"Ground floor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the only word—and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance the kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect we hung now on the very ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... with but three legs, which stood in one corner. The walls, he was surprised to observe, were handsomely decorated with tapestries, and Archie at once made up his mind that this had at one time been a private dwelling-house, and had probably been owned by some rich Spaniard who kept a store on the ground floor, and lived in these rooms. The insurgents had probably driven the family out of the country and had taken possession of the house, which they had stripped of everything useful, leaving the tapestries and ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... lodgers, Mrs. Bubb reserved the rooms on the ground floor for her own use. In that at the back she slept with the two younger children; the other two had a little bed in the front room, which during the daytime served as a parlour. On occasions of ceremony—when the parlour was needed in the evening—the children ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... after visiting all the millionaires and titled personages in Faubourg Saint-Honore, the doctor drew up at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and Rue Francois I., before a house with a swell front which stood at the corner of the quay, and entered an apartment on the ground floor which in no wise resembled those he had visited since the morning. Immediately upon entering, the tapestries that covered the walls, the old stained glass windows intersecting with their lead sashes the soft, many-hued light, a gigantic saint ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... ground floor there are open pillared halls with asphalted floors where the men assemble for parade, and, before they are marched off under the command of their section-sergeants, have orders and information read to them. There is a drying-room through which a current of hot air continually ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... which Wordsworth was taught for eight years—from 1778 to 1786—was founded by Archbishop Sandys of York, in 1585, and the building is still very much as it was in Wordsworth's time. The main school-room is on the ground floor. One small chamber on the first floor was used, in the end of last century, by the head master, as a private class-room, for teaching a few advanced pupils. In another is a small library, formed in part by the donations of the scholars; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... shown into a sitting-room on the ground floor, which he had always known as the Earl's own room, and there he found Lord Brentford alone. The last time he had been there he had come to plead with the Earl on behalf of Lord Chiltern, and the Earl had then been a ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Before he left the hotel, the landlord, with many apologies, had presented his bill for the dinner of the day before, which the military gentleman had forgotten to discharge. The door was opened, and he was shown into a parlour on the ground floor, and told to sit down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... child-messenger, we walked up the main street to a house at some little distance, and, entering the hall, were conducted to a room on the ground floor, where we found several persons assembled round a couch on which was laid the deceased. It was an old man, who had, as I was told, lived beyond his 130th year. To judge by the calm smile on his countenance, he had passed away without suffering. One of the sons, who was now the head of the family, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... let him feel her love. When she came in with soft steps she was amazed, for he was standing already quite dressed in the new black coat and trousers at the window, gazing fixedly at the field in which they were beginning to build a villa now. The ground floor was already finished, there was a high scaffolding round it; it was going to be an ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... to receive them, saying he had no vacant room. This might have disconcerted anyone but Derues, but his audacity, activity, and resource seemed to increase with each fresh obstacle. Leaving Edouard in a room on the ground floor which had no communication with the rest of the inn, he went at once to look for lodgings, and hastily explored the town. After a fruitless search, he found at last, at the junction of the rue Saint-Honore with that of the Orangerie, a cooper named Martin, who had a furnished ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... try a new one; he would set up a house of entertainment for sailors. His house being so close to the dock, could not be more favourably situated for the purpose, and they had ample accommodation. On the ground floor they could have a room for common sailors, and on the floor above they had one where captains ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... landlady invited him to follow her, and she led the way to a cozy apartment on the ground floor that was half kitchen and half sitting-room. A kettle was steaming merrily on the fire, and overhead an ominous red stain ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... and economy. Frequently, the architect will be called upon to design a bath in a given space in the lower floors of some existing building. He may be given the ground or basement floor to make the most of as best he can. His plan is thus considerably hampered. If the site includes the basement and ground floor of an ordinary house, he may arrange the offices and cooling and dressing rooms on the ground floor; and the hot rooms, shampooing room, and bath rooms, in the basement. Where possible, the hot rooms should be pushed out beyond ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... goin' to blossom!" declared the Drifter. "An' the guy which gets in on the ground floor is goin' to make a clean-up! They's a range there—the Double A—which is right in the middle of things. A guy named Bransford owns her—an' Bransford's on his last legs. He's due to pass out pronto, or I'm a gopher! ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the "great house," who can describe it? From the ground floor to the uppermost attic, the rooms presented that waste of furniture, in the shape of sofas, ottomans, easy chairs, couches, carpets, tapestries, curtains, paintings, pier glasses, plate, and a thousand other articles contributive of ease and luxury, which the most extravagant expenditure ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... a seaport and its merchant princes traded with Sultans and Doges and such-like magnificoes of the Mediterranean. But nowadays its glory has departed. Below the great gothic windows spreads the awning of a cafe, which takes up all the ground floor. Hugging it tight is the Mairie, and hugging that, the Hotel de Ville. Hither does every soul in the place, at some hour or other of the day, inevitably gravitate. Lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, merchants, lovers, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... with a store closet, a kitchen, pantry, and bed-chamber form the ground floor; there is a good upper floor that will make ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... on the ground floor to the left of the hallway was imposing in a stately Old-World way. The rooms in Wisteria Villa were rooms for personages from Zola; this room was inhabited by ghosts from the pages of Balzac. It was large, high, and square; the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... On the ground floor was a public restaurant where there was served the best dollar dinner on earth. It ranked with the best and the others were in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night, almost everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Every one who was any one in the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... my little pearl," he said, putting together with extreme precaution two cards that looked absurdly flimsy between his big fingers. Little Nina watched him with intense seriousness as he went on erecting the ground floor, while he continued to speak to Almayer with his head over his shoulder so as not to endanger ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... and started the car on its downward journey. As his passenger got off on the ground floor, he gave him a new thought to carry away ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... and John Gough, his Chief of Staff, in one of the rooms on the ground floor, poring over maps and evidently much disconcerted. But, though much perturbed in mind and very tired in body and brain, Haig was cool and alert ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... who asked him in very bad English what his business was. Lord Arthur handed him the paper Count Rouvaloff had given him. When the man saw it he bowed, and invited Lord Arthur into a very shabby front parlour on the ground floor, and in a few moments Herr Winckelkopf, as he was called in England, bustled into the room, with a very wine-stained napkin round his neck, and a fork in ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... to keep out the wind and the rain. The roof was covered with boards, and the floor was made of logs, each split into two parts and laid the flat side up. A plank door and three small windows completed the primitive dwelling. There was but one large room on the ground floor, twenty by thirty feet, and a loft above, to which access was obtained by a ladder. In the loft were the straw beds on ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... Princess of entrancing beauty, and of inordinate extravagance. Her little retinue was composed of one hundred and fifty cavaliers, all Persians, who lived on the ground floor; with them she hunted and rode in the broad day—rather contrary to Arab notions. The Persian women are subjected to quite a Spartan training in bodily exercise; they enjoy great liberty, much more so than Arab women, but they are also more rude ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... arrive at the manor, and when I look up I see that all the windows of the large room on the ground floor are wide open. God forbid! has some one died? I think to myself. I peep in and see Mateus, the footman, in a white apron with brushes on his feet, skating up and down like the boys on the ice. "The Lord be praised, Mateus, what are you doing?" I say. "In Eternity, I am polishing the floor," says ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... distinguished by having the front of the ground floor arranged as a show-room, warehouse, or business room which was open to the street. The trader lived at his shop. In the case of a butcher's, for example, the front part of the shutters that covered the unglazed window at night, was let down in business hours so that it hung over the ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... pleasant one, and quite artistic. It seemed original, too. There was something almost freakish in being answered by the parlourmaid (who was suitably like a fish in manner and profile), "Miss Luscombe is at home, and will you please step downstairs?" when one had rung the bell on the ground floor. And Miss Luscombe's ringing laugh with its three soprano notes and upward cadence always greeted one charmingly and cordially, and one always liked her; one couldn't help it. Her great fault was that ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... luggage was put upon it, and they were landed in Nelson Square. The lodgings were three rooms at the back of the house, two of them garrets at the top, and the third a small sitting-room on the ground floor, behind the front parlour. They looked rather dismal, and Miriam inquired whether they could not have ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... The puritan hens now slept irremediably; and being cheered with the promise of supper I wished them an ironical good-night, and was lighted across the garden and noiselessly admitted to a bedroom on the ground floor of the cottage. There I found soap, water, razors—offered me diffidently by my beardless host—and an outfit of new clothes. To be shaved again without depending on the barber of the gaol was a source of a delicious, if a childish joy. My hair was sadly ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the public rooms, was a hundred and thirty feet in length, and a hundred and twenty in depth. The hall on the ground floor, supported on arches, and terminated at the south by a bow, was ninety-five feet in length, sixty-six in breadth, and twenty in height. It was originally intended for the library, but is now occupied by the ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... morning hours he would sit in the silence of that corner-room on the ground floor reading. There were three writing-desks in the library, and one was chiefly reserved for correspondence of a political nature, and another for his literary work, while the third was used by Mrs. Gladstone. He spent his evenings ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... and looked—in vain. By this time the servants were gone to bed, and the two searchers were quite alone on the ground floor of their magnificent mansion. Mrs. Greyne began to look seriously ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... house, with latticed verandahs like a big cage, was built by a German missionary, who purposed having a school on the ground floor and living in the upper story; but as soon as he had built his house he was recalled to Germany, and the only trace of him that remained was a box full of torn Bibles and tracts, which, I am sorry to say, had been used as waste paper in the bazaar for tying up parcels since he left, but as the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... for? Shall we?—I—can't believe it—some how," and Ray stopped, glanced inquiringly at the major, and then nodded toward the doorway of the third house on the row. The ground floor was occupied by Field as his quarters, the up-stair rooms ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... now you're right. The next year I began to lose. Then Royster put me into that Company of his down in Virginia—the Virginia Improvement Company, you know. He took me down, in a special car, showed me how much he himself had in it, how much would be got out of it, offered to let me in on the ground floor, and made it look so rosy, withal, that I succumbed. Two hundred thousand was buried there. An equal amount I had lent them, at six per cent., shortly after I came to Northumberland—selling the securities that yielded ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... exception of the gallery, the great building was empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of the orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground floor far below, was still encased in white wrappings—her and there an attendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had to strain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of the German, and his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of liberal arts and fine arts was installed in the two wings on the ground floor of the Government Building, while the fine-art exhibit was placed in the art gallery formed by the rear wing of the building. Taking advantage of the available facilities, they were arranged so as to give unity to the whole, notwithstanding their ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... carriages drew up in turn before the house of mourning, the occupants stepped out and were conducted into the large waiting-room on the ground floor where they removed their wraps. Two neighbours of the Hindricksons, who acted as host and hostess, then invited the more prominent persons among the guests to step upstairs, where dinner ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... modern enough for comfort. Its quaint gables, mullioned windows and Cromwellian porch were the joy of photographers, while the old-fashioned hall, when the big log fire was lighted, would be hard to beat for coziness. The schoolroom, on the ground floor, had a separate side entrance on to the lawn, leading through a small ante-room where boots and coats and cricket bats and tennis rackets could be kept; the drawing-room had a luxurious ingle nook with cushioned seats, and all the bedrooms but two had a southern aspect. As for the big rambling ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... their feet with a bound and hurried from their room on the ground floor, while the others appeared at the head ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... apartments.... There are two fireplaces; and the day we dined there, there were 36 wax candles over the table, 14 on it, and ten great lamps on tall pedestals about the room.' At Thorp Perrow 'all the living rooms are on the ground floor, one a very handsome one about 50 feet long, with a great bow furnished with rose-coloured satin, and the whole furniture of which cost L4000.' At Goodwood the rooms were done up in 'brightest ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... in February, and found Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet-street[9], in which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the garret: his faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Capitoline Trust Company—starts next month—four million capital—I told you all about it. 'Oh, well,' he says, 'let's wait and think about it.' 'Wait!' says I, 'the Capitoline Trust Company won't wait for you, my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,' says I, 'and it's now or never.' 'Oh, let it wait,' says he. I don't ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a moment free, and come to the Odeon that night, you will find me in the manager's box, proscenium, ground floor. I am heavy-hearted about all you tell me. Here you are again in gloom, sorrow and chagrin. Poor dear friend! Let us continue to hope that you will save your patient, but you are ill too, and I am very anxious about you, I was quite overwhelmed by it this ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... just arrived. Here is the ground floor—no, that's rather difficult. Try the elevation. We are to have a good many gables ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... governess of a large family that lived in the Piano Nobile of the house inhabited by myself and my young charges (it was the Palazzo Poniatowski at Rome, and Messrs. Spillmann, two of the best pastry-cooks in Christendom, have their shop on the ground floor): Miss Bunch, I say, begged me to draw a set of Twelfth-Night characters for the ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... out of that sound-stricken house remains an unsolved mystery. He never understood it himself; he remembers only that when they reached the ground floor the vibrations of Skale's opening bass note had already begun. Its effect, too, was immediately noticeable. For the roar of the escaping Letters, which upstairs had reached so immense a volume as to be recognized ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... of his victim had, meanwhile, been conveyed to an apartment on the ground floor of the hotel, where on his arrival he was immediately confronted with it; but no sign of remorse or regret was visible as he gazed upon the corpse. "Turn it over," he said huskily, after he had gazed for awhile upon the glazed eyes and the parted lips. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... a place which a gun has located, because modern artillery is fine in its workings to a hair's-breadth, and can repeat its performance to a fractional inch. So the little household had removed themselves from the famous cellar to a half-shattered house, which had one whole living-room on the ground floor, good for wounded and for the serving of meals; and one unbroken bedroom on the first floor, large ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... them, and they completely overhauled the ground floor—hall, dining-room, studies, passages, vestibules, everywhere that was not barred to them; but they were no wiser at the end of their search than at the beginning; there was not the slightest clue as to the author of ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... derelict villas hard by that unoccupied building site that had been and was still the scene of his daily horticulture. He and his wife lived upstairs, and in the drawing and dining rooms, which had each French windows opening on the lawn, and all about the ground floor generally, Jessica, who was now a lean and lined and baldish but still very efficient and energetic old woman, kept her three cows and a multitude of gawky hens. These two were part of a little community of stragglers and returned fugitives, perhaps a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... its bankrupt proprietor was a refugee in foreign lands, it was not much more cheerful now when Sir Francis Clavering came to inhabit it. The greater part of the mansion was shut up, and the baronet only occupied a few of the rooms on the ground floor, where his housekeeper and her assistant from the lodge gate waited upon the luckless gentleman in his forced retreat, and cooked a part of the game which he spent the dreary mornings in shooting. Lightfoot, his man, had passed over to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... upper middle-class house near the Park. It is furnished in the conventional modern style, soberly and without imagination. The room is on the ground floor, facing the street, the door is to the right, and leads into the hall. To the left of this door is a sideboard, glittering with silver. Three tall windows, at the back heavily curtained; between them hang two or three family portraits. The table, on which there is the usual debris of a meal that ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... between the roof and the ceiling of the ground floor. At each end was a tiny window, and the whole area, windows included, had been divided longitudinally by a single thickness of hand-sawn lumber. Both windows were open, a cool breeze was blowing through, and a bright paper pasted on the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the West Ham shelter of the Salvation Army is a cold place on a January morning. The building itself, an old warehouse, is newly whitewashed. Its gabled end projects into the yard in the middle, with a door on the ground floor, and another in the loft above it without any balcony or ladder, but with a pulley rigged over it for hoisting sacks. Those who come from this central gable end into the yard have the gateway leading to the ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the larger. The amount of it all was; that Madame de ——, accustomed to have many rooms, and to think it vulgar to receive in her great drawing-room of a morning, believing au premier, or up one pair of stairs, more genteel than the rez de chaussee, or the ground floor, and feeling the necessity of an ante-chamber as there was an abruptness in being at once admitted into the presence of a lady from a staircase, a sort of local brusquerie, that would suit her cook better than the ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... studio in Boston, and had for this work secured a room on the ground floor of a business building. The light, to be sure, was not all that might have been desired, but it was abundant, window screens were cheap and the sculptor not over sensitive to subtile gradations of values. He made no attempt to decorate the room for his ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... Salo and Bruno that there was a large hall with weapons and armor at the ground floor of the castle. When the boys asked Apollonie to admit them, she opened a little side door for them, because Mr. Trius had hidden the other key. Salo lifted the armoured knight to his shoulders, and had the long, blue cloak draped around him. He looked like a frightful giant as he wandered up and ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... off in the main vestibule on the mezzanine. I went down a short stair leading to the ground floor. I settled my bill at that huge counter that was always under siege by a considerable crowd. I left instructions for shipping my containers of stuffed animals and dried plants to Paris, France. I opened a line of credit sufficient to cover the babirusa ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... which Mr. Wright conducted us was on the ground floor, and was about thirty feet deep and fifteen feet wide. Around the walls were hung skins of kangaroos, stuffed parrots, and other birds of gaudy plumage, while confined in brackets were old muskets in sufficient ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Cambridge, it must be from three such rooms; Greek burns here; science there; philosophy on the ground floor. Poor old Huxtable can't walk straight;—Sopwith, too, has praised the sky any night these twenty years; and Cowan still chuckles at the same stories. It is not simple, or pure, or wholly splendid, the lamp of learning, since if you see them ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up—perhaps to preserve it for the son with whom his plans were all associated—and the rooms to be ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the servants had vanished, and the habitues of the hotel had apparently gone to bed, for he met no one as he passed along, and turned down the passage leading to the salle-a-manger. This was a large long room, occupying the whole ground floor of one wing of the hotel, with windows looking out on one side into the courtyard, on the other into the garden, two long tables, smaller ones in the space between, and above them a row of chandeliers smothered in pink and yellow paper roses. The room looked bare and deserted enough now; a sleepy ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... rolled about in; the place was always in a romantic twilight; there were old, deserted spiders' webs hanging to the roof, looking like shops to let, which never did any business; and the ascent and descent of the perpendicular ladder from the ground floor was quite an adventure in itself. To picture a ship on which one had to go aloft to enter the cabin would seem rather a difficult task; but a child's imagination is the richest in the world, and though Valentine and his ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the fragment of a mediaeval town, situated on a river and fronted by a bridge; and on the bank of the river a dark, square, massive and weather-stained pile of four stories, with barred windows on the ground floor as defence against a possibly angry populace, and a sentry-box at each of its two lofty wrought-iron gates. It may be, as Baedeker informs us it is, a "handsome example of the German renaissance," but to the foreigner ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... there came a day when his timber turned to gold. The name of Grimwell became a household word. It even penetrated to the secret crannies of Wall Street. Men who did not know oak from soft pine began to plead with him to be "let in on the ground floor." Gentlemen who sat in mahogany offices and worshipped at unseen shrines, took notice of this man of the West who was getting more than his share of the pillage. Promoters sought him out and haggled with him—haggled with the prince of promoters! ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... long, 19 feet deep, and 30 feet high, and is very solid and massive, having been built of the limestone blasted from the rock. It consists of a ground floor containing the telegraph office, the observers' work room, and the kitchen and store rooms; the first story, in which are the living and sleeping rooms for the observers and their assistants; and the second story, living and sleeping rooms for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 647, May 26, 1888 • Various
... another, of the rooms opening out from the hallway, shutting and barring the metal blinds. Claire, following his example, had run from window to window, aiding him in his self-appointed task of barricading the ground floor. Milo alone stood inert and dazed, gaping dully at the two busy toilers. Then, dazedly, he stumbled to the front door and pushed it shut, fumbling with its bolts. As in a ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... of logs, was of two stories; on the ground floor were two living rooms, and the domains of Babette, who amongst her other accomplishments turned out to be not only a most capable valet, but a first-class cook. On the second story there were two large rooms. The whole house was furnished after the manner ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... said Martha, preparing to leave the bar, but first ringing the bell so that the crushed-looking waiter might come and attend to possible customers; 'he's on the ground floor, and there ain't no stairs to climb—now what are you looking at, sir?' with another gratified giggle, as she caught ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... ringers lit a candle, and, with the candle in one hand, the rod in the other, sped through the hall, and along a back passage leading to the gunroom. He had caught a glimpse of the Earl running down the main staircase, and had guessed that the trouble was on the ground floor. As he reached the end of the long dark passage, Fenwick leaped in by the back entrance, of which the door was open. What Logan saw was a writhing group—the Prince of Scalastro struggling in the arms of three men: a long white heap lay crumpled in a ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... afterwards one of these daughters wrote, "Almost the first time I can remember my parents was at home in Great Coram Street on one occasion, when my mother took me upon her back, as she had a way of doing, and after hesitating for a moment at the door, carried me into a little ground floor room where some one sat bending over a desk. This some one lifted up his head and looked round at the people leaning over his chair. He seemed pleased, smiled at us, but remonstrated. Nowadays I ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... merchants appearing to reside in larger and much better habitations. The houses in most of the streets were built with quadrangles, a gallery running round the interior sides of the first floor, on which indeed the families chiefly resided, appropriating the ground floor to offices for domestic purposes. The dwelling-rooms were not ceiled, but were open to the roof of the building, which rarely exceeded two stories in height. The upper part of the windows was glazed with very bad glass; the lower part consisted ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Negro Liberalism frightened Senor Avellanos. A newspaper was the only remedy. And now that the right man had been found in Decoud, great black letters appeared painted between the windows above the arcaded ground floor of a house on the Plaza. It was next to Anzani's great emporium of boots, silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys, tiny silver arms, legs, heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries, champagne, women's hats, patent medicines, even a few dusty books in paper covers and mostly in the French language. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... quarters. The book-plate in the volumes was printed from a wood-block engraved by his daughter, Miss Jane Quinton, a student of the Norwich School of Art, which at that time occupied the top floor of the Library. The books were shelved in cases on the ground floor until 1879 when they were removed to their present glass cases ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... and two daughters. The eldest child of these second nuptials was named George, and was born on February 11 (O.S.), 1732, at Bridges Creek. The house in which this event occurred was a plain, wooden farmhouse of the primitive Virginian pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, an attic story with a long, sloping roof, and a massive brick chimney. Three years after George Washington's birth it is said to have been burned, and the family for this or some other reason removed to another estate in what is now Stafford County. The second house was like the ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... take it to be as good as any, and much cheaper than either tiles or hair cloth. (See description page 23.) The dropping room for receiving the malt as it comes off the kiln may be constructed different ways; but I take it that a ground floor covered with a two inch plank well jointed, and properly laid, is preferable to a loft for keeping malt, and in this situation might be heaped to any depth without injury or danger of breaking down. Malt thus kept, if well dried before coming off the kiln, is never in danger of heating or getting ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... a boot-cupboard under the staircase on the ground floor that he hastened, to loose the mirth that was destroying him. He had not drawn breath for a first whoop of triumph when two hands ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... open there was a sharp explosion behind him, and he looked back, to see the windows on the ground floor glowing. That was the other can of petrol, as he could guess readily enough. At once he ducked, and, running low, got well to one side of the house. Then, just as a great burst of flame lighted up the whole scene, he dropped to the ground, and lay peering toward the road ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... who had left his own country in disgust at having discovered an attachment between his wife and one of his fellow-officers. He died in a fever, and while raving in a delirium spoke of a concealed chest. A trapper, who was his only attendant in his last moments, dug over the ground floor of the hut and found a box containing a jewelled sword, costly trinkets, and letters that bore out the presumption of Follingsby's aristocratic origin. What became of these valuables after their exhumation is not known, and the existence of ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... well. Max and Dale succeeded in effecting an entrance into the ground floor of the workshop after they had seen the watchman, by the glint of his lamp, make his midnight round. The two soldiers—one at each end of the building—saw nothing and heard nothing, of that they were assured. Without delay, therefore, for in a little over an ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... you know the Calle del Candilejo, where there is a head of Don Pedro the Avenger.*** That head ought to have given me pause. We stopped at an old house in that street. She passed into the entry, and knocked at a door on the ground floor. It was opened by a gipsy, a thorough-paced servant of the devil. Carmen said a few words to her in Romany. At first the old hag grumbled. To smooth her down Carmen gave her a couple of oranges and a handful of sugar-plums, and let her have a taste of wine. Then she hung ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... far from being a palace. The same apartment on the ground floor served for dining and drawing-room, communicating directly with the kitchen by a door, which stood always wide open. This room was furnished in the most scanty manner; two old arm chairs, six straw chairs, a sideboard, a round table. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the four boys descended to the ground floor of the office building. Here half a dozen people were waiting to go up, while several others were at the rear of ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... found that a window on the ground floor had been left open. It was but the matter of a moment to vault out and I found myself on the street alone at night for the ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... the ground floor of his own tenement house on Madison Street, and to say that Aaron Kronberg worshipped the ground his uncle walked on would be to utter the ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... was sitting down to the table, Clarence's notice was arrested by a somewhat suspicious and unpleasing occurrence. The supper room was on the ground floor, and, owing to the heat of the weather, one of the windows, facing the small garden, was left open. Through this window Clarence distinctly saw the face of a man look into the room for one instant, with a prying and curious gaze, and then as instantly disappear. As no one else seemed to remark this ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there, to our right, is the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. It's there the Central Executive Committee meets, and the Assembly. The same hall used to be the czar's throne room in the old days. On the nearer side, on the ground floor, are the Sobstvennaya Plovina, the former private apartments of Nicholas First. The extraterrestrials ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Haymarket. I forget what the play was. When we returned from the play I went to bed and began to read my Cary's Plato. It so happened that I stumbled on the 'Phaedrus.' I read on and on, till I reached the end. Then I began the 'Symposium;' and the sun was shining on the shrubs outside the ground floor on which I slept before I shut the book up. I have related these unimportant details because that night was one of the most important nights of my life.... Here in the 'Phaedrus' and the 'Symposium,' in the 'Myth of the ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... friend that he was, entered without ringing, and started through the ground floor of the house, stopping at times to admire a mantel-piece, a ceiling, or a painting. Lord Harrow's new hothouses being in full blast, there were flowers everywhere, and great logs of birch roared and crackled in all the fireplaces. The Poor Boy peeped into the dining-room and ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... year or two, with all the money we can raise, to drain the lake. It can be done. I've looked over the ground. But it will take every man in the country that's willing to work for wages. We'll need an army, and we need right now decent men in on the ground floor. Are you in?" ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... at my own fancy. Which of us two will yield, remains to be seen. Now for another matter: this mansion belongs to me! As I am about to leave it, I am indifferent whether you continue to live here or not; but the ground floor is uninhabited. It contains, besides the reception-rooms, two complete sets of apartments; I have let them for ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... o'clock Cope found himself tucked away in a small room on the ground floor. It had been left quite as planned and constructed by the original builder of the house. It was cramped and narrow, with low ceiling and one small window. It gave on a short side-porch which was almost too narrow to sit on and which was ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... general exhibition of all the conjoined Societies throughout the opening month of the Art Center (November, 1921) we presented a collection of one hundred and sixty-two prints from our own membership, filling one of the large galleries upon the ground floor. This Exhibition, representing all parts of the country, was exceedingly well received and, under the charge of the American Federation of Arts, was afterwards shown in Corvallis, Oregon; Emporia, Kansas; College Station, Texas; and ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1922 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... prison; the south side is a row of piazzas, the whole length of which are shops, and over it a gallery to see the bull-fights; the east side has some large houses belonging to people of distinction, and in the middle is a large fountain with a brass bason. The houses have, in general, only a ground floor, upon account of the frequent earthquakes; but they make a handsome appearance. The churches are rich in gilding as well as in plate: That of the Jesuits is reckoned an exceeding good piece of architecture, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... a righteous noise worthy of the occasion. They are neither afraid nor ashamed of the job; and we hope they draw consolation from it. The more genteel worshippers take up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—at the back of the central seats and at the sides. The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries. Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... these new "scientific missionaries" came in 1871, when he was deep in the great schemes of elementary education. More than a hundred of them flocked to South Kensington, where some large rooms on the ground floor of the museum had been secured and rigged up for the purpose by the Professor and his three demonstrators. For six weeks in the summer there was a daily lecture, followed by four hours' laboratory work under the demonstrators, in which the students verified for themselves facts which ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... subsoil and bringing it to the surface. If he could have done it, he would have ploughed ten feet deep. Tons of artificial manure came by canal boat—positively boat loads—and were stored in the warehouse. For he put up a regular warehouse for the storage of materials; the heavy articles on the ground floor, the lighter above, hoisted up by a small crane. There was, too, an office, where the 'engineer' attended every morning to take his orders, as the bailiff might at the back-door of an old farmhouse. Substantial buildings were erected for ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... situated on the second floor, consisted of three large rooms—dining-room, drawing-room, and bedroom. The first floor was occupied by the owner of the house, a stick and umbrella manufacturer, who had a shop on the ground floor. The house, which was narrow and by no means deep, had only two storeys. Felicite moved into it with a bitter pang. In the provinces, to live in another person's house is an avowal of poverty. Every family of position at Plassans has a house of its own, landed property ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... ship construction are fearfully high just now," he admitted; "but—mark my words!—they're going to double; and if we place our contracts now, while we have an opportunity to do so, we'll be getting in on the ground floor. I tell you that war hasn't really started yet; and the longer it continues the higher will prices on all commodities soar—but principally on ship construction. Father-in-law, I beg of you to let me get busy and build. Suppose the boats do cost us a quarter of a ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... still used as a store-room. The servants were subsequently shifted to what was then the chapel of the Capture of Christ, the figures in that chapel being moved to the one in which they are now. The original Capture chapel was on the ground floor of the large house that stands on the right hand as one enters the small entrance to the Sacro Monte which a visitor will be tempted to take, opposite Giovanni Pschel's chapel, and a little ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler |
