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Janitor   Listen
noun
Janitor  n.  
1.
A door-keeper; a porter. (Archaic)
2.
One who is employed to care for a public building, or a building occupied for offices, suites of rooms, etc.; a caretaker; the duties may include removal of trash, cleaning of the rooms and public areas, and minor repairs.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Janitor" Quotes from Famous Books



... frequently that the chemism of his nature demanded such fare. Perhaps his most astonishing failing was cats. He had an ineradicable aversion to that domestic animal. It will be remembered that he fainted dead away with sudden fright, while speaking in Brotherhood Palace, when the janitor's cat walked out upon the stage ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... apprehensions. Nelson was the janitor of the building in which he had roomed. He asked himself what could be Moxlow's ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... stomach which quickly rebels against too much or unsuitable food, may, as Sir Henry Thompson says, congratulate themselves on having a good janitor preventing the entrance of what would injure. The man who can and does eat anything, rarely lives to ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... heathen, had no youthful advantages, and is to-day one of the best-informed and most thoroughly cultivated thinkers of his age. When he left Dayton in the summer of 1878, he was greatly missed. At the Colored United Brethren Church he was janitor, leader of a choir, organist, superintendent of the Sunday-school, and class leader, and when the pastor failed, Wilberforce also did the preaching. He was never proud. In the humble capacity of janitor he took excellent care of Dr. Flickinger's office, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Burris shrugged. "A janitor doesn't work in the office with the men," he said. "He can drink out of a faucet in the broom closet—or wherever the faucets might be. Nobody would notice. Nobody would think ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... excitement when the Janitor came out to read the names of the nine successful ones. Every one sat perfectly still while the names were pronounced. First a boy's name. She expected that and was resigned. Then another boy's ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard

... hour later, when all was ready for our first act, Cousin Egbert was not to be found. I need not dwell upon the annoyance this occasioned, nor upon how a substitute in the person of our hall's custodian, or janitor, was impressed to read the part. Suffice it to tell briefly that Cousin Egbert, costumed and bedizened as he was, had fled not only the theatre but the town as well. Search for him on the morrow was unavailing. Not until the second day did it become known that ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... old-fashioned rooms, quaintly furnished in chintzes and white paint. They had found no such enchanting places, except at exorbitant rents. Seventy-five dollars, or one hundred dollars, were asked for the simplest of them, and the plumbing facilities, and often the janitor service, were of the poorest. So Nancy abandoned the dream, and enthusiastically accepted the East Eleventh Street substitute, Bert becoming a tenant in the "George Eliot," at a rental of thirty-five dollars a month. Some of the old Barrett furniture was too large for the place, ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris

... door of Northrop's room, which was at the far end, in a corner, and communicated with the hall only through the main floor of the museum. It was locked. A pass-key from the janitor quickly opened it. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... tiny cell situated on the roof of the side aisle, beneath the flying buttresses, precisely at the spot where the wife of the present janitor of the towers has made for herself a garden, which is to the hanging gardens of Babylon what a lettuce is to a palm-tree, what a porter's wife ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... consists of those who threaten to resign if everything is not done according to their desires, which they hide and compel you to find out the best way you can. Occasionally a preacher gets into a community where everybody in the church—from the janitor to the steward and treasurer—has this mania ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... always for the suds thing," Skinski chipped in. "But never to excess, never to excess. I never see Dodey lit up but once, and that was in Dayton, Ohio, the night we played to the janitor of the hall and his four children. When we came to the place where Dodey is blindfolded and does the decimal fractions stunt on the blackboard the janitor's oldest child fooled Dodey into doing all next week's ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh

... noineteen,'" he read slowly. "And is it possible 'tis only th' sivin hundred an' noineteenth of thim I have been gettin'? I w'u'd have said 't was th' forty-sivinth thousand gineral order I have had t' learn and memorize. Wheniver th' prisidint, or th' vice-prisidint, or th' manager, or th' janitor, or th' office-boy at th' head office has nawthin' else t' do they be thinkin' up a new gineral order t' sind t' Flannery. 'What's th' news of th' day?' says th' prisidint. 'Nawthin' doin',' says th' janitor. ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler

... he had a glimpse of the harbor from his sitting-room windows. He spent the last of his ready money in buying out the dilapidated furniture of his predecessor; and then with the assistance of the janitor's wife, who gave him his breakfast and did what she called "redding up the place," he began to live on the slim salary that his new job ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... genuine men of family, like our trio), they chose to remember, and to remind the world, that he was the son of a tenant farmer (a Macgregor, at that), that as a boy he had been willing to run errands and to deliver legs of mutton, and that for a time in his youth he had held the menial post of Janitor in the High School ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster

... male relative of an office-holder, or of his bondsman. The deputy is commonly a beautiful young man, with a red necktie and an intricate system of cobwebs extending from his nose to his desk. When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... a storm, nobody went,—not even the teacher, nor Ann Maria, nor any of us. It snowed and it hailed and the wind blew, and our steps were so slippery Amanda could not go out to put on ashes; ice even on the upper steps. The janitor, who makes the fire, set out to go; but she was blown across the street, into the gutter. She did succeed in getting in to Ann Maria's, who said it was foolish to attempt it, and that nobody would go; and I am not sure but she spent the night there,—at Ann Maria's, I mean. Still, ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale

... half-past seven when Presley reached Bonneville. The business part of the town was as yet hardly astir; he despatched his manuscript, and then hurried to the office of the "Mercury." Genslinger, as he feared, had not yet put in appearance, but the janitor of the building gave Presley the address of the editor's residence, and it was there he found him in the act of sitting down to breakfast. Presley was hardly courteous to the little man, and abruptly refused his offer of a drink. He ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... Napoleon jumped into bed, and on the authority of M. le Comte de Q-, at this time Charge a Affaires of the Luxembourg, and later on Janitor of the Tuileries, was soon dreaming ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... Johnstone as his extra man or servant. He lived in the house with him, slept in his room and waited on him when he became old; and, too, was the driver of his carriage. He drove him to other courthouses to hold court. After the war, my father was janitor at Newberry College, and he was liked by professors, students, and everybody who knew him as 'Uncle Billy'. At commencement, he always made a speech at night on the campus, which the students enjoyed. He told about his travels from Virginia to Newberry before ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... with the crowd. The moleskin waistcoat was leading now, and had reached the brook; with red-head a yard or two behind, and my cousin, a very bad third, panting—it pleased me to imagine how sorely—across the lower slopes to the eastward. The janitor leaned against his toll-bar and still followed me with a stare. Doubtless by my uncovered head and gala dress he judged me an all-night reveller—a strayed Bacchanal fooling in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Elam. "To-day I have put the Works into a new Combine which makes me a Janitor so far as the Plant is concerned, but boosts me into the Charley Schwab division when it comes to Collateral. I have three million Iron Boys and most of it is Turkey. I am foot-loose and free as a Robin. Let us beat it to the Big Show. It is about time that the vast Territory lying toward ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... self-conscious, thinking whether her garb is not fine enough or too fine, her possessions too small or too large, her influence too weak or opposition to it too strong? How much discussion is devoted to the question, what phrases must be repeated, what forms adopted, to pass the janitor who guards her doors! As has been truly said, the really useful reform for all of us would be that each should do his appointed work at least ten per cent. better than he has done it before. The work to be done should be the special work assigned to each and for which each is best fitted. We ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... quarter to eleven, and we would then get through the preliminaries and my lunch comfortably by noon and be off and away. So do hearthrugs talk with foreigners—light-heartedly and confident. But Heaven disposes. For when we reached the Bureau at a minute after eleven the next morning the smiling janitor told us we were too late. Too late at eleven? Yes, the office in question was closed between eleven and two; we ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various

... algebra, and two first readers. After that he lay down and went to sleep; but becoming hungry again he awoke and commenced on the school library, which he completely devoured. This library comprised all the solid and substantial wisdom in the Valley of Mo, and when the janitor opened the school-house door on Monday morning, all the books of learning in the whole land had been eaten up by the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum

... scarlet creepers, where three or four ecclesiastics saluted him, up a staircase or two, and found himself at last at a tall door bearing the number he wanted. As he hesitated to knock, the door opened, and a janitor ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... his room—it seemed a very mean little room now—packed his bag, told the janitor he should be absent a few days, and hurried to the ferry and the train as if he feared that some accident would delay him. When he was seated and the train moved off, his thoughts took another turn. He was in for ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the previous month his janitor, to whom he had delivered a rather muddled lecture on the "brother-hoove man," had come up next day and, on the basis of what had happened the night before, seated himself in the window seat for a cordial and chatty half-hour. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... money is gone, Goosie—and the janitor was impolite and treated me dreadfully, and oh, Goosie, I've had ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... to Neck-or-Nothing Hall, to hear the full and true account of the transaction from Andy himself. On arriving at the old iron gate, and pulling the loud bell, she was spoken to through the bars by the savage old janitor and told to "go out o' that." Mrs. Rooney thought fate was using her hard in decreeing she was to receive denial at every door, and endeavoured to obtain a parley with the gate-keeper, to which ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... business. The man was burly and of stout build, while his fat, bearded face, red as the gaol walls themselves, attracted Blanchard by its pleasant expression. Will's eyes brightened at the aspect of this janitor; he touched his hat very civilly, wished the man "good afternoon," and was about to step in when ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... of the position, and the Heathen Journalist as trumpeter of his wrongs and avenger of the Muses had not occurred to him. He smoothed out the magic scrap, and was inside the suffocating, close-packed theatre before the disconcerted janitor could meet the new situation. Pinchas found the vacated journalistic chair in the stage-box; he was installed therein before the managerial minions arrived on ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... some trouble in getting this craft. Charon, through his constant association with life on both sides of the dark river, had gained a knowledge, more or less intimate, of modern business methods, and while as janitor of the club he was subject to the will of the House Committee, and sympathized deeply with the members of the association in their trouble, as president of the Styx Navigation Company he was bound up in certain newly attained commercial ideas which were embarrassing to those members of the association ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... would, no doubt, receive me in a big yellow and white Colonial club-house built by the women of the town (I know of a dozen just such structures), with dressing and lunch rooms, spacious lecture hall, and janitor in ...
— Forty Minutes Late - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... you will execute it, I will try and get the janitor and his wife to acknowledge the instrument. I regret to say all my clerks ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... the members. "I'd like to know who got up this thing in the first place," he said. "Who's the founder of the F.O.T.A., if you please? Who got this room rent free? Who got the janitor to let us have most of this furniture? You suppose you could keep this clubroom a minute if I told my grandfather I didn't want it for a literary club any more? I'd like to say a word on how you members been acting, too! When I went away I said I didn't care if you ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor who had to keep the door until the ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie

... returned to the empty suite and rang a bell which summoned the janitor. Following a brief interval came a sound resembling that of a drinking horse and there entered a red-whiskered old man with a neatly pimpled nose, introducing an odour of rum. He was a small ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... that. But you could get a job as a janitor, or maybe as a messenger in some government bureau. Of course, the public loaf is always short in weight, but it comes steady, and then there is a pension for ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... Demosthenes Miller, or "Demy" as he was called—the studious janitor. "Oh, you boys! ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... probably this is an overestimate. One observer tells us that "the first sight I saw was a man with blood streaming from his wounds, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He placed the body on the floor of the court at the Palace Hotel, and then told me he was the janitor of a big building. The first he knew of the catastrophe he found himself in the basement, his dead wife beside him. The building had simply split in two, and ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... and retired, who passed their time plotting for the next campaign in the free seats provided by the City Fathers. One morning these individuals found no chairs,—absolutely none except those used by the officials and clerical force. They called the janitor and expostulated volubly, ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... door Nighthawk gave a single tap. The glass covering the circular space glided back, and a face reconnoitred. My companion uttered two words; and the door opened, giving access to a stairs, which we ascended, the janitor ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... ones outside stand!" And we passed the time of day a bit longer. The pretty and smart one was not for such tactics long. "W'at d'ye say we go up to where the firm is and beat the rest of 'em to it!" "You said it!" And we tore up the iron stairs. On the second flight we passed a janitor. "Where's ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... He took a long survey of the room they were in, arose and standing in the door leading to the next he studied that. To him "busy" meant work. Presently he went into the hall and returned with a hand broom and dust pan he had secured from the janitor. He carefully went over the floor, removing anything he could see that he thought should not be there, and then began on the room adjoining. Next he appeared with a cloth and dusted the furniture ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... at the Institute continued as it had begun. As regarded the general studies, every hour was turned to full account. The housework expected of the janitor was never either neglected or half done; and when each vacation time came round outside service had to be procured. During all this time both his mother and his brother stood by him, and not only gave him their sympathy, ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike

... of Woe; he ferries them across, provided the passage money has been placed in their mouths, and their bodies have been duly buried in the world above. Otherwise they are left to gibber on the hither bank. Pluto's house, wide-gated, thronged with guests, has a janitor Kerberos, sometimes friendly, sometimes snarling when new guests arrive, but always hostile to those who would depart. Honey cakes are provided for them that are about to go to Hades—the sop to Cerberus. This ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield

... through high school," he replied. "I worked my way through doing janitor-work. I wanted to go through the university. But my father died, and I came to work ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... f'r Germany, because all a German knows is what some wan tells him, an' his grajation papers is a certy- ficate that he don't need to think anny more. But we've inthrajooced it into this counthry, an' whin I was down seein' if I cud injooce Rafferry, th' Janitor iv th' Isaac Muggs Grammar School, f'r to vote f'r Riordan—an' he's goin' to—I dhropped in on Cassidy's daughter, Mary Ellen, an' see her kindygartnin'. Th' childher was settin' ar-round on th' flure an' some was moldin' ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... Just then the janitor came down, and Tish gave him a dollar for the use of the cellar and did not mention the furnace pipe. Aggie and I glanced at each other. Tish's demoralization had begun. From that minute, to the long and entirely ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... they were being crushed and shrilly demanding more room, men protesting that they themselves were powerless to resist the pressure from behind. It was evident that Cardington had not miscalculated their animus, for they hurled maledictions at the janitor, who stood waiting within, his watch in his hand, wavering between fear for the stability of the bolts and an unwillingness to disobey orders. Those already admitted listened with increasing uneasiness, momentarily anticipating ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... usual school magazine. This publication was a weekly—no, I guess a monthly—one, and I wrote stories for it, very little imaginary, just recitals of my sea and tramping experiences. I remained there a year, doing janitor work as a means of livelihood, and leaving eventually because the strain was more than I could bear. At this time my socialistic utterances had attracted considerable attention, and I was known as the "Boy Socialist," a distinction that ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London

... believe much in dhrugs. He says that if he wasn't afraid iv losin' his practice he wudn't give annybody annything but quinine an' he isn't sure about that. He says th' more he practises medicine th' more he becomes a janitor with a knowledge iv cookin'. He says if people wud on'y call him in befure they got sick, he'd abolish ivry disease in th' ward except old age an' pollyticks. He says he's lookin' forward to th' day whin th' tillyphone ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne

... the second interrogatory; and as the apparitor and janitor of the chapter have stated Master Francois de Hangest to be in the country, the torture and interrogations are appointed for to-morrow at the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... was searching for a studio in which to set up my easel. My 'house-hunting' ended at the New York University, where I found what I wanted in one of the turrets of that stately edifice. When I had fixed my choice, the janitor, who accompanied me in my examination of the rooms, threw open a door on the opposite side of the hall and invited me to enter. I found myself in what was evidently an artist's studio, but every object in it bore indubitable signs of unthrift and neglect. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... alertness, and nothing has been more closely followed by his observers, and yet I sometimes wonder when looking at him, how old he must be, how world weary, before the race turns from its worship of the political janitor and says of him, "this is one ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.

... Nevertheless Sears Kendrick enjoyed their drive and was almost sorry when the Foam Flake halted, snorting, or sneezing, violently, by the hall platform. The building was as yet but dimly lighted and Asaph Tidditt, the janitor, was the only person about. Asaph, hearing the Foam Flake's sneeze, came ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... schools. Thus it will be seen that the bulk of the expense of education is borne by the State in general. (2) The departements erect the normal school and furnish the apparatus and supplies for the same. (3) The communes pay for the needed supplies, for the janitor, and for other local necessities of the elementary schools. They may also tax themselves to increase the salaries of teachers beyond the State allowance. Each community thus has the power to decide whether it will ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... I think, our eldest-born, although Loving, devoted, tender, watchful, dear, The innermost of home-bred love shall know! Yea, when at last the janitor draws near, A still, pale joy will through the darkness go, At thought of lying in those arms again, Which once were ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald

... The janitor came and by that time the boy had recovered consciousness. He groaned in agony. The physician, whose office was in the ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford

... two weeks, a general vaccination furor would have set in, and many mammas and little children would have dreamed of confluent smallpox for weeks to come. But we did none of these things in the Philippines. We merely requested the authorities to remove the smallpox patient, and ordered the janitor to scrub the room with soap and water. Nobody quitted school; nobody got the smallpox; and the whole thing was only ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... sing it. A woman who could reach out for that last high note and teach it to take a joke. The whole refrain is working up to that. You need Tetrazzini or someone who would just pick that note off the roof and hold it till the janitor came round to lock up ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... in any of them because I am afraid they will ask me to take part in the order. It would make me feel cheap. I have often felt like committing suicide, but I would pull my nerves together and make the best of it again. I am now a janitor at a school." ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... coming a step nearer in her earnestness, "that I make such allusions to pain you, but only in my sincere wish to help you, and illustrate my meaning by something you know so well. Did death make havoc in your mother's case? Was it not rather a sombre-liveried janitor that opened for her ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... interviewing the families concerning one another. But they bore with each other's peculiarities quite cheerfully and spoke in the hall when they met. Sometimes this tolerance would even extend to conversation about the janitor, a thin creature who did the work of five men. The ladies ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... boy, with a contemptuous emphasis on the mut. "Dat's the janitor's dog an' he's nottin' but a tramp. I wisht he'd fall in de river an' get ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie

... graduated at the Brattleboro, Vt., High School, taught district schools six terms, and entered Dartmouth College with just money enough to pay the first necessary expenses. He worked in gardens and as a janitor for some time. During his course he taught six terms as principal of a high school, and one year as assistant superintendent in the Essex County Truant School, at Lawrence, Mass., pushed a rolling chair at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, was porter one season at Oak Hill House, Littleton, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... closely. The one who escorted us asked several questions, and discovered, by our accent, that we were foreigners, a sufficient excuse for the novelty of our proceeding. The professor received us most graciously, and ordered the janitor to bring us chairs, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Colvin's child I'll ask the next legislature to abolish my office. Come, now, Uncle Frank, let her have the money. I'll sign the papers officially, if you say so; and then if the governor or the comptroller or the janitor or anybody else makes a kick, by the Lord I'll refer the matter to the people, and see if they won't endorse ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... cold blood. It would only have been rigid justice if I had done so, but I could not bring myself to do it. I had long determined that he should have a show for his life if he chose to take advantage of it. Among the many billets which I have filled in America during my wandering life, I was once janitor and sweeper out of the laboratory at York College. One day the professor was lecturing on poisions, [25] and he showed his students some alkaloid, as he called it, which he had extracted from some South ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Barbara, however, drew him aside from the direct path to Marrow Lane. He had resolved not to see her for a year, but thought it right to break through that resolution in order to tell her at first hand of Harry West's death. But the janitor told him that Miss Ferris had not been coming to the studio for a long time. She had had no word from her. She had left one day by the back stair without her hat; a little later the legless beggar had left by the front door. His expression had been enough ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... such questions as the minimum length of sheets on hotel beds, the limitation in inches and fractions, of the heels of women's shoes, the amount of flesh that could be legally exposed by a bathing suit, or the pensioning of a Swedish Assistant Janitor,—all of which are the substance of actual bills introduced in various State legislatures during the ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... not to be sneezed at; positively no toads, however. How we played in the garden, chasing the elusive sunbeams, rolling over and over, and learning to box and jump! It all came to an end too soon, however, for one day a very neat little girl came in and said that her father, who was janitor in a grammar school, wanted a kitten, because the mice were getting the best ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... Trelawny he did not find the Kilgours' name on the directory board. The elevator man, the janitor, the manager, told him the same story with the same indifference. The Kilgours had sold their possessions and had ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... the penury of his parents, compelled to be janitor of the high school at Edinburgh; a mean office, of which he did not afterwards delight to hear. But he surmounted the disadvantages of his birth and fortune; for, when the duke of Montrose applied to the college of Edinburgh for a tutor to educate his sons, Malloch ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... Breckenridge," he announced the morning that he began his new duties as janitor of the Adelaide apartments, and he at once gave the tenants to understand that no liberties were to be taken with it. He preferred it all when he was addressed in ordinary conversation, he explained to them, but he had no objections to the ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... stood for hours in line waiting his turn in the crowd, and after all they had been told that there would be no distribution that day. As he came near the house where he lived he heard his name, and a young man who was talking to the janitor turned and held out a letter, looking rather embarrassed as Clerambault came forward. The right sleeve of his coat was pinned up to the shoulder, and there was a patch over his right eye; he was pale, and evidently had been laid up for months. Clerambault spoke pleasantly to him and tried to take ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... je vais vous raconter mon histoire du commencement jusqu'ici: —my father was a native of Sceira in Greece, from whence at an early age he repaired to Pera, where he served as janitor in the hotels of various ambassadors, by whom he was much respected for his fidelity. Amongst others of these gentlemen, he served him of your own nation: this occurred at the time that there was war between England and the Porte. {14} Monsieur the Ambassador had to escape for his life, leaving ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... led me to a public school on Greenwich Avenue. The janitor wanted an assistant. I was so weary with my inactivity, that any kind of a job at any kind of pay would have been acceptable. The janitor showed me over the school, told me what his work was. Finally, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... small plot the character of the soil is of little consequence. We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big building where the janitor smuggled up the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... and a bell—the bell to play "go to school" with when she was kept home minding the baby. Lest he should by any chance miss the alley in spite of directions, little Rosa was invited to hang her stocking, and her sister's, with the janitor's children's in the school. And lo! on Christmas morning there was a gorgeous doll, and a bell that was a whole curriculum in itself, as good as a year's schooling any day! Faith in Santa Claus is established ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... springing up almost within arm's-reach of it. It suggested guns pointing from a fort, and perhaps it pleased the old man's soldier fancy. It certainly made smoke enough in his room, where he was fighting his battles over with himself, and occasionally with the janitor from the front, who climbed over the pile of bricks and in through the window to bring him water. When I visited him there one day, and, after giving the password, got behind the bolted door, I found him, the room, and everything else ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... are getting old, and ought not to work so hard. My wife and I have been making inquiries, and we know all about you and your sick wife. How would you like to be janitor in the building where I have ...
— Jerry's Reward • Evelyn Snead Barnett

... she continued, not averse to prolonging the conversation, "our business is mostly outside. Hear about the sky-scraper we're building in Elwood? Three stories! One of the best little towns in Indiana, all right. Say, the janitor service in this old ark is something I couldn't describe to a gentleman. If there's anything in these microbe fairy stories we'll all die early. You might as well know the worst:—they do light housekeeping on the third floor and the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... fighting over a thing never makes it any better. Look at that banana!—is it any good to either of you now?" (Pause. The still small voice was busy, but no sound was heard save the distant whistle of the janitor.) ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... matters were from the grocery wagon sections and were addicted to chewing cloves. Those from the West Side chewed tobacco. All ate peanuts. Special appropriations were requested by John Ward, city hall janitor, to remove the peanut hulls after each talk fest. And thus it was that peanut politics and peanut politicians came to be known in Columbus. Peanut politics like all infections, spread until the whole political system became affected. If the depot had been located ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... gone over to the office to post the letter. Over there she had been in no particular hurry; on the contrary, she had preferred to carry on a conversation with Mrs. Paaschen, the wife of the janitor of the building. About ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... Saylor came to Frankfort, and visited the courtroom a few minutes after adjournment; he even went up and tried the chair of the Chief Justice, and found the seat was none too large. No one was present but Jake, the negro janitor. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... Smythe was the janitor of the museum. Betty, standing behind her father, wondered what he could want that he should phone so early in the morning. Her father's next words sent a thrill ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... than most free negroes. 'Twas he. He was janitor to offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of the slave-mart. And when he found one who was quite of the right kind—and Ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know—he would show him to grandpere, and at the auction, if the ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... will be permitted," said the judge, "and the officers and the janitor will give the Professor all the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... he murmured. "How are we to accommodate him in a city apartment, Jemima? And that highly decorative rooster—I fear we shall have some difficulty in persuading my janitor to accept him as an inmate. Do you suppose all your mother's tenants will feel called upon ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... with three free beds for pregnant women, by Mrs. Seneschal, or that the two wings on both sides of the great entrance-gate have also been built by her liberality. One of these wings, the one on the right, is used by the janitor, a fine-looking old man, who formerly was beadle at the cathedral, and who loves to think of the happy days when he added to the splendor of the church by his magnificent presence, his red uniform, his gold bandelaire, his ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... made it yield all of which it is capable, either in the self-directed activity of the children or in correlated subject matter. It has, in many cases, been only a bit of recreation from the more serious work of the school. In a house prepared by the janitor or older pupils the children have been allowed to arrange and rearrange ready-made furniture contributed from their playthings at home, but little creative work has been attempted. In other cases an elaborate house, carefully planned ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs

... this matter. You know what I mean. What's the decision?" Luck scowled at the pretty girl on his wall calendar, and began to rub his right foot with the left and to curse the janitor with that part of his brain not occupied ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... not long to wait. The clerks soon departed, and the colored janitor entered on his labors. Bodine remained writing quietly until George came and said, "Will you be so kind as to ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... Fellner has been ill in bed several days, quite seriously ill, they tell me. The janitor seems very ...
— The Case of The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner

... when it was usually opened as early as seven o'clock, no fellow could imagine. That the girls were the cause of their being deprived of their regular place for holding business meetings never occurred to them, and the only reason they could assign for this remarkable delay on the part of the janitor was that Deacon Littlefield was ill. They did not really hope that their teacher was sick; but they would have been willing he should be slightly indisposed, if, in such case, they ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis

... that morning when Burns was installed in his new position as assistant janitor that he was cleaning off the front steps of the Settlement, when he paused a moment and stood up to look about him. The first thing he noticed was a beer sign just across the alley. He could almost touch it with his broom from where he stood. ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... out into Madison Square and look back at the towering mass of the Flatiron building, creamy and delicate as carved ivory under the rays of the moon—and it was long past midnight when I finally turned in at the Marathon. Higgins, the janitor, was just closing the outer doors, and he joined me in the ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... were permanent fixtures in the Black establishment. As a matter of fact, the only fixtures were the cook and second girl. The laundress came in on Mondays and Tuesdays to do the washing and ironing, and the "man" acted as janitor's helper at the factory three days of the week. The chauffeur was but a summer flourish; B. Phelps drove his own car eight months in ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Golightly, aged ten; what curled the lip of Benjamin Franklin Jenkins, aged seven; or what shone in the bold blue eyes of Bromley Chitterlings, aged six and a half, as they sat in the corner of the playground at recess. Their only other companion and confidant was the negro porter and janitor of the school, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... that perhaps after all she had not succeeded in quite locking it, but the door held, and she flew on blindly down the stairs, caring little where they led only so that she might hide quickly before they found the janitor and pried ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill

... to make, I will give you my reasons for them. They are distinct from the recognition of his person by the inmates of the Hotel D——, and added to that recognition, form a strong case against him. The janitor who has charge of the offices in Duane Street, happening to have a leisure moment on the morning of the day on which Mrs. Van Burnam was murdered, was making the most of it by watching the unloading of a huge boiler some four doors below the Van Burnam warehouse. He was consequently ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green



Words linked to "Janitor" :   custodian, keeper



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