before him, then jumped up to open or close a door or window. He stretched, yawned, gazed at the ceiling, cut his nails, sharpened his pencil, changing his occupation and position every two minutes, effectually preventing the establishment of the faintest magnetic current between the speakers and the committee. It was with difficulty I restrained the impulse more than once to hurl my manuscript ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... is what you might expect to find in a village boarding-house: the floor of liliuptian extent; the ceiling low, uneven, cracked and yellow; the originally coarse and ugly wall-paper now blotched with age; the carpet thin, threadbare, patched and stained; the furniture of various woods and colors, and in ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... again they droned, and when they ceased others within the house took up the strain. During the singing the carabao head was brought from the house, and the horns, with small section of attached skull, chopped out, and the head returned to the ceiling of the dwelling. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... documents pinned at the level of their eyes—and tapping, tapping. A kind of cavernous retreat in which monstrous iron growths rose out of the floor and were met half-way by electric flowers that had their roots in the ceiling! In this jungle there was scarcely room for us to walk. Buchanan explained the linotypes to me. I watched, as though romantically dreaming, the flashing descent of letter after letter, a rain of letters into ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... secretary said to me in English, "Mr. White, I don't see why we should be talking in German; I was educated at Rochester University under your friend, President Anderson, and I come from Waterloo in Western New York.'' Had he dropped through the ceiling, I could hardly have been more surprised. Neither Waterloo, though a thriving little town upon the New York Central Railroad and not far from the city in which I have myself lived, nor even Rochester with all the added power ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... in a series of tumultuous gestures at the ceiling; then he moaned and sank into a chair at his writing-table. Presently a comparative calm was restored to him, and with reverent fingers he took from a drawer a one-pound box of candy, covered with white tissue-paper, girdled with blue ribbon. He set the ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... perfect and very beautiful. The Duke of Bedford has a house at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been very like it, but is more ruined. This has a good apartment, and a fine gallery, a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which takes up one side: the wainscot is pretty and entire: the ceiling vaulted, and painted in a light genteel grotesque. The whole is built for show: for the back of the house is nothing but lath and plaster. From thence we Went to Bocton-Malherbe, where are remains of a house of the Wottons, and their tombs in the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... vessel and drove its sword through 'copper sheathing, an inch board under-sheathing, a three-inch plank of hard wood, the solid white oak timber twelve inches thick, then through another two and a half-inch hard-oak ceiling, and lastly penetrated the head of an oil cask, where it stuck, not a drop of the oil ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the corner by the window, in which Marguerite had placed herself with her work. There, as if she had dropped from the ceiling, or come up through the floor—there, in the old attitude, with her face to the stove—sat an Obstacle that had not been foreseen, in the person of Madame Dor! She half got up, half looked over her broad shoulder at Vendale, and plumped ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... Kaaba. The very idea was pollution to a Moslem. "Nothing," says Burton, "is more simple than the interior of this sacred building. The pavement is composed of slabs of fine and various coloured marbles. The upper part of the walls, together with the ceiling, are covered with handsome red damask, flowered over with gold. The flat roof is upheld by three cross beams, supported in the centre by three columns. Between the columns ran bars of metal supporting many lamps said to ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... attaining the perfect insight and sympathy imagined and longed for which is always a part of intense appreciation of natural beauty, Miss Dwyer threw herself back in her seat, and fixed her eyes on the car-ceiling with an expression as if she were looking at something at least as far away as ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... that took place among the wheat-fields. The candelabra on the altar are made of "Seventy-five" shells, the Virgin's halo is composed of radiating bayonets, the walls are intricately adorned with German trophies and French relics, and on the ceiling the cure has had painted a kind of zodiacal chart of the whole region, in which Menil-sur-Belvitte's handful of houses figures as the central orb of the system, and Verdun, Nancy, Metz, and Belfort as its humble satellites. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... room, beautiful proportions, a lovely kakemono in the alcove—it's a scroll, not a kimono—and a five-legged little table made of metal with mother-of-pearl inlay. Otherwise nothing but the room with gorgeous blue and gold chrysanthemums alternating on the paneled ceiling and five silk cushions scattered around for us to sit on, and a single one at the end of the room for him. In about five minutes another screen door opened and he appeared in a gorgeous but simple flowing ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... a comfortable chamber, with an oak wainscot; and whenever in summer months the air is sharp enough, as on the present occasion, a fire helped to light it up; which fire, being chiefly wood, made a pleasant broad flicker on panel and ceiling, and yet did not ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... by the negligence of the steersman, the steerage was set on fire: that, at his outcry for help, the fire was, as we thought totally extinguished; but, that some sparks getting between the timber, and within the ceiling, it proceeded into the hold, where there was no resisting it; & then they got into their boats, as creatures in the last extremity, with what provision they had, together with oars, sails, and a compass, intending to go back ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... one he passed without hesitation. It yielded to his hand, and he flashed the light about a bare room, with half of the ceiling sloping down to the window. In the corner beyond this window a second door was partly concealed by the recess. The inspector stepped across the floor ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... and to the sound of the London traffic. It was Helena's room, for which she was responsible. The walls were of the dead-green colour of August foliage; the green carpet, with its border of polished floor, lay like a square of grass in a setting of black loam. Ceiling and frieze and fireplace were smooth white. There ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... then about eighty-seven years of age, taking a journey to Brescia in connection with an important commission given to him for the decoration of the great hall in the Palazzo Pubblico at Brescia, to which the Vicentine artist Righetto had supplied the ceiling, and Palladio had added columns and interior wall-decorations. The three great ceiling-pictures, which were afterwards, as a consequence of the contract then entered upon, executed by the master, or rather by his assistants, endured only until 1575, when in the penultimate year of Titian's life ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... our infallible square inch rule, now. Take the inside of this room from floor to ceiling, and search in succession every square inch of it. No matter whether the part under review seems a likely or an unlikely, or even a possible or an impossible place of concealment, search it whether or no. Stolen goods are ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... lasting longer or shorter, in proportion to the dose. When Abou Hassan laid down his head on the bolster, he opened his eyes; and by the dawning light that appeared, found himself in a large room, magnificently furnished, the ceiling of which was finely painted in Arabesque, adorned with vases of gold and silver, and the floor covered with a rich silk tapestry. He saw himself surrounded by many young and handsome ladies, many ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... was a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as it shook in ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... almost every object of value had been removed at once for safety, every fresco even of importance had been cut bodily out of its setting and placed in one of those immense halls on the ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments of all sizes, a medley of domestic subjects and of classical myths! Torn from the walls they were specially executed to adorn, divorced from their proper scheme of surrounding ornament, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... shining in at a badly curtained window; a clumsy wooden bed, with big twisted posts that reached to the ceiling; on one side of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the other side, an elderly gentleman unremembered by me at that moment—such were the objects that presented themselves to my view, when I first consciously returned to the world that we ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... throne of the sultan was placed opposite the entrance. The tiles are nearly 4 ft. high all round, and the colours vary at intervals. Over them is a series of oval medallions with inscriptions, interwoven with flowers and leaves. There are nine windows, three on each facade, and the ceiling is admirably diversified with inlaid-work of white, blue and gold, in the shape of circles, crowns and stars—a kind of imitation of the vault of heaven. The walls are covered with varied stucco-work of most delicate pattern, surrounding many ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the dining-room whose fame had spread to the outposts of Spring township and to the fastnesses of Prospect, behaved with scarcely less constraint than the eldest Miss Morton. She gazed at the beamed ceiling, the high wainscoting, the stenciled walls, the frescoes upon the panels, framed by the beams, the wide sideboard, the glittering glass and the plated silver service, and if her eyes had not been so beautiful they would have betrayed her wonder and admiration. As ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... curiosity; the pure white walls and ceiling, shining with matchless cleanness, the glittering instruments arranged carefully on glass tables, the attentive and pleasant-faced nurses, standing also in pure white, and the doctor in his vestments, smiling reassuringly. In the centre of the room was a large glass table, long ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair |
