"Staircase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters, "Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... leave of Colonel Mariage, old Baron von Moudenfels passed through the antechamber, where he found the valet, with slow and weary steps. Panting and resting on every stair, he descended the staircase, coughing, and moved slowly past the houses to the nearest carriage, into which he climbed with difficulty and sank with a groan upon ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... weald or valley on the fourth; all warmly lit with sunshine, deep under liquid sunshine like the sands under the liquid sea, no harshness of man-made sound to break the insulation amid nature, on an island in a far Pacific of sunshine. Some people would hesitate to walk down the staircase cut in the turf to the beech-trees beneath; the woods look so small beneath, so far down and steep, and no handrail. Many go to the Dyke, but none to Wolstanbury Hill. To come over the range reminds one of what travellers say of coming over the Alps into Italy; from harsh sea-slopes, made ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... She had missed them; but she thought they must be near; for they seldom took long walks early in the day. Meeting Jacintha on the landing of the great staircase, she asked her ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... mortified that he could not produce the evidence of the murder of the two sons of Edward IV., so as to settle this gay young pretender; but he did not succeed in finding the remains, though they were afterwards discovered under the staircase of the White Tower, and buried in Westminster Abbey, where the floor is now paved with epitaphs, and where economy and grief are better combined, perhaps, than elsewhere in the world, the floor and tombstone being happily united, thus, as ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... staircase was full of people, and I dived under to go below and find my cabin, which I now resentfully remembered was ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... sleep; so, after an hour or two had passed, she rose, lit a candle, threw on a wrap, and descended the broad staircase, intent upon a queer and enthralling Spanish book—the story of a mad knight and his comic, matter-of-fact attendant, which was ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... are speaking is somewhat low and not exactly correct in all its lines: whether the architect who built it was afflicted with poor eyesight or whether the earthquakes and typhoons have twisted it out of shape, no one can say with certainty. A wide staircase with green newels and carpeted steps leads from the tiled entrance up to the main floor between rows of flower-pots set upon pedestals of motley-colored and fantastically decorated Chinese porcelain. Since there are neither porters nor servants who demand invitation cards, we will go in, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... had come down, but coated with dust and marked here and there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could speak, could have given their own dread memories of fear and pain. We were glad to pass up the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving the outer door open to light us somewhat on our way; for to our eyes the one long-wick'd, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall gave an inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the corner of the chamber overhead, ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... few hard chairs for yelling Shand from, and then rushing away. There is an iron spiral staircase that once led to the ladies' hairdressing apartments, but now leads to more Shand, Shand, Shand. A glass door at the back opens on to the shop proper, screaming Civil and Religious Liberty, Shand, as it opens, and beyond is the street crammed ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... some time, and Mrs. Green had already called up the staircase that dinner was nearly ready before Mopsey had commenced to clothe himself in such garments as he supposed Richard the Third wore. First he put on a thin pair of cotton pants that had once been white, but were now a drab, and which fitted quite closely to his skin. On the outside seams of ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... house, and called, standing at the foot of the staircase, 'Tricksy, it's Graham major and Graham minor with their Pater; ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... of the building, which led through two spacious porticoes. The second floor formed one large room only, the ceiling of which was divided into rectangular panels, supported by thirty-two Doric columns. The second floor was reached also by a majestic double staircase, where a spacious reception room, two apartments for ladies, and the offices of the commission were situated. In the center of the reception room was a marble statue representing "the Feast," mounted on a large pedestal and encircled by an upholstered settee. Above this statue the large central ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the glass door sitting cross-legged on his work-bench, his bowed back within an inch of the floor above, stitching away at a National Guard's uniform, while the citoyenne Remacle, whose cooking stove boasted no chimney but the well of the staircase, poisoned the other tenants with the fumes of her stew-pots and frying-pans, and their little girl Josephine, her face smudged with treacle and looking as pretty as an angel, played on the threshold with Mouton, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were lit in the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... brilliantly lighted on the first floor. The street door opened on to a staircase, and as I mounted it the sound of a piano and a singing voice reached me. At the top of the stairs I caught sight of a waiter loaded with glasses. I ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... a Templar of the present generation receive so fair and innocent a visitor. To him the presence of a gentlewoman in his court, is an occasion for ingenious conjecture; encountered on his staircase she is a cause of lively astonishment. His guests are men, more or less addicted to tobacco; his business callers are solicitors and their clerks; in his vestibule the masculine emissaries of tradesmen may sometimes be found—head-waiters from neighboring taverns, pot-boys ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Eton, to and from their Windsor quarters, is an incident of constant occurrence. When the stately military music was heard far off, in gusty splendour, in the little town, or the fifes and drums of some detachment swept blithely past, he would throw down his pen and go down the little staircase to the road, the boys crowding round him. "Brats, the British army!" he would say, and stand, looking and listening, his eyes filled with gathering tears, and his heart full of proud memories, while the rhythmical beat of the footsteps ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Venetians heard that the king was in Naples, and that the strong fort, which they had great hopes would hold out, was surrendered, they sent for me one morning, and I found them in great number, about fifty or sixty, in the apartment of the prince (the doge) who was ill. Some were sitting upon a staircase leading to the benches, and had their heads resting upon their hands, others otherwise, all showing that they had great sadness at heart. And I trow that, when news came to Rome of the battle lost at Cannae against Hannibal, the senators who had remained there were not more dumbfounded and dismayed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... heard myself called "Venetian coward." In spite of my rage I restrained myself, and turned back saying, coolly and firmly, that perhaps a Venetian coward might kill a brave Pole outside the theatre; and without awaiting a reply I left the building by the chief staircase. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... could only find a back-staircase," she thought, "I would soon be enjoying myself! Arthur, lucky wretch, said something about playing golf. No!—there ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... Perhaps it could not be said to belong to any decided style of architecture; but its central appearance was light, airy, and elegant. After traversing a wide and spacious entrance-hall, you arrived at the foot of a handsome spiral hanging staircase; on the right of which were two spacious apartments, one above the other, which were occupied as sitting chambers by the two houses of representatives. From these branched off several smaller rooms, fitted up as offices, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... much with the town furniture-dealer. A great deal of the furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good feather-beds and blankets. The women—especially the elder women—go to great trouble, and pinch themselves, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... This room, the staircase, the maid, all bore witness to Miss Floyd's simplicity—like the Romney dress of Mount Vernon. The colour of the walls and the hangings, the lines of the furniture, were all subdued, even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white, showed the artistic mind; the chairs ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I like to think that to them Weir is always their true home; and their hearts really live in that broad shadowy house where the steps of the staircase were so wide and shallow that each was a little landing in itself; and where the candles flamed at night in high sconces; and in the halls was a rustling of silk; and in the air the smell of flowers and burning wood. The nursery was high up under the ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... sea, followed the hospitable little fellow to Hypatia's door, where he dropped his daily load of fruit, and then into a narrow by-street, to the ground-floor of a huge block of lodgings with a common staircase, swarming with children, cats, and chickens; and was ushered by his host into a little room, where the savoury smell of broiling ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... without a taint of mockery, for I cared little what might follow; then, with head erect and the firm tread of defiance, I stalked out of his apartment, along the corridor, down the great staircase, across the courtyard, past the guard,—which, ignorant of my disgrace, saluted me,—and out into ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... replied I. "Now it puts all my fear in action, and imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty for you to go and stand where it gave me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, recognized the Queen. Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmountable barrier between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the most ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... movable desks for them, and aided by timely but not oppressive prizes from the Messrs Wilson, and by the presence of Mr J. P. Wilson, the little self-constituted school progressed considerably, until it reached the number of thirty; then a large old building was cleared out, a rickety wooden staircase taken down, an iron one put up in its stead, and a lofty school-room, capable of holding about 100 or more, made in the place of two useless lumber-rooms. The making and furnishing that room amounted to L.172. The school for some time held to its first principles of self-government. All the instruction, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... distance of time, I do not think it would be possible for me to describe accurately all the windings of the corridor which led to the abbe's door. I remember that the first part was damp and low, and after it I used to mount a crazy stone staircase, and at the top passed through a passage that opened on one side upon a narrow court; then there was a little wicket of iron, which, when it turned, tinkled a bell. Sometimes the abbe would hear the bell, and open his door down at the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... afterwards the Literary Club, founded. Moves into lodgings on the library staircase of the Temple. June 26. 'History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son' published. October 31. Oratorio of 'The Captivity' sold to James Dodsley. December 19. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... BROAD STAIRCASE WHICH led to the main avenue of Phutra I caught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world. Involuntarily I shrank back as one of the creatures approached to inspect us. A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a couple of tumblers and dutifully took his leave, turning round, as he reached the staircase, to make a playful gesture of benediction towards the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... hotel, and, ascending a short staircase, found himself in the office. On one side was a writing-room, on ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... made him start. He leant over towards the staircase that climbed the terrace, a staircase cut out of the rock, by which people coming from the side of the frontier often entered his grounds so as to avoid the bend of the road. There was nobody there nor anybody opposite, on the roadside slope all ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... in the mean time, had started and passed round through Newbury Street and Essex Street to the front of the house, entered the postern gate, passed to the rear of the house, placed a plank against the house, climbed to the window, opened it, entered the house alone, passed up the staircase, opened the door of the sleeping-chamber, approached the bedside, gave Mr. White a heavy and mortal blow on the head with a bludgeon, and then with a dirk gave him many stabs in his body. Crowninshield said, that, after he had "done for the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... that the upper floor rooms are the best apartments, from their ample windows; it is also pretty evident that the first floor is divided into two main rooms with large bay windows, and a smaller room or a staircase window, between them; the second floor windows are also shifted up higher, the two principal ones going in to the gables, showing that the rooms below them have been raised in height. Windows carried up the full height of these rooms, however, might be too large ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... continues in a state of solemn repose. Some paces behind these figures, Dona Marcela de Ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a guardadimas, are seen in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of a staircase, up which Don Josef Nieto, queen's apasentador, is retiring; and near this door there hangs on the wall a mirror, which, reflecting the countenance of the king and queen, shows that they form part of the principal group, although placed beyond ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... exclamation, of relief it seemed to me. Then she appeared, descending the staircase. Her face was, as Lute had said, pale, but her manner was calm, much calmer than ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... there must be a staircase somewhere," said Mr. George. "We will ramble about, and see if we ...
— Rollo in Rome • Jacob Abbott
... hand upon Olga's arm, she led her through the Gothic archway to a second smaller hall, and on up a wide oak staircase with a carved balustrade that was lighted half-way up by another great window of monastic design ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... street—like Easter. All the windows are brightly lit up, the gay music of violins and pianos floats out through the panes, cabmen drive up and drive off without cease. In all the houses the entrance doors are opened wide, and through them one may see from the street a steep staircase with a narrow corridor on top, and the white flashing of the many-facetted reflector of the lamp, and the green walls of the front hall, painted over with Swiss landscapes. Till the very morning hundreds and thousands of men ascend and descend ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and the Rev. R. V. Taylor[1] has discovered that the house was in the occupation of one of his tenants. I have carefully examined the house without finding anything to suggest that such squalor could have ever existed there. The staircase is very picturesque, and one of the brass drop handles on the bedroom doors shows that the building was a good one. The bedroom in which the Duke died has the fireplace blocked up; there is a recessed window containing a seat, and the walls, where they are panelled, are of fir, ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... lottery drawing, a prize-fight, or a horse-race, where the issue is known not even to the organiser of the excitement. And this consideration will show why some books are very successful, the art of which is very little. Nothing is harder in real life than to put your back against the wall on a dark staircase and keep three armed men at bay with your whirling sword. But nothing is easier than for the romantic writer to dip his pen in ink and say that his hero did that. And nothing is more stimulating and exciting for the reader than to imagine the hero doing it; and in his gratitude ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... read in her eyes? A confession of insecurity, fear; a mute appeal? Before it all his doubts and misgivings vanished; the look they exchanged was like that when she had stood on the staircase in the inn. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... foot had thrust itself into, was scarcely effected, ere another series of knocks at the door, and batch of invectives from Mr. Adolphus Casay, hurried the partial sacrificer to the Graces, at a Derby pace, over the cold stone staircase, to discover the cause of the confounded uproar. The door was opened—a confused jumble of unintelligible mutterings aggravated the eager ears of the shivering Adolphus. Losing all patience, he exclaimed, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... reached the water's edge. Then they proceeded to the mouth of an immense cave, some fifty feet above the river, under the cliff. A little stream of limpid water trickled down from a spring within the cave. The little watercourse served as a sort of natural staircase for the visitors. A cool, pleasant atmosphere exhaled from the mouth of the cavern. Really it was a shrine of nature, and it is not strange that it was so regarded ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... to heaven. By ascending millions of steps heaven is reached. My poem has also a staircase; these tasteless verses are the steps. If you can't climb these few steps, how will you ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... little dearer than they expected, for two years, and they furnished it, as far as they could, out of the three or four hundred dollars they had saved, including the remaining hundred from the colt and cutter, kept sacredly intact by Marcia. When you entered, the narrow staircase cramped you into the little parlor opening out of the hall; and back of the parlor was the dining-room. Overhead were two chambers, and overhead again were two chambers more; in the basement was the kitchen. The ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... staircase was open, showing which way the girl had gone. But the steps that were now descending were heavy, though quiet,—far different from the rush of an excited bird that had gone up a moment before Margaret's appearance. ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... the staircase, and rang his bell, forgetting that he had his latch-key in his pocket. His housekeeper ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... too agreeable to be abandoned. Finding after a while that his drawing progressed but slowly, by reason of infinite joyful thoughts more allied to his nature than to his art, he relinquished rule and compass, and entered one of the two turrets opening on the roof. It was not the staircase by which he had ascended, and he proceeded to explore its lower part. Entering from the blaze of light without, and imagining the stairs to descend as usual, he became aware after a few steps that there was suddenly nothing to tread ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she remembered Captain Anthony's threat to stay in the garden all night. She hesitated. She did not understand the mood ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... loci—received the party. She scrutinized Lucille with a protracted stare of audacious inquisitiveness, and when she had quite satisfied her curiosity, she led the way through several halls and lobbies up the great staircase, along a corridor, through a suite of rooms, upon another lobby up a second staircase, into a great dreary passage, through half a dozen waste and desolate chambers, and so at last into a room which had a few pieces of furniture at one end of it, and a log of wood smouldering ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... feet, through which mesdames et mesdemoiselles were to be conducted. We made a rush at the first open door, and passed comfortably under the heels of some horses gathered under the arched court, and up a stone staircase, which turned out to be that of the Russian consul's house. His people welcomed us most cordially to his abode, and the ladies and the luggage (objects of our solicitude) were led up many stairs and across several terraces to a most comfortable little room, under a dome of its own, where ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not seen Augustus, as I had come straight from a room near McGreggor's, where I had spent the night. As I was leaving the dining-room I went towards the staircase, but Antony ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... reached the river bank where I saw thousands and thousands of pilgrims crowding the steps of the Ghaut, the staircase leading to the river, bathing and waiting to greet the dawn. As I followed their example and took my bath, there arose over the swaying crowd and the beating feet, a murmur like the spray of foam on the seashore after the breakers have dashed against the beach. Then the day broke ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... so she thought she must be dreaming. Then, in a secluded path in the shrubberies, she came across a child's glove and a toy watering-can, and as she was going downstairs to dinner, and was passing a broad staircase window, she noticed upon its broad ledge a little bunch of daisies. She looked at them and took them up in her hand. She fancied, as she noted the droop of their stalks, that she could see the impress still upon them of a hot, ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... hall, and, preceded by my conductress, ascended a noble oak staircase, treading carefully on a ribbon of matting that ran up the middle. On the first-floor landing Miss Oman opened a door and, pointing to the room, said: "Go in there and wait; I'll ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... present, the boys observed the utmost quiet and decorum. All continued quite orderly until he had passed away through the lavatory, and one of the boys following him as a scout, had seen the last glimmer of his candle disappear round the corner at the foot of the great staircase, and heard the ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... in France the fundamental standard for measures of length was for a long time the Toise du Chatelet, a kind of callipers formed of a bar of iron which in 1668 was embedded in the outside wall of the Chatelet, at the foot of the staircase. This bar had at its extremities two projections with square faces, and all the toises of commerce had to fit exactly between them. Such a standard, roughly constructed, and exposed to all the injuries of weather and time, offered very slight guarantees either ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... you observe her, or what the time or the place, is always persistently and grotesquely overdressed. From the women who frequent the hotels of our summer or winter resorts, down all the steps of the social staircase to the char-woman, who consents (spasmodically) to remove the dust and waste-papers from my office, there seems to be the same complete disregard of fitness. The other evening, in leaving my rooms, I brushed against a portly person in the half-light ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... also a superb water-staircase, for the river Anio, turned from its course by a gigantic feat of engineering, leaps in a magnificent cascade, laughs in the spray of a thousand fountain jets, and makes the bosquets which shadow the regal staircase ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... doctor. "He is climbing up beside the fall because the water has worn the gully into rough steps and formed a staircase by which we might get out of this gorge and perhaps find ourselves in another perhaps wilder valley. What's ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Another staircase leads down again to the vestibule and hall, where the crowd is by this time perceptibly thinning. Chaperons are sailing off to the cloak-room, each followed by her brood; and the hoarse voices of the servants and policemen outside—"Call Mrs. Thingummy's carriage," "Mrs. Whatshername's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... been bought expressly to please her by the late archdeacon, and altered under her own superintendence. Her tastes and wishes had been studied throughout. The interior was something like a diary of her life. The broad oak staircase was decorated with flags and banners from all the countries she had travelled through; souvenirs labelled with the names of every town she had visited, and the date of that event, lay scattered about. ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... perils threw terror into the hearts of the Jacobins, and roused them to deeds of desperation. Though Madame Roland was now in comparative obscurity, night after night the most illustrious men of France, battling for liberty and for life in the Convention, ascended the dark staircase to her secluded room, hidden in the depth of a court of the Rue de la Harpe, and there talked over the scenes of the day, ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the waterfall of S. Simao, where we went through numerous channels, following the right bank as much as we could, until we arrived at a gigantic staircase of rock, down which the water divided itself into little channels. We took all the baggage over the rocks on the right bank—a very heavy task, as we had to climb up and down big boulders with sharp edges. We slipped many times with the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... father was a simple workman, she used to live in a building like that, and afterwards, when their circumstances were different, she had often visited them in the character of a Lady Bountiful. The narrow stone staircase with its steep dirty steps, with landings at every story; the greasy swinging lanterns; the stench; the troughs, pots, and rags on the landings near the doors,—all this had been familiar to her long ago. . . . One door was open, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to Heaven she is there, enthroned in Christ, on the Right Hand of God; if I go down to Hell she is there also, drawing back souls from the brink from which she alone can rescue them. For she is that very ladder which Jacob saw so long ago, that staircase planted here in the blood and the slime of earth, rising there into the stainless Light of the Lamb. Holiness and unholiness are both alike hers and she is ashamed of neither—the holiness of her own Divinity which is Christ's and the unholiness of those outcast members of her Humanity ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... the rainbows of the machine of Marly, the terras of St. Germains, the chateaux, the gardens, the statues of Marly, the pavillion of Lucienne. Recollect, too, Madrid, Bagatelle, the King's garden, the Desert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of such a column. The spiral staircase, too, was beautiful. Every moment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time moved on with a rapidity, of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea. And yet, in the evening, when one took a retrospect ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... scene of the third act shows the exterior of one of the towers of the castle, with a winding staircase passing beneath a window at which sits Melisande, combing her unbound hair, and singing in the starlit darkness—"like a beautiful strange bird," says Pelleas, who enters by the winding stair. He entreats her to lean further forward out of the window, that he may come closer, that he may touch ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... Bibboni had told the whole story, he was again embraced and kissed by the secretary, who thereupon left them and went to the private apartment of the ambassador. Shortly after he returned and led them by a winding staircase into the presence of his master. The ambassador greeted them with great honor, told them he would strain all the power of the empire to hand them in safety over to Duke Cosimo, and that he had already sent a courier to the Emperor with the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... sound of busy, pattering footsteps is heard on the old, creaking staircase, and soon the bows of Miss Prissy's bonnet part the folds of the boudoir drapery, and her merry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... as it should. Thus, in Crafton v. Metropolitan Railway Co., /1/ the plaintiff slipped on the defendant's stairs and was severely hurt. The cause of his slipping was that the brass nosing of the stairs had been worn smooth by travel over it, and a builder testified that in his opinion the staircase was unsafe by reason of this circumstance and the absence of a hand-rail. There was nothing to contradict this except that great numbers of persons had passed over the stairs and that no accident ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... with warmth and color; without it they are cold and ghostlike. Accordingly, where water ripples over these gigantic steps, towering one above another toward the sky, they look like beautiful cascades of color; and when the liquid has deserted them, they stand out like a staircase of Carrara marble. Hence, through the changing centuries, they pass in slow succession, from light to shade, from brilliancy to pallor, and from life to death. This mineral water is not only a mysterious architect; ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... tilpe stones, parut stones, copper, lead, iron, tin, and khibisti made of earth. I wrote thereupon the glory of the gods. Above I built a platform of cedar beams. I bordered the doors of pine and mastic wood with bronze garnitures, and I calculated their distance. I made a spiral staircase similar to the one in the great temple of Syria, that is called in the Phoenician language, Bethilanni. Between the doors I placed 8 double lions whose weight is 1 ner 6 soss, 50 talents[46] of first-rate copper, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... workmanship of the vase that contains his heart. And what shall we forebode of so many modern poems, full of splendid passages, beginning everywhere and leading nowhere, reminding us of nothing so much as the amateur architect who planned his own house, and forgot the staircase that should connect one floor with another, putting it as an afterthought on ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... comicality. It is, I think, excellent, but is too eccentric to be exhibited. I am at one extreme corner; my wife, in this wild dress, and looking like a ghost, is at the extreme other end; between us an open door exhibits my palatial entrance hall and a part of my respected staircase. All this is touched in lovely, with that witty touch of Sargent's; but, of course, it looks dam ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... curls in the direction of the moving staircase, which in Toyland was known as the "Oscillator." A bored-looking youth was stationed officially at the top in order to catch any ascending lady who might threaten to fall; but as only the oldest and frailest ever did so, his bored expression had ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable state; and, on some one asking "Who is this?" stammering out "Wilberforce." On one occasion he speaks of coming out of a tavern with the dramatist, when they both found the staircase in a very cork-screw condition: and elsewhere, of encountering a Mr. C——, who "had no notion of meeting with a bon-vivant in a scribbler," and summed the poet's eulogy with the phrase, "he drinks like a man." Hunt, the tattler, who observed his lordship's ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... light off, and stood for a while in the dark. Then he opened the door and went out and stood on the landing. The servants were sitting huddled together on the staircase, nervous looking, indeed, but not frightened. It seemed to him to be remarkable that these girls should have kept their nerve as finely as they had. He smiled at them, as he closed ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... going on for a long time, and the children were being taken in to supper—and a very nice supper, too, with plenty of milk, white bread, and sparkling jellies—one of the largest girls stopped with Milly Holland for a moment where the staircase turned and looked down upon the oaken landing. There stood the tall, old-fashioned clock, looking very old and rather proud in its rich dark case, and against it leaned a very little girl, not more than eight years ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... A staircase, making one side of a narrow and dimly lighted hall, from down whose length came muffled sounds from the barroom, was before him; and this, without hesitation, the Flopper began to mount, his knee thumping from step ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... numbered four thousand. William of Orange had arrived, accompanied by one thousand mounted men. The whole troop now entered the city together, escorting the Prince to the town-house. Here he dismounted, and was received on the staircase by the Princess Anna, attended by her ladies. She immediately afterwards withdrew to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bright scarlet neck-ribbon of hers, and she ran off to her room to fetch it. I followed her almost immediately. Her room and mine, I must, by the bye, explain, were at extreme ends of a passage several yards in length. There was a wall on one side of this passage, and a balustrade overlooking the staircase on the other. My room was at the end nearest the top of the staircase. There were no doors along the passage leading to Helen's room, but just beside her door, at the end, was that of the unused room I told you of, filled with ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... awaited them at the foot of the broad Moorish staircase open on one side to the patio and heavily carved in balustrade and cornice. These gentlemen bowed gravely—indeed, they were so numerous that the majority of them must have had nothing to do but ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... high pitch. I couldn't fairly say, indeed, that I remembered the different rooms. All I could say with certainty was that I had seen them before. To this there were three exceptions—the three that belonged to my Second State—the library, my bedroom, and the hall and staircase. The first was indelibly printed on my memory as a component part of the Picture, and I found my recollection of every object in the room almost startling in its correctness. Only, there was an alcove on one side that I'd quite ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... uncertain, escaped to the window and threw it open. But Mr. Carlyle was nearly as quick as she; he caught her to him with one hand, and drew the window down with the other. To have these tidings told to her abruptly would be worse than all. By this time some of the servants had descended the other staircase with a light, being in various stages of costume, and hastened to open the hall-door. Jasper entered. The man had probably waited to help to put out the "fire." Barbara caught sight of him ere Mr. Carlyle could prevent it, and grew sick with fear, believing some ill had happened ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... not much time to look and to admire. His conductor hurried him across this striking scene, and suddenly dived with him into a very steep paved lane. Turning to the right, they entered a scale staircase, as it is called, the state of which, so far as it could be judged of by one of his senses, annoyed Mannering's delicacy not a little. When they had ascended cautiously to a considerable height, they heard a heavy rap at a door, still two stories above them. The ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... means," exclaimed the professor, as he linked his arm in that of his companion; and together the strongly contrasted pair wended their way through the handsome entrance-hall of the building and up the spacious marble staircase to the cosiest ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the slope by a giant staircase, each step of which must have been at least seven or eight feet in height. More than once the lasso was called into use; but all obstacles were at last safely overcome. I can not describe the joy I felt upon once more seeing pine-trees. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... Turkey carpet, and a sort of cathedral gloom around him. He was disconcerted, but the Turkey carpet assured him somewhat. As his eyes grew habituated to the light he saw that the cathedral was very narrow, and that instead of the choir was a staircase, also clothed in Turkey carpet. On the lowest step reposed an object whose nature he could ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... been desecrated into utility. The Holy Office began in 1504, and became a free tribunal in 1567. Its palace was here founded in 1659 by Don Jose Balderan, and restored in 1787 by Don Diego Nicholas Eduardo, whose fine fronting staircase has been much admired. The Holy Tribunal broke up in 1820, when, the Constitution proving too strong for St. Dominic, the college-students mounted the belfry; and, amid the stupefaction of the shuddering multitude, joyously tolled its death-knell. All the material was sold, even the ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the school-house at Reading, 'or rather the abbey itself, was exceedingly interesting, . . . the ancient building . . . consisted of a gateway with rooms above, and on each side of it a vast staircase, of which the balustrades had originally been gilt. . . . The best part of the house was encompassed by a beautiful, old-fashioned garden, where the young ladies were allowed to wander under tall ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... arrangement of treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... told me he was going to try what sleeping out of town might do for him. "I remember," said he, "that my wife, when she was near her end, poor woman, was also advised to sleep out of town; and when she was carried to the lodgings that had been prepared for her, she complained that the staircase was in very bad condition, for the plaster was beaten off the walls in many places." "Oh!" said the man of the house, "that's nothing but by the knocks against it of the coffins of the poor souls that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the handsome staircase, and contrasted it with the little cosy entrance at her aunt's. She felt how she hated all these fine surroundings, and how very good and unworldly she was for so doing. Only, was it good to have been so violent towards ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in his book, the work he had been engaged on that morning when Ida met him by the roadside, dropped out, and she saw herself leaning on the baluster rail of the staircase, with her hand half extended as a token of forgiveness and reconciliation. Her cheeks flushed instantly, but she ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... the lift to ascend he rushed to the staircase, and sweating with terror gained the street and bribed a loafer to find ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... as a weapon, was depreciating the value of the wall-paper in the hall. "There's that play of his being tried out there, you know, Monday," resumed Mrs. Meecher, after the handyman had bumped his way up the staircase. "They been rehearsing ever ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... double staircase (decorated with white or pale frocks of unparalleled richness), and so into the grand hall. A scarlet orchestra was on the platform, and many people strolled about the floor in attitudes of expectation. The walls were festooned ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the bright afternoon sun of a frosty January day: which motto was raising sundry thoughts in his brain, when the porter came upon the right place in his list, and directed him to the end of his journey: No. 5 staircase, second quadrangle, three pair back. In which new home we shall leave him to install himself, while we endeavor to give the reader some notion ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... this anxiety filled her mind, and her hands were idle in her lap. She did not even summon John to luncheon, knowing he would come if he saw fit; for herself, she could not eat. It was almost five, when she heard John push his chair back (she was sitting on the lowest step of the staircase, which ended at the study door, leaning her head against the frame), and again her ear caught the heavy, long-drawn sigh. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... hotels. It was simply an ordinary house, with the words "Macpherson's Hotel" painted on a semi-circular board over the doorway. The front parlour had been converted into a bar, and in the back parlour the Macphersons lived. The staircase was narrow and dirty, and in the front drawing-room,—with the chamber behind for his bedroom,—Mr. Kennedy was installed. Mr. Macpherson probably did not expect any customers beyond those friendly Scots who came up to London from his own side of the Highlands. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... with the steady tick of the telegraph machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools, rakes and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in resuming my toil-worn ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... dream, having left her to drear solitude, anxious conjecture, and bitter, still—disappointed expectation. What had she done the while, how supported his absence and neglect? Light grew dim in these close streets, and when the well known door was opened, the staircase was shrouded in perfect night. He groped his way up, he entered the garret, he found Evadne stretched speechless, almost lifeless on her wretched bed. He called for the people of the house, but could learn nothing from them, except that they knew nothing. Her story was plain to him, plain and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... which ran a strong electric current. These lines of trenches followed without interruption from the banks of the Isonzo to the summit of the mountains which dominate it; they formed a kind of formidable staircase which had to be conquered step ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... ditch covered his whole body; and, when the bell rang for study and the lines filed out of the playrooms, he felt the cold air of the corridor and staircase inside his clothes. He still tried to think what was the right answer. Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother? What did that mean, to kiss? You put your face up like that to say good night and then his mother put her ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... space wherein either to enjoy his blunt hatred of that bridegroom or theorize as to its roots. His ear caught a muffled scream, and then down the wide staircase in front of him ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... any one either in the entry, or on the staircase, or down below, he slipped out into the little enclosure. The day was cloudy, the sky lowering; a little damp breeze bent the tops of the grass-blades and gently waved the leaves on the trees. The mill rattled and buzzed less than usual at this hour; ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... gathered up the corpses, which they flung down the staircase, at the foot of which Etzel stood, helplessly wringing his hands, and vainly trying to discover some ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... arrayed with many jewels of gold and diamonds and many pearls. Opposite the gate which is on the east side of the front of the open space, and in the middle of it, there are two buildings of the same sort as the House of Victory of which I have spoken; these buildings are served by a kind of staircase of stone beautifully wrought, — one is in the middle and the other at the end. This building was all hung with rich cloths, both the walls and the ceiling, as well as the supports, and the cloths of the walls were adorned with figures in the manner of embroidery; ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... information Eliza needed; she nodded to the footman, and ascended the staircase quickly. The old footman did not follow her; he knew that it was unnecessary for him to announce beautiful Lizzie to his mistress, but that she always was welcome to her. He therefore sat down again quietly, and took up the wood-work with ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to a table, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... Bonaparte has since stated, was long and painful, and the two children at length introduced their mother, and placed her in his arms. The unhappy woman had awaited his decision at the door of a small back staircase, extended at almost full length upon the stairs, suffering the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... and Sir Edward was just starting for church. As he stood over the blazing fire in the hall buttoning a glove, a little voice came to him from the staircase: ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... This opens on a staircase leading to the river. Here's the key. I have a boat below. To-night I'll creep up the stairs and knock three times. Open, then, this door—and you'll find deliverance for those ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... passage, but here he comes anyway. That is he," said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built, broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone staircase. One of the members going down—a lean official with a portfolio—stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... hour very well, for in the nervous excitement of it every little thing impressed itself upon my mind. I remember even the shape of the clouds that floated over us, remnants of the storm of the previous night. One was like a castle with a broken-down turret showing a staircase within; another had a fantastic resemblance to a wrecked ship with a hole in her starboard bow, two of her masts broken and one standing with some fragments of sails flapping from it, and ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... has brought other changes upon this cluster of buildings. In 1633 cardinal Scipione Borghese completed its modernization by raising the facade, which does so little honor to him and his architect, Giovanni Soria. But let us pause on the top of the staircase which leads to it, with our faces towards the Palatine; there is no more impressive sight in the whole of Rome. Placed as we are between the Baths of Caracalla, the Circus Maximus, the dwelling of the emperors, and the Coliseum, with the Via Triumphalis at our feet, we can hardly ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... house; he said we could, and that the housekeeper would show it to us in a little time but that at present she was engaged. We entered a large quadrangular court: on the left-hand side was a door and staircase leading into the interior of the building, and farther on was a gateway, which was no doubt the principal entrance from the park. On the eastern side of the spacious court was a kennel, chained to which ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the house had been left open, and the visiter had entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the staircase. Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard him descending. Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming up. He did not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision, and rapped at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... what I had not noticed in my extreme weariness last night, viz. that this inn was, in fact, a large hotel; and as I slowly descended the broad staircase, halting on each step (for I was in wonderfully little haste to get down), I gazed at the high ceiling above me, at the painted walls around, at the wide windows which filled the house with light, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... tore the lad out of their hands; and gossipped a little with the porter of the monastery; and listened to the holy ankret roaring out in his cell against Hierusalem that slew the prophets;—and, most of all, remembered, or told one another of Master Richard's face as he came out from the privy staircase before he was struck down—like the Melitenses—convertentes se dicebant eum esse deum. ["Changing their minds, they said he was a ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... Collection at the South Kensington Museum is another portrait of her, and a third in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. The two magnificent cartoons on the staircase at Hertford House, called the Rising and Setting of the Sun, she begged from the king. These were ordered in 1748 as designs to be executed in tapestry at the Manufacture Royale des Gobelins, by Cozette and Audran, according to the catalogue of the Salon in 1753 when they ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... is an adjunct. It must be left to each spectator to decide for himself if it improves or diminishes the effect of the whole. It is of late Decorated date, highly enriched with profuse carving. The staircase turrets, as well as the great window are embattled. Possibly there may have been pinnacles now lost. The spaces north and south, and within the portico, have tracery on the walls similar to the window. The groining is very ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... The staircase, she remembered, was at her right; and feeling out before her with her hands, she reached the stairs, and began to mount them. She went slowly, very slowly. They were bare, the stairs, and unless one were extremely careful they would creak out through the silence ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... hailed a motor-omnibus, and Marjorie carefully climbed the spiral staircase at the back. Her father followed, and sitting up on top of the 'bus, in the crisp, wintry air and bright sunshine, they ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Lizaveta Ivanovna was a very unfortunate creature. "The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality? The Countess A—— had by no means a bad heart, but she was capricious, like a woman who had been spoiled by the world, as well as being avaricious ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... did as he was told; dug, and found a staircase, which he descended, and found a room full of money. The fish-dealer became wealthy, lent the king of Spain money, and was made viceroy and raised to the rank ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... wild impulse to break away from the dreadful scene, and rush out into the darkness which lay so softly upon the hills, she put it aside, with the thought, "too late now—forever too late"; and taking the arm which Richard offered her, she went mechanically down the staircase into the large parlor where the wedding guests were assembled. Surely, surely, she did not know what she was doing, or realize the solemn words: "I charge and require you both, as ye shall answer at the great day, when the secrets ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... and found himself in a long hall, flanked by a couple of doors on each side. These he opened in rapid succession, finding nothing but silence and solitude; and Ormiston—who, upon reflection, chose to follow—ran up a wide and sweeping staircase at the end of the hall. Sir Norman followed him, and they came to a hall similar to the one below. A door to the right lay open; and both entered without ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... enameled bricks which give evidence of an advanced stage of art. The palace of Persepolis has left ruins of considerable mass. The rock of the hill had been fashioned into an enormous platform on which the palace was built. The approach to it was by a gently rising staircase so broad that ten horsemen could ascend riding side ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Madame de Cintre the next day, and was informed by the servant that she was at home. He passed as usual up the large, cold staircase and through a spacious vestibule above, where the walls seemed all composed of small door panels, touched with long-faded gilding; whence he was ushered into the sitting-room in which he had already been received. It was empty, and the servant told him that Madame la Comtesse would presently appear. ...
— The American • Henry James
... very hot day, all the ladies in waiting felt strangely drowsy, and, though they tried their best to keep awake, one by one they gradually dropped off to sleep in the high carved chairs on which they sat. Then a gentle rustle might have been heard outside on the staircase, and when the door opened a brilliant light streamed in, though the ladies slept too soundly to be awakened by it. Wrapped round by the light were six fairies, more beautiful than any fairies that ever were seen, who glided noiselessly to the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... you learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the sala. It has five windows and five doors, and is decorated with pictures ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... organizing an armed force of women was started, and one day, on observing on the walls of Paris a green placard which announced the formation of a "Legion of Amazons of the Seine," I repaired to the Rue Turbigo, where this Legion's enlistment office had been opened. After making my way up a staircase crowded with recruits, who were mostly muscular women from five-and-twenty to forty years of age, the older ones sometimes being unduly stout, and not one of them, in my youthful opinion, at all good-looking, I managed to squeeze my way into the private office of the projector ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Just as we are going to start, you must lose a stick or a coat. I'll offer to go back for it, and meet you at the side door; there is a staircase leading to the nursery close to it, down which I shall come with the baby after I have sent the housemaid who is guarding it to look for your stick. We shall be off and the baby on board before it is missed, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... a stone-flagged lower hall where several shrouded carriages would have betrayed the use to which it was put had not a stable odor first betrayed it. Thence we passed up a staircase, broad and shallow, which at the top entered a long, high-ceiled room, evidently a salon in days past. It had fallen to baser uses, however, and now served as dining-room. One side gave on the court, and another on an azotea ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... to growling Jacob as he went past to the side entrance on the east, stepped in through the little door that was beside the great one, and passed on as he had been bidden into the little court, turned to the left, went up an outside staircase, and so down a little passage to the ladies' parlour, where he knocked upon the door. The voice he knew called to him from within; and he went in, smiling to himself. Then he took the girl who awaited him there ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... does want to be friends with me, but I can't have him here," thought Tom, who now opened his door as quietly as he could, but it gave a loud creak, so did one of the boards, as he walked towards the staircase. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fashion, though the old plans, with the houses sketched in rows, exhibit an uniformity of streets and buildings. They show us also that the houses were for the most part of wood, having each a covered outside staircase leading to the upper stories. Built so much of wood it was exposed to frequent conflagrations, the last being the great burning at the time of the French invasion in 1812. But so quickly was it always rebuilt and on the same lines that it has ever retained its original and ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... if we are going below for a clean handkerchief or a veil or a cigarette, we stroll down the great staircase of the liner to the Turners' sitting-room, and close ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pursued his way to the house. Effie's suggestion struck him as useful. He had pictured himself as vaguely drifting about the drawing-rooms, and had perceived the difficulty of Miss Viner's having to seek him there; but the study, a small room on the right of the hall, was in easy sight from the staircase, and so situated that there would be nothing marked in his being found there ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... imagine," and other similar phrases, uttered in a passionate and half-angry voice. Then ejaculations from Mrs. Deo, and a word or two of caution or injunction in the polished tones of the lawyer, followed by a sudden rush towards the staircase, ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... when, after placing Zola's note in my pocket, I began to cross the vestibule, the others deliberately followed me, and in all likelihood I should have fled never to return if a well-known figure in a white billycock and grey suit had not suddenly advanced towards us from the direction of the staircase. In another moment I had exchanged greetings with M. Zola, and my suspicious scrutinisers had been introduced to me as friends. One of them was none other than M. Fernand Desmoulin. They had arrived from Paris that morning, and were about to sally ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... reply, whereby, in conformity with my own wishes, we accepted the scheme of the Commissioners; 5thly, in dining with an old friend at Clare College; 6thly, in adjourning to the weekly meeting of the Ray Club, from which I returned at 10 P.M., dog-tired, and hardly able to climb my staircase. Lastly, in looking through the "Times" to see what was going on in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... obeyed, remembering his hat, which he had laid on the table. One step took him out of the lighted dining room into the dimness beyond. Another step and he was on the stairs. There, for the moment at least, he was safe from detection; for the staircase faced the front door, and Mrs. Ellsworth must approach from the back. She would come to the door of the dining room, and, expecting only the girl, would not think of spying at the foot ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... put on her own clothes, and hid in a cupboard of the room. When she saw her lover leave the room, and heard him go down the staircase, she closed the door behind him ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... pistols by her side, which she had always ready loaded in a closet adjoining her bed-room, and proceeded down-stairs. When she had reached the first landing-place, she saw her coachman coming down the private staircase, which led to the servants' rooms, with a lighted candle in his hand, and full dressed. Suspecting his intentions were bad, and with heroic presence of mind, she presented one of her pistols, and threatened to lodge ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... excellent New England gentleman, who was to show me through the Institute. He took me first to the barn, a large and substantial building in which are stored the products of the farm, and in which the stock have their shelter. We ascended a winding staircase, reached the top, and looked down upon the Institute grounds with their wide shell-paved walls, grassplots, flower-beds, orchards, groves and many buildings—the whole full of life, and giving evidence of abundant prosperity, and surrounded by a beautiful and charming country. We came down ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... There was a hole in it, and from somewhere below I thought I heard voices. It was not very comfortable, standing there on top of Heaven knows what; but we were divided between fear and outrage, and our indignation won. With hardly a word we went back to the rear staircase and so to the cellar. Halfway down the stairs both of us remembered the same thing—that it was Tish's day to use the ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... evening in that lonely little passage that they tasted real happiness. Miette was exceptionally punctual. She fortunately slept over the kitchen, in a room where the winter provisions had been kept before her arrival, and which was reached by a little private staircase. She was thus able to go out at all hours, without being seen by Rebufat or Justin. Moreover, if the latter should ever see her returning she intended to tell him some tale or other, staring at him the while ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Curtis and Kelson, their arms full of spoil, clambered up the staircase of their lodgings, and ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... occupants of "Sunnyside" find the dead body of Arnold Armstrong, the son of the owner, on the circular staircase. Following the murder a bank failure is announced. Around these two events is woven a ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... broad oak staircase—through the silent hall—into the drawing-room runs Lilian, singing as she goes. The room is deserted; through the half-closed blinds the glad sunshine is rushing, turning to gold all on which its soft touch lingers, and rendering the large, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... began the stranger, "and"—but here the wind charged again, blew open the door, pinned Jeff behind it back against the wall, overturned the dripping stranger, dashed up the staircase, and slammed every door in the house, ending triumphantly with No. 14, and a crash of glass ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... great staircase, and as her eyes fell on a large panoramic oil painting of a review held in a historic English park a hundred years before, she remembered that it was here, in this very house, that she had come to a great political reception more than twenty years ago—in fact just after ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... it burst open with a loud crackling report. Being cramped, it had stuck in the sill. Less than three seconds passed when, as Israel was groping his way down the long wide hall towards the large staircase at its opposite end, he heard confused hurrying noises from the neighboring rooms, and in another instant several persons, mostly in night-dresses, appeared at their chamber-doors, thrusting out alarmed faces, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... sat down on the pink bonnet. He was not in the least anxious over her name. She was a schoolmate of John's, of course; he had often stumbled over these active eager little creatures in the back yard, in the near paddock, by the emus' run, near the pigeon-boxes, on the staircase. Only hitherto they had been of John's own sex. This pretty little nervous ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... after our arrival in M—— Trenchard worked in the theatre, bandaging and helping with the transport of the wounded up the high and difficult staircase. Then at midday, tired with the heat, the closeness of the place, he escaped into the little park that bordered the farther side of the road. It was a burning day in June—the sun came beating through the trees, and as soon as he had turned the corner of the path ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Nutkin into his house, and held him up by the tail, intending to skin him; but Nutkin pulled so very hard that his tail broke in two, and he dashed up the staircase, and escaped out of ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... decretal, an indulgence had been promised by the pope to all who should ascend upon their knees "Pilate's staircase," said to have been descended by our Saviour on leaving the Roman judgment hall, and to have been miraculously conveyed from Jerusalem to Rome. Luther was one day devoutly climbing these steps, when suddenly a ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... fire, and on the distant staircase stands already Cresswell, ready to stop the fight. "A minute more," cries Birket, and the ring is still as when ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... house from front to rear and a staircase went up at either side of the entrance, meeting in a bridge on the first floor. The huge drawing-room was on the ground floor to the right and was hung with tapestries representing birds and foliage. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant |
