"Ceiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the four-square cave there was a brazier of bronze, and from each rose incense smoke, straight upward. The four streams of smoke met at the ceiling and converged into a cloud ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the Matted Gallery, as it is now with the mats and boards all taken up, so that we walked over the rafters. But strange to see how hard matter the plaister of Paris is that is there taken up, as hard as stone! And pity to see Holben's work in the ceiling blotted on and only whited over! My wife this day with Hales, to sit for her hand to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... its master. His most famous pictures, in addition to the Assumption already cited, are—the "Entry of Paul III. into Bologna"; the "Francois I. Touching for King's Evil"; a "Power of Love," painted under a fine ceiling by Agostino Carracci, on the walls of a room in the ducal palace at Parma; an "Adam and Eve" (at the Hague); and two of "Joseph and Potiphar's Wife" (at Dresden and Copenhagen). His son Felice (1660-1724) and nephew Paolo (1709-1764) were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... then it seemed to Jenny as if Paradise burst upon her. She had never before seen such a room as this cabin. It was a room such as she had dreamed about in those ambitious imaginings of a wondrous future which had always been so vaguely irritating to Emmy. It seemed, partly because the ceiling was low, to be very spacious; the walls and ceiling were of a kind of dusky amber hue; a golden brown was everywhere the prevailing tint. The tiny curtains, the long settees into which one sank, the chairs, ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... had closed behind Stephen and Nevill, they were not yet in the house, but in a large court with a ceiling of carved and painted cedar-wood supported by marble pillars of extreme lightness and grace. In front, this court was open, looking on to an inner garden with a fountain more delicate of design than those Stephen had ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was certainly, perhaps a hackneyed type none the less: the ceiling and the walls panelled in dark well-polished oak; the floor a pavement of broad stone flags, covered for the most part now by a faded Turkey carpet; the narrow windows, small-paned and leaded, set in deep stone embrasures; a vast fireplace jutting across a corner, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the variant form "cassoon" being adapted from the Ital. casone), a chest or case. When employed as a military term, it denotes an ammunition wagon or chest; in architecture it is the term used for a sunk panel or coffer in a ceiling, or in the soffit of an arch or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... room that she expected to be her prison for an indefinite length of time. Walls and ceiling were sections, locking together, and in some places she could see through the cracks. One side opened upon a tent wall; the other into another room; the small glass windows upon a house of canvas. When Allie put her hand ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... in beginning pictures, some in finishing, &c. The window, which is remarkably large, and situated so as to command a good prospect from without, admits light sufficient to illuminate the room, or rather shop, which shop is at least fifteen feet long. Casting your eye up towards the ceiling, which is equally lofty with the length of the apartment, you are somewhat at a loss to account for a vast quantity of beams, cordage, pullies, and canvasses, all appearing to have their several uses, and all kept in regular order by a man for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... conceive the idea of reproducing on canvas that perfectly typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of the Salon in that vast hothouse of statuary, with the yellow gravelled paths and the great glass ceiling, beneath which, half-way from the floor, the galleries of the first tier stand forth, lined with heads bending over to look, and with ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... refreshment for travellers and villagers is dispensed in stone mugs embellished with the sign of the inn; and its "low-roofed room" is at the end of the passage as Mr. Pickwick found it, with its oak beams across the ceiling adding to its picturesqueness. In this room the "high back leather-cushioned chairs" are still to be seen, together with a grandfather clock and other antique pieces of furniture in thorough ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... to earth were there in abundance. The columns were of white quartz, inlaid with green jade; the seats were made of coral, the curtains of mountain crystal as clear as water, the windows of burnished glass, adorned with rich lattice-work. The beams of the ceiling, ornamented with amber, rose in wide arches. An exotic fragrance filled the hall, whose outlines ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... emptied his glass at one go. Leaning his head against the wall, his fists on the table, his legs stretched out, he stared at the ceiling. ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... harness against one wall, and the floor was black and thick with grease all round the rusty stove. A pile of unwashed dishes and cooking utensils stood upon the table, and the lamp above her head had blackened the boarded ceiling, and diffused a subtle odour ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... day the house is all hung with a canopy that covers everything, so that neither walls nor ceiling are seen. The bridal-chamber is open to the sight and richly adorned, for on that day everything gleams with splendor and adornment. The bride is seated on a cushion, near a seat made for the groom from cushions in the Moorish style, with embroidery and strips of silk with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... standing on the bed, struck it furiously against the ceiling, intending it as signal to the man above to desist. But Paul, catching the