"Ceiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... however, which moved and taught her more than all the rest—the lamp, namely, that hung from the ceiling, which she always saw alight, though she never saw the flame, only the slight condensation towards the centre of the alabaster globe. And besides the operation of the light itself after its kind, the indefiniteness of the globe, and the softness of the light, giving her the feeling as if ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... of the room formed an excellent background for the books which lined its walls. Shelf after shelf of them rose from the floor, almost to the ceiling; and since many were bound in soft, rich colours, they struck a delightful note in the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... business experience, mitigated only by such exercise as the game of poker affords, had intensified an instinctive inexpressiveness. Under the most solitary circumstances old Grammont was still inexpressive, and the face that stared at the ceiling of his cabin and the problem of his daughter might have been the face of a pickled head in a museum, for any indication it betrayed of the flow of thought within. He lay on his back and his bent knees lifted the bed-clothes ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... vertical rack was no less painful. The prisoner with his hands tied behind his back was raised by a rope attached to a pulley and windlass to the top of a gallows, or to the ceiling of the torture chamber; he was then let fall with a jerk to within a few inches of the ground. This was repeated several times. The cruel torturers sometimes tied weights to the victim's feet to increase ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... see anything as I gazed around me, it was so dark; but gradually my eyes became accustomed to it, and I found that I was in a huge cave, part of the walls of which I observed on each side of me. The ceiling just above me was also visible, and I fancied that I could perceive beautiful glittering objects there; but the farther end of the cave was shrouded in darkness. While I was looking around me in great wonder, it came into my head that you two would think I was drowned; so I plunged down ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... stove, its four heavily rusted legs set in a shallow box which was sometimes filled with fresh sawdust. The stovepipe, guyed by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... 311th were loaded on the King Edward. Everybody had a pleasant time. No space went to waste, whatever. Some tried to sleep during the long night that ensued while standing against a post and others tried to strap themselves to the ceiling with their cartridge belts. In general the scene was like unto a large meat-cooler in a butcher shop, with the exception that the ship furnished life-preservers instead of meat-hooks and the temperature was the extreme ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... the larger portion of it, and has an imposing trophy in one of the four most advantageous positions in the building. The base of the apartment is about one hundred and forty feet square, and the domed ceiling at a height of one hundred and fifty feet rises from a square tower whose sides are round-topped windows of blue and white glass in chequerwork. These give full illumination and a gay appearance to the spacious hall, in which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... eddicated woman," said Mr. Bowers, with slow deliberation. "Yes, sir,—a pow'ful woman, havin' grand ideas of her own, and holdin' to 'em." He had withdrawn his eyes from the editor, and apparently addressed the ceiling in confidence. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... lengthways of the building, ten feet from each side and twenty feet apart. At every ten feet on these pipes we place five feet of three-quarter inch pipe, reaching each side, at the end of which is placed the sprinkler in an elbow pointing toward the ceiling. This arrangement is as we place them in all cotton and woolen mills, but may be varied to suit different styles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... attaining the perfect insight and sympathy imagined and longed for which is always a part of intense appreciation of natural beauty, Miss Dwyer threw herself back in her seat, and fixed her eyes on the car-ceiling with an expression as if she were looking at something at least as ...
— Deserted - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... feet broad some of them, and nearly one hundred feet high,—they easily eclipsed what I had recently seen in a mine, and which I at the time imagined shamed all the architecture of the world,—where the mountain was upheld over a vast space by massive piers left by the miners, with a ceiling unrolled over your head, and apparently descending upon you, that looked ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... can feel life hammering and throbbing in the air. We aren't in a garret any longer, dear. It's a fairy palace. Listen. Can't you hear the people shout, and the music, and the fountains playing? Can't you see the dusky walls fall back, the marble pillars, the lights in the ceiling?" ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... back to the floor. They every one disappeared from view in the ceiling. If it had not been for the heavy chair I had rolled in front of the door, I think ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... at yon show. And when us got here Hannah was lying on th' floor, just there, with her head on this 'ere hearthrug. Susan, th' woman, told us as th' missis said she felt as if she were falling down, and then down her falls. She was staring hard at th' ceiling, with eyes fit to burst, and her face as white as a sheet. Doctor lifts her up and puts her in a chair. Bless us! How her did gasp! And her lips were blue. "Hannah!" I says. Her heard but her couldna' ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... on the pillow beneath his head, Joe Mauser stared up at the ceiling of his room and rehashed his session with Nadine Haer. It hadn't taken him five minutes to come to the conclusion that he was in love with the girl, but it had taken him the rest of the evening to keep himself under rein and not let the fact get ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... recreation of the commune, which is a small rectangular room with a stage across one end. It is the only thing approaching a theatre which the commune boasts. It is well lighted, with big windows in the sides, and a top-light over the stage. It is almost new, and the walls and pointed ceiling are veneered with some Canadian wood, which looks like bird's-eye maple, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... him wistfully. Was ever poet, king, or even emperor, housed more sumptuously than this, he thought? ... as his eyes wandered to the domed ceiling, wreathed with carved clusters of grapes and pomegranates,—the walls, frescoed with glowing scenes of love and song-tournament,—the groups of superb statuary that gleamed whitely out of dusky, velvet-draped corners,—the quaintly shaped book-cases, overflowing with books, and made so as ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... hands, loaded their horses with the plunder, and broke to pieces what they could not carry away. Sometimes, not finding sufficient to satisfy their greed, they broke down the doors and windows, demolished the ceiling in order to tear out the beams, and made of these pieces and the furniture, which was too heavy to be carried away, a fire, which being communicated to the roofs of neighboring houses consumed in a moment the dwellings of the unhappy ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... with children from ceiling to floor, and I could see the invisible hands of thousands of mothers who had put the girls into clean pinafores and brushed and oiled the tousled ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... walking ahead of the Secretary while on the ceiling above him danced red and yellow and blue rainbows ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... walls, and the ceiling was brilliantly frescoed, while one of the wide bay-windows contained a stand filled with a superb array of wax flowers. Regina opened the elegant grand piano, but forbore to touch the keys, and at last when she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... pointed hell never know whether he did it or not there thats good enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eying up at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... gone well, he always replied cheerfully that things had gone about the same as usual, even though the day had been a particularly bad one. This was only at first, however. The girl happened to be the kind that likes to know things. One night, when she wakened to find him staring sleepless at the ceiling, the thought struck her that, after all, she knew nothing of his particular problems, and if they were partners in the business of living why shouldn't she be an intelligent member of the firm, even ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... never do any harm to the box-office," Potter added. "You may not get a hand on 'em, but you'll never get a cough, either." He looked dreamily at the ceiling. "I've often thought of doing a Biblical play. I'd have it built around the character of St. Paul. That's one they haven't touched yet, and it's new. I wouldn't do it with a beard and long hair. I wouldn't use much makeup. No. Just the face ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... know—they were so far off. But this one was, oh, so big! and it had great wings, as wide as—twice over the ceiling. So, when it was picking up Sindbad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn't know if we got on its back too: so I got up first, and then I pulled up Florrie, and we put our arms round its neck, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the maid lightly escaping from the room. He perceived that he had slept all night on the lounge, and he sent a cheery hail into his wife's room, and then followed it to tell her how he had thought it all out. She was as glad as he was; she applauded his plan to the ceiling; and he might not have thought of her accident if he had not seen presently that she was eating her breakfast ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... and the Captain sent a blue cloud whirling toward the ceiling. Then he asked suddenly, "Web, how much money has ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... in a mood of great depression out of a dream of wandering interminably in an endless building of innumerable pillars, pillars so vast and high that the ceiling was lost in darkness. By the scale of these pillars he felt himself scarcely larger than an ant. He was always alone in these wanderings, and always missing something that passed along distant passages, something desirable, something in the nature of a procession or of a ceremony, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... front part were five parlours, the frieze of the ceiling of which was all carved, and the pillars ornamented. On either side, were covered avenues, resembling passages through a rock. In the side-rooms were suspended cages, full of parrots of every colour, thrushes, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "the Hub," in 1859 and '60 I several times saw and heard Father Taylor. In the spring or autumn, quiet Sunday forenoons, I liked to go down early to the quaint ship-cabin-looking church where the old man minister'd—to enter and leisurely scan the building, the low ceiling, everything strongly timber'd (polish'd and rubb'd apparently,) the dark rich colors, the gallery, all in half-light—and smell the aroma of old wood—to watch the auditors, sailors, mates, "matlows," officers, singly or in groups, as they came in—their physiognomies, forms, dress, gait, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... are indoors, sit or stand against an inside wall (preferably in the basement), or in an inside doorway; or else take cover under a desk, table or bench (in case the wall or ceiling should fall). Stay away from ...
— In Time Of Emergency - A Citizen's Handbook On Nuclear Attack, Natural Disasters (1968) • Department of Defense
... again the Highland tragedy, of which Sir James Simpson tells in his lectures to the working-classes of Edinburgh, when at a Christmas meeting thirty-six persons danced all night in a small room with a low ceiling, keeping the doors and windows shut. The atmosphere of the room was noxious beyond description; and the effect was, that seven of the party were soon after seized with typhus fever, of which two died. You are inflicting on yourselves the torments of the poor dog, who is kept at the Grotto ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... single glance; all eyes were fixed on the advocate speaking. But far down in the court sat Geissler again, looking highly supercilious, as if bursting with his own superiority, his under-lip thrust forward, his face turned towards the ceiling. This enormous indifference to the solemnity of the court, and that "H'm," uttered loudly and without concealment, cheered Axel mightily; he felt himself no longer ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Dresden china, marqueterie tables, and a shrine (see page 237) of gilt carved work at one end of the room, reflected in mirrors of gigantic dimensions, dazzle the senses; and its ceiling studded with blue and gold pendants, and its walls all painted over with quaint devices like the pages of a missal. Also a magnificent Gothic chimney-piece (see page 238) of Carrara marble, fitted with brass-work of ormolu and chimney-glass. The chimney ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... a long sleep. Christmas Present comes in the shape of a giant, with a holly-green robe. SCROOGE perceives him seated in his room, with his noble head crowned with holly wreath studded with icicles, reaching to the ceiling. His throne is a wine-cask and his foot-stool a twelfth-cake. In his hand he bears a blazing torch, from which he sprinkles down gladness upon every threshhold he enters. An immense fire glows and crackles ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... lady entered, leading a meek-looking little fox- terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog and the poodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be thinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the other dogs, all silent, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... were now prepared to go to curry favour with Tiberius and Sejanus was exemplified in the ruin of Sabinus, a loyal friend of the house of Germanicus. The unfortunate man was tricked into speaking bitterly of Sejanus and Tiberius. Three senators were actually hidden above the ceiling of the room where he was entrapped into uttering unguarded phrases, and on ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... plan, and at least three hundred feet on a side. It was half filled with a brilliant throng, in which our entry caused a sensation. Light entered through lofty windows on all four sides. The floor seemed to be of a rose-colored marble, with inlaid diapering of lapis lazuli, and the walls and ceiling were equally rich. But that which absolutely fascinated the eye in this great apartment was a huge circle high on the wall opposite the entrance door, like a great clock face, or the rose window of a cathedral, from which poured trembling streams of ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the very prime of life. But Max, with his health impaired and his employment taken away from him, felt and looked a decrepit old man as he tottered upstairs to his third-floor room and flung himself on the bed, where he lay for more than an hour staring at the ceiling. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... scarcely dared mention to himself. "Rattly Robot," a dull-witted mechanical clod who was continually falling over himself and getting into trouble. It was a repellent caricature, but could still be very funny. Jon was just starting to read it when the ceiling light ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... Don't gorge yourself at every table where you dine; recollect you are to maintain the dignity of a millionaire. Don't shovel in your snuff like an old Invalide; toy with your snuff-box, glance often at your feet, and sometimes at the ceiling, before you answer; try to look sagacious, if you can. Above all, get rid of your vile habit of touching everything; in society a banker ought to seem tired of seeing and touching things. Hang it! you are supposed ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... house, which, at that time, belonged to the Bradshaw family. The house is of a much earlier date, though, than that, and was once, undoubtedly, a royal residence; for in a fine old oak room, the carved panelling of which was as black as ebony, the ceiling was all wrought with the roses and the fleur-de-lys. The kitchen and bar-room were both made out of an old banqueting-hall, immensely lofty, and with a very fine carved ceiling, and stone-mullioned windows, of capital style and preservation. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... smaller than Ncovi. It is studded with islands of fantastic shapes, all wooded with high trees of an equal level, and with little or no undergrowth among them, so their pale gray stems look like clusters of columns supporting a dark green ceiling. The forest comes down steep hill sides to the water edge in all directions; and a dark gloomy-looking herb grows up out of black slime and water, in a bank or ribbon in front of it. There is another channel out of this lake, still to the N.E. The Fans say they think it goes into ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... strange, they get restless and disgusted, and some of them go out. If they know him, they smile at one another and the ceiling and wait with more or less patience until he "gets started." If it is a meeting where others are to speak, by the time he "gets started" the chairman is anxiously looking at his watch and wondering if he will have as much trouble ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... hard to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted with ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... small, two figures stood before a reading-pulpit. The voice of the serving man who had thrown open the door made the words 'The Lord Privy Seal of England' echo mournfully along the gilded and dim rafters of the ceiling. ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... Jamestown the temperature was almost tropical at this season, and exhausting to body and spirit. The room in which they met, in the governor's house in Jamestown, was hardly spacious enough for their accommodation: four unadorned walls, with a ceiling that could be touched by an upraised hand. It had none of the aspect of a hall of legislature, much less of one in which was to take place an event so large and memorable as the birth of liberty in a new world. But the delegates thronged in, and were greeted at their entrance by Yeardley, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... but before undertaking this it was necessary for several reasons to go to Java. In Soerabaia I had my first experience of an earthquake. Shortly before two o'clock, while at luncheon in the hotel, a rather strong rocking movement was felt, and I looked at the ceiling to see if there were cracks which would make it advisable to leave the room. But it lasted only a few seconds, although the chandeliers continued to swing for a long time. At other places clocks stopped, and I ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... Consul went to the theater, which was packed to the ceiling, and offered a charming sight. The municipal authorities had a delightful fete prepared, which the First Consul found much to his taste, and upon which he complimented the prefect and the mayor on several different occasions. After witnessing ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... splendor, beauty, and luxury, never surpassed even by the great Vourienne and Devizac themselves! Painting, gilding, and flowers had not been spared. The walls were covered with frescoes of Venus, Psyche, Cupid, the Graces, and the Muses, seen among the rosy bowers and shady groves of Arcadia. The ceiling was covered with celestial scenery, in the midst of which was seen the cloudy court of Jupiter and Juno and their attendant gods and goddesses; the pillars were covered with gilding and twined with flowers, and long wreaths of flowers connected one pillar with another and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... meet and so confer Both by a shining salt-cellar, And have our roof, Although not arched, yet weather-proof, And ceiling free From that cheap candle-bawdery, We'll eat our bean with that full mirth As we were lords of all the earth. HERRICK, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up another sheet, and employed his eyes in following the course of a crack in the plaster, a slender black aperture which staggered across the dusty ceiling and down the dustier wall to disappear behind a still dustier map of Carlow County. "That's the trouble!" exclaimed Parker, observing the other's preoccupation. "Soon as you get to writing a line or two ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... table; and all the rest of the furniture, including the arm-chair in which the dressing-gown reclined, a stool, an easel, three packets of cigarettes and a trouser-stretcher, might have been replaced for another ten florins. Up in the corners of the ceiling, obscure in the eclipse of the cardboard shade, was a complicated system of cobwebs to match the dust ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... in the cool breezes from meadow and stream; an old beamed ceiling, smoke-browned by countless pipes; walls covered with sketches of every nook and corner about us; a table for four, heaped with melons, grapes, cheese, and flanked by ten-pin bottles just out of the brook; good-fellowship, harmony of ideas, courage of convictions—with no heads swelled to an unnatural ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... vast and sombre hall whose darkly panelled walls and high-beamed ceiling bred a multitude of shadows that danced about the table a weird, spasmodic saraband, without meaning or end, restlessly advancing and retreating as the candles flickered, failed and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... they—and many of their visitors and servants—had seen the phantasms of a very hideous and malignant old man, clad in tight-fitting hosiery of mediaeval days, and a maimed and bleeding big, black cat, that seemed sometimes to drop from the ceiling, and sometimes to be thrown at them. In one of the passages all sorts of queer sounds, such as whinings, meanings, screeches, clangings of pails and rattlings of chains, were heard, whilst something, no one could ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... my sight these cigarette matches, that smell like a candle that has been blown out when it needed snuffing." And the old man began to wake up, as the tobacco smoke went searching through his hair and up to the ceiling. "And so the government lost fifty ambulances in transit, eh? Well, they will be searching the returned soldiers next, to see if the boys got away with them, and never think of looking up the contractors, who probably never shipped them at all. It ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... such is mine host's name, immediately commenced exercising his skill in composition on a large, poster, which with a good hour's labour he completes, and posts upon the ceiling of the "bar-room," just below an enormously illustrated ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... communicated with a kind of loft—the space between the floor of the king's room and the ceiling of the one below it. Their plan was to pass through the hole they were making into this loft and cut out from below a piece of the flooring of the king's room, so as to form a kind ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he saith, it was garnished with them; he saith it was garnished with them for beauty. The line[16] saith, garnished; the margin saith, covered. 2. Wherefore, I think, they were fixed as stars, or as the stars in the firmament, so they were set in the ceiling of the house, as in the heaven of the holy temple. 3. And thus fixed, they do the more aptly tell us of what they were a figure; namely, of the ministerial gifts and officers in the church. For ministers, as to their gifts and office, are called ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... devices of Kinch to entertain him. That young gentleman quite distinguished himself by the variety and extent of his resources. He devised butting matches between himself and a large gourd, which he suspended from the ceiling, and almost blinded himself by his attempts to butt it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... from the gas-burners seemed to be changed to low, mournful cries, as of a woman over the dead. He turned the gas down a little; then the shadows of the cannel-coal fire danced like spectres on the ceiling. He jumped up and raised the lights again; again the low, dismal monotone sang in his ears. He stopped them with his fingers; again the persistent voice asked, "Why didn't you come down?" Flakes fell off the coal in the grate in shapes like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... by sparks from adjoining buildings, was very considerably damaged, however only to such an extent as to allow its restoration to the original condition. The roof frame is burned to the beginning of the curve of the dome. The inner ceiling has prevented the fire from spreading to the inner part of the church, containing rich art treasures. Above the choir, however, the inner ceiling gave way, thereby partially damaging the upper part of the rococo altar of stone which was without any ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... When his partner Herndon was asked when Lincoln had found time to study out the constitutional history of the United States, Herndon expressed the opinion that it was when Lincoln was lying on his back on the office sofa, apparently watching the flies upon the ceiling. This combination of bodily repose with intense mental and spiritual activity is familiar to those who have studied the biography of some of the great mystics. Walter Pater pointed it out in ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... portion of his hearers. All did not seem to agree on the subject, however, to judge, at least, by their manner and expression; for, during the delivery of their brother-in-law's oration, Miss Patsey Hubbard seemed to be generally looking down at the floor, while Charlie was looking up at the ceiling: and there were many others present, who thought Mr. Clapp's fluency much more striking than his common sense, or his sincerity. It is always painful to hear a good cause injured by a bad defence, to see truth disgraced by unworthy weapons employed in her name. It would ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... lonely Laura. Iron stairways conducted the unfortunates to these stone cages, where the dim cold light filtered through the iron lattice-work of the upper part of the door, made a perpetual crepuscular atmosphere within. The bare floor, walls, and low ceiling were spotlessly clean and white; and an iron cot with heavy brown blankets spread smoothly and a wooden bench in one corner, constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness reigned everywhere, but ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... bit startled at so novel a suggestion but assented with a nod. In a twinkling the operator had suspended a roller-screen from the chandelier dependent from the ceiling, pulled down the window shades and attached his projecting ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... order in which I noticed them. The first thing that impressed me was, that whatever Mrs. Daniels called her, this was no sewing girl's room into which I now stepped. Plain as was the furniture in comparison with the elaborate richness of the walls and ceiling, there were still scattered through the room, which was large even for a thirty foot house, articles of sufficient elegance to make the supposition that it was the abode of an ordinary seamstress open ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... blowing a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling, "I believe that this is as strange a week as any man ever lived. It's like a story book—like one of your wonderful stories, Scheherazade. It doesn't seem real, now that ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... large garret lit by oil lamps hung from ceiling. Some masked men standing silent and apart from one another. A man in a scarlet mask is writing at a table. Door at back. Man in yellow with drawn sword at it. Knocks heard. Figures in cloaks and ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... appropriated to the sailors. Two or three hammocks hung upon the ceiling, a table and two benches composed the entire furniture. D'Artagnan picked up two or three old sails hung on the walls, and meeting nothing to suspect, regained by the hatchway the deck ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... economically and socially under government auspices in 1933, 1934 and 1935, but the people of this country, by an overwhelming vote, are in favor of having the Congress—this Congress—put a floor below which industrial wages shall not fall, and a ceiling beyond which the hours of industrial labor shall ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was certain that he would not approve of the book her mother was reading from. He made no signs, however; and in the feeble glimmer she could see only the vigorous, clear cut profile, somewhat turned upwards, as if gazing at the ceiling. ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... midst of a curious litter. Clusters of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and all among them were clumps of old boots, shriveled skins, battered pans, scrap-iron, sheep-skins, useless touloupes, and on the floor musty old clothes, moth-eaten furs, and sheep-skin coats that even a moujik of the swamps would not have deigned ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... Jacob Clancing had given over to my keeping. On arriving at the Castle we found that the King had not yet come out from his chamber, but we were shown into the great hall to await him, a fine room with lofty windows and a noble ceiling of carved woodwork. At the further end the royal arms had been erected without the bar sinister which Monmouth had formerly worn. Here were assembled the principal chiefs of the army, with many of the inferior ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Helium rose from the pile of silks and soft furs upon which she had been reclining, stretched her lithe body languidly, and crossed toward the center of the room, where, above a large table, a bronze disc depended from the low ceiling. Her carriage was that of health and physical perfection—the effortless harmony of faultless coordination. A scarf of silken gossamer crossing over one shoulder was wrapped about her body; her black hair was piled high upon her head. With a wooden stick she tapped upon ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Miss Cresswell," he said, and seating himself at his desk he put the tips of his fingers together and looked up to the ceiling for inspiration. "I am afraid, Miss Cresswell," he said, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... pieces. It was his habit to feel less when he talked more; but no one could have fallen into a more perfect taciturnity than he when he saw Kirsteen coming up those narrow stairs. In so small a space as this room, where his head nearly touched the ceiling, was it fair to be confronted by that lady—he put it to his wife that same evening—"Was it fair?" He had seen a mother wild duck look like that when you took away its young—snaky fierce about the neck, and its dark eye! He had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a room that seemed to occupy most of the small house. One half of it was covered with a wooden ceiling which served as the floor of a loft, while for the rest of the way there was nothing beneath the sloping rafters of the roof. A ladder reached from the floor to the loft, and at one end, that nearest the outer door, a ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... were made of terra-cotta or bronze. They were mostly oval, flat on the top, often with figures in relief. In them were one or more round holes to admit the wick. They either rested on tables, or were suspended by chains from the ceiling. ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... congregate, by means of a brush. A common syringe is an excellent thing to use in applying it to the bedstead. Apply the water as hot as you can. Apply it freely, and you will hardly be troubled any more that season with bugs. Whitewash the ceiling with plenty of dissolved alum in the wash, and there will be an end to their dropping down from ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Tom. And this remark brought to an end the first phase of this conversation,—brought to an end, apparently, all conversation whatsoever. Tom racked his brain for a new topic, opened his roll-top desk, drummed on it, looked up at the ceiling and whistled softly, and then turned and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was choice of two rooms,—one flight, or two. But the first looked out westward, where was comparatively little of what they had come for. Higher up, they could have the same outlook that the others had; a slanting ceiling opened with dormer window full upon the grandeur of Washington, and a second faced southward to where beautiful blue, dreamy Lafayette lay soft against ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... money, into the company, and when the mine begun to return dividends by the car load, they could give largely to the church and pay the debts of all the churches, and put down carpets and fresco the ceiling. The man said he felt that he had been steered on to that silver mine by a higher power, and his idea was to work it for the glory of the cause. He said he liked Pa, and would make him vice president of the company. Pa, he bit like ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... friend! You have had sad proof enough of that in your brief stay amongst us. But we can have clear consciences, and that is the main point!" And herewith the chaplain threw his handsome eyes upward, and tried to look as if his conscience was as white as the ceiling. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hour or two, and then we returned to the shop where we had left our horse and wagon, the pilot very eccentric behind us. It was a small, dingy shop, dimly lighted by a single inch of candle, faintly disclosing various boxes, barrels standing on end, articles hanging from the ceiling; the proprietor at the counter, whereon appear gin and brandy, respectively contained in a tin pint-measure and an earthenware jug, with two or three tumblers beside them, out of which nearly all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... of things!" cried Mr. Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "She never tasted it—it can't be tasted in a sip! Why, how, old ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... is!" remarked Myra to the ceiling, before looking again into the bright eyes of her partner. "Pardon me, Don Carlos, but you are carrying your extravagant nonsense ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... room, near a window overlooking the Place, was General Pershing's table. It was adorned with a statuette of General Joffre and a cluster of miniatures of captured German standards. Extending from the floor to the ceiling on one of the walls were two enormous oil copies of "La Bataille de Fontenoy" and the "Passage du Rhin." A large flag-draped photograph of President Wilson occupied a place of honour on an easel at one end ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... that was wonderful, and gazed at the ceiling, her lips closed. Mickey watched her a second, then he began softly: "Flowersy-girl, I don't see what you mean! I don't know why you act like this! I don't know what's to have a tantrum for, when I didn't mean it to be ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... room, about fifty feet in length, and proportionably wide; somewhat dark, for the light came only from the one large window through which they entered; and though the window rose to the cornice of the ceiling, and took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes were set, and by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the upper part of the casement. The bookcases, too, were ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... seemed to be that of confounding appetite at every turn. A long, shedlike room it was, with walls of unpainted pine, still sweating from the axe. Festoons of scalloped paper, in conflicting shades, hung from the ceiling, a menace to the taller of the guests. On the rough walls some one, either prompted by a latent spirit of aestheticism or with an idea of abetting the town towards merrymaking—an encouragement it hardly required—had tacked posters of shows, mainly ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... had used to enter here all alone and lock the doors, remaining thus in sorrow and solitude many hours. She recalled her own childish fears when, by chance running in to look at the pictures for her own entertainment, or to play with her ball on a rainy day for the convenience of space and a lofty ceiling, she was suddenly checked and held in awe by the sight of that great gilded frame enshrining the, to her, unknown presentment of a veiled Personality. Her father alone was familiar with the face hidden behind that covering which he had put up with his ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was me," he went on, "I wouldn't want you a little bit. But it's Her. She's got her mind made up to do the right thing and have us all be somebody, and when she makes her mind up——" He hesitated and studied the ceiling for some seconds. "Believe me," he continued, ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... expected to see, he found himself looking, as it were, through a window from the outside into a great, oak-panelled sleeping chamber, lighted by a huge silver lamp hanging from the middle of the painted and corniced ceiling. Against the middle of the left hand side wall, as he was looking into the room, stood one of the huge, heavily-draped, four-post bedsteads in which the great ones of the earth were wont to take their rest a couple of hundred years ago. The curtains were drawn back on both ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... rich with the light of the western sun, whose arrangement instantly struck Kate Rice as unusual, for the book-shelves were precisely like those of a butler's pantry. They began at about four feet from the floor and reached entirely to the ceiling, and were filled with splendid, neglected books, while beneath a broad shelf, at their base, were rows of little brass knobs, each of which indicated a shallow drawer. Each drawer had a lock and a small plate which bore a letter and a number, ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... mountain-eagle hovers over it. It has five hundred and forty doors, each large enough for eight hundred heroes to march through abreast. Inside, every thing is glittering bright. The rafters are made of spears, and the ceiling is covered with shields, and the walls are decked with war-coats. In this hall Odin sets daily a feast for all the heroes that have been slain in battle. These sit at the great table, and eat of the food which Odin's servants have prepared, and drink of ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... at the invitation of the hunter, entered his house, first taking off our shoes. We all sat round the fire, which was in a great square hearth in the middle of the floor, while the chimney was a gaping black funnel in the ceiling. My party consisted of three of my students from the government school of Fukui, my interpreter, a brave soldier named Inouye, and my body-servant Sahei. The six mountaineers with huge wide snow-shoes, whom I hired for the size of their feet to ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... from the centre of which curtains of blue and