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Loft   Listen
noun
Loft  n.  
1.
That which is lifted up; an elevation. Hence, especially:
(a)
The room or space under a roof and above the ceiling of the uppermost story.
(b)
A gallery or raised apartment in a church, hall, etc.; as, an organ loft.
(c)
A floor or room placed above another; a story. especially, An upper story located in a building with a business below, often having no partitions, and in cities sometimes converted into living quarters, or used as studios for artists. "Eutychus... fell down from the third loft."
2.
(Golf) Pitch or slope of the face of a club (tending to drive the ball upward).
On loft, aloft; on high. Cf. Onloft. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Loft" Quotes from Famous Books



... the sort which most people laugh at as "old-fashioned" and enjoy thoroughly, there is usually a scene in which the hero, or the heroine, or both, are about to be drowned in the sinking ship or roasted in the loft of the burning building, or butchered by the attacking savages, or executed by the villain and his agents. The audience enjoys some delightful thrills while watching this situation—whichever it may be—develop, but ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and soon returned with a report that there was a trap-door leading into the loft under the roof, and that they could draw the ladder up ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... beside me began again to haunt my imagination; when, to my great relief, I ascertained that these were "the miller's men," who, having eaten their supper with the female members of the family, would withdraw to their nests in the cock-loft. And truly this affair of the domestics' supper was curious enough. Heaven knows what the mess might be, which, being brought piping hot from the oven, was planted down in a brown stew-pan, right in the centre of one of the tables; but the appetites of ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... they pluck some of the eleusine, and each of them puts one grain in her necklace, chews another and rubs it on her forehead, throat, and breast. "No joy is shown by the womenfolk on this occasion, and they sorrowfully cut a basketful of the corn which they take home with them and place in the loft to dry." ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Looking carefully all round he could see nothing to find fault with, until he glanced upward at the floor over the manger, where he discovered a protruding cork. He remembered that a heap of oats was stored in the loft, from which the bailiff gave out the rations for their teams to each man weekly. Getting the key of the loft, he found that the cork was nicely adjusted to a hole beneath the oats, so that the carter in question could exceed the recognized ration whenever inclined. The ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... aboard the Roosevelt. As they rowed they cheered, and when they sighted Commander Peary three ringing cheers and a tiger were given. The newspaper men requested an interview with the Commander. He granted their request, at the same time suggesting that they accompany him ashore to a fish-loft at the end of the pier, where there would be more room than aboard the ship. Accompanied by the members of the expedition, the Commander and the reporters left the ship. Arriving at the loft Commander Peary sat on some fishnets at the rear end of the loft, some of the reporters sat on barrels ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... on the morrow, the second day of August, being in the loft where they laid up the hay they brought from the meadow, I was taken with a similar giddiness and a similar faintness, but still more violent than the other. I fainted away completely; one of the men perceived it. I have been told that I was asked what was the matter with me, and that I replied, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the room; a crucifix and holy images, hung over by rosaries of all kinds, made of ivory, shells, and American corn, completed the simple arrangements. In a corner, however, stood a screen which concealed the ladder that led to the loft where the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... large keys, and yawningly unlocks and sets open. Come Mrs. Tope and attendant sweeping sprites. Come, in due time, organist and bellows-boy, peeping down from the red curtains in the loft, fearlessly flapping dust from books up at that remote elevation, and whisking it from stops and pedals. Come sundry rooks, from various quarters of the sky, back to the great tower; who may be presumed to enjoy vibration, and to know that bell and ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... that moment the new choir-loft caught Evelyn's eye, and she imagined the melodious choirs answering each other from opposite sides. No doubt her father had insisted on the addition, so that such antiphonal music as the Reproaches might be given. Some rich carpets had ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... heavily and in the midst of our slumbers, an orderly happened along and woke me up. I gave Mac a shove and he too woke up. We were drenched and made for the barn. We found the Old Man there with a lantern and told him we were going up in the loft, but he scowled and said we were not to go. "To hell with you!"—and up we went, finding five or six of the boys there taking advantage of the lull to snatch an hour's sleep. We quickly followed suit, getting hold of some straw and grain bags ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... he was now quite himself again. The boys were safe, at any rate. True, they were confined in the loft of an old house, with a ferocious wild beast barring the way to liberty; but then he reflected that this ferocious wild beast could not get near them. Had it been a bear, the affair would have been most serious; but a wild boar, as he knew, could not climb into a loft. For among the ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... Elsie felt thoroughly frightened and miserable. Even when she had stayed in the crofter's cottage she had not felt worse. For this little attic, right at the top of a tall house full of people, seemed even more dreadful than the bare wretched loft in Sandy Ferguson's hovel. The height of the house, the noises of loud angry voices, banging doors, hurrying footsteps coming and going on the stairs, the continual roar of traffic in the street below, were all things strange and ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... you count the boards of the ceiling (loft) in a strange room before going to sleep, you will dream of your ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... note the oft-repeated song of the scarlet tanager in the maple woods that crown a hill above me, and in the loft overhead two broods of swallows are chattering and lining up their light-colored breasts on the rims of their nests, or trying their newly fledged wings while clinging to its sides. The only ominous and unwelcome sound is ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... ingrejunce? An' what's the greatest ingrejunce in punkin pies if it ain't eggs? Or cake, uther?" to which Moses had jocularly replied: "It might be punkin or flour." And again, Susanna: "My suz! But you air smart, ain't ye? Well, eggs I haven't, an' eggs I shall an' must. An' up that loft I go, tromple or no tromple the hay, an' before the sun sets another time ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... done say dat he hear talk dat dey was comin through en he tell his niggers to hurry en hide all de plantation rations. Yes, mam, dey dig cellars under de colored people houses en bury what meat en barrels of flour dey could en dat what dey couldn' get under dere, dey hide it up in de loft. Mr. Ross say, 'Won' none of dem damn Yankees get no chance to stick dey rotten tooth in my rations.' We say, 'Ma, you got all dese rations here en we hungry.' She say, 'No, dem ration belong to boss en you chillun better never ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... right," spoke up George. "Up yonder where your topknot is there's an aching void. I read the other day that Sydney Smith said 'Nature never built a man more than seven stories high without leaving the top loft empty'." ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... was waiting, he took a couple of horse-blankets from the harness-room, and fastened them up before the only two windows in the loft. This made the place quite dark, though there was light enough to enable him to find his way. Then he kneeled about ten feet from the open window, darkened to within a foot of the bottom. From this point he discovered, by looking through the window ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic

... of the barn, which had been intended for a storage house of some sort, but not used by the present occupants of the premises. This Hugh had commandeered, and fitted to his purpose. The upper part he had made into a pretty fine loft for his fancy homing pigeons. When the first of his pedigreed youngsters arrived at the flying stage, he meant to have considerable fun taking them ten or twenty miles away, and then letting them loose, in the expectation of finding them at home when he got back. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... horses and came to a primitive little hotel, consisting of a bar-room, a dining-room, a lean-to kitchen, and above a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. When he entered the bar-room late in the evening—it was a cold night and there was nowhere else to go—a would-be "bad man," with a cocked revolver in each hand, was striding up and down the floor, talking with crude profanity. There were several bullet holes ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... room, looking into the rickety wall cupboards, venturing through another door into a second smaller room, really a lean-to, and then going up the ladder into a loft. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... wrathful glance towards the place. The post at the end of the hall was shivered in pieces by his very look; the beam that upheld the floor of the loft was broken, and all the kettles tumbled down with a fearful crash. Thor and Tyr crept out from among the rubbish, and stood before old Hymer. The giant was not well pleased at the sight of such guests come thus ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a balustrade) running diagonally across it—the ascent being from the south. Under cover of the widely projecting eave these steps gave access to a door leading to the garret, or rather loft—for it was lighted only by a single window to the north, and seemed to have been ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... have been in his mind all the time that the girl was there, as it was natural she should have come to the place where they had met. Even before he caught the outline of her dress against the pillar he found himself crossing over to the organ loft the better to observe her. Knowledge reached him incredibly across the empty space, as to what, over and above the pictured saints, she faced there in the vault, lit so faintly by the shining of its golden walls. The service of the benediction going on in the church below furnished ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... once her benefactress and tormentor. I do not know the details, but I have only heard that the orphan girl, a meek and gentle creature, was once cut down from a halter in which she was hanging from a nail in the loft, so terrible were her sufferings from the caprice and everlasting nagging of this old woman, who was apparently not bad-hearted but had become an insufferable tyrant ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... It was the day he dined here for the first time, and he came up to my room. He had hidden himself in the loft. I did not dare to scream for fear of making a scandal. I no longer knew what I was doing. Then I said nothing because ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... of keeping out the prospect and letting in the cold. I could observe little therefore, but the inns and farmhouses at which we stopped. They were all alike, except in size: one great room, like a barn, with a hay-loft over it, the straw and hay dangling in tufts through the boards which formed the ceiling of the room, and the floor of the loft. From this room, which is paved like a street, sometimes one, sometimes two smaller ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... entertainment of guests, especially on fair and market days, when space is precious. There was a table with a bench for the use of drinkers. There were, moreover, three beds, but I was careful to ascertain that none would be occupied except by myself. I would sooner have slept on a bundle of hay in the loft than have had an unknown person snoring in the same room with me. One has always some prejudice to overcome. The bed was not soft, and the hempen sheets were as coarse as canvas, but these trifles did not trouble me. I listened to the song of the crickets on the hearth downstairs until ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... out on the various barns and sheds clustered at the back of the ranch-house. The harness-room occupied the ground floor of the nearest shed, with a low, seldom-entered loft above, containing a single, narrow window without ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... poor man to bed. We slept, all four of us, in a loft, which could only be reached by a ladder; and a ram, as you know, can't climb a ladder. It's out of nature. Yet the brute tried its best, having taken such a fancy to Badcock, and wouldn't be denied till his master beat him out of doors with a fire-shovel and penned ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Fox was heard on the piney hillside, as he lay down on the hay in the loft, but there were no signs of life on the snow. He had come to wait all night if need be, and waited. The lantern might allure, it might scare, but it was needed in this gloom, and it tinged the snow with faint yellow light below him. An hour went by, then a big-tailed form came near and made ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... a spirit with less change of voice than when he is going to speak about a marten cat—a rare beast now-a-days. Many years ago he used to work in the garden, and once they put him to sleep in a garden-house where there was a loft full of apples, and all night he could hear people rattling plates and knives and forks over his head in the loft. Once, at any rate, be has seen an unearthly sight in the woods. He says, "One time I was ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... established. All formations were assembled in the street in front of the battery office. Difficulty was experienced during the stay at this place in getting the battery out at all formations, especially those members who were billeted in the loft of a barn at the extreme end of the battery street. As a remedy the battery buglers were given the job of traversing the street each morning and ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... they judge of nappy ale, And tell at large a winter tale; Climb up to the apple loft, And turn the crabs till they be soft. Tib is all the father's joy, And little Tom the mother's boy. All their pleasure is Content; And Care, to pay their ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... loft room is yours, Joyce, for as long as you want it," Isa was saying, through the sobering silence. "I ain't going to side with Jared Birkdale when a woman's sense of right has been roused. Jared's wits are the keenest and ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... hardly realised the news, further than to understand that she had been brought in one short moment face to face with something unexpected and final. It did not even occur to her to ask for any explanation. She thought: accident—terrible accident—blood to the head—fell down a trap door in the loft. . . . She remained there, distracted and mute, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... shed littered with paint-cans, tools, a lawn-mower, and ancient wisps of hay. Above it was a loft which Cy Bogart and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, for smoking, hiding from whippings, and planning secret societies. They climbed to it by a ladder on the alley side ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... de la Paix, of all his offices and dignities, and authorizing him to choose for himself the place of his retreat. The favorite had more correctly estimated the hatred excited against himself; he had sought no other retreat than a loft in his palace. There, rolled up in a mat, with a few pieces of gold in his hands, he waited for the moment to take his flight. On March 19th, at ten o'clock in the morning; as he attempted to escape secretly, he was perceived by a soldier of that guard to which he had formerly belonged; ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... little instrument in my hands, whilst Mr. Carmichael ascended a ladder to a kind of loft in the shed. It only weighed a few pounds, and yet I could feel it exerting a ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... all his school-fellows felt for him. He was mischievous enough, but his pranks were accompanied by a sort of vivacity and cheerfulness, which delighted Sumner and myself. I had much talk with him about his apple-loft, for the supply of which all the gardens in the neighborhood were taxed, and some of the lower boys were employed to furnish it. I threatened, but without asperity, to trace the depredators, through his associates, up to their leader. He ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... Grammar School (Rev. —— Wapshot) is; Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather); the butchers' slaughtering-house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and the Misses Finucane's establishment for young ladies. The two schools had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town, the Doctor induced the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little flock downstairs; and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... up and his coffee pot was steaming on the live coals long before the next morning's sun had pierced its shafts into the gray opaqueness that cloaked the valleys. He squatted on his heels before the fire, honing the ancient blade of the scythe that he had found in the cock loft, and that blade was swinging against the stubborn resistance of weed and briar-trailer before the drench of the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... thirty-one years of age and has just been released from a term in Sing Sing Prison. The crime for which he served sentence was burglary. He made a skeleton key with which he gained access to a loft where were stored valuable goods. He stole three thousand dollars worth of these from his employer. He admits that he has committed other crimes of forgery and theft. Perhaps the cleverest of these was forgery which was never discovered. He ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... log cabin, with hardly ten nails in it, the latch-string, the wide-mouthed stone-and-stick chimney, the spring-house with its deep crocks, the smoke-house made of a hollow gum-tree log, the ladder to the loft where I slept, and where the snows would drift on the floor through the rifts in the split clapboards that roofed me over. I wondered if to-day was so much better than yesterday as conditions would warrant us ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... maruellous sore tempest fell in sundrie parts of England, but especiallie in the towne of Winchcombe, where (by force of thunder and lightning) a part of the steeple of the church was throwne downe, and the crucifix with the image of Marie standing vnder the rood-loft, was likewise ouerthrowne, broken, and shattered in peeces; then folowed a foule, a noisome, and a most horrible stinke in the church. [Sidenote: A mightie wind.] On the 17. daie of the same moneth much harme was doone ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... acted. They used to climb up on the hay-mow for a stage, and the grown people sat in chairs on the floor. It was great fun. One of the plays they acted was Jack and the Bean-Stalk. They had a ladder from the floor to the loft, and on the ladder they tied a squash vine all the way up to the loft, to look like the wonderful bean-stalk. One of the little girls was dressed up to look like Jack, and she acted that part. When it came ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... complained a lot about his hang-over disposition, and finally quit him for good five or six years before she passed on. Also, Clyde was no plute. He was existin' chiefly on bluff at present, and that studio of his was a rear loft over a delivery-truck garage down off Sixth Avenue. Then, there was other items ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... terror from the loft where she happened to find herself. I made her sit down at the end of the room beside Babet, who remained silent, pale, and with beseeching eyes. We put little Marie into bed; she had insisted on keeping her doll, and went quietly to sleep pressing it in her arms. This ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... he 'low he gwine wait a bit. He 'low he gwine jes wait a li'l bit. He 'low he gwine be no trouble at all ef he jes been let wait twell he ma she gwine up de ladder to de loft to bed, too. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... their idolized leader and pitch him into the tinsel torrent. This is also extremely satisfactory to the wide-awake young Arabs of the cock-loft. The bandits disperse, and Demas indulges in some fifty lines of rhymed reflections, which are interrupted by the approach of the Holy Family, hotly pursued by the soldiery of Herod. They stop under a sycamore tree, which instantly, by very clever machinery, bends ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... any room which may be available within the farmhouse itself. The Company Commander has the best bedroom—a low-roofed, stone-floored apartment, with a very small window and a very large bed. The subalterns sleep where they can—usually in the grenier, a loft under the tiles, devoted to the storage of onions and the drying, during the winter months, of the family washing, which is suspended from innumerable strings stretched ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... when that official appeared, "Greusel has discovered a window to the north through which yourself and a number of your men can get down to the rocks with the aid of a cord, and he tells me there is a loft full of ropes. A flotilla of boats is tied up at the lower end of the Castle. He has visited the treasury, and finds it well supplied with bags of coin. I intend to effect a junction between those bags and that flotilla. Our position here is quite untenable, for there ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... trees and the mounting block to the stable-yard. And there was no one there. Neither coachman nor groom nor stable-boys. And there was no one in the stables, or the coach-house, or the harness-room, or the loft. ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... to a beautiful grove of trees by the brook. And there in the midst of it was a log hut. I pushed the rude door open and entered. There was but one room. It had a fireplace needing repair. I saw a ladder in the corner, climbed it through a loft hole and looked into the loft. The rafters were rough and crooked, made only of undressed poles. I could see daylight through the shingles. The floor was of hewn planks. But I was elated. Why not come here to live? I did not like ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... to do it. Many's the one I've taught to ride in my time. You settle any hour you like, and I'll have the horses ready for you, and take you a turn across the park. There's some old side-saddles put away in the loft. I'll have 'em down, and put in order for ye. And the gentlemen? You'll not be ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... moved on. When they arrived at Col. Bill Splawn's that night Colonel Splawn and his family had gone to bed, and it seemed unwise to disturb them. The hungry army camped in the barnyard and crept into the hay-loft to sleep. Presently somebody yelled "Fire!" One of the boys had been smoking and started the hay. Lieutenant Clemens suddenly wakened, made a quick rolling movement from the blaze, and rolled out of a big hay-window ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... out. This letter asked Ursula to meet Kenneth in the beechwood the next afternoon, and so she stole away there when suspicious father and watchful stepmother thought she was spinning in the granary loft." ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... I was once myself, for example, at one of our Dalkeith fairs, present in a hay-loft—I think they charged threepence at the door, but let me in with a grudge for twopence, but no matter—to see a punch and puppie-show business, and other slight-of-hand work. Well, the very moment I put my neb within the door, I was visibly convinced of the smell of burnt roset, with, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... me the ladder, and I'll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won't know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she'll be going down to see would he be floating ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... the fiddlers in the organ loft pealed out a wild shrill march, which stopped the reverend gentlemen, and in the midst ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... it was just the season for planting corn. Nine days later Nitschmann's garden was laid out aside of Spangenberg's. By the 14th the cabin on Spangenberg's town lot was finished. It was twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and fourteen feet high, with a little loft where they slept, their goods, with a table and benches being in the room below. At daybreak they rose, sang a hymn, and prayed together, breakfasted at eight o'clock, the daily text being read aloud, then worked until half past eleven, when they ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... Trinity chime the midnight hour. From dark hallways men and women pour forth and hasten to the Maronite church. In the loft of the dingy old warehouse wax candles burn before an altar of brass. The priest, in a white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back, chants the ritual. The people respond. The women kneel in the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls; a surpliced acolyte ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... and had been for a long time a shelter for all kinds of animals. She had a chimney built on the floor prepared for the school-room, the Sisters cooking and eating there, when school was dismissed. The loft of the stable served for a dovecot and granary, and was reached by an outside ladder. This she arranged as a dormitory and a community-room. All things being now in working order, they began to receive boarders and day-pupils. One of the latter, Marie Barbier, who was afterwards called ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... Norman dancers and the three Parisian warblers." Thus it sometimes happens that very charming, elegant, and sensitive gentlemen, who under ordinary circumstances would be very difficult to please, are obliged to sleep in a barn or loft, on a very nice bed of clean straw, with a dark lantern to light them there, and the luxury of a truss of ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... although he did not boast of it. With his wife and six children he occupied one of the best huts. A fire in one corner frequently filled it with acrid smoke. It was very small and had no windows. At one end was a loft where family treasures could be kept dry and reasonably safe from molestation. Piles of sheep skins were arranged for visitors to sit upon. Three or four rude niches in the walls served in lieu of shelves and tables. The floor of well-trodden clay was damp. Three mongrel ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas, as a kind of house, with heaven as its upper story and the earth as its ground floor. To the north of the earth was a great mountain; at night the sun was pushed into a pit and pulled out again in the morning, with heaven as a loft and hell as a cellar. In the Atlantic Ocean, at some unknown distance from Europe, was one of the openings into hell, into which a ship sailing to this point, would tumble. The terror of this conception was one of the chief obstacles of the great voyage ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... he saw with what unbounded glee Lauritz rushed off towards the wharf, in order to bring up his sea chest, containing all his treasures, he forgot for a moment how dearly he had paid for his young friend's little loft ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... have, sir," cried Dexter, in a voice full of eager protest. "Hours and hours, sir, I walked up and down the garden with it, and then I took the book up with me into my loft, and made a chalk triangle on the floor, and kept on saying it over and over, but as fast as I said it the words slipped out of my head again. I can't help it, sir, I am ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... miles away, and he was invited there to sing in the choir of Saint Michael's. The pay he received was very slight, but that was not to be considered. An occasional bowl of soup and piece of rye-bread, and the privilege of sleeping in the organ-loft, all combined with freedom, made his paradise complete. He played on the harpsichord in the pastor's study sometimes; and occasionally the organist, who could not help loving such a music-loving boy, would allow him to try the big organ, and at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... self-immolation, exhibited the charred stump to her wondering, round eyes. This love, however, abated at the coming of a new girl to the school, who, not more beautiful, but more buxom, made stronger appeal to my nascent sexuality. One afternoon, in the loft of her father's stable, she induced me to disrobe, herself setting the example. The erection our mutual handlings produced on me was without conscious impulse; I felt only a childish curiosity on beholding our genital difference. But the episode started extravagant whimsies, one of which ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... be have ordered me to provide two hatchways big enough to lower whole locomotives through, and pigeonholes in the hold big enough to carry them. As far as the Mamise is concerned, that means we've just about got to rub it out and do it over again. It's a case of back to the mold-loft for Mamise." ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... cover of a box. Built into the wall, generally at the right of the entrance, was the stone chimney, whose top projected a little above the roof; the stewpan, in which the food was cooked, was hung in the fireplace from a hook. Near the hearth a staircase, or rather a ladder, led to the loft, which was lighted by two windows cut in the sides, and which held the grain. Finally a table, a few chairs or benches completed these primitive furnishings, though we must not forget to mention the old gun hung above the bed to be within reach of the hand in case of a ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath

... can not prove their claims, are made to swear to them, we pass through a court between rows of Persian lilac trees, into a dark, stivy arcade on both sides of which are dark, stivy cells used as stables. Reaching the citadel proper, we mount a high stairway to the loft occupied by the mudir. This, too, is partitioned, but with cotton sheeting, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... strange tricks or habits, such as thrusting on your tongue, continually snapping your fingers, rubbing your hands, sighing aloud, gaping with a noise like a country fellow that has been sleeping in a hay-loft, or indeed with any noise; and many others that I have noticed before. These are imitations of the manners of the mob, and are degrading to a gentleman. It is rude and vulgar to lean your head back and destroy the ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... and his extraordinary power of combining the knowledge that he so acquired, the period which he gave to the naval service must have been, to a spirit so active, a period of painful constraints. I remember that in a conversation upon Lord Erskine, with Mr. Capel Loft, after enumerating the many great causes in which the great advocate had been engaged, he exclaimed, "what an infinite multitude of ideas must have passed through that man's mind." The remark is not an empty one; I doubt ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... of a moment when none belonging to him were observing his actions, the lapidary cautiously left the room. The bailiff was waiting for him upon a sort of little landing, covered also by the roof. Upon this landing, opened the door of a loft, which had formerly been part of the garret occupied by the Morels, and in which Pipelet kept his stock of leather; and the worthy porter called this place his box at the play, because, by means of a hole made in the wall between two laths, he ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... authorities. Every one had suffered together. Nor was it due to any one's fault. True, the town water-supply had been temporarily out of commission, some stranger was said to have been smoking in the hay loft, Providence had not specially intervened to save property, and hence this result. Thus to our relief it was a city of hope, not of despair, and to our amazement they were able to show most kindly interest in problems such as ours which seemed so remote at the moment. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... is really very jolly when you get her alone and she isn't thinking of some book or other she's reading, and we quite enjoyed the little walk. The church was open as usual, but there was no sound of music yet, only there was a light up in the organ loft, which I was sure showed the lady was coming, though Anne thought it was perhaps only a reflection of the evening light through the window. But I knew by this time that it was always pretty dark up by the organ, except perhaps in the very middle of ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising currents of air. Mind this, too; it is by no means the same thing to let these flues open into a loft over the attic rooms, with windows in ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... (Strix flammea).—Nested in a barn, another year in a pigeon-loft, and again in an old tub at Otterbourne. To be seen skimming ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... into the loft and fastened them in, after giving them a saucerful of milk. Then down she went to tell ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... they work, but I guess you won't be that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and the hum of innumerable voices, I was to meet my ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... rooms for the family, the nursery is the best to dispense with, the very young children being kept under the mother's oversight in her sewing-room, or the attic, or a loft in an out-building being fitted up for the elder ones as a play-room. In the case of the loft, it is well to equip it as ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller

... smelt anything so delicious as the odor of the sweet clover grass that hung down between the boards of the flooring of the hay loft, and when a mouse would scurry away, he would laugh at ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett

... she said, brutally, "are a person of some education, refinement, and background. Yet you are content to dance around in these—these—well, back home a chap might wash dishes in a cheap restaurant or run an elevator in an east side New York loft building, but ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... stable and climbed up the perpendicular ladder into the loft, where the boys could hear him stumping about in the dark place, stumbling over the hay and straw trusses, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... Evidently there was no soreness or distrust here between the employer and the employed. When they had gone through the rooms where the work was going on, they climbed a staircase like a ladder, and came to the loft where the wool was stored. Hyacinth handled it as he was directed, and endeavoured to appreciate the difference between the good and the inferior qualities. They passed by an unglazed window at the back of the mill, and Mr. Quinn pointed out his own house. It stood among ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... given by Charles was also taken down, and silver candlesticks and other ornaments, including the brass about the shrine, perhaps, of St. William, and also the lectern in the choir, were sold for the repair of the fabric and bells. In 1646 the organ loft, the canopies over the altar in the side choir, and the font were removed. In 1647 a cushion was made of the dossal. The library was left untouched and thrown open to the public, and the keys of the minster placed in charge of the Mayor and Corporation. In place of the dean ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... across to the doors of the Parker House. There after some search was made we found the proprietor. He, too, seemed very busy, but he spared time to trudge ahead of us up two rickety flights of raw wooden stairs to a loft where he indicated four canvas bunks on which lay as many ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... weighed, emptied and stacked when he climbed the ladder-like steps to the scaffold where the cotton was sunned preparatory to its ginning. When he had pushed his way through the crowd of negroes hanging about the door of the ginhouse-loft he heard the overseer call, "Whar's that yaller ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... of many days to purchase. And then he saw the midnight ceremony in the church at New Year, with the shining face of the Prediger in the pulpit,—the village preacher who, on the last night of the old year, saw in the empty gallery beyond the organ loft the faces of all who were to die in the ensuing twelve months, and who at last recognised himself among them, and, in the very middle of his sermon, passed into a state of rapt ecstasy and burst ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... gifts. Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution, and the Emperor would never have existed; he would have been no more than a second edition of Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no amateurs, no celebrity, no cross of dishonor earned by squandering men's fortunes, is Correggio in a hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay her price. She must keep up a very elegant style, for this is her shop-sign; she must be sufficiently well bred to flatter the vanity of her lovers; she must have the brilliant ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... 1753, when a most tumultuous popular investigation of the supposed house of captivity was made, he says that he and others, finding the dungeon not to be square, small, and darkish, but a long, narrow slit of a loft, half full of hay, expressed disbelief. Yet it was proved that he went on suggesting to Lyon, Elizabeth's master, that people should give money to Elizabeth, and 'wished him success.' The proof was a letter of his, dated ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain—relic of the time when the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfnished ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... difficulties, succeeded in removing a mass of sand and exposing the building which had so long been covered up. The masonry is rude, but the walls are solid and complete. The interior was perfectly free from the modern accompaniments of Roman Catholic places of worship. There was no rood-loft, no confessional, no pictures of the Virgin and saints, nothing to indicate the unscriptural adoration of the wafer, or masses for the dead. The most diligent search was made for beads and pyxes, censers and crucifixes; not ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... box-stalls were small display-rooms, hung with tapestries and lighted with candles in old French sconces. The great carriage-room became a refectory, with Jacobean and old monastery chairs, and the vast loft overhead, reached by a narrow staircase that clung to the wall, was railed on its exposed side, waxed as to floor, hung with lanterns, and ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... time he clambered up into the loft under the high peaked roof, where lay numberless forgotten things covered with the dim dust of years. There a flock of pigeons had made their roost, and flapped noisily out into the sunlight when he pushed open the door ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... satisfactory as the soil works through, and when there is a gale the rooms below are thick with dust. Perhaps the dust is also caused by the innumerable wood-lice which work in the wood and make a fine wood-dust. Every house has a loft running the whole length of it. We found ours the greatest boon as it was the only place we had in which to keep the year's stores. The woodwork of nearly all the houses is from wrecked ships; boards from the decks form the flooring, masts and yards appear as beams, cabin doors give entrance ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... in the "grand march," and with a magic-lantern one of the boys flashed vari-colored lights upon the crowd from the loft-ladder at the end ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... morning, exerting myself beyond my power; and about noon the following day I went into a yeoman's house, the name of which was Ellanshaws, and requested of the people a couch of any sort to lie down on, for I was ill, and could not proceed on my journey. They showed me to a stable-loft where there were two beds, on one of which I laid me down; and, falling into a sound sleep, I did not awake till the evening, that other three men came from the fields to sleep in the same place, one of whom lay down beside me, at which I was exceedingly glad. They fell all sound ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg



Words linked to "Loft" :   organ loft, floor, golf game, story, attic, level, garret, house, propel, golf, haymow, slant, storey



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