response, began to jump more furiously than ever, finding ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... unpleasant meeting. Mr Gogram, as he had walked across the hall, had pulled a document out of his pocket, and held it in his hand as he took a chair. John Vavasor stood behind one of the chairs which had been placed at the table, and leaned upon it, looking across the room, up at the ceiling. George stood on the rug before the fire, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... that it appears to have three probosces. There are no markings on the wings of the ordinary species of Culex, while the wings of Anopheles are distinctly mottled. The Culex, sitting on a wall or ceiling, holds its hind legs above its back and its body nearly parallel to the wall or ceiling, but the Anopheles carries its hind legs either against the wall or hanging down (rarely above the back), and its body, instead of lying parallel ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... writing books for the multitudes. In this way arose the profession of the novelist and the illustrator. But the people who had money enough to buy the new books were not the sort who liked to sit at home of nights, looking at the ceiling or just sitting. They wanted to be amused. The few minstrels of the Middle Ages were not sufficient to cover the demand for entertainment. For the first time since the early Greek city-states of two thousand years before, the professional ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... below life size, when apparently intending that they should be full- sized, and worse than this, that some are smaller in proportion than others. Nevertheless, when we bear in mind that the Crucifixion chapel was the first work of its kind, that it consists of four large walls and a ceiling covered with magnificent frescoes, comprising about 150 figures; that it contains twenty-six life-sized statues, two of them on horseback, and much detail by way of accessory, all done with the utmost care, and all coloured up to nature,—when we bear ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... Ayscough. It has to be finished in three weeks. Armies of workers.... And the blue room on the first floor, put in a new ceiling, something elaborate. What's that? Can't do it in three weeks? But it has to be done. I leave it to you, my dear Ayscough.... Oh, the garden wants seeing to. I must have the garden put straight.... And the paths graveled.... A few sheep ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... I alluded to, after our ride we attended morning service, held as usual in the neat little church, which, with the exception of a few gashes in the ceiling rafters, caused by fragments of shell, had up to date escaped serious injury. The Dutch Church, on the other hand, curiously enough, was almost demolished by shell-fire at the beginning of the siege. We then drove up to the hospital, where Miss Hill, the plucky and youthful-looking matron, ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... consisted of a pitcher of cold tea, a lantern, matches, a revolver, and a shotgun. Enormous yellow cats, which lived in and around the freight-house, darted to and fro inside and outside the house, along the ceiling-beams, emitting loud cries, and that alone was enough to prevent sleep. In the old part of the house, some of the partitions did not run up to the roof, but were left open (for ventilation, I suppose), thus making a fine play-ground for cats and rats, which darted along, squeaking, meowing ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... 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 party drank; some coming up to the counter frankly, others lingering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... flicker of fire-light on the carved and gilded panels of the lofty ceiling; the ceiling, in fact, was invisible, unguessable ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... well employed by a detail of men, whom the Doctor had previously instructed. The floor was as white and clean as strong arms with an abundance of soap and hot water could scrupt it, the walls and ceiling were neatly papered with "Harper's Weeklies," and "Frank Leslies," other papers concealed the roughness of the table and shelves, white sheet and pillow-cases had given the cot an air of inviting neatness, and before it lay a square of rag carpet. The window was shaded with calico curtains, the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... them,—"As if any livin' boy would pick out dried apples to eat, when he hed a hull store to choose from!" and how the very next day a man coming to buy a pair of boots, Omnium Grabb hooked down a pair from the ceiling, where all the boots hung, and found them "chock full" of dried apples, which the rats had been busily storing in them ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... windows and doors, were covered with paintings, admirable both for their design and color; and running all around the room, and attached to the walls, was a low and broad seat, covered with cushions of the richest workmanship and material. A lofty and arched ceiling, lighted by invisible lamps, represented a banquet of the gods, offering to those seated at the tables below a high example of the manner in which the divine gifts should be enjoyed. This evening, at least, we did not use the privileges which that high example ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... eyes looked up, with saintly resignation, at the dirty ceiling—and asked in dumb show what she had done to deserve the injury implied by ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... are placed in the way of these gentlemen's investigations, I shall make it my duty to bring the facts before the Home Secretary," announced the professor, speaking up to the ceiling with the voice of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... looking at my ceiling, Mrs. Percival," said Mr. Early. "It is a reproduction of the beautiful fan-tracery in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster. Doubtless you recognize it. But, alas, it is impossible to attain the spiritual beauty of the original until age has laid its sanctifying ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... And straight before her stood the angel of God in white garments, the same she had seen at the church-door; but he no longer carried the sharp sword, but in its stead a splendid green spray full of roses, and he touched the ceiling with the spray, and the ceiling rose up high, and where he had touched it there gleamed a golden star. And he touched the walls and they widened out, and she saw the organ which was playing; she saw the old pictures of the preachers and ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... falls on the day before summer. It had been such a day, and now at midnight I was sitting at my desk. Both hands of the clock were pointing to the ceiling—and to the limitless stars beyond. My wife and daughter had long been asleep. I had stayed up to write a few letters but it was not a night for working. Although it was a bit chilly outside, the ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... enough—or assisted by their elders, in the form of governess or elder sister, play at forfeits and twilight, and blindman's buff. These innocent gambols they carried on in the wide entrance hall. Some flags had been hung, to please Milly, against the heavy beams of the ceiling, and the gardener had filled every niche ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the ceiling. "Sounds as if I had heard it, but I can't place it this minute. Certainly I never met ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... leaned a little forward in the box, Philip in a state of beatific wonder, which turned soon to amazement when, at Elizabeth's first appearance, the house suddenly rose, and a torrent of applause broke out from the floor to the ceiling. Elizabeth for a moment seemed dumbfounded. The fact that the news of what had happened that afternoon could so soon have become public property had not occurred to either her or Philip. Then a sudden smile of comprehension broke across her face. With understanding, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... more preposterously are we deluded, until at last—but the Lord—to think of preaching," and he laughed—"you must have made me do it;" and he rose and played with his favourite toys, the wax apples, pitching them up to the ceiling alternately and catching them in one ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... now go inside by the front door. The cornice of the ceiling of the vestibule first entered is singularly fine. Like every other good artist Professor Aitchison improved as he went on, and this is one of his latest designs in mouldings. When the entrance was altered some ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... received by the ministry of an angel the several articles of the Koran.] The other is that after his death he was buried at Medina, and his coffin suspended, by divine agency or magnetic power, between the ceiling ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... despairingly to the ceiling with wide-spread hands. "There's no poetry in his soul," he mourned, "no blood in his veins!" He faced Don scornfully. "Donald P. Gilbert is your name, my son, and the P stands for Practical. All right, then, draw up a chair and let's have it over. To think, ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... in a richly ornamental style. The whole front of the lower story, except that taken up by the doorway, is occupied by two large plate glass windows, a single plate to each window, costing together over three thousand dollars. On entering and looking up, you find above you a ceiling sixteen feet high; while, on gazing before, you perceive a vista of One Hundred and Fifty-Seven feet. The retail counters extend back for eighty feet, and, being double, afford counter-room of One Hundred and Sixty feet in length. There is also over Three Thousand feet ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... now shrivelled at the edges in this extreme heat. On the wall in front of him the Congo bows and poisoned arrows looked more venomous and deadly than by the light of day. A scorpion twice the size of a penny was making a circuit of the walls just below the ceiling; you could hear a faint scratch from it as it travelled along, a scratch that seemed an echo of Meeus's pen as ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... were the heavy timbers of the frame, the summer-pieces and joists. The summer-piece was the large middle beam in the middle from end to end of the ceiling; the joists were cross-beams. These were not covered with plaster as nowadays, but showed in every ceiling; and in old houses are sometimes set so curiously and fitted so ingeniously, that they are always an entertaining study. Another ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... intended to keep a quantity of provisions and outfit. The walls consisted of 3-inch planks, with air space between; panels outside and inside, with air space between them and the plank walling. For insulation we used cellulose pulp. The floor and the ceiling between the rooms and the loft were double, while the upper roof was single. The doors were extraordinarily thick and strong, and fitted into oblique grooves, so that they closed very tightly. There were two windows — a triple one in the end wall of the main room, and a double one ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... specimens, curious stuffed birds, a cabinet of osteological preparations, and over and around the heavy looking carvings and mouldings about the four doorways, and continued from the fireplace up to the low ceiling. But, look where he would, he could see nothing but a beautiful face with large, pensive eyes, gazing with loving trust in his as he had seen them only a few hours before when he ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... sunrises as it had witnessed—looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the stairs. It was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... went down and turned into his hammock. I didn't go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the creaking of the ship's timbers as she rose to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging slowly altogether. At last, however, I dropped off, and I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with a start. For the first moment I didn't see anything but the swinging hammocks and the lamp; but ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... fly a little. So once, when he was nowhere to be found, the monks of the convent at last discovered him in the church, "raised so high above the ground that his head touched the ceiling." This is not a bad performance for a mere lad, as he then was. And how useful this gift became in old age was seen when, being almost incapable of moving his legs, and with body half paralysed, he was nevertheless ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... from year to year, the same passions, the same prayers; his apparel, the wide-brimmed hat, the cloak falling in long straight folds, the peaked shoon, are an habitual part of him. We see little of the room, but every one remembers the chandelier hanging from the ceiling reflected in the mirror opposite. These reflections have lasted for three hundred years; they are the same to-day as the day they were painted, and so is the man; he lives again, he is a type that Nature never wearies of reproducing, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... by ten looking glass sloped from the wall over a large towel and comb case.... We got a roof laid over head as soon as possible, but it was laid of loose clapboards split from a red-oak, and a cat might have shaken every board in our ceiling.... We made two kinds of furniture. One kind was of hickory bark, with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all around the tree, the size of which would determine the caliber of our box. Into one end ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... against the wall and the furniture, as would many birds in his position; in fact, he showed unusual self-possession and self-reliance. He was exceedingly curious about his surroundings: tapped the wall, tested the top of picture frames, drummed on the curtain cornice, and closely examined the ceiling. He was beautifully dressed in soft gray all mottled and spotted and barred with white, but he had not as yet put on the red cap of his fathers. While we watched him, he heard outside a sapsucker cry, to which he listened eagerly; then he drummed quite vigorously on the cornice, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... for 1980 of 8.2 million barrels a day—well below the level of foreign oil purchases in 1977. I expect our imports to be much lower than this, but the ceiling will be enforced by an oil import fee if necessary. I'm prepared to lower these imports still further if the other oil-consuming countries will join us in a fair and mutual reduction. If we have a serious shortage, I will not hesitate to impose ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... deep breath. His hands clasped behind his head, and he looked up at the ceiling. He seemed perfectly relaxed. That, Malone knew, was a bad sign. It meant that there was a dirty job coming, a job nobody wanted to do, and one Burris was determined to pass off on him. He sighed and tried to ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ceasing to be that it has taken on no other character, except that of a place which no one cares either to preserve or change. It is painted the life-saving grey, but has not the life-saving freshness. This is one end of what was the big boat room, and at the ceiling is seen a part of the frame work from which the boat once swung. About two thirds of the back wall is open, because of the big sliding door, of the type of barn door, and through this open door are seen the sand dunes, and beyond them the woods. At one point the line where ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... memory of the poet, we must go to Ayr, and look upon the humble cottage which was his birthplace. It consisted of but two small rooms paved with flag-stones, and with but one window of four small panes, while the thatched roof formed the only ceiling. The whole place is inconceivably small for the dwelling of a family, for there is not even an attic-room, or any other spot where children could have been hidden away. In such a hut as this it is hard to conceive of a family being reared in purity and delicacy, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... wharves and shipping in the busy river. The hill has been levelled on the top and paved into a wide platform, to which you ascend by a flight of many steps from the gate below, where stand the dragons. This entrance-way is all roofed over, and the pillars and the ceiling are red and painted. Here it was that much fighting took place in the early wars, in 1852 especially, and many men, English and Burmese, were killed in storming and defending this strong place. For it had been made a very strong place, this holy place of him ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... kick some myself. Excuse ME." He stood for a moment looking up at the stovepipe, then without apparent effort he sprang into the air, shot up his long legs, and knocked the stovepipe with a bang against the ceiling. There was a ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... use in modern times, Anne Pratt[3] tells us how, "on going into a small shop in Dover, she saw a quantity of the plant suspended from the ceiling, and was informed that it was gathered and dried as being good for weak eyes;" and in many of our rural districts I learn that the same value is still attached to it by ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... fancy for political caricatures, rows of which, there being no room for them on the walls, hung on strings from the ceiling—like clothes hung out to dry—and among them dangled various books to which he had taken an antipathy, principally High Tory and Benthamite, crucified, impaled through their covers, and suspended in all sorts of torturing attitudes. Among them, right over the table, figured a copy ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... 