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More "Stair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he put his foot on the lowest stair he raised his hands to cover his face as though to shut out the visions ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... in the sheepskin that lay at the foot of his bed, and of being carried in Diccon Bowman's arms down the silent darkness of the winding stair-way, with the great black giant shadows swaying and flickering upon the stone wall as the dull flame of the lamp swayed and flickered in the cold ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... killed when he minded what the guide told him? What guys camp in the Indian gardens? How much does it cost? Did any one ever climb up the side of the Canyon, say like one yonder where it looked like different colored stair steps going up? Did any one ever find gold in the canyon? How did they know it when they found it? Did Frank ever do any mining? What was placer mining?" And on and on, only the intermittently returning fear ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... waiting my hand I went from my breakfast to my study. My forenoons thereafter were spent at my desk, but with the understanding that if she got lonesome, mother was privileged to interrupt, and it often happened that along about eleven I would hear a softly-opened stair-door and then a call,—a timid call as if she feared to disturb me—"Haven't you done enough? Can't you come now?" There was no resisting this appeal. Dropping my pen, I went below and gave the rest of my day ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Bright! Miss Lilywhite, I see you hiding in the croft! By yon steep stair of ruddy light The sun is climbing fast aloft; What makes the stealthy, creeping chill That hangs about the morning still?" Tinkle, tinkle in the pail: "Some one saunters up the vale, Pauses at the brook awhile, Dawdles at the meadow stile— Well! if ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... and hundreds of houses, once human habitations, now smashed down to their very foundations, or mangled so as to have lost all meaning, ruins containing nothing but broken stones and ashes and at the best here and there a stair banister, suspended in midair. And all destruction had not been wrought as a result of a long siege and its continuous assaults of gunfire and shells. In one night, at the command of the Russian authorities, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... always marks the infrequent traveler, and poor Alfaretta caught the same fever of haste. Without a word of real farewell, now that she had come thus far at so much risk to speak it, she dashed ahead, slipped on the brass-tipped stair and plunged headlong into the ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... used for the cresting of some large piece of furniture, or may be adapted to fill screens or partitions, stair newels, and balusters, or it may be used as a cornice decoration in the manner suggested by No. 26, where the pierced work can be backed by a hollow cornice ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... long, low room and climbed the stair to a sort of half-room—unfinished, the roof sloping to the eaves. Westbury called it the kitchen-chamber, and it led to bedrooms—a large one and three small ones. Also, to a tiny one which in our dream we promptly converted into a bath-room. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and glided to the door through which her brother had gone. There she was startled by the sight of him speeding cautiously down the stair. ...
— Bylow Hill • George Washington Cable
... in some houses when a young man is expected every evening. Iris blushed, and said that perhaps he was not coming. But he was, and his step was on the stair as she spoke. ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... down." It was my own fault, I admit. We had talked this thing over before going to bed, and I myself had impressed upon Veronica the need for caution. The architect of the country cottage does not waste space. He dispenses with landings; the bedroom door opens on to the top stair. It does not do to walk out of your bedroom, for the reason there is nothing outside to walk on. I had said to Veronica, pointing out ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... by Ralph Urphistone's little child. When the great man first felt the touch of those baby fingers upon his, he shuddered and half recoiled, but as the little one pulled him gently but persistently towards the stair, he gradually yielded to her persuasion, and followed till he had descended to the ground-floor and left the fatal house. I do not think any other power could have induced him to pass that blood-stained threshold. For he seems thoroughly broken down, and ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... weakness of a then present minister, and complained that he was dull and tardy, and knew little of affairs: "You may as well complain, sir," says Johnson, "that the accounts of time are kept by the clock; for he certainly does stand still upon the stair-head—and we all know that he is no great chronologer." In the year 1777, or thereabouts, when all the talk was of an invasion, he said most pathetically one afternoon, "Alas! alas! how this unmeaning stuff spoils all my comfort in my friends' conversation! Will ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... would not doubt that it was stern self-command which gave him that threatening glare, to seem terrible, in spite of his anguish, to those whose obedience he required. He had really needed his companion's support as they descended the stair, that she could plainly see; and she had observed, too, how carefully his guide had striven to conceal the fact that he was upholding him; but the courtier was too tall to achieve the task he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was ready, each of us bought a taper, and the procession set out through the iron grating, down a narrow, winding stair, from which low, dark passages opened out at various angles. On each side of these narrow passages, along which we were led, reposed the "incorruptible" bodies of St. Antony and his comrades, in open coffins lacquered or covered with ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... when Mr. Linden was out of school could rarely be study times, except of study with him; and to be prepared for him Faith was eager. She took times that were hers all alone. Nobody heard her noiseless footfall in the early morning down the stair. Long before it was light,—hours before the sun thought of shewing his face to the white Mong and the snowy houseroofs of Pattaquasset, Faith lighted her fire in the sitting-room, and her lamp on the table; and after what in the first place was often a good while with her Bible, she bent herself ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... published in A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land, by W. R. Hughes, for the background of his drawing of "Durdles Cautioning Sapsea". There are, however, two other gatehouses, the "Prior's", a tower over an archway, containing a single room approached by a "postern stair", and "Deanery Gate", a quaint old house adjoining the Cathedral which has ten rooms, some of them beautifully panelled. Its drawing-room on the upper floor bears a strong resemblance to the room—as ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... it, there was a noise as of a rapid cavalcade traversing the Place Vendome, and stopping at the Marquis's door. A crowd appeared to mount the stair; the great doors of the reception-room were flung open, and two pages announced their Majesties the Emperor and the Empress. So engaged were Lanty and Blanche, that they never heard the tumult occasioned by the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... think, when late at even I climb the stair reluctantly, Some shape that should be well in heaven, Or ill elsewhere, ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... to the butler, "was gone to bed—I'm sure of it—Nay, don't you recollect my taking this JAPANNED CANDLESTICK out of your hand, and making you to go up to bed with the brass one, and I bolted the door at the stair-head after you?" ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... said, 'I will have a purer gift; There is smoke in the flame; New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, And love without a name. Fond children, ye desire To please each other well; Another round, a higher, Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair, And selfish preference forbear; And in right deserving, And without a swerving Each from your proper state, Weave ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... part of the hotel for which he was willing to pay rent. In fact he failed to thus impress them; failed in dark wrath, but, nevertheless, failed. At last he was simply forced to concede the travel of files of men up the broad, redcarpeted stair-case, each man being loaded with Coleman's luggage. The men in the hotel-bureau were then able to comprehend that the foreign gentleman might have something else on his mind. They raised their eye-brows languidly when he spoke ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... dwelling-house, without the written permission of the proprietor; and no tenant shall be entitled to remove from out the dwelling-house or offices possessed by him at the expiry of his lease, any roof, window, door, loft, stair, or other plenishing of a like fixed nature, even though furnished and put in by himself, unless his tack specially confers upon him such power; but the incoming tenant shall be bound to pay the outgoing tenant the ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... music, with the intention of seeing how long my lady would linger outside alone. Gentlemen, it was two hours before I saw her face again. How she got back into the house I do not know. It was not by the garden door, for my eye seldom left it; yet at or near half-past one I heard her voice on the stair above me and saw her descend and melt into the crowd as if she had not been absent from it for more than five minutes. A half-hour later I saw her with Frederick again. They were dancing, but not ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... so far broken or changed, that he was able to rise and follow him: even in his dreams he was a boy of courage, and feared nothing so much as yielding to fear. The figure went on, nor ever turned its head, up the stair to the room over that they had left—the best bedroom, the guest-chamber of the house—not often visited, and there it entered. Still following, Cosmo entered also. The figure walked across the room, as if making for the bed, but in the middle of the floor suddenly turned, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Jimmy, that I will," cried the little girl; "here, let us sit on this lowest stair; I don't think many people will be passing up now, and then I shall see mother when she ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... other heraldic devices, a form of decoration which was also continued over the ceiling. The back part of the house was evidently the older; the same beautiful plaster-work was to be seen, both in the bedrooms and kitchen, together with fine black oak beams. There was a winding stair to the upper story, with narrow windows that suggested a castle, and that dull, dim, soft yellow-brown light about everything which only seems reflected from ancient walls. The front portion consisted of two great sitting-rooms, one of which was empty, while the other had been arranged ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... door for a senile lunatic, and herself for a poltroon. She became defiant of peril, until the sound of a step on the stair beyond the door threw her back into alarm. But when the figure of Miss Ingate appeared in the doorway she was definitely reassured, to the point of disdain. All her facial expression ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... his footsteps on the stair the playing of the piano ceased. He was surprised at what greeted him above. In startling contrast to the loathsome environment below he entered a luxuriously appointed room, heavily hung with oriental ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... at Jack, and smiled at herself in the Psyche, without at that time asking heaven why she was so unhappy. Then Constant threw over her shoulders a warm cloak, and accompanied her to the carriage, while Jack, leaning over the railing, watched from stair to stair, moving almost as if she were dancing the little pink slippers embroidered with silver, that bore his mother to balls where children could not go. As the last sound of the silver bells died away, he turned towards the salon, disturbed and anxious for the first time ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... they were ready. They ran down the stairway, Nora following with the suit cases, and laughing because they hopped on every other stair. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... reached Jules even after he had mounted the stairs and closed the door. The child crept close to the cheerful fire, and, crouching down on the rug, waited in a shiver of nervousness for his uncle's step on the stair. ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... projecting steps of a staircase. Three steps were of necessity to project into the boudoir: they are therefore made triangular steps; and instead of being rested on the floor, as usual, they are made fast at their broad end to the stair door, swinging out and in, with that. When it shuts, it runs them under the other steps; when open it brings them out to their proper place. In the kitchen garden, are three pumps, worked by one horse. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... from alley and square, To the wonderful palace the rats repair; And one old forager, grizzled and spare,— The wisest to plan and the boldest to dare, To smell out a prize or to find out a snare,— In some dark corner, beneath some stair (I never learned how, and I never knew where), Has gnawed his way into the grand affair; First one rat, and then a pair, And now a dozen or more are there. They caper and scamper, and blink and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... her to climb the first three flights of stairs, Una realized how hot she was, how the clammy coolness of the hall was penetrated by stabs of street heat which entered through the sun-haloed windows at the stair landings. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the palace, the massive doors were thrown open, and the court passed in. The nurses bore the Princess Rosetta's basket up the grand marble stair, and carried ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... approached the iron gate of the churchyard. I saw the church door open; the sexton was replacing his pick, shovel, and spade, with which he had just been digging a grave in the churchyard, in their little repository under the stone stair of the tower. He was a polite, shrewd little hunchback, who was very happy to show me over the church. Among the monuments was one that interested me; it was erected to commemorate the very Squire Bowes from whom my two old maids had inherited the house and estate of Barwyke. ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... foot of the stair, under a feeble gas-jet, Christina opened her hand, disclosing an old-fashioned ring set ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... order. Horses and weemen noo. It's not a bad thing—a while wi' a lass after the horses are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"—his smile broadened until I could see his teeth—"if it had been Dauvit the leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about it. . ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... sitting up with him at night until he got the change and it was for the better. It might be a week after, I went to meet her on her way home from the place where she had been at work, and saw how slow she walked and the trouble she had in getting up the stair to our room. She gave me my supper and lay down on the bed to rest, for she said she was tired. Next morning she complained of headache and did not rise. Neighbors came in to see her now and then. I stayed by her, she had never been thus before. When it became dark she seemed ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... Thursday after breakfast his aunt produced a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed in his Sunday best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to the Rue de Rivoli. He mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpet and polished brass stair-rods of which filled ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... spellbound. Each advance marked a victory worthy of a battlefield. But at each step he was forced to pause and rally all his forces before he went on to the next. First he would twine his long fingers about the rail reaching up as far as he was able; then he would lift one limp leg and swing it to the stair above; he would then heave himself forward almost upon his face and drag the other leg to a level with the first, rouse himself as from a tendency to faint, and stand there blinking at the next stair with an agonized plea as for mercy written in the deep furrows of his face. The drunken candle ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... random, scarcely hearing her chatter, and listening, listening each instant for his step or voice on the stair. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... story above the ground-floor, with four windows from which the panes shine cheerfully in the first rays of the sun, and upon the red-tiled roof two attics with pointed gable. The door, which one reaches by a broad stone stair, is framed by two vines, their vigorous branches stretching up to the side of the windows, yielding to the hand, when September is come, their velvety, ruby bunches. Behind the house, a little garden surrounded by a hedge of green, at once an ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... benevolence, according to circumstances, was sure to be the result. As he was one day poking through the passages, he suddenly encountered an enormously big, fat servant-woman, engaged in cleaning a stair. She was steaming with perspiration. Eyeing her curiously for a moment, "Ho, ho!" he cried (his usual introductory exclamation), "do you bake the bread?" The woman, staring in astonishment, and, fortunately for her own self-complacency, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was hideously wrong. And to whom might she go for help or for advice? As though to answer her question came a foot-step on the stair. It was a slow, not very heavy step. It came to her door and there followed a sharp ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... away from the stair door and explained the situation to Mrs. Brown, who was very sober. But when Henry said that Dr. Hardy had asked the boys to come and that he would himself be with them in New York, the serious look vanished from Mrs. Brown's face. "That's all right, ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... so ridiculous that the mother attempted to rush down stairs three at a time, to have her husband come up to the prayer meeting, when she stubbed herself on a stair rod, and—well, she got the black eye on the journey down stairs, though what hit her she will probably never know. But she said when she began to roll down stairs she felt in her innermost soul as though she had broke up that prayer ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... the steel landing stair snaked out, and the hefty Plekhanov stepped down, closely followed by Chessman. The others brought up the rear, Watson, Roberts, Stevens, Hawkins and Cogswell. They had hardly formed a compact group at the foot of ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... down with him and filled the workshop with her chatter. At about eight, when it began to grow light, he heard her staggering step on the stair, and she remained with him until Ellen took her up in the evening by main force to put her to bed. She dragged all the tools together and piled them up in front of Pelle on the bench so that he could hardly move, and called it helping. Then ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... a portrait of him in Lord Suffolk's collection at Charlton.] who, because some of the noblemen there would go up-stairs to the Emperor before him, he would not go up till the Emperor had ordered those two men to be dragged down-stairs, with their heads knocking upon every stair till they were killed. And when he was come up, they demanded his sword of him before he entered the room. He told them, if they would have his sword, they should have his boots too. And so caused his boots to be pulled off, and his night- gown ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... crowded roadway, he passed through the narrow door and up the steep stair that ends so abruptly into the long, low supper-room ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... once rode Past guarded gates to trumpet sound, Along the devious ways that wound O'er drawbridges, through moats, and showed The vast St. Lawrence flowing, belt The Orleans Isle, and sea-ward melt; Then by old walls with cannon crowned, Down stair-like streets, to where we felt The salt winds blown o'er ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... too," he answered. "I'd like to see your ghosts again." Then I heard Mr. Jermyn loitering at the stair-head while the Duke left the council-room. My hair was rising on my scalp; there was cold sweat on my forehead; it was as much as I could do to keep my teeth from chattering. I heard the Duke's feet upon the ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... kind of chamber which was about four feet wide and eight feet long. At the end of this was a stone stair-way which went down. Harry looked around, and took all this in at a glance. His first thought was ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... looking towards the stair-head. The passage was empty and ended in utter darkness. I glanced the other way, and thought I saw—though not distinctly—in the distance a white figure, not gliding in the conventional way, but limping off, with a sort of jerky motion, and, in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sing in the eaves and rose All in a strange delight while others slept, And down the creaking stair, alone, ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... the bed, and Sam didn't know whether Bill was dying or whether 'e 'ad got delirium trimmings. All 'e did know was that 'e wasn't going to sleep in that room. He shut the door gently and went downstairs agin, feeling in 'is pocket for a match, and, not finding one, 'e picked out the softest stair 'e could find and, leaning his 'ead agin the banisters, went ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... building shook, and Lady Mar, almost insensible with terror, received the exhausted body of her husband into her arms; he fainted from the transport his weakened frame was unable to hear. Soon after this the stair-door was forced, and the panic-struck women ran shrieking into the room ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... infirmity. There was an old iron shop, that stood flush with the sidewalk, flanking the stableyard. A lantern and a mammoth key were suspended above the door and hanging upon the side of the shop was a wooden stair ascending to the chalet The latter had a sheathing of weather-worn clapboards. It stood on the rear end of the brick building, communicating with the front rooms above the shop. A little stair of five steps ascended from the landing to its red door that overlooked an ample ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... puff my cigar. Regarding the transfer of the trunks, my eye was suddenly attracted to some lettering that appeared upon one of the packages—a leathern portmanteau. I sprang from my seat, and as the article was carried up the gangway stair I met it halfway. I glanced my eye over ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... to talk and the evening advanced in an unaccountable manner toward bedtime, so delightful were the hours of getting acquainted. When she felt they must break up, Aunt Janice led the way up the winding stair. ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay
... figure, that wrings its hands; folk may tell of the apparition of an ancient dame, whose corpse-like features yet show traces of passions unspent; of solemn, hooded monk, with face concealed by his cowl, who passes down the castle's winding stair, telling his beads; they whisper, it may be, of a lady in white raiment, whose silken gown rustles as she walks. Or the tale, perhaps, is one of pitiful moans that on the still night air echo through some ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... and Jo shut the door, feeling that food was an uncongenial topic just then. She stood a minute looking at the party vanishing above, and as Demi's short plaid legs toiled up the last stair, a sudden sense of loneliness came over her so strongly that she looked about her with dim eyes, as if to find something to lean upon, for even Teddy had deserted her. If she had known what birthday gift was coming every minute nearer and nearer, she would not have ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... keenly, and hesitatingly passed down the dusky stairway. Then I turned and tried to crawl on, eager to gain my room without revealing my condition; but when I reached the topmost stair it seemed that I could not go any further if my life depended on it. With an irritable imprecation on my weakness, I sank down on the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the stair and rushed into her aunt's presence, sobbing out in agony of grief,—"She has gone! Madeleine has gone! I know she has gone, and she will never, never return to us! Her dresses are there; everything you have given her is there; she has only ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... traces of Richard the Second's badge, the White Hart, can be seen from below on sunny mornings. We have already noticed the doorway of St. Faith's Chapel at the extreme south end, and there also are the ruins of a little stone stair, which used to lead below the triforium level above the chapel into the monks' dormitory beyond. The large rose window, the tracery of which has been remodelled more than once since the thirteenth century, was refilled with painted glass two years ago in memory of the late ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... husband had lost, running to the head of the stairs and talking to the cook, the day passed away pretty well till four o'clock; when, as before, Mrs Handycock screamed, the cook screamed, the parrot screamed, and Mr Handycock rapped at the door, and was let in—but not by me. He ascended the stair swith [sic] three bounds, and coming into the parlour, cried, "Well, Nancy, my love, how are you?" Then stooping over her, "Give me a kiss, old girl. I'm as hungry as a hunter. Mr Simple, how do you do? I hope you have passed the morning agreeably. I must wash my hands ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... another wife bade me a last good-bye, or one of my instruments of music, which I did not grieve to see the last of, or some article of my strange attire, was taken from me. At length after an hour's march, for our progress was slow, we reached the flat top of the pyramid that is approached by a great stair, a space larger than the area of the churchyard here at Ditchingham, and unfenced at its lofty edge. Here on this dizzy place stood the temples of Huitzel and of Tezcat, soaring structures of stone and wood, within which were placed ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... no need to describe it. It is very like ten thousand other houses in our dark City of London. There was a dirty passage and a dirty stair, and from the passage two dirty doors let into two filthy rooms, which had strong bars at the windows, and yet withal an air of horrible finery that makes me uncomfortable to think of even yet. On the walls hung all sorts of trumpery pictures in tawdry frames (how different from ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wife. Velasquez stands on the left of the picture, behind the Infanta, painting, with his canvas turned back toward us as we look into the room. The black figure of an attendant has passed out of the apartment and is going up a stair against a clear white wall. The skilful way in which you are led into the picture is astonishing, and the whole thing is quite by itself as a piece of painting. There is no attempt at anything subtile or even delicate in the treatment, speaking from the point of view of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... nothing to you," says he, "'tis my standard," says he" and by G—d I'll have it," says he. "D—nation seize me," says I, "if you shall," says I, "till I have first delivered it to the general," says I; and accordingly I went to the headquarters after the battle, and delivered it to my Lord Stair, who promised to do for me. But I am no more than a poor lieutenant still, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... it is just the day to enjoy it and I was longing for something nice to read," said Rose as Jamie sat down upon the lower stair for a protracted struggle with ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... at the Gates of the Palace; for the Coach being drawn by Six Ostriches, we were but a little Time upon the Way; and mounting the great Stair-case, without being any way molested by the People's Curiosity (for the Moment my Lord appear'd every Fowl of what Quality soever, clapp'd his Beak to the Ground, and did not alter that Posture till he was past) he ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... you like to have a dreadful pain under your apron, and have everybody call you "a little cross thing," when you couldn't speak to tell what was the matter with you? How should you like to crawl to the top stair, (just to look about a little,) and pitch heels over head from ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... stair, a century at a step, and presently walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... its way to the foot of the steeper slopes, above the tree line, hesitated, eyed me, then started up a narrow little passage that led up between two cliffs. A rock-slide cluttered this granite stair. Stable footholds were impossible for the loose rocks slipped and slid, rolled from beneath the sheep's feet and bounded ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... existing in their audience. Even in order to be appreciated, they must have at least partially educated audiences. Give either of them Whitefield's auditory, and these effects become impossible. Here we come upon the inert masses, which cannot by any possibility be induced to ascend one single stair in any upward movement, but must be swayed this way or that way upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... into my parlour is up a winding stair, And many are the curious things I'll show you when you're there. Will you, will ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... mistress more real, more inaccessible and more mysterious than anything that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential, enviable staircase to the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat; on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... remarked, "to show off the talents of your dressmaker, eh, Quimby? Can't you just see the stunning gowns coming down that stair in state, and the young men below ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... up-stairs, and found Ellen, as usual, at her needle, and Paul in the arm-chair close by Alfred, both busied in choosing and cutting out pictures from Matilda's 'Illustrated News,' with which Harold ornamented the wall of the stair-case and landing. Mr. Cope sat down, and made them laugh with something droll about the figures that were lying ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heart, sae smooth his speech. His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair— And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... to-morrow, just as we have learned to pronounce their names; and the sound of the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth. The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given us two dinners which bore a curious ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... giants, as no children had leisure for ash-carrying after the age of seven. A still greater honour accorded to Darius was permission to sit, during lessons, on the topmost visible step of the winding stair. The widow Susan, having taught Darius to read brilliantly, taught him to knit, and he would knit stockings for ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, "Jug Jug" to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... pointed out to the Corporal certain modes and methods by which he fancies this island could be held, in case the French should discover its position; but the excellent Sergeant, though your father, and as good a man in his duties as ever wielded a spontoon, is not the great Lord Stair, or even the Duke of Marlborough. I'll not deny the Sergeant's merits in his particular sphere; though I cannot exaggerate qualities, however excellent, into those of men who may be in some trifling degree his superiors. Sergeant Dunham has taken counsel of his heart, instead ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... sweetness, joined to such thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... a scurvy disease had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case. I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; And therefore contented like others ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... to what was most to be desired in life were simply the result of the atmosphere in which she had lived; and she confessed to him that the most beautiful thing she had ever seen was the arrivals at a Mansion House ball—the coloured stair-cloth, the beautiful ladies, the brilliant uniforms. Her knowledge of politics was entirely derived from the cartoons of the comic journals in the shop windows; and she had any quantity of vague and vulgar prejudices about Catholics, Radicals, and Jews. But ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... me as ladies not loosed from a dance, but who stop silent, listening till they have caught the new notes. And within one I heard begin, "Since the ray of grace, whereby true love is kindled, and which thereafter grows multiplied in loving, so shines on thee that it conducts thee upward by that stair upon which, without reascending, no one descends, he who should deny to thee the wine of his flask for thy thirst, would not be more at liberty than water which descends not to the sea.[1] Thou wishest to know with what plants this garland is enflowered, which, round about her, gazes with delight ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... and it was late in the evening, when she sat down, tired and faint, with a great bundle of girls' themes or compositions to read over before she could rest her weary head on the pillow of her narrow trundle-bed, and forget for a while the treadmill stair of labor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... draught through the house, and drew down the blinds at the back and shut the kitchen door to conceal his arrangements from casual observation. At the end he would open the door on the yard and so make a clean clear draught right through the house. He hacked at, and wedged off, the tread of a stair. He cleared out the coals from under the staircase, and built a neat fire of firewood and paper there, he splashed about paraffine and arranged the lamps and can even as he had designed, and made a fine inflammable pile of things in the little parlour behind ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... took my arm and led me through the gallery, I had an odd presentiment of going towards a doom. While I followed her up a winding stair, the misgiving increased. Did venerable lemurs inhabit the Basque mountains? Could so magnificent; an old age be of this earth? An ancestral shudder from the Steppes came over me. It was her ruddy train rustling round the turns ahead that aroused ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... I am. And I come to fetch a letter from Marse Jacky Lytton to Miss Lorrer. And I seen a sperrit at the top o'them stair steps. And that's what's the matter of ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the Donjon is a square. The towers at the four angles are divided into five floors, each having a separate stair-case, and each floor is vaulted, with an apartment in the centre, sustained by pillars, which are chimneys. At each of the four corners of the apartment in the centre is a cell thirteen feet square. The towers are encompassed on the third story by a large gallery on the outside, and on the top ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... ten apartments in the building, two on a floor. The living room formed an L. Kitty's buttressed Gregor's. The elevator shaft was inside, facing the court; and the stair head was on the Gregor side of the elevator. The two entrances faced each other across ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... to remain in absolute silence, motionless, tense, where he was on the stair, and to trust to the chance that the woman did not look up. But Miss Baylis neither looked up nor down: she reached a landing, turned along a corridor with decision, and marched forward. A moment later Spargo heard a sharp double ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and turnings confuse the passage to the devouter books—the Early Fathers in particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room of dingy ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... which they passed was sufficiently dark to prevent the masculine eye of Ringfield noting that long and systematic neglect marked every inch of the wall, every foot of flooring, every window, door, stair, sill and sash. Nothing was clean, nothing was orderly, and as the books and papers contained in the invalid's room had overflowed into the halls, lying on the steps and propped up on chairs and in corners, the dirt and confusion was indescribable. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day, at noon, the students came in hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers, and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... bellowing in me, as of might Unfleshed and visionless, mangling the air With horrible convulse, as if it bare The cruel weight of worlds, but could not fight With the thick-dropping clods, and could but bite A vapour-cloud! Oh, I will climb the stair Of the great universe, and lay me there Even at the threshold of his gate, despite The tempest, and the weakness, and the rush Of this quick crowding on me!—Oh, I dream! Now I am sailing swiftly, as we seem To do in sleep! and I can ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... as she leaped down from the fourth stair, and landed in an ignominious pile on her knees; "we're going to ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... the rest of the roof fell in, hiding the tower in spouts and veils of flame. Here they might not stay if they would live. Lifting her mistress in her strong arms, as she was wont to do when she was little, Emlyn found the head of the stair, so that when the wind blew the smoke aside for an instant, those below saw that both had vanished, as they thought ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... dear old pious ingrate, on this Christmas morning, think what your mercies have been; and do not walk too far before your breakfast - as far as to the top of India Street, then to the top of Dundas Street, and then to your ain stair heid; and do not forget that even as LABORARE, so JOCULARI, EST ORARE; and to be happy the first ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the corridor, opposite the kitchen window, there was a flight of stairs. On the third stair from the bottom stood (teetering a little slowly back and forth, his lean hands joined behind him and twitching regularly, a kepi tilted forward on his cadaverous head so that its visor almost hid the weak eyes sunkenly ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... dust! dust! Carpet, curtain, window, floor; Right, left, thrust, thrust— Clouds are rising more and more! Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— Kitchen, parlour, passage, stair; Sweep, sweep, sweep, sweep— That's what I'm obliged to bear! Dust, dust, dust, dust, In the lofty attic found; Dust, dust, dust, dust, In the ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... she heard a manly step on the stair, she started and turned pale, expecting nothing short of an armed messenger of the law. She never was in this danger for a single minute, but conscience made ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... heart would burst. No bold, imperious, master spirit was this, demanding her love and life as if they were his by natural right. It was as though she had been newly roused by a faint knock at the door; and now, before her foot was set upon the stair that led down to the entering guest, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... hold of his legs in the dark. They went on and on, and round and round the little corkscrew staircase—then through the bell-ringers' loft, where the bell-ropes hung with soft furry ends like giant caterpillars—then up another stair into the belfry, where the big quiet bells are—and then on up a ladder with broad steps—and then up a little stone stair. And at the top of that there was a little door. And the door was bolted on the ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... thatch. There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too; there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven long years. She is a hundred ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... philosophy affordeth no solution. Now, if you demand my opinion and metaphysics of their natures, I confess them very shallow, most of them in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures; for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; between plants and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... hastily up a kind of stair in the rock-wall, until they reached a cranny, whence through a hole in the cliff, they could see all over the haven. And lo! as they looked, in the very gate and entry of it came a great ship heaving up her ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... on a chair, held his breath, listened, went on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again for over a minute—and in that minute he felt more alone than he had ever felt before. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... herself in holy prayer To worship ever the All Fair; She coins her heart in largess golden, And beggars self on her altar-stair. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... transference of coal and cargo which went on without cessation, day and night, our ship was gradually being stripped. Bunks and cabin fittings, heating apparatus, pianos, bookcases, brass and rubber stair-treads, bed and table linen, ceiling and table electric fans, clocks, and all movable fittings were transferred to the Wolf, and our ship presented a scene of greater destruction every day. The Germans were excellent shipbreakers. Much of the cargo could ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... attempts at improvement cannot be traced farther back than 1723, when a number of landholders formed themselves into a society, under the title of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland. John, 2nd earl of Stair, one of their most active members, is said to have been the first who cultivated turnips in that country. The Select Transactions of this society were collected and published in 1743 by Robert Maxwell, who took a large part ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... did this fear become that at length I arose, lit a candle and dressed myself. As it happened I knew where Miss Holmes slept. Her room, which I had seen her enter, was on the same corridor as mine though at the other end of it near the head of a stair that ran I knew not whither. In my portmanteau that had been sent over from Miss Manners's house, amongst other things was a small double-barrelled pistol which from long habit I always carried with me loaded, except for the caps that were in a little leather case with ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... — N. method, way, manner, wise, gait, form, mode, fashion, tone, guise; , modus operandi, MO; procedure &c. (line of conduct) 692. path, road, route, course; line of way, line of road; trajectory, orbit, track, beat, tack. steps; stair, staircase; flight of stairs, ladder, stile; perron[obs3]. bridge, footbridge, viaduct, pontoon, steppingstone, plank, gangway; drawbridge; pass, ford, ferry, tunnel; pipe &c. 260. door; gateway &c. (opening) 260; channel, passage, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the ground floor with an orange press, various agricultural implements, and numberless baskets for gathering fruit; there was a bare kitchen with a wood fire and a table spread with cups and dishes; then up a winding stair was a bedroom with walls colored sky blue, and a veranda that looked down over a glorious ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... have happened while we were on the river, so we could know nothing about it. Somebody must have stolen up the turret stair and got on to the roof. That's the only possible way it could be done. The senior Forms are in a rare ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... d. The bas-reliefs on this low screen are groups of peacocks and lions, two face to face on each panel, rich and fantastic beyond description, though not expressive of very accurate knowledge either of leonine or pavonine forms. And it is not until we pass to the back of the stair of the pulpit, which is connected with the northern extremity of this screen, that we find evidence of the haste with which the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... passed through my mind when the man whom we were watching caught sight of the number on our door, and ran rapidly across the roadway. We heard a loud knock, a deep voice below, and heavy steps ascending the stair. ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... had pushed past him to the top stair, and was already shoving his hardest against the stone above. Of course, it did not ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... his sister as she sat, rosy cheeked and laughing, on the lowest stair, and stood before her. "That wasn't so bad," he said, approvingly. "You and Jarve had better get out a copyright on that—you worked in some pretty fancy steps. Got your skates on to-night, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... without on the stair; the old man gave a relieved sigh, but when the door opened it was only ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... she started back with a scream which at once brought Jupp upstairs. Joe the gardener still stopped, however, on the mat below in the passage, as nothing short of a peremptory command from the vicar would have constrained him to put his heavy clod-hopping boots on the soft stair-carpet. Indeed, it had needed all Mary's persuasion to make him come into the hall, which he did as gingerly as a cat treading on ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... left the door ajar so that he might hear, if he presently returned, his eldest pupil. But he heard only James go clattering down the passage and the stair. Strickland, blowing out his candles, left his room to the prolonged June ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... scaffolding, and has a dim, blurred outline from a distance, as though it were being rapidly shaken to and fro. I found a friendly and communicable man who offered to take me over it; we climbed a dizzy little winding stair, with bright glimpses at intervals, through loop-holes, of sunlight and wheeling birds; then we crept along the top of a vaulted space with great pockets of darkness to right and left. Soon we were in the ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... conflict raged. The boys had both received several blows, for the weight of the heavy weapons sometimes beat down their guard; but they still fought on, retiring a step or two up the stair when hardly pressed, and occasionally making dashes down upon their assailants, slaying the foremost, and hurling the others backwards. Presently the girl ran ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... of slight delicate mould, with refined, transparent-looking features, and with hair and budding moustache too fair for his large dark eyes, came bounding up the broad stair, to the embrace of the aunt who stood at the top, a little lame lady supported by an ivory-headed staff. Her deep blue eyes, dark eyebrows, and sweet though piquant face were framed by the straight crape line of widowhood, whence a soft white veil ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... men and maidens, old men and widows, meet each other on the path of the green lane, like angels on the steps of Jacob's Ladder in a Flemish picture that I have, where the ladder is represented by a broad stone stair-case; except that blessings are here all brought up instead of down, for a brace of Shad is in the hand of every family-man returning ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... his Heaven and all's right with the world, sings at her work; she shows extraordinary activity when going about her duties. She does unusual things like remembering to polish the brasses every week—indeed, you have only to step in the hall and glance at the stair rods to discover the exact stage of her latest 'affair.' I remember once when one ardent swain (who she declared was 'in the flying corpse') got to the length of offering her marriage before he flew away, she cleaned the entire house down in her enthusiasm—and had actually got to the ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... noted as I paused irresolutely on the lower stair, wondering if I could safely walk directly out of that front door, ignoring the sentries by right of the uniform I wore, and thus attain the open air. The constant haunting fear of the early return of Sheridan and his aides, or a possible encounter with some former acquaintance in that ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the underground of his subconsciousness, refusing realisation, yet all the time only too well divining. Some careless word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy wrapping of a pair of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, the removal from a down-stair room of an object always there—one tiny thing, and he knows for certain that he is not going too. He fights against the knowledge just as we do against what we cannot bear; he gives up hope, but not effort, protesting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... her in his arms and carry her up the stairway—it seemed the thing most worth doing in all the world—but he could only lean against the desk and see them go slowly stair by stair out ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... imputed her success to necromancy. According to the popular belief, this Dame Margaret purchased the temporal prosperity of her family from the Master whom she served under a singular condition, which is thus narrated by the historian of her grandson, the great Earl of Stair: "She lived to a great age, and at her death desired that she might not be put under ground, but that her coffin should stand upright on one end of it, promising that while she remained in that situation the Dalrymples should continue to flourish. What was the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... room; has slung his chevroned coat under the bed; has slipped beneath the sheet and coverlet, and now, breathlessly, he listens. He hears the inspector moving from room to room on the ground floor; hears him spring up the iron stair; hears him enter his own,—the tower room at the north end of the hall,—and there he stops, surprised, evidently, to find Cadet Captain Stanley absent from his quarters. Then his steps are heard again. He enters the opposite room at the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... to begin with. I want that white, and I've ordered a dark red stair-carpet to put down. Then there'll be doors and windows. But I want all this done as soon as possible really; it's been left too long as ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... narrow, spiral stair to the lighthouse tower, and there, apparently lifted into the cloud-navigated sky, I awakened to the real wonder of coral reefs. Ridges of white and brown showed their teeth against the crawling, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... dealing with inanimate things and leave the school work to those who can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... is she who peeps From the gallery stair, Smiles palely, redly weeps, With feverish furtive air As though not ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... follow and led the way silently past the others toward the stair shaft. Climbing to the top level was a heart-pounding task, but Mason almost ran up those steps. At the surface he leaned against a pillar, his lips ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi
... a cellar-stair lighted by a small lamp with a sputtering wick darkening the chimney with smoke; having safely reached the bottom, he turned to the left in the darkness; here and there, at an angle, a floating wick threw a ruddy light on the circuit ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... not let her fall, but took advantage of the support of the handrail to imprint a kiss upon her lips—lips in the day-time scorned. Then he clasped her with a renewed firmness of hold, and descended the staircase. The creak of the loose stair did not awaken him, and they reached the ground-floor safely. Freeing one of his hands from his grasp of her for a moment, he slid back the door-bar and passed out, slightly striking his stockinged toe against the edge of the door. But this he seemed not to mind, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... interested in any other piece of property in this vicinity—" were the last words she heard floating down the stair well as she passed ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... Lateran is the holy stair-case, transported, it is said, from Jerusalem to Rome. It may only be ascended kneeling. Caesar himself, and Claudius also, mounted on their knees the stair-case which conducted to the Temple of the Capitoline Jove. On one side of St John Lateran is the font where it is ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... when the servants were going to bed, it became known that she had left the house, that she had taken the six o'clock to Brighton. Esther turned from the foot of the stair with a wild ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... eyes the passageway was a place of utter darkness, but the red ones, their great owl eyes opened wide, hurried him on. His stumbling feet encountered a flight of steps. With the red guard he climbed a winding stair where the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... three hours late—it was afternoon when we arrived in Portland. Following the directions of my colored friend, I went up an extremely dirty stair into a very dirty office, found an innocent young man smoking a cigar. He did not know anything, you know, so sat grimly down to wait for the arrival of some one who did. Such a one soon appeared and took ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... upon his outstretched arm. As for me, I stood a minute with set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and went out of the room and down the stair and out into the street. In the dust beneath the window lay my dagger. I picked it up, sheathed it, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Chatterton, The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space Thy gallant sword-play:—these to many an one Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown, And ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... emblematic of youth, so it is here that the intellectual education of the candidate begins. And therefore, here, at the very spot which separates the Porch from the Sanctuary, where childhood ends and manhood begins, he finds stretching out before him a winding stair which invites him, as it were, to ascend, and which, as the symbol of discipline and instruction, teaches him that here must commence his masonic labor—here he must enter upon those glorious though difficult researches, the end of which is to be the possession of divine truth. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... in the upper part of a closet-door. Emily believed her father to be in the closet, and, surprised that he was up at so late an hour, apprehended he was unwell, and was going to enquire; but, considering that her sudden appearance at this hour might alarm him, she removed her light to the stair-case, and then stepped softly to the closet. On looking through the panes of glass, she saw him seated at a small table, with papers before him, some of which he was reading with deep attention ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the stair-rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-flicker, that the young country minister could think of no word but ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... One case is of the very best spirits for our own use. The rest is common stuff and is intended as presents. Our main drink will be tea and chocolate. These are invaluable for the traveler. I have, besides, large quantities of calico, brass stair rods, beads, and powder. These are the money of Africa, and pass current everywhere. With these we shall pay our carriers and boatmen, with these purchase the right of way through the various tribes we shall meet. Moreover ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... the other nurses. Small emergencies were constantly arising and finding her at a loss. Once at least every night, Miss Harrison would hear a soft hiss from the back staircase that connected the two floors, and, going out, would see Sidney's flushed face and slightly crooked cap bending over the stair-rail. ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... grinding of the immense door near the altar; it was opened; steps entered hurriedly. She heard, next instant, her father's voice,—impregnated with icy ire, low with smothered hatred, distinct with the only purpose he ever entertained,—punishment. She flew, with feet that gave no echo, up the stair on her side of the lobby. Rodomant was sitting dead-still, with his face in his hands; they looked rigid; the veins in his forehead, as it showed above his hands, were swollen and stood out, but colorless as the keys that stretched beneath. His ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... plunged bravely on, concluding 'there' to be up a narrow, uncarpeted stair, with a nursery wicket at the top, in undoing which, she was relieved of all doubts and scruples by a melancholy little duet from within. 'Mary, Mary, we want our breakfast! We want to get up! Mary, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochere. Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... peril, fear Bade wrath and grief awake and hear What shame should say in fame's wide ear If she, by sorrow sealed more dear Than joy might make her, so should die: And up the tower's curled stair he sprang As one that flies death's deadliest fang, And leapt right out amid their gang As fire from heaven ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... it must be owned, had an incumbrance, which she kept as far as might be in the lower regions of her house, but which was now and again encountered on the stair—a shambling son, one Joe, mostly in shirt —sleeves, distilling familiarity and beer from every pore. He was a ne'er- do-well, whom it was his mother's cross and crown to keep in complete idleness. He cast dreadful looks, as of an equal in snugness, a fellow- minion, at the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... home that day. The spot where he had been lying was several miles from the white cottage, yet he was conscious of no time, no distance. It seemed one burning moment, a moment never to be forgotten while he lived, till he found himself at the foot of the outer stairway, the stair that led to the attic. She might still be living, and he would not go to her without the thing she craved, the thing which could speak to her ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... she opened, and there beyond it, a drawn scimitar in his hand, stood a tall Moor on guard. Inez spoke a word to him, whereon he saluted with his scimitar and let them pass across the landing to a turret stair that lay beyond, which they descended. At its foot was another door, whereon she knocked four times. Bolts shot back, keys turned, and it was opened by a black porter, beyond whom stood a second Moor, also with drawn sword. They ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... Bohemian cabinet-maker; his wife, a Viennese, who kept everything in the neatest order. I do not know how many families lived in this house; but it was a huge parallelogram with a paved courtyard, in the centre of which stood a wooden pump. There was a common stair in each corner, all of stone, and a common closet at the bottom of each staircase, equally of stone, seat and all, and very common indeed. Each lodging consisted of three continuous rooms, with only one entrance from the common stair: first was the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... for Whitehall Stair; Salute th' Exchequer Barons there, Then summon round thy civic chair To dinner Whigs and Tories— Bid Dukes and Earls thy hustings climb; But mark my work, Matthias Prime, Ere the tenth hour the scythe of Time Shall amputate, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... They descended the stair, Toad shouting abuse at them through the keyhole; and the three friends then met in conference ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... and although in two of them some items of massive furniture remained, covered with dust-sheets, no sign of habitation did I come upon. The whole of the ground floor proved to be vacant and a broad uncarpeted stair suggested that the floors above were ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... picturesque a custom, and he said if I visited one of his castles that these estimable people, at a word from him, would form a corduroy road in the mud with their bodies, so that I might step dry-shod from the carriage to the castle doors, and I stipulated that he should at least spread a bit of stair carpet over the poor wretches before I made my progress across his ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... the doughty little knight of the Good Turn, and several nurses watched him amusedly from the foot of the broad stair.... ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... sat down on the top stair, overcome with excitement and surprise. "To-day! this very day! Oh dear! oh dear! how careless of Lizzie not to tell us! The poor child might come at any time, and nobody be there to meet her, and we can't write and ask, for she didn't give us any address ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... had taken his key from Diaz' helpless hand, and opened his door and guided him within, and closed the door definitely upon the outer world, I breathed a great sigh. Every turn of the stair had been a station of the cross for me. We were now in utter darkness. The classical effluvium of inebriety mingled with the classical odour of the furnished lodging. But I cared not. I had at last successfully hidden his shame. No one could witness ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... slight, persistent fear of seeing these wounded whom I cannot help. It is not very active, it has left off visualizing the horror of bloody bandages and mangled bodies. But it's there; it waits for me in every corridor and at the turn of every stair, and it makes me ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... drew nearer. The singers paused at the landing of the stair. Hester could distinguish Erma's loud, clear notes which soared upward like a bird and ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... eye of faith beholds A golden stair, like that of old, whereon Fair spirits go and come; God's angels coming down on errands sweet, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... had returned and held the stair-door open for him. Sommers looked at her searchingly, curious to find where this power lay. Her face had grown white and set. The features and the figure were those of a large woman. Her hair, bronzed in the sunlight ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Bohemia, and the stair-carpet the sea, because then the aunts won't hear the lion ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in black drew herself up proudly. "Yes, one; better than killed. Wait." The women shrunk from her as she darted up the stair. They looked at each other wonderingly. The woman returned with something in her grasp. She flung it on the table. "It is an Indian's hand. His arm will shrivel to the bone. They will leave him some day to die in the sand." The women ...