silver, sweeping back and wreathing the columns, form an arch beneath which queens might be proud to walk. The walls are glittering with silver and blue, and all the decorations of the apartment exhibit the same beautiful union. The ceiling above is painted in fresco, where cherubs, lovely as the dream of love, spread their wings of silvery tinted azure and draw ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... so crazy as I supposed," said Solomon Owl to himself. And ever afterward, when he happened to awake and feel hungry, Solomon Owl used to look up at the ceiling above him and wish that Benjamin Bat ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the scene for a short time, and introduce to our readers a company assembled in the best inn which, at that time, was to be found in the town of Cherbourg. The room in which they were assembled was large in dimensions, but with a low ceiling—the windows were diminutive, and gave but a subdued light, on account of the vicinity of the houses opposite. The window-frames were small, and cut diamond-wise; and, in the centre of each of the panes, was a round of coarsely-painted glass. ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and "Rum." To add to the effect, between the decanters were ranged glass jars of striped peppermint and winter-green candies, while a few lemons suggested pleasing possibilities of a hot sling, spiced rum flip or Tom and Jerry. The ceiling of this dining-room was blackened somewhat and the huge beams overhead gave an idea of the substantial character of the construction of the place. That fuel was plentiful, appeared in evidence in the open ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... but far more the appearance had it of a magnificent temple, so vast and lofty it was; so mazy with multitudinous columns and arches, and so resplendent with the light of that living lamp, which found reflection in a million star-like points, as if wall, floor, ceiling, column and arch were studded with gems of every rich and brilliant hue. The hubbub which he had heard around him, the individual sounds whereof were now more distinct to his ear, Sprigg found to proceed from an innumerable multitude of diminutive people, sweeping by him in a continuous stream, ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... dream on this moon-haunted wall, near this nocturnal pool, forever. Hubert pictured Berenice in her room, behind bolted doors, lying across the bed weeping, or else staring in sullen repentance at the white ceiling. Why had she indulged in such vandalism? The portrait was utterly destroyed by the flaring smear laid on with a brush in the hand of an enraged young animal. What sort of a woman might not develop from this tempestuous girl! He knew that he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... supports of the dolmen of Petit-Mont-en-Arzon has on it a representation of two human feet in relief; that of Couedic in Lockmikel-Baden is paired with flat stones covered with engravings. On the granite ceiling of the crypt beneath the dolmen of the Merchants, or as it is called in Brittany the DOL VARCHANT, is engraved the figure of a large animal supposed to have been a horse, but the head of which was unfortunately ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... Saharan cities,) with here and there open spaces or little squares, of which there are several to let in the light of heaven. They are small and narrow, and winding, not more than a couple of camels can pass abreast, the ceiling however being high enough to admit the entrance of the tall Maharee camel. A camel of this species entered to-day: it amazed me by its stupendous height; a person of average size might have walked under its belly. The principal ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... gentlemen and ladies appear in the dress of kings or queens, mountain bandits or clowns, and at the close of the dance throw off their disguises, so, in this dissipated life, all unclean passions move in mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. The lights sparkle along the wall, or drop from the ceiling—a very cohort of fire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flash, and rustle, and ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... children, a nebulous distrust of this mysterious Person, a distrust of which I was particularly conscious on winter nights when the gas had been turned down to a blue fleck, and the shadow of the mantelpiece flickered and plunged on the ceiling, and the clock ticked louder and louder, in prediction (I suspected) of some terrible event very ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... had never seen a place like this. It was the front kitchen; the cooking and most of the house-work was done in the back one, a big barn-like place with doors in all corners. The front one was half a kitchen and half a sitting-room, warm-coloured, with red-tiled floor and low ceiling, heavily cross-beamed and hung with herbs and a couple of hams, in great contrast to the whiteness of the kitchen at the bulb farm. There were brass and copper pots and pans such as he knew, but they reflected an open fire, a dirty extravagance unknown to Mevrouw. Joost glanced ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... years old) spoke next. "I would tie an extinguisher to one end of a thread. I would put this string through a pulley fastened to the ceiling; the other end of this string should be fastened to the middle of another thread, which should be strained between two posts set upright on each side of the candle, so as that the latter string might lean against the candle at any distance you want below the flame. When the candle burns down to ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... entrance to them being from the two wings. The entrance to the pump-room, which is extensive, lofty, and of exact proportions, is through folding doors at each extremity of the central building.—The ornaments of the ceiling, the cornices, and in fact, the whole interior embellishments, are chaste and simply elegant. On one side the light is introduced through seven windows, and on the opposite side by one window of large dimensions, composed of stained glass. Underneath ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... into which peach stones are trodden at the threshold, in order to prevent its wearing away. The furniture consists of a deal table and some chairs, rather nearly made of strips of hide fastened to a wooden frame. There is no ceiling, but only beams, to which are fastened strips of "biltong," or game's flesh, dried in the sun. Out of this room open one or two more, in which the whole family sleep, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... erect and groped for the door of the compartment which he located in the ceiling almost directly above him. Drawing himself through the aperture, he made the narrow passage, but such was the position of the car that it was only with the greatest difficulty he succeeded in worming his way along, using the dividing wall ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... consul, who is an immensely wealthy man and lives in the most princely style. I visited the house a few days since, before the arrival of the governor, and was delighted with the splendid taste displayed in the fresco of the ceiling, the stucco of the walls, and indeed with every article of furniture with which the rooms were supplied. On the parterre, or lower roof, was a little gem of a garden, with raised beds, blooming with beautiful plants and flowers, while in the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... servants, and even the fragments were then gathered up and locked away in safety. She moved across the kitchen to the accustomed cupboard, taking the keys from her pocket, and he followed close upon her. There was a small oil lamp hanging from the low ceiling which just gave them light to see each other. She lifted her hand to this to tare it from its hook, but he prevented her. "No, by Heaven!" he said, "you don't touch that till I've done with it. There's light enough for you to drag out ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... back with a piece of clothes-line, one end of which he slipped with a running knot round one ankle, and the other in like fashion round the other. Then he cut the line in halves, and drawing them over two hooks in the ceiling, some distance apart, so that the legs continued widespread like a V upside down, hauled the feet up as high as he could, and fastened the ends of the lines. Hold lines and hooks, it was now impossible to ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... and would not burn, so the giant began to blow. At the first puff Ashpot found himself flying up to the ceiling as if he had been a feather, but he managed to catch hold of a piece of birch-bark among the rafters, and on reaching the ground again he told the giant that he had been up to get something to make ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... and the lower part of his waistcoat and an intervening inch of shirt were visible. He was standing inside the window on the steps, hanging up the last strip of his background from the brass rail along the ceiling. Within, the Manchester shop window was cut off by a partition rather like the partition of an old-fashioned church pew from the general space of the shop. There was a panelled barrier, that is to say, with a little door ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... looked at and listened to the tape and practically went through the ceiling. It stationed a monitor truck in Osceola for months, listening feverishly ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... equanimity, to esteem the purple no higher than the warm dress worn at home, rather to remain in the ranks of those that obey than to press into the confused crowd of candidates for the office of ruler, rather to lie on the grass beside the brook than to take part under the golden ceiling of the rich in emptying his countless dishes. This philosophico-practical tendency is the true ideal essence of the Lucretian poem and is only overlaid, not choked, by all the dreariness of its physical demonstrations. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of myself, I am obliged to relate. I am, at the same time, under the necessity of being mysterious and subtle, of endeavoring to impose and of descending to things the most foreign to my nature. The ceiling under which I write has eyes; the walls of my chamber have ears. Surrounded by spies and by vigilant and malevolent inspectors, disturbed, and my attention diverted, I hastily commit to paper a few broken sentences, which I have scarcely time to read, and still less to correct. I know ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... on the upper floor. He knew its floor, and began at once to take out bits of it. When he had managed to get under the floor he took out pieces of the ceiling beneath, and jumped down into the mortuary a floor below. That day only one corpse was lying on the table. There in the corner of the room were stored bags to make hay mattresses for the prisoners. Vassily knew about the bags, and that ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... thank God that I do not belong to the stupid sluggish Germanic race, but to a braver, taller, and handsomer people;" here taking the pipe out of his mouth, he stood up proudly erect, so that his head nearly touched the ceiling of the room, then reseating himself, and again putting the syphon to his lips, he added, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... going to be the top-mounter!" cried Teddy, taking a running start and beginning to clamber up the human column. He was assisted up and up until he was standing at the top, his head almost touching the high ceiling ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... "I won't be hushed! Everybody says 'Hush' to me. The count says 'Hush!' Allan says 'Hush!' You say 'Hush!' I'm a-weary of this hushing. Ah, if there was a man who didn't say it to me!" and Mistress Thankful lifted her fine eyes to the ceiling. ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... distressed on the occasion, that she would have given all her little treasure, and even all her playthings, to have brought Cherry to life; but it was now too late. Her papa had the bird stuffed, and hung up to the ceiling, in memory of Nancy's carelessness. She dared not even to lift her eyes up to look at it, for, whenever she did, it was sure to make her cry. At last she prevailed on her papa to have it removed, but not till after many earnest entreaties and repeated acknowledgments of the fault she had been ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... of which was a table on hinges, so that it could be dropped down when not in use. The only possible objection to this cabin, in the mind of a shoreman, would have been its lack of height. It was necessarily "low studded," being only five feet from floor to ceiling, which was rather trying to the perpendicularity of a six-footer. But it was a very comfortable cabin for all that, though tall men were compelled to be ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... loftier than the usual yacht saloon, and on all sides the windows were oval shaped, set in between the most exquisitely painted panels of sea pieces, evidently the work of some great artist. Overhead the ceiling was draped with pale turquoise blue silk forming a canopy, which was gathered in rich folds on all four sides, having in its centre a crystal lamp in ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli |
