"Basement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be cheaper than dragging the six girls and himself daily from one end of London to the other. The house in which he took up his quarters, in Rathbone Place, quite close to Jimmy, was small and dark, but not dear. The upper story was occupied by people who were out all day and the basement served as a lumber room. They would feel quite at home here ... with no old sheep to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... active members. The Commission got to work without delay, but for a space of six years had some trouble with the building in question. Either the climate hindered operations or the materials used were of the kind which prevents official edifices from ever rising higher than the basement. But, meanwhile, OTHER quarters of the town saw arise, for each member of the Commission, a handsome house of the NON-official style of architecture. Clearly the foundation afforded by the soil of those parts was better than that where the Government building was still engaged in hanging ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... founders, and she comes back to England. Both the sisters rent a nice place in the country and spend a lot of effort in decorating it. So Miss Harding has occasional spells of living as her original young self with her sister, before returning to her basement flat. As usual with this author, with her fascination with illness, a child of one of the neighbours, Billie, becomes very ill and needs roound-the-clock nursing. Miss Harding plays a big part in this. But one day a chance remark by another of the tenants in the block of flats ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... The entire basement of the annex had been remodeled into a well-equipped gymnasium, and at the rear of the lot a ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... fifteen feet in length. On either side the walls were painted and decorated very beautifully. Her Majesty spoke to one of the eunuch attendants, who stooped down and removed from the ground at each end of this passage two wooden plugs which were fitted into holes in the basement. I then began to realize that what I had hitherto regarded as solid walls were in reality sliding panels of wood. These panels when opened revealed a kind of grotto. There were no windows, but in the roof was a skylight. At one end of this room or grotto was a large rock, on the top of which was ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... Duerer and Lucas van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece carved by Flaxman; the miniatures and bronzes and Etruscan vases,—all the "infinite riches in a little room," which crowded No. 22 from garret to basement. These were the rarities that filled the columns of the papers and the voices of the quidnuncs when in 1856 they came to the hammer. But although the Press of that day takes careful count of these things, it makes little reference to the sale ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... ran to the extreme limit of San Francisco. Harry English lived not far from the terminus, and to the cozy home of this most genial and hospitable gentleman the youth wended his way. The house stood upon the steep slope of a hill; the parlor was upon a level with the street,—a basement dining-room below it,—but the rear of the house was quite in the air and all of the rear windows commanded a magnificent view of the North Bay with its islands and the ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and lean streaks which export imperfectly nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of late years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of New England. The "Granite State" being naturally enough deficient in pudding-stone, its children are apt to wander southward in search of that deposit,—in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... original pair of pigeon-blue trousers with which Mr. Bookham Pryce made his sensational debut on the Lincoln course in the spring of 1894. We might linger here a moment to muse over the simple beginnings of great men, but time is pressing and we are all agog to visit the Bargain Basement. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... foot for blowing up the king, the lords and commons, with gunpowder, as soon as parliament should re-assemble. In May (1604) a house had been hired by a Catholic named Robert Catesby, through which access might be gained to the basement of the parliament-house. The party-wall, however, proved exceptionally thick, and more than a year elapsed before the necessary mining operations were complete. Catesby was assisted in his work by a Spaniard named Guy Fawkes, who assumed the name of John Johnson. In the spring of 1605 the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... asked me what trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one be better? and couldn't I wait till after dinner?—and so the trunk would probably have had a three-days' journey from garret to basement. Now I am strong in the wrists and weak in the temper; therefore I used the one and spared the other, and got the trunk down-stairs myself. Halicarnassus heard the uproar. He must have been deaf not to hear it; for the old ark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... attic to basement, and though it was Christmas Eve, the air was like spring, for nature sometimes turns freakish, and smiles on us when we are expecting the cold shoulder. Here and there, a window was open, for the Derings always did love plenty of air; and so a merry ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... south wall of the basement of 114 Federal Street, formerly known as Custom House Place, that congested, central Redlight District of three years ago, there was a blind passage-way between 114 and 116 Custom House Place, 116 being the notorious dive "The California" now located at —— ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... were ordered to carry Aubers, the Rue D'Enfer and the ground extending to the Wood of Biez. In these places a terrible resistance had been encountered. The Germans Corps Reserves, several divisions of them, had arrived. They had fortified Aubers by using the lower or basement storeys of houses for machine gun emplacements, and a large redoubt with wire had been constructed in ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... down the wide stairs, the centre of which had been converted into a gangway for the passage of wheeled stretchers, into a large basement, with concrete floors and massive pillars, lit by flaring gasjets. Along the sides of the outer room were rows of wounded soldiers, their bandaged heads and arms no whiter than their faces, a patient and pathetic group, waiting without complaint ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... floors deafened. In consequence, you cannot hear anything that is going on in the story below; and when you are in the upper room of the house there might be a democratic ratification meeting in the cellar and you would not know it. Therefore, if any one should break into the basement it would not disturb us; but to please Mrs. Sparrowgrass, I put stout iron bars in all the lower windows. Besides, Mrs. Sparrowgrass had bought a rattle when she was in Philadelphia; such a rattle as watchmen carry there. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... had wandered in, maybe, before the big door downstairs was closed, or who, if still blessed with some outer semblance of gentility, had managed cunningly to get past the Cerberus who lived in the basement, and whose duty it was to open the front door, after eight at night, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... basement floor, about seventy feet below the level of the window which opened into the room occupied ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... after him asking: "What do you require?" but with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain R—'s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a place of dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being stopped by some rule of no-admittance. However he was ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of the house, which has been repaired and redecorated inside on Laura's account. My two rooms, and all the good bedrooms besides, are on the first floor, and the basement contains a drawing-room, a dining-room, a morning-room, a library, and a pretty little boudoir for Laura, all very nicely ornamented in the bright modern way, and all very elegantly furnished with the delightful modern luxuries. None of the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... not disconcert me in the least; on the contrary, it confirmed my belief that he did not dabble in music, until, to my horror, I discovered that the strangely discordant sounds of a harp which kept reaching my ears from some unknown region were actually proceeding from his basement, where he had two harpsichords of his own invention. He informed me that he had unfortunately neglected playing them for a long time, but that he now meant to begin practising again assiduously in order to give me pleasure. I succeeded in dissuading him from this, by assuring ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... got no learning; dey kept us from dat, but you know some of dem darkies learnt anyhow. We had church in the heart of town or in the basement of some old building. I went to the 'piscopal church most all the time, till I ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... know how long—not since—. Then you played on the organ some variations on a tune—'The Sweet By-and-by'—and the tears started, and I seemed but a leaf in a wild storm. That was the song my little boy used to sing! There was a Sunday-school in the basement of a church next to our house, and he would stand at the window, and listen till he caught the tune, and learned the words. Oh, that hymn! Every note stung me like a whip lash when I heard it again. My child's face as I saw him the last time I put him to bed; when ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... "Will you walk into my parlor?" "Oh yes," says the giddy fly, "it looks so nice, positively inviting?" But what of the other rooms in your house; your garret near the sky, where you do star-gazing, and your basement, where crawl the foul ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... showed several times to many ingenious citizens who then governed Florence, his readiness to lift up without ruining it, the church of San Giovanni in Florence (the Battistero, opposite the Duomo) in order to place under it the missing basement with steps; he supported his assertions with reasons so persuasive, that while he spoke the undertaking seemed feasable, although every one of his hearers, when he had departed, could see by himself the impossibility of ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... opened from the stable, and here she prepared meals for her family and for all the new-comers as well. The Doctor established a dispensary in one room of the Chateau, and Mademoiselle opened a store in the basement, keeping there for sale a large quantity of the supplies which had been brought by