— The Indian's Hand - 1892 • Lorimer Stoddard
... dining-room are two windows; in the right-hand wall is a door leading to the kitchen; and in the left-hand wall a door opens from a vestibule, where, opposite this door, there is another door which gives on to the landing of the common stair. ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... the uppers are worn you can move the whole thing down one file and put the steps where the uppers were. None of your cocoanut stuff or gimcracks for the honest house: when there is money you should have Brussels, when you have none linoleum—but I digress). The stair-rods were of brass and beautifully polished, the banisters of iron painted to look like mahogany; and this staircase, which I may take to be the emblem of a good life lived for duty, went up one pair, and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... cabman had finished his late midnight meal and departed. But another passer-by dropped in, who was left over a plate of stew while the waiter led Ned to a narrow stair at the end of the room, passing round a screen behind which a stout, gray-haired man slumbered in an arm chair with all the appearance of being the proprietor. The waiter showed Ned the way with a lighted match, renewed when burnt out. Ned noticed that the papered ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... indifference. My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there the corpses were in large numbers. He counted thirty in less than a hundred yards. Some were lying under the doorways; a dead woman was seated on the bottom stair of one of the houses. Near the church of "La Trinite" were two guns, the reports from which were deafening; several of the shells fell on a bathing establishment in the Rue Taitbout opposite the Boulevard. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... just like the steps of a stair. Gerald's the oldest. He's twelve and they call him Jerry. He's a clever boy. Faith is eleven. She is a regular tomboy but pretty as a picture, ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... white, The bride came forth on her wedding night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; And in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair,— "Forever—never! Never—forever!" ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... woman of genuine ability, who has been too busy with teaching and concert pianism to find as much leisure as she deserves for composition, is Patty Stair, a prominent musical figure in Cleveland. Her theoretical studies were received entirely at Cleveland, under F. Bassett. Her published works include a book of "Six Songs," all of them interesting and artistic, and the "Madrigal" particularly ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... on the stair. He and all the others had listened to Paddy's speeches in a blank amazement which had much ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the hallway and sat down in a fainting condition upon one of the stair steps. Still dizzy, with severe pains in the head and sensations of nausea, I was shown ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... down the blinds at the back and shut the kitchen door to conceal his arrangements from casual observation. At the end he would open the door on the yard and so make a clean clear draught right through the house. He hacked at, and wedged off, the tread of a stair. He cleared out the coals from under the staircase, and built a neat fire of firewood and paper there, he splashed about paraffine and arranged the lamps and can even as he had designed, and made a fine inflammable pile of things in the little parlour behind the shop. "Looks ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... "presented" Mr. and Mrs. Robert K. Cassatt of Philadelphia, Mrs. Ernest Wiltsee, Mrs. and Miss Luce and Mrs. Norman Whitehouse. On the arrival at the palace with these and all the members of the Embassy Staff and their wives, we were shown up a long stair-case, at the top of which a guard of honour, dressed in costume of the time of Frederick the Great, presented arms to all Ambassadors, and ruffled kettle-drums. Through long lines of cadets from the ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... stone or steel But doth some stir unwonted feel, When to the day new brightness bringing Thou standest at the stair-foot singing! ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... had disappeared into the little house near the corner, the hidden door in the damp cellar below "The Pidgin House" opened and a bent old woman, a ragged, grey-haired and dirty figure, walked slowly up the rickety wooden stair and entered a bare room behind and below the shop and to the immediate left of the den of the opium-smoker. This room, which was windowless, was lighted by a tin paraffin lamp hung upon a nail in the dirty plaster wall. The floor presented a litter of straw, ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... oak about the palace there, The king came back from battle, and I stood To meet him, with my ladies, on the stair, My face made beautiful with my ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... insert his reply to the Query of MATFELONESIS, because we do not regard a newspaper paragraph as an authority. The story of Lord Stair being the executioner of Charles I. is related, we believe, in Cecil's Sixty Curious Narratives, an interesting compilation made by the late W. Hone, who does not, however, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... reached the palace, the massive doors were thrown open, and the court passed in. The nurses bore the Princess Rosetta's basket up the grand marble stair, and carried it ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... now, thinking there was something extraordinary in the case, after looking to God for direction, inclined to do. The apparition went down some steps with the candles, and carried them into a long trance, at the end of which there was a stair which carried down to a low room. This the spectre went down, and stooped, and set down the lights on the lowest step of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... himsel' in their verra herts. Come thou, an' abide in us, an' tak' us to bide in thee; an' syne gin we be a' in thee, we canna be that far frae ane anither, though some sud be in haven, an' some upo' earth. Lord help us to do oor wark like thy men an' maidens doon the stair, remin'in' oursel's, 'at them 'at we miss hae only gane up the stair, as gin 'twar to haud things to thy han' i' thy ain presence-chamber, whaur we houp to be called or lang, an' to see thee an' thy Son, wham we lo'e aboon a'; an' in his name we ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... senses almost leaving me; but I did what I could to hold the door shut just as I heard the strange step come from the last stair on to the landing. Then there was a horrid sound, and some one began trying the lock ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... raged. The boys had both received several blows, for the weight of the heavy weapons sometimes beat down their guard; but they still fought on, retiring a step or two up the stair when hardly pressed, and occasionally making dashes down upon their assailants, slaying the foremost, and hurling the others backwards. Presently the girl ran ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... certain wistful, half-envious admiration. She had once been shaken by all these emotions herself, years ago, when she was in love. She had regarded them as a revelation while they lasted; and afterwards, as a steep step—a very steep step—upon the stair of life. But she realized now that such as Hester live constantly in the world which the greater number of us can only enter when human passion lends us the key; the world at which, when the gates are shut against us, the coarser minded among us are not ashamed to level their ridicule ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... indicate varieties and states of more or less altered basalts and dolerites, though no longer held to differ in any essential respects from the better preserved basalts. Still older is the term trap, which is derived from a Swedish word meaning "a stair," for in many places superposed sheets of basalt weather with well-marked step-like or terraced features. This designation is still used as a general term for the whole suite of basaltic rocks by many geologists and travellers (e.g. trap-dikes, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... English feet, by twelve in diameter at the base, and ten below the capital, which is Doric and carved out of a single block; the column is composed of thirty-four blocks, hollowed out internally and cut into a winding stair. A series of bas-reliefs, divided from one another by a narrow band, run spirally around the shaft parallel to the inner staircase of a hundred and eighty-two steps, and describes twenty-three circuits to reach the platform on which the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... polished floor. Holly and mistletoe, rosemary and bay, and all the decorations of an old-time English Christmas were tastefully arranged. A burst of laughter ran through the hall, as through the ample doorway, and down the broad stair, trooped the Motley train of the Lord of Misrule to open the Christmas revels. A fierce and ferocious-looking fellow was he, with his great green mustache and his ogre-like face. His dress was a gorgeous parti-colored jerkin and half-hose, trunks, ruff, slouch-boots of Cordova ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... centuries it took her to climb the first three flights of stairs, Una realized how hot she was, how the clammy coolness of the hall was penetrated by stabs of street heat which entered through the sun-haloed windows at the stair landings. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... shock! While writing alone here (almost all have gone to church), I heard a step ascending the stair. What, I asked, if it should be Will? Then I blamed myself for supposing such a thing possible. Slowly it came nearer and nearer, I raised my head, and was greeted with a ghastly smile. I held out my hand. "Will!" "Sarah!" (Misery ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... community must have been reenforced from time to time, as they have maintained, in a marvellous way, the fairness of their complexion. It will not require much imagination, as one enters their synagogue, to think of the synagogue of Nazareth of old. As we ascend the stair-way into the little schoolroom above, and hear the little ones reciting, in pure Hebrew, passages from the Pentateuch, we can easily imagine that we are listening to the voice of a dear little Boy, nineteen centuries ago, reciting to His master those ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... not know anything about the august memory that with him inhabits the dilapidated rooms. He doubtless fails to appreciate the honour of placing his hand upon the selfsame polished mahogany stair rail which our immortal "infidel's" hand once pressed, or the rare distinction of reading his evening paper at the selfsame window where, with his head upon his hand, that Other was wont to read ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... tower—the Keep. I believe you have not been in here before, Mr. Copplestone—just pay particular attention to this place. Here you see is the Keep, standing in the middle of what I suppose was the courtyard of the old castle. It's a square tower, with a stair-turret at one angle. The stair in that turret is in a very good state of preservation—in fact, it is quite easy to climb to the top, and from the top there's a fine view of land and sea: the Keep itself is nearly a hundred ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... absurdity of such a conjecture he was blind in his anger. But that he was helpless, befooled, he recognized; and with a final muttered imprecation he turned and slowly descended the stair. A lingering hope was dispelled when, looking right and left along Bond Street, he failed to perceive the ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. But he thought better of it when we had come halfway down the winding-stair, and said he would excuse me this time, and that the constable might let me go, and only lock up my child very fast, and bring the key to him, seeing she was a stubborn person, as he had seen at the very first hearing which ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... shapes that passed and repassed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was not lifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostly hands that came toward me from between the spindles of ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... window the moment that she had barred the kitchen door, and knew that he would be within the house. She could hear him knock at the parlour door, and then enter the parlour. But he did not stay there a moment. Then she heard him at the foot of the stair, and with a low voice he called to her by her name. "Linda, are you there?" But, of course, she did not answer him. It might be that he would fancy that she was not within the house and would retreat. He would hardly intrude into their bedrooms; but it might be that he would go as far as his ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... mill. They might have noted in his manner a continual restlessness; a wandering about the mill from room to room; prying into odd corners here and there; pounding upon the beams and partitions; poking under stair-ways; rummaging into long unused chutes and bins; for ever hunting, anxious-eyed; as though the mill had an evil and troublous influence ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... "Trained stair-climbers should be the healthiest as well as the most beautiful of women, yet," says Mrs. Russell, "a town of stairs given, and I will prophesy thin, eye-circled, cross-looking women." All of this is to be laid to the fact that most women ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... being able to force the door, which Thompson had secured, collected piles of wood, which, being placed against the door and set fire to, in process of time not only burnt through the door, but also set fire to the stair-case conducting to the lantern, into which Thompson and the negro were compelled to retreat. From this, too, they were finally driven by the encroaching flames, and were forced outside on the parapet wall, which was not ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... amazement, Ben skipped in through the hall and up the stair as fast as his wooden leg would allow him. He reached the office door. "Miss Margaret," he gasped, "Barney's at the door with a sick man. Wants a bed ready. We ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... down, and making signs to her to mount up by it. It was quite easy; up went Olive, step by step, and when she reached the place where the two dwarfs were standing, she saw how it was that they had all disappeared. The tree trunk was hollow, and there were steps cut in it like a stair, down which the dwarfs signed to her that she was to go. She did not need to be twice told, so eager was she to see what was to come. The stair was rather difficult for her to get down without falling, for the steps were ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... beyond the curb and signaled, then as the 'bus drew over and came to a stop, she nodded to the man as she started up the stair to the roof. "Good-night, Mr. Burton," she called over her shoulder. "You are ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... moment before so ghostly, now rang with the sound of voices as Rosalind, leaning over the stair rail, joyfully ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... plotting ill against him in her mind, thinking that by doing evil to him she might find favor with his enemies. Nevertheless, she kept this well to herself and received Robin with seeming kindness. She led him up the winding stone stair to a room which was just beneath the eaves of a high, round tower; but she would not let Little ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... stuck-up and wished to cut old friends. He picked his way through the nine brats who clung affectionately to his wet knees, dispersing them finally by a jet of coppers to scramble for. Peter met him on the stair and shook his hand lovingly and admiringly, and took him into Mrs. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... into the fire-place, mistaking it for the door, yet their escape was at length happily effected—and half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of St. Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the landlady of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... A softened melancholy rested upon her heart, and she would wander about her house looking at the relics of her lost one. And day by day the roses faded from her cheek, her step grew lighter on the stair, and she rapidly declined, till at length she was startled at the shadowy form and face her mirror revealed to her. Her long-neglected Bible was once more sought for, and she read with all the desperate eagerness of a drowning man, who catches at every chance of safety. It was her mother's ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words—"An operation to-day. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had almost answered bidding him go to the devil, when a damsel put her head over the stair-rail of the landing above and called down to us to obey and open at once: and looking up in the dim light of the passage I recognized her for the one who had scattered the flowers, just now, to ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... courtyard that the King had builded especially for her. But to this little chapel, that was of Edward IV's time, small and round-arched, all stone and dark and bare, she went with the Lady Mary alone. Her ladies and her doorguards they left at the stair foot, on a level with the sleeping rooms of the poorer sort, but up the little stairway they climbed by themselves, in darkness, to pray privately for the conversion of England. For this little place was so small and so forgotten that it had never been desecrated by Privy ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... and shield, and scimitar against the wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. The recollection of it came ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish, respectively distributed in their several cantons, according to the diversity of these languages. In the midst there was a wonderful scalier or winding-stair, the entry whereof was without the house, in a vault or arch six fathom broad. It was made in such symmetry and largeness that six men-at-arms with their lances in their rests might together in a breast ride all up to the very top of all the palace. From the tower Anatole to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... again that holy face. In a dream of loss he gazes upon her, as the angels lift up the flower-garnished sheet; and not only her face, but every detail of that room of death is etched in tears upon his eyes,—the distant winding stair, the pallid death-lamps, the intruding light of day. All Passion and all Loss, all Youth, all Love, and all Death met together in an everlasting requiem ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... assaulted it, and it was open. They passed rapidly within, and closed it behind them, and with the woman's hand guiding, Dawson stumbled up a long, narrow, sloppy stair that gave on to the flat roof of the building. Above them was sky again. The rain had passed, and the frosty stars of Mozambique shone faintly. He took a deep breath as he received the image from ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... with considerable difficulty I persuaded this functionary to permit my carrying my hat with me to the drawing-room, a species of caution on my part—as he esteemed it—savouring much of distrust. This point however, I carried, and followed him up a very ill-lighted stair to the drawing-room; here I was announced by some faint resemblance to my real name, but sufficiently near to bring my friend Tom at once to meet me, who immediately congratulated me on my fortune in coming off so well, for that the person who preceded me, Mr. Jones Blennerhasset, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... to give way: to my bewilderment, it shook, it sunk, it rolled back into nothing; its vanishing left an opening arched, leading into an arched passage, with a mystic winding stair; both passage and stair were of cold stone, uncarpeted and unpainted. Down this donjon stair descended a tap, tap, like a stick; soon there fell on the steps a shadow, and last of all, I was aware of ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... their revolvers in their right hands, glided after the Mungana. In the corner of the big room they came to a little stair. How it opened in that place where no stair had been, they could not see or even guess, for it was too dark, only now they knew the means by which the Asika had been able ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... small room, I somehow snatched five valses from the fire. And I did stout supper-service for your mother, While you wove the self-same spells o'er many another, And I said, no doubt, the sort of things that they did, In the shaded Little nook beneath the palms upon the stair, To my fair. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... In thy boldness over-rash Madly thou thy foot didst dash 'Gainst high Justice' altar stair. Thou ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... the broad, winding stairway. Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... she after a while, as one awaking from thought, "has done his business zealously and well. I will go to my room now and rest: but let me be aroused when this visitor comes, for I believe that I can deal with him." And she rose and walked away to the stair, with the hound ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! O, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... English spelling you'll surely beware, When you notice how stair, pear and heir rhyme with there; The sad English spelling, The mad English spelling, Sing hi! for the mare and ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... them possessed this important peculiarity had been one of the last things he did before quitting Mr. Bumble's service. Was it the fifth or sixth? He hesitated, then avoided the fifth gingerly, and hoped for the best.... Beneath the increased pressure the sixth stair fairly shrieked. Mr. Morgan skipped on to the seventh and broke into a cold sweat. Again he was confronted with the choice of the eighth or ninth. After a moment of agonized indecision, he decided to miss them both.... Man but proposes. In his anxiety he missed the tenth ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... years before Airy, and his reputation, both for mathematical and all-round knowledge, was extremely and deservedly great, but he was always most generous in his recognition of Airy's powers. Thus in a letter of Mar. 16th, 1823 (Life of William Whewell by Mrs Stair Douglas), he says, "Airy is certainly a most extraordinary man, and deserves everything that can be said of him"; and again in the autumn of 1826 he writes to his aunt, "You mentioned a difficulty which had occurred to you in one of your late letters; how Airy should be made ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... a loose nail in the stair-carpet, which, apparently resenting her hasty progress past it, had torn a yard of filmy ruching off her skirt before ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... would accept it. Before departing, Janet lifted her veil, with a beautiful gesture, and offered her lips to kiss. They embraced affectionately. The next moment Hilda, at the top of the dim, naked, resounding stair, was watching Janet descend—a figure infinitely stylish and agreeable to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... this new organist," he thought, "who can afford to bury his talents at Audley, and play Mendelssohn's finest fugues for a stipend of sixteen pounds a year." He lingered in the porch, waiting for the organist to descend the awkward little stair-case. In the weary trouble of his mind, and with the prospect of getting through the five hours in the best way he could, Mr. Audley was glad to cultivate any diversion of thought, however idle. He therefore freely indulged his curiosity about ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... may be so, but I still think that there must be some way out from here. Why should men go to the labour of cutting this long stair, and excavating this chamber here, without any reason whatever? Let us look ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... looked greatly disturbed and excited. His face was lit up by the now fiery glare of the sun, and when, in passing, she nodded to him, and he took off his hat, he cast at her a glance that was like an accusation. As soon as she gained the verandah she heard his heavy step upon the stair. For a moment she hesitated. Should she go into her room and so avoid him, or remain and let him speak to her? She knew that he was following her with that purpose. Her mind was almost instantly made up. She crossed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... down was by a cellar-stair lighted by a small lamp with a sputtering wick darkening the chimney with smoke; having safely reached the bottom, he turned to the left in the darkness; here and there, at an angle, a floating wick threw a ruddy light on the circuit which he made in alternate light and shade, till at last he had ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... therefore, the Wavertree carriage stopped at the foot of the wide flight of steps, flanked by urns of blooming flowers, which led up to Mrs. Rushton's great hall door, the mistress of Amber Hill was seen descending the stone stair leading a little child by the hand. This was Hetty, dressed in a white frock of lace and muslin, and decked ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... barrel of rain water and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps. He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the foot of the stair had been in low whispers, and I whispered back her good-night, and turned to go. Then, like Lot's wife, I looked behind me. She had reached the first landing, where the stairway curved. She saw me, and peered forward, holding ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... his foot on the bottom stair, at the same time peering aloft. He saw nothing, yet as he proceeded upward every inch of the way was perceptible to his inner feelings. The staircase was cold, dismal, and deserted, but it seemed to him, in his exaltation of soul, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... let us say, there were compensations. The love of luxury is only dormant in the heart of the hardiest barbarian; and the polished floors and soft-piled rugs, the bath-room with its great china dish, and the carpeted stair with the old grandfather clock ticking bravely on the landing, presently began to thrum the tuneful chord of pride. Perhaps Ardea Dabney would not laugh and say, "What a funny, funny old place!" as she had once said when the Major ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, and who, in spite of his having but one eye, and pock-marks all over his face, busied himself with considerable success in repairing the trousers and coats of officials and others; that is to say, when he was sober and not nursing some ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Kirkwood moved toward the stair-head, and drew back with a cry of disgust. "Too late!" he told himself bitterly; his escape was cut off. He could run up-stairs and hide, of course, but the boy would ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... head; then I blew out my cruse, and out we came, jolting each other in the dark passage through sheer hurry and confusion—down the Canongate, t'll we came to Meggat's Land, in at the kitchen door, ben a dark passage, up a stair, then ben another passage, till we came to a back room, the door of which was opened by somebody inside. I was bewildered—the light in the room made my een reel; but I soon came to myself, when I saw a man and Mrs. Kemp the howdie ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Orleans was a little man fondly known among his people as Pere Jerome. He was a Creole and a member of one of the city's leading families. His dwelling was a little frame cottage, standing on high pillars just inside a tall, close fence, and reached by a narrow out-door stair from the green batten gate. It was well surrounded by crape myrtles, and communicated behind by a descending stair and a plank-walk with the rear entrance of the chapel over whose worshippers he daily spread his hands in benediction. The name of the street—ah! ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... into the hall, switched on the light and tore open the envelope. Then she gasped suddenly and sat down on the stair steps with ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... the weaker prey. Oh! I forgot—but Heaven will not forgive If at my word the helpless cease to live; Follow who will—I go—we yet have time Our souls to lighten of at least a crime." He climbs the crackling stair—he bursts the door, Nor feels his feet glow scorching with the floor; His breath choked gasping with the volumed smoke, But still from room to room his way he broke. 820 They search—they find—they save: with lusty arms Each bears a prize of unregarded charms; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... went to my head, and with my delicate nerves you will readily understand that I was about to faint. I mastered this sensation, however. She took a firm grip of my hand, as one would clasp the knob of a cane or the banister of a stair, and we advanced into the stream ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... there is but one entrance to it; an arched doorway opening upon a low-roofed stone hall; in place of a door there are heavy gates of iron, with a smaller wicket-gate set in their midst; from the stone hall a stone stair leads to the various chambers above; in the outer walls the windows are high and narrow; each is filled with old painted glass. A strong, grim building, this; and when the iron gates are locked, as they are every night when the curfew bell—an ancient institution ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Roland feared to call, "Denasia!" He hesitated at the foot of the narrow stair and then went softly to the door. All within was still as the grave, but a glimmer of pale light came from under the ill-fitting door. He might be mistaken in the room, but he resolved to try. He turned the handle and there was an instant movement. He ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... who had offered their services to William for the settlement of Scotland, three were eminent above the rest: the Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Athole, and Lord Stair. The Duke of Hamilton had disapproved of the measures of the late reign, but without publicly opposing them. He had observed the same cautious conduct with regard to the parties of his countrymen. He took advantage of his rank to attend none of ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... Jobson," he replied, sitting down upon the bottom stair, and leaning his head against ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... abused with no thought given its architectural merits and much of the woodwork has been removed. The stair is perhaps the finest in Alexandria, with spindles and risers carved in a more elaborate fashion than was the practice of the thrifty Scotsmen of Alexandria. At the rear of this large house, separated only by a narrow area, stands another ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... of the adherents was appointed for the next afternoon. We decided to have it on the Queen's Stair-way, which is a long flight of steps, cut in the solid limestone, and leading up out of a deep and shadowy ravine, where the people of the town many years ago cut out the calcareous material for their houses. There has been no stone cut here for a long time, and the walls of the ravine, which ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... together and descended the stairs in company, Richelieu attending Louis until he had reached the foot of the stairway, and gone into an adjoining room. The cardinal turned to ascend again, without a moment's suspicion that the two gentlemen at the stair-foot clutched hidden daggers in their hands, ready, at a signal from the duke, who stood near by, to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... farmer's course in the Kansas College provides for a general training in mechanical handiwork, but facilities are given also to those who wish to follow out the trade, and special instruction is provided in the whole range of work, from framing to stair-building, as also in iron work, such as ordinary forging, filing, tempering, etc. Of the students attending this college, 75 percent, are from farmers' homes, and the majority of the remainder from the families of mechanics ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... cumbrous graver's implements. It is situated at the furthest part of the garden from the house; a small door in the garden-wall leads into a little inclosure, one side of which is occupied by the stable. The painting-room is over the stable, and is reached by a stair; it has but one window which looks towards the road. It must have been sufficiently commodious for Hogarth's purposes; but possesses not the conveniences of modern painting-rooms. The house at Chiswick could only have been a place ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... up the stair, and a man entered. It was her husband. On his return he had missed his wife, and guessed whither she had gone, and had followed her. ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... post of secretary for Scotland was bestowed upon lord Melvil, a weak and servile nobleman, who had taken refuge in Holland from the violence of the late reigns: but the king depended chiefly for advice upon Dalrymple lord Stair, president of the college of justice, an old crafty fanatic, who for forty years had complied in all things with all governments. Though these were rigid pres-byterians, the king, to humour the opposite party, admitted some individuals of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... basins, or soap, no tables, chairs, or other furniture, are provided. Wood for cooking and washing for the family is found, but when the master's work is done, the slave must find wood for himself if he has a fire. I have repeatedly known slave children kept the whole winter's evening, sitting on the stair-case in a cold entry, just to be at hand to snuff candles or hand a tumbler of water from the side-board, or go on errands from one room to another. It may be asked why they were not permitted to stay in the parlor, when they would be still more at hand. I answer, because waiters are not allowed ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... stairs with a lady, it is proper to offer your arm, provided the stair-case is sufficiently wide to permit two to go up ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... close behind her head as it seemed, and turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair. But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on the pillow and then ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... work of Grinling Gibbons; and he built the chapel, which also has some fine carving. A later and most princely Bishop, Anthony Thorold, who held the See from 1891 to 1895, laid down a mile and a hundred yards of stair carpet, and repaired an acre and a fifth of roof. He also fitted up rooms for ordination candidates, each room with a name. St. Francis and other saints preside over the slumbers of some; some sleep in Paradise; a Bishop who is an occasional ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... as he talked, looking after window fastenings, and examining things generally. Celia watched him from her place on the bottom stair. He was approaching her with the intention of putting out the hall light and joining her to proceed up-stairs, when he stopped still, wheeled, and made for the back of the hall, where the cellar ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... which an acquaintance with the more modern works of Biblical criticism will pour upon him, and for which his mind is wholly unprepared. To meet with a far weaker evidence than we had taken it for granted we were to find, gives the same shake to the mind, that missing a stair gives ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... noiseless step and suppressed breath, trembling at every rustle of their own apparel, one after another the fair prisoners glided down the winding stair, under the guidance of Roland Graeme, and were received at the wicket-gate by Henry Seyton and the churchman. The former seemed instantly to take upon himself the whole direction of the enterprise. "My Lord Abbot," he said, "give my sister your arm—I will conduct the Queen—and that ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... and up, as high as they will stand; give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... up, darling!" You see, Sally had manifestoed down into the garden from the landing of the stair, which was made of iron openwork you knocked flower-pots down and broke, and you have had to have a new one—that, at least, is how Ann put it. On the stair-top Mrs. Nightingale stems the torrent of her daughter's revelation because it's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... she sat, rosy cheeked and laughing, on the lowest stair, and stood before her. "That wasn't so bad," he said, approvingly. "You and Jarve had better get out a copyright on that—you worked in some pretty fancy steps. Got your skates on ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... series of waterfalls until it beat itself into a turbulent spray in the bed of the chasm below. The laughing moon filtered its beaming rays through the thin sheet of shimmering water as it danced down its course from precipice to precipice, and seemingly converted it into a great silvery stair-way connecting earth with heaven. Marie's heart throbbed with emotion. The dashing of the falling water on the rocks below in the bed of the canon made a hollow sound as its echoes reverberated ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
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