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Ground-floor   /graʊnd-flɔr/   Listen
Ground-floor

adjective
1.
On the floor closest to level with the ground.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ground-floor" Quotes from Famous Books



... had leisurely set the whole of the ground-floor to rights, he followed her. She was waiting for him in the boudoir. She had removed her hat and mantle, and lighted one of the new radiators, and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... on?" thought the lad, and seeing that the shutters of the ground-floor room in which he had left his friend had been opened, and it being very nearly broad daylight, instead of entering the hall he sprang to the window and ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... The hotel, then, from ground-floor to attic, was bright as noon-day. Six lackeys, in silvered livery, stood on either side of the entrance, with torches in their hands, to light their lady to the vestibule. From the inner door to the staircase a rich Turkey carpet ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... unhappy wenches, against whom her old tongue is clacking from morning till night: she pounces on them at all hours. It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... among other members of the College, and to see that the juniors were under proper supervision. At Peterhouse, and in many other colleges, there were to be two in each chamber. When William of Wykeham built on a large scale, he ordered that there should be four occupants in the ground-floor rooms and three in the first-floor rooms. At King's, the numbers were three in ground-floor rooms and two in first-floor rooms. At Magdalen, the numbers were the same as at New College, but two of the beds in the upper rooms and one in the lower were to ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... the least frightened. I crept cautiously along the floor, on tip-toe, to examine the contrivance. A hollow shaft of light wood, a sort of big wooden pipe, led down through the floor, probably to the ground-floor or basement, much as a mast goes down through a ship's decks into the hold. It was slowly revolving, being worked by some simple, not very strong mill-contrivance downstairs. A shelf had been fixed up inside the pipe. On the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... Nohant is indeed, as Mr. Matthew Arnold says, a plain house, only the roof with its irregularly distributed dormars and chimney-stacks of various size giving to it a touch of picturesqueness. On the other hand, the ground-floor, with its central door flanked on each side by three windows, and the seven windowed story above, impresses one ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... which I had along with me, and dressed myself as well as I could. And now, when I thus made my appearance, they did not, as they had the evening before, show me into the kitchen, but into the parlour, a room that seemed to be allotted for strangers, on the ground-floor. I was also now addressed by the most respectful term, "sir;" whereas the evening before I had been called only "master": by this latter appellation, I believe, it is usual to address only farmers and ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... was a cubicle contrived by enclosing a corner of the ground-floor with two walls and a ceiling of match-boarding. Into this constricted space were huddled two imposing roll-top desks, P. Sybarite's high counter, and the small flat desk of the shipping clerk, with an iron safe, a Remington typewriter, ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... surprise, offered to come with her, and she was too glad to see him exert himself, to regret the musings she had hoped for; so out they went, after opening the window to give Charles what he called an airing, and he said, that in addition he should 'hirple about a little to explore the ground-floor of the house.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is but a small one," said she, after the first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, "and very likely may be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds! and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage! It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the Colonel to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... flue of a forge, shown by a long trail of soot,—a minor detail which confirmed the conjecture of archaeologists as to the original use to which the building was put. On the first floor (above the ground-floor) was one room and the kitchen; on the floor above that were two bedrooms. The garret was used to put away articles more choice and delicate than those that ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... on the ground-floor, I found the giant's couch. The bed of a cart had been taken off its wheels, forming a very good bedstead, dry and sheltered on three sides. On the fourth the sleeper's feet were towards the charcoal fire. Opening the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... at five o'clock, I was at the house of this singular character. He lived on the ground-floor, in a small simple room, where, excepting a large crucifix, and a picture covered with black crape, with the date, 1794, under it, the only ornaments were some nautical instruments, a trombone, and a human skull. The picture was the portrait of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... down his supper tray, and also that used by her mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be at its height below, as it always was at this hour. The young woman shrank from having anything to do with the ground-floor serving, and crept silently about observing the scene—so new to her, fresh from the seclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sitting-room, which was large, she remarked the two or three dozen strong-backed chairs that stood round against the wall, each fitted ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... into a spacious and cool apartment on the ground-floor, where a table was covered with all the varieties of a tropical breakfast, consisting of fried fish, curries, devilled poultry, salt meats, and everything which could tend ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... ground-floor, the bedroom looking into the University Square and my study into a garden. Next door to me dwelt Paulus, the king of the Rationalists. He was then, I believe, ninety- four years of age. He remained ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... unsecured on the outside, and, under the eye of Varney, withdrew the supports which sustained the falling trap, which, therefore, kept its level position merely by a slight adhesion. They withdrew to wait the issue on the ground-floor adjoining; but they waited long in vain. At length Varney, after walking long to and fro, with his face muffled in his cloak, threw it suddenly back and exclaimed, "Surely never was a woman fool enough to neglect so ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... passage was cleared, and Miss Benson took Ruth into the sitting-room. There were only two sitting-rooms on the ground-floor, one behind the other. Out of the back room the kitchen opened, and for this reason the back parlour was used as the family sitting-room; or else, being, with its garden aspect, so much the pleasanter of the two, both Sally and Miss Benson would ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... was waiting on the step, I was able to get a view through the slats of the Venetian blind of the front ground-floor sitting-room. I could scarcely restrain a cry of pure aesthetic delight at what I saw within. Price was sitting on a horse-hair sofa with an arm round the waist of a rather good-looking girl. Her eyes were fixed on his. It was Edwin and Angelina in ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... young Neligan arrived at the Brambletye Hotel on the very day of the crime. He came on the pretence of playing golf. His room was on the ground-floor, and he could get out when he liked. That very night he went down to Woodman's Lee, saw Peter Carey at the hut, quarrelled with him, and killed him with the harpoon. Then, horrified by what he had done, he ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to-day. A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor's carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the adjoining ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... dwelt in a cottage standing by the side of the road leading from the West Moor colliery to Killingworth. The railway from the West Moor Pit crosses this road close by the east end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground-floor, with the garret over-head, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. But with his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which he lived as ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... road forced her to consider how a suspension of traffic would interfere with her business. She was now in Broad Street, and when she raised her eyes she saw her own house. A new building high and narrow, it stood in the main street at the corner of a lane, the ground-floor windows filled with light goods, and underneath them black hats trimmed with wings and tails of birds. There were also children's dresses, and a few neckties trimmed ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... upwards and at last she ascended, by a spiral staircase, to the ground-floor of the temple. Once or twice she had met a few men, but solemn silence reigned in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... foot of this shoe, Meade had his head-quarters. I tied my horse at the gate, and entered the little square box of a house which enjoys that historical celebrity. It is scarcely more than a hut, having but two little rooms on the ground-floor, and I know not what narrow, low-roofed chambers above. Two small girls, with brown, German faces, were paring wormy apples under the porch; and a round-shouldered, bareheaded, and barefooted woman, also with a German face and a strong German accent, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... to one small room on the ground-floor,— And this you must not open, or you will repent it sore." And so he went; and all the friends came there from far and wide, And in her wealth the lady took much happiness and pride; But in a while this kind of joy grew ...
— The Sleeping Beauty Picture Book - Containing The Sleeping Beauty; Bluebeard; The Baby's Own Alaphabet • Anonymous

... light appeared in one of the windows of the ground-floor, then changed into another, and a third.... Some one was walking through the rooms with a candle. "Can it be Lisa? It cannot be." Lavretsky got up.... He caught a glimpse of a well-known face—Lisa came ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... there seemed no chance of having anything else to swallow; and after a refreshing plunge in the 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 fish revived ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... The ground-floor is divided by a hall twenty-five feet wide into two long chambers, one intended to serve as a dining-hall for the multitude of descendants that Hector expected to see round his old age, the other as a withdrawing-room for himself and his wife, or for festive occasions. In this mansion ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... out in uniforms of delicate blue. They did not touch their hats—they raised them. Audrey descended and penetrated into the portico, where a tall dandy saluted and inquired her will. She wanted rooms; she wanted a flat? Certainly. They had nothing but flats. A large flat on the ground-floor was at her disposal absolutely. Two bedrooms, sitting-room, bathroom. It had its own private entrance in the courtyard. She inspected it. The suite was furnished in the Empire style. Herself and maid? ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... a hospital by means of a benefactor who desired to cooperate in a work of so great importance and mercy. Although they had no hospital in Cebu, while I was there, there was one religious, who had charge of the poor sick people, in a low apartment, or room above the ground-floor of the episcopal residence. As the land is so poor there, it is very difficult to found and preserve a hospital; and more so since scarcely a Spanish inhabitant of importance is to be found there now, for the reasons that were given ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... bombardment, although not so heavy as it had been, was far too heavy to be pleasant. Most of the people still remaining have established themselves in their cellars, and every moment one came against some chimney emerging from the soil. Some were still on the ground-floor of their houses, and had heaped up mattresses against their windows. The inhabitants occasionally ran from one house to another, like rabbits in a warren from hole to hole. All the doors were open, and whenever one heard the premonitory whistle which announced the arrival of one of the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... but every one was thankful that no lives were lost. The scouts, both girls and boys, had worked so faithfully that all the silver and linen were saved, and the men had removed much of the best furniture in the ground-floor rooms. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... temporary building for the use of the Convention. The "Wigwam," as it was called, covered a space of 600 feet by 180, and the height was between 50 and 60 feet. The building would hold about 10,000 persons, and was divided into platform, ground-floor and gallery. The stage upon which the delegates and members of the press were seated, held about 1,800 persons; the ground-floor and galleries, about 8,000. A large gallery was reserved for ladies, which was filled every day to overflowing. The Convention ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... very pretty. It consisted of a cluster of cottages, each of which possessed a ground-floor only. No such luxury as stairs was known at Gangoil. It stood about half a mile from the Mary River, on the edge of a creek which ran into it. The principal edifice, that in which the Heathcotes lived, contained only one ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope

... Well was to be lowered to the good-natured Marguerite (who went to and fro from the door of the building to the washing shed); who was to fill it for us at the pump situated directly under us in a cavernous chilly cave on the ground-floor, then rehitch it to the rope, and guide its upward beginning. The rest was in ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... said, "I occupied a ground-floor apartment in one of a row of houses, all alike, away at the other end of the town, on what we call Rincon Hill. This had been the best quarter of San Francisco, but had fallen into neglect and decay, partly because the primitive character of its domestic architecture no longer suited ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... this quarter are very solidly constructed, lofty, and with flat roofs. The ground-floor seems to be appropriated to merchandize, or as domestic offices, the habitable apartments being above. The windows are supplied with outside Venetian blinds, usually painted green, which, together with the pure white of the walls, gives them a fresh and new appearance, which I had ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... said the better; but everything is at least more spacious than at home. The climate and the comparative cheapness of land give the colonists an aversion to height in their buildings, and even in the busiest parts of Melbourne most of the buildings have only two stories—i.e., a ground-floor and one above—and I can hardly think of any with more than three. The sums which banking companies pay for the erection of business premises are enormous. Thirty to sixty thousand pounds is the usual ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... 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 too long, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... back of the cabinet in the best bedroom upstairs into the library on the ground-floor. That sounds like nonsense, but Molly declares it ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... amount of their bills. It was late at night, after one of such meetings, that Dr. L. was awakened by a noise at his bed-room door; he rose up, and going into the passage which led to the staircase, but which was not in the direct way from Aram's bed room to the ground-floor, he discovered the usher dressed. Having questioned him as to the object of his rising at that unseasonable hour, Aram confusedly answered that he had been taken unwell, and had been obliged to go do down stairs. The Dr. then retired, unsuspiciously, to bed. From the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various

... we must pause with him for awhile at Hobart Town, which he looked upon even then as a place of remarkable importance. "Its houses," he says, "are very spacious, consisting only of one story and the ground-floor, though their cleanness and regularity give them a very pleasant appearance. Walking in the streets, which are unpaved, though some have curb stones, is very tiring; and the dust always rising in clouds is very trying to the eyes. The ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... heavy clouds, driven by the winds, obscured the sky; hardly one star could be seen through the increasing gloom. The house, with its irregular gables, was completely buried in darkness, except the two windows of the ground-floor, from which streamed a red light, reflected like long trains of fire on the troubled waters near the landing-place, close to the house. The chains of the boats moored there mingled their rattling with the mournful sighing of the wind through the poplars, and the heavy splashing ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... room allotted to him on the ground-floor, and Mr Slope had another. Into this latter Mr Harding was shown, and asked to sit down. Mr Slope was not yet there. The ex-warden stood up at the window looking into the garden, and could not help thinking how very short a time had passed since the whole of that house had ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... older date than the facade. This is the quadrangle which gives its collegiate character to Oropa. It is surrounded by cloisters on three sides, on to which the rooms in which the pilgrims are lodged open—those at least that are on the ground-floor, but there are three storeys. The chapel, which was dedicated in the year 1600, juts out into the court upon the north-east side. On the north-west and south-west sides are entrances through which one may pass to the open country. The grass at the time of ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... is generally identified with the church built here by Benedict Biscop for the monastery which he founded in 672 A.D. The nave was originally aisleless, long, narrow and lofty: the entrance porch had an upper story finished with a gabled roof, and a vaulted ground-floor with entrances on three sides. There was evidently a chancel arch, and probably the chancel was rectangular. The material of the building was not Roman; but, in the decoration applied to it, Roman work was imitated. Only a few miles further north, Benedict founded, in 680 A.D., the sister monastery ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson

... dismount, and then, still under escort, was marched into the building. It was roofless, but an inner chamber had been constructed—a cellar, so to speak—under the ground-floor, with a roof of its own of rammed earth many feet thick, supported by heavy beams. This was one of the famous casemates invented by Todleben, impervious to shot and shell, and affording a ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... drew near the farm. The windows of their parlour were open, and I heard voices when I turned the corner of the house, as I passed the first window (there were two windows in their little ground-floor room). I saw Lucy distinctly; but when I had knocked at their door—the house-door stood always ajar—she was gone, and I saw only Mrs. Clarke, turning over the work-things lying on the table, in a nervous and purposeless manner. I felt by instinct that ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... warehouse on the first floor, thirty stitched copies which we added to that of M. Derosne. In the workshops on the ground-floor, I seized a considerable quantity of printed sheets of the same work, which M. Le Normant estimates at nine thousand sheets; and thirty-one printing-forms which had been used ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... a low white building, and had evidently been a private house at one time. The only change made had been in the shape and size of the windows on the ground-floor; and these were protected by green persiennes, fanned out like awnings, although the house was shaded by magnolia trees. There was no name over the open door, but the word "Antiquites" was painted in large black letters ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... bill and the correspondence with the Supervising Architect that it is proposed to erect a two-story building, with fireproof vaults, heating and ventilating apparatus, and elevators, 40 by 80 feet in dimensions. The ground-floor area of 3,200 feet, to be devoted to the post-office, would give 400 square feet to each of the present employees. The second story and the basement, each having the same area, will be absolutely tenantless, unless authority is given by law to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... Kate that I succeeded yesterday in the very first walk, and took a cottage at a place called Alphington, one mile from Exeter, which contains, on the ground-floor, a good parlour and kitchen, and above, a full-sized country drawing-room and three bedrooms; in the yard behind, coal-holes, fowl-houses, and meat-safes out of number; in the kitchen, a neat little range; in the other rooms, good stoves and cupboards; and all for twenty pounds ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... house where he was born; it stands in the lower part of the town, close to St. Peter's Church. Several conflagrations, which devastated Eisleben, have left it undestroyed. But of the original building only the walls of the ground-floor remain: within these there is a room facing the street, which is pointed out as the one where Luther first saw the light. The church was rebuilt soon after his birth, and was then called after St. Peter and St. Paul; the ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... lower parts of the walls, sometimes up to the sills of the ground-floor windows, are of stone or brickwork. Above this the house is a timber structure as far as its main outline and its sustaining parts are concerned, whatever may be the character of the material with which the ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... Bursley all day, and had dressed at the Conservative Club; and his lordship had ordered that the programme of dances should be begun. Denry learned this as soon as he emerged, effulgent, from the gentlemen's cloak-room into the broad red-carpeted corridor which runs from end to end of the ground-floor of the Town Hall. Many important townspeople were chatting in the corridor—the innumerable Swetnam family, the Stanways, the great Etches, the Fearnses, Mrs Clayton Vernon, the Suttons, including Beatrice Sutton. Of course everybody knew him for Duncalf's shorthand ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... rough-cast walls, oak beams, richly carved overhanging eaves, and soft-red tiled roofs, show little evidence of the ravages of time. The most famous of these houses was built, in the seventeenth century, by Jens Bang, an apothecary. The chemist's shop occupies the large ground-floor room, the windows of which have appropriate key-stones. On one is carved a man's head with swollen face, another with a lolling ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... the elderly body-servant, rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements of the chase—fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags, sheath-knives—obtruded far more prominently than those of study. The furniture was massive, ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... monotonous culture through the rooms of educated single women. A proper appreciation of polished wood, the sanitary and aesthetic values of the open fire, a certain scheme in couch-pillows, all linked it to the dozen other rooms that occupied the same relative ground-floor corners in a dozen other houses. Some of them had more books, some ran to handsome photographs, some afforded fads in old furniture; but it was only a question of more or less. It looked utterly impersonal to-day; its very atmosphere was ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam

... way of salutes, &c. We were conveyed in carriages-and-six, with an escort, to the Governor's town palace, which I was told to consider placed at my disposal. It consists chiefly of a very spacious room on the ground-floor, paved in marble, and looking very brilliant, lit up with wax candles in chandeliers. Some of the high officials came to dinner, and we were waited on by black servants in state liveries and bare feet, who moved noiselessly ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... back room on the ground-floor, chosen because he could not walk up the stairs, but must have as little trouble in self-conveyance as possible,—staggeringly making his toilet for the meal to come, sitting patiently in front of his dressing-table by the light of a solitary candle. He would appear ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... died, is filled, like Magliabechi's at Florence, with books, from the top to the bottom—every chair, every table, every passage containing piles of erudition. He had another house in York Street, leading to Great James's Street, Westminster, laden from the ground-floor to the garret with curious books. He had a library in the High Street, Oxford, an immense library at Paris, another at Antwerp, another at Brussels, another at Ghent, and at other places in the Low Countries ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... of enterprises, such as dressmakers, milliners, shoemakers and tailoring "bushelers" carried on their business in the front room of a ground-floor flat and lived, often with families, in the rear rooms. In those cases, only the floor space of the room used for business purposes was included in ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes

... had performed those mysteries intrusted to him, attendant giants threw open folding doors at the farther end of the court, and the bright visions disappeared into a long gallery on the ground-floor, painted in brilliant frescoes, to the reception-room. The suite of rooms on the ground-floor are the summer apartments, specially arranged for air and coolness. Rustic chairs stand against walls painted with fruit and flowers, the stems and leaves represented as growing ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... six-thirty, and this was followed by a dance at nine, with music by a famous stringed orchestra of Chicago, a musical programme by artists of considerable importance, and a gorgeous supper from eleven until one in a Chinese fairyland of lights, at small tables filling three of the ground-floor rooms. As an added fillip to the occasion Cowperwood had hung, not only the important pictures which he had purchased abroad, but a new one—a particularly brilliant Gerome, then in the heyday of his exotic popularity—a picture of nude ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... Is the aspect south? Of course it is! I ought to see by the sun that the aspect is south. These and the other two are, I suppose, the only rooms on the ground-floor? And is it quiet? Of course it's quiet! A charming house. Far more likely to suit my friend than any I have seen yet. Will you give me the refusal of it till to-morrow?" There she stopped for breath, and gave Mr. Delamayn his first opportunity of ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins

... the artless habitation of Louis XII. by its imposing masses. On the side of the gardens, that is, toward the modern place des Jesuites, the castle presents an elevation nearly double that which it shows on the side of the courtyard. The ground-floor on this side forms the second floor on the side of the gardens, where are placed the celebrated galleries. Thus the first floor above the ground-floor toward the courtyard (where Queen Catherine was lodged) is the third floor on the garden ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... range of granite, the rock which forms the ground-floor of the Sierra Leone peninsula and the Gold Coast, possibly varied by syenites and porphyries. It would probably contain, like the sea-subtending mountains of Midian, large veins of eminently metalliferous quartz, outcropping from ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... 'em for a while, and then started back to my room. Somehow I got twisted up in the shrubbery, and instead of goin' back the way I came, I gets around on the other corner. Just about then a ground-floor window is shoved up, and a female in white floats out on a little stone balcony. She waves her arms and begins to ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... who that is behind Nig? Trust him to get in on the ground-floor. He ain't worryin' for fear his pardner'll lose the boat," she called to the Colonel, who was pressing forward as Rainey came down ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... could see through the lower windows that the whole ground-floor was nothing but a roaring furnace; I also noticed that it had been filled with straw to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... been in correspondence with Dr Malkin (master of Bury School), who on Feb. 8th sent a certificate for my brother William, whom I entered at Trinity on Peacock's side. On Mar. 25th I changed my rooms, quitting those on the ground-floor east side of Queen Mary's Gate for first-floor rooms in Neville's Court, south side, the easternmost rooms. In this term my lectures lasted from Apr. 18th to May 14th. Apparently I had only the Senior Sophs, 19 in number, and the same four pupils (Turner, Dobbs, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... to the tavern-establishment at the upper end of the prison, where the collegians had just vacated their social evening club. The apartment on the ground-floor in which it was held, was the Snuggery in question; the presidential tribune of the chairman, the pewter-pots, glasses, pipes, tobacco-ashes, and general flavour of members, were still as that convivial institution had left them ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... gardens, white with rime, and showing the bleak, stiff melancholy of cemeteries. He could distinguish his friend's place from afar on account of the colossal plaster statue of the 'Vintaging Girl,' the once successful exhibit of the Salon, for which there had not been sufficient space in the narrow ground-floor studio. Thus it was rotting out in the open like so much rubbish shot from a cart, a lamentable spectacle, weather-bitten, riddled by the rain's big, grimy tears. The key was in the ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... huskily, 'not a bit of it. My letter of credit, my room at the hotel, my dress suit, even my ticket to Coney Island, are at your disposal; but I think the partner of your childish joys ought first to be let in on the ground-floor of this enterprise, and informed how the deuce you manage to turn up in New York fifteen years subsequent to your obsequies. Is New York the hereafter for boys of your kind, or is this some ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... perhaps the oldest of all—the Mysteries. They resembled in their main features those performed in the rest of Europe. In the public squares, in the churches and in the cloisters, extensive scaffolds were constructed, the upper story of which served as a Paradise to open and shut at will, and the ground-floor often as 8 Hell, while between the two lay the stage properly so called, representing the scene of all the earthly events of the drama In Italy, as elsewhere, the biblical or legendary play often began with an introductory dialogue between Apostles, Prophets, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... Co-operative Store, nor the Savings' Bank can make the working man's life what it should be without the home, and it is with the home that alike M. Menier's philanthropy and organization attain the acme. These dwellings, each block containing two, are admirably arranged, with two rooms on the ground-floor, two above, a capital cellar and office, and last, but not least, a garden. The workman pays a hundred and twenty francs, rather less than five pounds, a year for this accommodation, which it is hardly necessary to say is the portion of very few artizans ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... the Legislature sat in its shirt-sleeves, and several statesmen had removed their boots. Even had appearances counted, the session was invisible from the street. Unlike a good number of houses in the town, the State-House (as they called it from old habit) was not all on the ground-floor for outsiders to stare into, but up a flight of wood steps to a wood gallery. From this, to be sure, the interior could be watched from several windows on both sides; but the journey up the steps was precisely enough to disincline the idle, and this was counted a sensible thing ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... idle, unless the men of the two countries shall remain, or shall become, greater than the mere things that they produce, and shall know how to regard those things simply as tools and materials for the attainments of the highest purposes of their being. Ascending, then, from the ground-floor of material industry toward the regions in which these purposes are to be wrought out, it is for each nation to consider how far its institutions have reached a state in which they can contribute their maximum to the store ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... chosen three rooms on the ground-floor of a house in a long and dreary terrace, the windows of which looked across an intervening waste to the walls of Alan's prison; and here she watched ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... quiet retirement of college-rooms, of which he had heard so much, was in many cases an unsubstantial idea, founded on imagination, and built up by fancy. One day that he had been writing a letter in Mr. Smalls' rooms, which were on the ground-floor, Verdant congratulated himself that his own rooms were on the ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... round timidly: nobody had seen him. There was nobody in the street, and there were only a few people walking in the distance. He bent his head and crept past the windows on the ground-floor—now he was in the garden behind the bushes—now over the hedge his trousers slit, that did not matter—now he looked back at the house with a feeling of wild triumph. He stood in the waste field, in which no houses had been built as yet, ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... Gate House, the flutter of a white dress caught my eye. It was almost dawn, and a pink haze hung over the paddy-fields. The world had that appearance of peace and cleanliness which is left by the passage of an Indian night. My rooms were on the ground-floor, and it seemed to me that, at the sound of my horse's feet, some one had come out of them to pass up the stone stairs that led to Graham's quarters. As I slipped out of the saddle the sound of a distant cannon broke the silence of the night, and my ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman

... a little old cottage, which seemed to consist chiefly of a gable end and a chimney stack, in that cluster of dwellings behind St. Oswald's church, which was once known as the Kirk Town. Visitors went downstairs to get to Mr. Barlow's ground-floor, for the influence of time and advancing civilisation had raised the pathway in front of Mr. Barlow's cottage until his parlour had become of a cellar-like aspect. Yet it was a very nice little parlour ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... this dark day of humiliation when his older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented, now—it would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. So I sent it to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House, and he said he would present it. But he did not do it. I think he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... followed my uncles into the spacious ground-floor of the works, all wet and dripping with the water from the grindstones which had just been left by the men, and were still whizzing round ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... of the Crypt, is partly round and partly polygonal; round as regards the outer wall of the main building and the inside and outside of the small Chapels in the Crypt, but polygonal in the interior walls of the main building in the Crypt; whereas on the ground-floor the main building and the Chapels are all polygonal.[3] An examination of the remains of the Eastern Arches, as seen above the last Norman piers eastward of the Choir, shows the direction of the lines distinctly, following ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse

... at first to study the arrangements of houses and streets in Venice. Here I found that what had once been the palace of a noble, presented, first, a ground-floor about three feet above the medium level of the Adriatic, composed of a broad vestibule crossing through from front to rear, with the inferior apartments on each side; second, a floor of good apartments, with an open hall in the centre ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... go to the City before cold weather came. He had there a small and decent steam-warmed flat where he boiled his own eggs and made his own coffee, read his newspapers and kept his counsel, descending nightly to the ground-floor cafe to dine on ambiguous dishes at tables of other bank swallows who nested in the same cliff. But as the days went by, he found himself staying on in Old Trail Town, with this excuse and that, offered by himself to himself. ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... I descended to the ground-floor of the house. The solemn man-servant of the night before met me wandering among the passages, and compassionately showed me the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins

... accident had received a blow on the knee from the cricket-ball bowled by Franklin, who was a tremendously hard and swift bowler. The hurt which this had caused was so severe that he was ordered by Dr Keith to sleep on the ground-floor in the cottage for a fortnight, in order to save him the exertion of running up and down so many stairs. The opportunity of this prolonged absence was maliciously seized by the tyrants of Number 10; but Eden ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... and pantries, and about a bedroom on the ground-floor,—for, like all other women of our days, she expects not to have strength enough to run upstairs oftener than once or twice a week; and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... fled, and the rioters went to work without hindrance. Mounting to the upper lofts, they first broke in all the doors and windows, and then began to roll and heave out the flour. The barrels on the ground-floor were rolled, swift as one could follow another, into the street, when they were at once seized by those waiting without, and their heads knocked in, and their contents strewn over the pavement. On the upper lofts, they ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... In the ground-floor dining-room of that unanimated hotel sat an old gentleman named Brodnax, once of the regular army, a retired veteran of the Mexican war, and very consciously possessed of large means. He sat quite alone, in fine dress thirty years out of fashion, finishing a late lunch ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... The ground-floor of the inn was enveloped in flames. I took a ladder, and resting it against the sill, I mounted to the window that had been pointed out to me. On the hospitable soil of France a stranger must not perish for want of a Frenchman to save him. Like Anthony, with ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... red wooden house, standing a little way back from the road. On the ground-floor is a room which leads into the kitchen, and from that again into the passage. There is also a larger room which does not communicate with the kitchen. The church of Wissefjerda is situated obliquely to your right when you are standing in ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead

... often tender. Profoundly sad he could be: indeed his own head, in bronze, at the Accademia, might stand for melancholy and bitter world-knowledge; but seldom tender; yet the Madonna and Child in the circular bas-relief in this ground-floor room have something very nigh tenderness, and a greatness that none of the other Italian sculptors, however often they attempted this subject, ever reached. The head of Mary in this relief is, I think, one of the most beautiful things in Florence, none the less so for the charming head-dress which ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... views of greenhouses at the New York station at Geneva, the Ohio station at Wooster, and the New Hampshire station at Durham. Note the strong, vigorous plants in Fig. 26; the method of utilizing tile for watering in Fig. 27; and the ground-floor ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... towards evening I made up my mind I'd go, after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight o'clock. I didn't go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I've only got the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn't cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... room became pressing, the three stories of the main building were successively utilized, as well as a large storage-room in the yard. The ground-floor contained the surgeons' and steward's offices, store-rooms, etc., while the second and third formed two immense sick-wards. The first floor of the long wing before mentioned was occupied by the kitchen ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... varied in height according to the rank of the owners. Those of the inferior classes could have only one story above the ground-floor, and in most cases they were limited to the ground-floor itself. The door was never placed in the centre of the facade. Its position, as well as its height and breadth, was fixed by rule; the same was true of the windows. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... to which they constructed a casa fuerte, or block-house, the walls of which were formed of large beams resting horizontally upon each other. This house had two stories; in the upper story two cannon of small calibre were placed; and two soldiers lived on the ground-floor, and were served by an Indian family. Those of the natives with whom they were at peace cultivated spots of land round the casa fuerte. The soldiers called them together by the sound of the horn, or a botuto of baked earth, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... recounting to his wife the day's doings, the evicted Tryst sat on the end of his bed in a ground-floor room of Tod's cottage. He had taken off his heavy boots, and his feet, in their thick, soiled socks, were thrust into a pair of Tod's carpet slippers. He sat without moving, precisely as if some one had struck him a blow in the centre of the forehead, and over and over again he turned the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... ground-floor are the offices, with windows opening on the street, fortified by strong iron bars sufficiently large and close together ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... the stage-box, and found the manager there with Finot. Matifat was in the ground-floor box exactly opposite with a friend of his, a silk-mercer named Camusot (Coralie's protector), and a worthy little old soul, his father-in-law. All three of these city men were polishing their opera-glasses, and anxiously scanning the house; certain symptoms in the pit appeared to disturb them. The ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... companion. Nevertheless, there was a slight cloud on Mrs. Harcourt's face as she walked through the shrubbery that led to her house, and the fold of care was still on her brow as she entered her husband's study—a pleasant room on the ground-floor, overlooking the garden. Mr. Harcourt was reading, but he put down his magazine and greeted his wife with a smile. He was just rising from his seat, but she prevented him by laying her hand on ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... at the palace Conde proceeded to the hall of the Council, which was on the ground-floor; and at the termination of the sitting ascended, as was his custom, to the apartments of the Queen-mother, where Louis, who had entered eagerly into the part that had been assigned to him, and who had just distributed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... buildings are plain and solid. The northern court contains the cells, 14 in number. It is surrotmded by a double stone wall, the two walls being about 30 ft. or 40 ft. apart. Between these, each in its own garden, stand the cells; low-built two-storied cottages, of two or three rooms on the ground-floor, lighted by a larger and a smaller window to the side, and provided with a doorway to the court, and one at the back, opposite to one in the outer wall, through which the monk may have conveyed the sweepings ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... three months: she is something marked, but has recovered her complexion quite, and looks very well. Then I sat the evening with Mrs. Vanhomrigh, and drank coffee, and ate an egg. I likewise took a new lodging to-day, not liking a ground-floor, nor the ill smell, and other circumstances. I lodge, or shall lodge, by Leicester Fields, and pay ten shillings a week; that won't hold out long, faith. I shall lie here but one night more. It ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... little sitting-room where Dan and he had smoked so many pipes together. The visitor was striding across the passage to the bedroom, also on the ground-floor, when the landlady issued therefrom; and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... part of the house constituted practically a building by itself, with a stairway of its own, and the people living there seemed to form a world apart, with which Keith never became very well acquainted. But on the ground-floor of that part was the laundry, used in turn by every household in the entire house and regarded by the boy as a far-off, adventurous place until he had been allowed to visit ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... who answered the door looked surprised, hesitated a moment, and then asked him to walk in. He followed her, and was not surprised to find that she was conducting him straight to the school-room, which was on the ground-floor. He had thought that she looked stupid; now he was sure of it. But it was a stupidity so much to his advantage that he mentally vowed to reward it by the gift of half-a-crown when ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... best way of breaking down their reserve was to let them try to penetrate mine. I therefore confined myself to saying, in a matter-of-fact tone, that I had been received with great kindness, and that Frome had made a bed for me in a room on the ground-floor which seemed in happier days to have been fitted up as a kind of writing-room ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... past the ground-floor rooms and up a flight of stairs. After pausing on the landing and waiting a long time for Eve to take breath, he began ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... window could be seen on the lower story, and the only entrance, which had the appearance of a gateway, with a portcullis, looked towards the mainland, to which access was obtained by a drawbridge, lowered and raised by two heavy chains. A broad veranda ran round the building above the ground-floor, on which the windows, unusually narrow, opened. From the part of the veranda above the entrance of the gate, projected the muzzles of two ship's guns, commanding the approach to the house on the opposite ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... men were sitting in one of the most pleasant places in all the world in which to sit on a summer evening—in a ground-floor room looking out upon the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was in that short space of time, between six and seven, during which the Great Court is largely deserted. The athletes and the dawdlers have ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... her without another word and ran downstairs. In the ground-floor rooms he found the servants waiting, the two men armed, Marie wildly excited, all talking at once, for they had heard from an upper window ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... what seemed to be one of the best streets in Sapporo, I noticed that some exceptionally large houses were the dwellings of the registered prostitutes. Each house had a large ground-floor window. Before it was a barrier about a yard high which cleared the ground, leaving a space of about another yard. Such of the public as were interested were able, therefore, to peer in without being identified ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... beckoning him with a jerk of her head. The officer bade them good-night and limped to a ground-floor flat ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... predisposition to account for everything through Heath, and Coryndon warned himself against falling into the same snare with Leh Shin. He thought of the Chinaman's shop, and he knew that it was built on the same plan as his own dwelling. There was no basement, and hardly any room beyond the open ground-floor apartment and the two upper rooms. Nowhere, in fact, to conceal anything; and its thin walls could not contain a single cry for help or prayer for mercy. It was possible to have drugged the boy and smothered ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... by lawyers once: but the laity have long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of Genius and Capital Company, another;—the only gentleman whose name figures here, and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears mustachios, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... perhaps so constructed for the use of the bow. The apartments have communicated with each other; and there has been a winding staircase leading from one of them to the rooms above, and to the top of the castle. Under the ground-floor of these ancient castles used commonly to be dark and dismal apartments, or dungeons, for the reception of prisoners, but nothing of the kind is known to be here. The porch is called ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... you can look to the very bottom of the soul, there are all of those to be seen this Sunday morning in a house that you know, a new house on the outskirts of the old faubourg. The show-case on the ground-floor is more brilliant than usual. The signs over the door dance about more airily than ever, and through the open windows issue joyous cries, a ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... since I knew from his niece that it was one on which Mr. Carruthers had been a faddist in his time. He had made quite a study of the cracksman's craft, in a resolve to circumvent it with his own. I remembered myself how the ground-floor windows were elaborately bolted and shuttered, and how the doors of all the rooms opening upon the square inner hall were fitted with extra Yale locks, at an unlikely height, not to be discovered by one within the room. It had been the butler's business to turn and to collect all these keys before ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... the inn matters very much. There it is,—a roomy, commodious building, not easily intelligible to a stranger, with its widely distributed parts, standing like an inverted V, with its open side towards the main road. On the ground-floor on one side are the large stables and coach-house, with a billiard-room and cafe over them, and a long balcony which runs round the building; and on the other side there are kitchens and drinking-rooms, and over these the chamber for meals and the bedrooms. All large, airy, ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope

... were by lack of room to move freely, they could do nothing. They had foolishly left no force on the ground-floor, but had all gone to the first storey, in order to be the better able to fire on their foes; and this oversight now cost them very dear. The Bolivians got jammed into an inextricable mass, in their efforts to ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... present day. At length, to conclude the inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the ground-floor of the keep. ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... half-encouraging, half-derisive. And Aaron saw a smallish-black figure of a youth, fair-haired, not more than seventeen years old, clinging like a monkey to the front of the house, and by the help of the heavy drain-pipe and the stone-work ornamentation climbing up to the stone ledge that ran under ground-floor windows, up like a sudden cat on to the projecting footing. He did not stop there, but continued his race like some frantic lizard running up the great wall-front, working away from the noise below, as if in sheer fright. It was one unending wriggling movement, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... would be posted now, but there was no sign of a soul. The house stood as open as a market-place for anybody to observe. A three-foot railing separated it from the cliff road; the windows on the ground-floor were all open, and shaded lights and the low sound of voices revealed where the occupants were finishing dinner. Everything was as public and above-board as a charity bazaar. Feeling the greatest fool on earth, I opened the gate and rang ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... beams, the tiles have been broken by falling, and not only the tiles but the antefixes, cut in palm-leaves or in lion's heads, which spouted the water into the impluvium. Nothing remains but the basin and the partition walls which marked the subdivisions of the ground-floor. One first discovers a room of considerable size at the end, between a smaller room and a corridor, and eight other side cabinets. Of these eight cabinets, the six that come first, three to the right and three to the left, were bedrooms, or cubicula. What ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That night, when Sophia was composing herself to sleep, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... reached home at length, we found that Ethel, or, as we commonly called her, using the other end of her name, Wynnie—for she was named after her mother—had got a room on the ground-floor, usually given to visitors, ready for her sister; and we were glad indeed not to have to carry her up the stairs. Before my wife left, she had sent the groom off to Addicehead for both physician and surgeon. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... our castaways have found the contrivance useful, but Crichton's brain was perhaps a little lordly when he conceived it. Another door leads by a passage to the sleeping-rooms of the house, which are all on the ground-floor, and to Crichton's work-room, where he is at this moment, and whither we should like to follow him, but in a play we may not, as it is out of sight. There is a large window space without a window, which, however, can be ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... quarrelsome fortnight—with his old friend. The prospect of the visit was a better tonic than any contained in the little doctor's black-box. Indeed it drove all thoughts of doctors and their medicines so completely out of his head that he was quite surprised when, having dressed and descended to the ground-floor, he saw Dr. Cricket standing at the foot of the stairs, wiping the perspiration off his forehead with a large ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... at fixed prices, which are marked over the doors. All the rooms in the upper story of the Princely Bathing House open on, or are almost immediately connected with, a long corridor, which extends the whole length of the building. The ground-floor, besides the space occupied by the baths, also affords a spacious promenade, arched with stone, and surrounded with stalls, behind which are marshalled vendors of all the possible articles which can be required by the necessities of the frequenters of a watering-place. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of their own house. It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and two floors above, in the rue Belle-Normande. The maid, Josephine, a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess with the startled, animal expression of a peasant, opened the door, went upstairs at her master's heels to the drawing-room, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... temple, and in a few moments the great block of stone which had admitted them had turned into its place again. Those who passed by, even in broad sunshine, could not distinguish it from all the other blocks of which the ground-floor ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Benny had never in his small life seen any edifice nobler than a loghouse on the ground-floor; and the upper storey which Mr. Callaghan had built with his chips seemed to him as queer a phenomenon as ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the eating parlour,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I can find it myself.' So he led his daughters, without waiting for any further introduction, into a room on the ground-floor, where a table-cloth (rather a tight and scanty fit in reference to the table it covered) was already spread for breakfast; displaying a mighty dish of pink boiled beef; an instance of that particular style of loaf which is known to housekeepers ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens



Words linked to "Ground-floor" :   downstair, downstairs



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