the six young women. Father Meraut and Grandpere worked hard on the gardens, assisted by Pierre and Pierrette and any ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the wall were doubled, and then a house to house search was commenced, every possible place of concealment being rummaged from basement to attic. Presently the searchers entered the lane in which Mrs. Martin lived. The latch was ere long lifted, and a sergeant and six soldiers burst into the room. The sight which they beheld quieted their first noisy ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... approached the house, placing themselves in the angle of an outhouse out of sight from the windows. There was no sound, and no light appeared. Just above the ground about a foot of window was visible, with a grating over it, apparently lighting a basement. Suddenly Hewitt touched his companion's arm and pointed toward the window. A faint rustling sound was perceptible, and, as nearly as could be discerned in the darkness, some white blind or covering was placed over the glass from the inside. Then came the sound of a striking match, and at the ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... breakfasted with all the petty foresights that can mean the shaving of clearance in a tight squeeze, and got off with all the margin of time he could muster. In the apartment court, he had a parking space by the basement exit and, for a wonder, no free-wheeling nincompoop had done him out of it last night. Even so, getting to the car door illustrated the ordeal ahead; the snow was the damp, heavy stuff that packs and glares. The streets were nasty, but he had the advantage ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... itself debasing, but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise themselves. After the first and second floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry—simple adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them—show themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... school again. This time she went as a pupil to Miss W—-, who lived at Roe Head, a cheerful roomy country house, standing a little apart in a field, on the right of the road from Leeds to Huddersfield. Three tiers of old-fashioned semicircular bow windows run from basement to roof; and look down upon a long green slope of pasture-land, ending in the pleasant woods of Kirklees, Sir George Armitage's park. Although Roe Head and Haworth are not twenty miles apart, the aspect of the country is as totally dissimilar as ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... things as one finds them. The entrance by which the Capitol is approached is such as I have described. There are mean little brick chimneys at the left hand as one walks in, attached to modern bakeries, which have been constructed in the basement for the use of the soldiers; and there is on the other hand the road by which wagons find their way to the underground region with fuel, stationery, and other matters desired by Senators and Representatives, and at present by ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... down to the Old Red Barn, and Bobby noticed that the flock of sheep had been driven into the basement. ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... isolation of my unspeakable terror. On we went, turning to the left instead of to the right, past my suite of sitting-rooms where the gilding was red with blood, into that unknown wing of the castle that fronted the main road lying parallel far below. She guided me along the basement passages to which we had now descended, until we came to a little open door, through which the air blew chill and cold, bringing for the first time a sensation of life to me. The door led into a kind of cellar, through which we groped our ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... grew on my nerves to such an extent that, were it only to punish my cowardice, I felt I must make the 'round of the basement again, and, if anything were there, face it. And then, I would go up to my study, for I knew sleep was out of the question, with the house surrounded by creatures, half beasts, half something else, and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... quiver So far in the river, With many a light From window and casement, From garret to basement, She stood, with amazement, Houseless ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... was already agreed upon. Mrs. Chaffery was tied to the house in Clapham by a long lease, and thither they must go. The ground floor and first floor were let unfurnished, and the rent of these practically paid the rent of the house. The Chafferys occupied basement and second floor. There was a bedroom on the second floor, formerly let to the first floor tenants, that he and Ethel could occupy, and in this an old toilet table could be put for such studies as were to be prosecuted at home. Ethel could have her typewriter in the ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... the city. There's nothin' there for us, and our advice to you is for you to steer clear of the place, too. Them police takes ye and throws ye into jail as quick as a wink, and there's no chance of gettin' anythink to eat at basement doors, neither. They're all on to us, there, laddie, and ye'd better ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... after Carl Linstrum's arrival, he rode with Emil up into the French country to attend a Catholic fair. He sat for most of the afternoon in the basement of the church, where the fair was held, talking to Marie Shabata, or strolled about the gravel terrace, thrown up on the hillside in front of the basement doors, where the French boys were jumping and wrestling ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... let breezes sweep through the building. Aaron explained to Musa the function of this tobacco shed, where he would hang his lathes of long-leafed tobacco to cure from August through November. The tobacco seedlings were already sprouting in Mason jars on the sunporch window-sills. The bank-barn's basement was also dedicated to tobacco. Here, in midwinter, Aaron and Martha and Waziri would strip, size, and grade the dry leaves for sale in Datura. Tobacco had always been a prime cash-crop for Levi, Aaron's father. After ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... it were. At about five there is a sort of stir, not unlike the stir in a theatre when the curtain is on the point of falling. Ledgers are closed with a bang. Men stand about and talk for a moment or two before going to the basement for their hats and coats. Then, at irregular intervals, forms pass down the central aisle and out through the swing doors. There is an air of relaxation over the place, though some departments are still working as hard as ever under ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... Contrary to the young ruler's expectations, the building, even now that he was inside it, remained dark and silent as the grave; but this was explained by the statement of Xaxaguana that the revolting priests were all gathered together in the rock-hewn basement of the building, where they were at that moment engaged in putting their more faithful brethren to the dreadful "ordeal by fire". Accordingly, when Xaxaguana unlocked a massive bronze gate let into a ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... detention hospital was also established in the basement of the Sacred Heart school, conducted by the Dominican Sisters at the corner of Fillmore and Hayes streets, and the first commitment since the earthquake was made on the Sunday following the fire. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... us in '59, and sent her to a training-school for teachers in Dublin, so that she was quite competent on our return to take the management of the girls' school. We had eight girls in the house, and a few day-scholars from the town. Lessons used to go on in a room on the basement, where of course I was superintendent, and they learnt sewing in the afternoon. Julia was a very gentle mistress, and I was feeling very happy about my girls, when I found to my sorrow that Julia had an admirer, and I must make up my mind ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... very rude kind. It was looked upon as a holy island, and many kings and chiefs were buried there. Macbeth was the last king of Scotland who had that honour paid him. Opposite the cathedral we saw a beautiful cross, carved in high relief. It had fallen down, but had been replaced on a basement of granite. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... janitor of a tenement-house should notify the owner of the existence of a smoldering fire in the basement, and if the owner, instead of taking measures to extinguish the fire, should have the janitor locked up for giving information that might alarm the tenants and "unsettle their minds," we should regard such owner ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... case a refrigerator is not available, it will be necessary to resort to other means of keeping milk cool. A cool cellar or basement is an excellent substitute, but if milk is kept in either of these places, it must be tightly covered. Then, too, the spring house with its stream of running water is fully as good as a refrigerator And is used extensively in farming districts. But even though a housewife ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... hair dowdily, partook recklessly of poetry and pickles, read inordinately in bed,—leaning all night on her elbow,—and was threatened with spinal curvature and spiritualism. Adelaide set invisible little traps in every nook and cranny, every cupboard and drawer, from basement to attic, and with a cheerful, innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and bitter tongue, resenting en famille the devilish endearments she so sweetly suffered in company; but ever as she groped about in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the window covering the same is an iron guard such as is used in New York on the lower back windows. The rods running up and down are about four inches apart. There is a projection outside the window such as would be formed by a storm door in the basement; running the full length of the window and about thirty inches wide, raised about a foot from the floor in front and about nine inches in the back, there is opening inward a door at left back, leading ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... drawing-room—a sunny, cheerful room, with a smaller one behind, where Blake can work with his pupils—and two good bedrooms. Biddy (how I wish she were not to be of the menage!) will have to content herself with a dull slip of a room on the basement. Of course the furniture is shabby, and there is very little of it; but I mean to introduce a few improvements by degrees. I like the appearance of the woman of the house. She is a widow, and is evidently very respectable. Her daughter, a ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... in. Yesterday, too. I don't mind, for I would rather watch the lightning up here than be down in the basement with the others. There are days when I love thunder and lightning. I can't flash and crash, being just Mary Cary; but I'd like to, and when it is done for me it is ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... they were, she had not the heart to turn them away, so told the gatekeepers to let them in as long as they could find a place in which to stand. And although the chapel was crowded to its utmost seating and standing capacity, even the basement and the yard outside being filled, Dr. Hue said that no better behaved or more quiet crowd could have been desired. They listened attentively to the exercises, which were fully two hours long, and at the close, group by group, they all went up to thank the ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... down the ancient, darksome stairway, where owls hooted and bats flittered in their faces. Now they were at the last flight, which descended to a little recess set at right angles to the steps and flush with the floor of the basement, for once the door of the stairway had opened here. Thus a person standing on the last stair could not be seen by any in the tower. They reached the step and halted. Then very stealthily Nehushta went on to her hands and knees and thrust her head forward so that she could look into the base ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... two entrances to these mansions," he explained between stars and chimney-stacks: "one to our staircase, and another round the corner. But there's only one porter, and he lives on the basement underneath us, and affects the door nearest home. We miss him by using the wrong stairs, and we run less risk of old Theobald. I got the tip from the postmen, who come up one way and down the other. Now, follow ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... shook as he clambered down from the wagon; he stood irresolute and at the mercy of all the inquiring glances from the steps down to the basement of the big house. They were talking about him and the boy, and laughing already. In his confusion he determined to make as favorable a first impression as possible, and began to take off his cap to each one separately; and the boy stood beside him and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... station, the name of which I do not care to publish. Incubators kept in a cement basement which has flues in which fires were built to secure "ample ventilation." This caused a strong draft of cold, dry air, making the worst possible condition for incubation. The hatch for the season averaged 25 per cent. and was explained by lack of ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... wraps were left in the basement in locker rooms on which barred iron doors were locked. In the boys' basement were lockers A and B. Each locker was in charge of a monitor who carried the key to ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... that window first," said our leader, pointing, "and then the others on the veranda. I don't want to break one if we can help it. If we have to, we'll take a basement window. ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... I never passed so sad an hour, Dear friend, as that one at the church to-night. The edifice from basement to the tower Was one resplendent blaze of colored light. Up through broad aisles the stylish crowd was thronging, Each richly robed like some king's bidden guest. "Here will I bring my sorrow and my longing," I said, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... On the basement story of the original house the embellished mouldings of a doorway, carried the mind back to [Picture: Doorway] the days of Charles I., and, standing within which, imagination depicted the figure of a jolly Cavalier retainer, with his pipe and tankard; or of a Puritanical, formal ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... the chrysolite, The seventh gem in that basement; The eighth, a beryl, clear and white; The topaz, ninth, its luster lent; Tenth, chrysophrase, both soft and bright; Eleventh, the jacinth, translucent; And twelfth, and noblest to recite, Amethyst, ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... was, she had no idea any one would let her go. But it so happened that thoughtless Rachel was the one who unlocked the basement door, and it was an easy thing to slip ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... will make a close inspection of a few pieces. Here, several men and women are led into a basement cell, under the veranda, and stript most rudely. No discrimination is permitted. Happy freedom! What a boon is liberty! Mr. Romescos views their nice firm bodies, and their ebony black skins, with great skill and precaution; his object is to prove the disposition of the articles,—strong evidence ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... she said. "Come." She led him down rough wooden cellar stairs to a basement, unfastened with pale and dexterous fingers a padlocked wooden door behind the big old-fashioned furnace with its up-curving stovepipe arms, under which he had to stoop to avoid bumping ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... and Termination of the Niger," "Journal Royal Geographical Society," vol. i. p. 131) says of the Island Zegozhe, that "zh is pronounced like z in azure." This upright mass, apparently 40 feet high, and seeming, like the "Lumba" of Kinsembo to rest upon a basement, is very conspicuous from the east, where it catches the eye as a watch- tower would. At the bluff-base, a huge slab, an irregular parallelogram, slopes towards the water and, viewed far up stream, it passably represents a Kaffir's pavoise. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... carry me under your casement, You'll feel in your dreams as you lie The quiver, from gable to basement, The rush of my train sweeping by. And I shall look out as I pass it,— Your dear, unforgettable door, 'T was ours till last night, but alas! it Will never be ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... who thinks that if she, or her sister or daughter, were heroic enough to share the labors and sacrifices of a home missionary, she ought to have some better place to live in than an old grocery, a room over a saloon or the basement ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 8, August, 1889 • Various
... repaired. Errors of this kind, however, are rare, and the burden of the labor in this department consists of making the goods up into secure packages and sending them to their destinations. The tickets delivered at the parcel desk are then sent to the checking desk, which is also in the basement, where they are compared with those delivered by the salesmen to the cashiers, and if no error is discovered, the goods are sent to the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... flats in the house in which Owen lived. No. 1 (the basement) was occupied by an estate agent's clerk. No. 2—on a level with the street—was the habitat of the family of Mr Trafaim, a cadaverous-looking gentleman who wore a top hat, boasted of his French descent, and was a shop-walker at Sweater's ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... servitor in whose breast beat a heart of unquestioning loyalty, the untriumphant victor went down into the basement of his house, where between marble slabs and porphyry columns he had equipped a small gymnasium finished with the magnificence of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... balustrade. Rather it seemed to her, as she looked into some of the half-open doors of the swarming rooms she passed, or noticed with disgust the dirt and dilapidation of the stairs, and the evil smells of the basement, that the house added one more to the standing shames of the district—an opinion doubly strong in her when at last she emerged from her gropings among the dens of the lower regions, and began to toil upstairs again with her filled ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... barn was on a knoll, so that its floor was almost as high as the roof of the house. Which would have been the best place for the tank: high up on the windmill (which stood on the knoll by the barn), or the basement of the house, or ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... has a door into the hall of the house, so that the manager is not obliged to go out into the street in order to go to business. There are no living-rooms on the ground floor, and the house has no basement. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... buildings, and the runner had passed between it and him. And he had not heard his footsteps. Then he understood, and his pulse quickened as he felt that he was on the track. Beneath the block was a large sort of cellar-basement. It was used as a store-room for chairs, and was never opened except when prize-day or some similar event occurred, when the chairs were needed. It was supposed to be locked at other times, but never was. The door was just by the spot where he ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... far as the Plaza and Church of San Lorenzo, stopping now and then to peep into the cool patios filled with flowers, and a murmuring fountain often in the middle, which you see through the corridor, sometimes with a door of iron trellis, sometimes open. All the windows of the basement have iron gratings and wooden shutters; and the courting and sweethearting is carried on with the lady inside and the lover outside the railing. Not that we saw anything of the kind as it takes place of an evening; but the construction of the houses explains ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... to Westminster, an engraving of which we have given on page 313, we gather that the cross was both stately and graceful. It consisted of three octangular compartments, each supported by eight slender columns. The basement story was probably twenty feet high; the second, ten; the third, six. In the first niche stood the effigy of probably a contemporaneous pope; round the base of the second were four apostles, each with a nimbus round his head; ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely "Bunner Sisters" in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... himself. No suggestion of iris clung to her now. And he remembered that the odour disappeared after they left the church. He held his peace until they arrived before a brown-stone house of the ordinary kind with an English basement. She took a key from her pocket and, going down several steps, beckoned to him. Baldur followed. His interest in this modern Cassandra and her bizarre words was too great for him to hesitate or to realize that he would get himself into some dangerous scrape. And was this truly the Mrs. Whistler ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... home half an hour earlier than was really necessary. Jack had asked them, over the telephone, to drop around, as he had to go out to his father's mill before he could attend the meeting in the church, where a room in the basement had been kindly loaned ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... When they arrived, the basement of the great church was filling with a throng of men and women. Soon the officers and the speaker of the evening appeared. The president was a brown woman who spoke easily and well, and introduced the main speaker. He was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced black man, clean shaven ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the basement story is in the Chinese or Venetian style, the first floor in that of the florid Gothic, with tiles and a pediment a-la-Nash, at the Bank; a doorway with inclined jambs, and a hieroglyphic a-la-Greek: a gable-ended glass lean ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at the foot of the wooden staircase ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... stepped over from his drugstore to join them. "Dammit," he said plaintively, dusting off his store jacket, "I been in the basement the last hour looking for an old pipe wrench. I swear ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... feet, and joined the first passage about midway between the sepulchral chamber and the outer air. The sepulchral chamber was carved mainly out of the solid rock below the pyramid, but was roofed in by some of the basement stones, which were sloped at an angle. The chamber measured forty-six feet in length and sixteen feet in breadth; its height in the centre was twenty-two feet. It contained a plain granite sarcophagus, without inscription of any kind, eight feet and a half in length, three feet and a half ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... days setting Nancy Ellen's new home in order. From basement to garret she had it immaculate and shining. No Bates girl, not even Agatha, ever had gone into a home having so ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... contains four class-rooms with physical and chemical laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred spectators. Frequent gatherings occur ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... nonsense my husband may write, but should be sorry to have the house look just like any other, and, of course, wish to have it look well. Why may not our stone house be built in the manner of your model brick one, at least basement and first story, thoroughly warmed and ventilated, brick partitions, fire-proof, and so on,—that is, if we can afford it? And that brings me to the question that I intended to ask in the beginning, Are these suggestions intended to apply to common kind of buildings or ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... not seem to have done very much damage, but afterwards one found that although the walls were standing and apparently solid there was no inside to the house. From roof to basement the building was bare as a dog kennel. There were no floors inside, there was nothing there but blank space; and on the ground within was the tumble and rubbish that had been roof and floors and furniture. Everything inside was smashed and pulverised into scrap and dust, and ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... a dozen other Ridgleyites, and Snubby Turner's room quickly became crowded with members of the school whose attention had been attracted by the exclamations. Meanwhile Snubby Turner slipped out of the room and ran down to the basement to consult Jerry, the janitor's assistant; he remained in the old fellow's box-like room ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, all the hypotheses of objectors to Darwin's theory are alike weak; for all have made these processes their chief reliance, whether appealing to a calcareous, or a volcanic, or a mountain-peak basement for the structure. The subsidence which the Darwinian theory requires has not been opposed by the mention of any fact at variance with it, nor by setting aside Darwin's arguments in its favour; and it has found new support in the facts from the "Challenger's" soundings ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... singing. Melchior and the old grandfather were sitting by the front-door smoking, and chatting and laughing uproariously. Louisa could not see them: but she was glad that her husband was at home that day, and that grandfather was in such a good temper. She was in the basement, cooking the dinner: an excellent dinner: she watched over it as the apple of her eye: there was a surprise: a chestnut cake: already she could hear the boy's shout of delight.... The boy, where was he? Upstairs: she could hear him practising ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... abandoned the upper stories to future bombs. Mr. Moulton is located in the salon; Mademoiselle has taken the salon jaune, and I the boudoir. Louis has improvised a bedroom in the small dining-room, that he may be near us at night if we should need him. The other servants sleep in the basement. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... bulletin boards in the gymnasium basement. It ran an employment agency, a blue-print shop, and a second-hand book- store. It was astonishing, said Mary, with a mysterious shake of her head, how many splendid girls—the very finest at Harding—the society was helping. Confidentially, she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... came crashing through the roof of a house at the end of the alley and burst in the basement, showering the street with slate and plaster. A second struck a chimney and plunged into the garden, followed by an avalanche of bricks, and another exploded with a deafening ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... room in the lab basement the four houseboaters and the barber waited under heavy guard for the arrival of a Coast Guard cutter. The barber was there courtesy of Captain Douglas, who had picked him up and delivered him to Spindrift after a call ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... up to the robing chambers, and completely disguised. Meanwhile a suitable camouflage of automobiles had arrived ostentatiously at the main entrance, to carry and escort the illustrious couple in fitting pomp to the great station. From the landing the couple were dropped direct to the basement to a prearranged oubliette. The password was the sound of the wheels of an ordinary cab at the kitchen entrance. The moments of suspense were not long. At the sound of the crush on the gravel a silent ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room window. The light came from thence; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... extraordinary furbishments, Mr. Williams had his mustache waxed to fine points and his back hair was precious with the luster and richness which accompany the use of the attar of Third Avenue roses combined with the bear's grease dispensed by basement barbers on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... and there as a preacher, now in the basement of churches at week-night religious meetings, and now in school-houses on Sunday afternoons, and here and there in pulpits with brave pastors who dared risk having an inexperienced theological student preach ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... there was a narrow pathway about six feet wide; by day, the passage would have been dangerous; but, by night, it was a perilous enterprize. The walls of the farm took an extensive sweep, the path crept round their entire basement, and to follow it to the end, in the darkness, only two paces from the edge of a perpendicular chasm, was no very easy task, even for as practiced a horseman as myself. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate, but boldly ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... wedge-shaped objects of a gray material. The materialization bombs! They were placing them carefully at selected points on the rocks, and adjusting the firing mechanisms. This group near us, which Don and I watched with a fascinated horror, were down in the basement of the jewelry store, among its foundations. There for a moment; then moving out under Fifth Avenue, peering carefully at the spectral outlines of ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... and Kearny, Big John, at Merchant street between Montgomery and Sansome, Marshall's Chop House, in the old Center Market, and Johnson's Oyster House, in a basement at Clay and Leidesdorff streets, were all noted places and much patronized, the latter laying the foundation of one of San Francisco's "First Families." Martin's was much patronized by the Old Comstock crowd, and this was the favorite ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... others were subsequently erected, the last being eighty cubits high. The Sanchi tope, the finest in India,[96] is a solid dome of stone, one hundred and six feet in diameter and forty-two feet high, with a basement and terrace, having a colonnade, now fallen, of sixty pillars, with richly carved stone ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... capacious mows. These latter have become the type now generally followed, the main improvement in later years being the raising of the frames upon stone foundations so as to provide accommodation for live stock in the basement. It would be interesting and profitable to study carefully the different localities to determine what elements have contributed to the peculiar agricultural characteristics of the present day. In this connection the language also might be investigated. For instance, to the early ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James
... valley were five or six high, irregular buildings, illuminated from basement to roof, each with a monstrous chimney from which issued a fan of party-colored flame. On one long low structure, with a double row of windows gleaming like the port-holes of a man-of- war at night, was a squat round tower ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... an old, rheumatic cook, Martha, who seldom left her basement kitchen, except when she went to her Baptist meeting, but for hours and hours she crooned heart-breaking melodies of that hope within her, of a better ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... certainly somebody down there, Nelly," I said to my sister, "and they are down in the basement. If we could creep down quietly and get into the drawing-room, we might open the window and call the watchman or policeman; both are on ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... her burden would let her, the old washerwoman passed through the crowd into a broad street and rang the basement bell ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... and the greater part of this magnificent collection remained in storage in the basement of Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, for the next twenty years. From time to time Professor Cope removed parts of the collection to his private museum in Pine Street, for purposes of study and scientific description. He seems, however, to ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... be has filed his application for preemption at the land office in the district in which he resides. Let us suppose further, that he is passing his first autumn here. His house, if he is a man of limited means, has but two rooms, and they are both on the basement story. He has just shelter enough for his stock, but none for his hay, which is stacked near by. The probability is, that he lives in the vicinity of some clear stream or copious spring, and has not, therefore, needed to dig a well. The whole establishment, one would think, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews |