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 in ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... in which they were was small. It was named the tentroom, being hung with dull-green draperies, which hid the ceiling and fell loosely to the floor on every side. A heavy curtain shrouded the one door. On the hearth flickered a fire, before which lay Valentine's fox-terrier, Rip. Julian was half lying down on a divan in an unbuttoned attitude. Valentine leaned forward in an arm-chair. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... closet in the hall, the floor of which was directly over the Kelpie's bed, with no ceiling between. With a gimlet I bored a hole in the floor, through which I passed a piece of string. I had already got a bit of black cloth, and sewed and stuffed it into something of the shape of a rat. ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... The association had been too painful, and in his daily tendance he had somewhat neglected this room and had usually entered the other by the French window from the veranda. Thus, he saw now that a bloated tarantula had established itself in one corner, between wall and ceiling, and an uncanny looking white lizard scuttered across the boards, and disappeared under a piece of furniture, leaving its tail behind. A phenomenon of natural history at which, he remembered now, Bridget ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and regarded him thoughtfully. Then he took one long puff at his pipe, removed it from his mouth, and blew the smoke in spirals towards the ceiling. ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his weary eyes fell upon something they had not before beheld. It was a square trap-door in the ceiling ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... my many days. We were received by a smart divine, tres bien poudre, and with black satin breeches—but they are giving new wings and red satin breeches to the good old hostel too, and destroying a gallery with a very rich ceiling; and nothing will remain of ancient but the front, and an hundred mouldy portraits, among apostles, sibyls, and Kings of England. On Sunday I shall settle at Strawberry; and then woe betide you on post-days! I cannot make news without straw. The Johnstones are ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling, too much exhausted by the excitement of the last few minutes to realise entirely what had happened, but with a vague, agonised consciousness that he had done something irrevocable, something that mattered supremely. But to try even ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... lifted the revolver a few inches and fired. The bullet struck the wall barely a foot over Herr Freudenberg's head. A faint puff of blue smoke floated up towards the ceiling. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... been partly rebuilt after the destruction caused by the French in 1380. It contains a wonderful clock, made in Queen Elizabeth's reign, and said to be the oldest in England still in working order. It has a long pendulum which comes through the ceiling ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... eight shillings altogether: a few hours he put in assisting Crass to wash off and whiten a ceiling and paint a room, and there was one coffin-plate. He wrote the latter at home, and while he was doing it he heard Frankie—who was out in the scullery ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to rouse in the early morning to a conviction of something wrong before he was fully awake. Then would come the uncertainty and pain of full consciousness, and he would lie with his arms under his head, gazing unblinkingly at the ceiling and preparing ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the ceiling of the control room of the Liberty. His uncle was saying amiably to the young man at the control-board, "That's a very pretty fleet-formation, if ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the Bear and Ragged Staff, three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The ponderous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace being positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remained uninterested. Nothing concerned him now, lying there on his back, his bruised young face toward the ceiling, and every earthly question answered for him as long as ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... with the lamp in his left hand and the pistol in his right slowly ascended the stairs. The first landing was clear. He opened the doors of each room, and, holding the lamp aloft, peered in. Then he mounted higher, and looked in the rooms, crammed from floor to ceiling with pledges, ticketed and placed on shelves. In one room he thought he saw something crouching in a corner. He entered boldly, and as he passed along one side of a row of shelves could have sworn that he ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... noble building fit to be the living heart of a great metropolis, and inside of it but a few little pictures, brightly painted, and a diminutive rood-screen, scarcely higher than a five-barred gate. On the ceiling of the great dome was painted a lively and striking picture of Christ, probably done of old time, but in countenance resembling, strangely enough, the accepted portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson—a Christ ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... the winter afternoon had deepened into the evening twilight, made dimmer still by the aromatic clouds that came, with dignified deliberation, from the baron's lips, and curled and floated up to the carved ceiling of the turret, where they spread themselves into a dim canopy, which every successive cloud brought ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... little town, but at last she stopped in front of a small tumble-down house. She drew a rusty old hook from her pocket and stuck it into a little hole in the door, which suddenly flew open. How surprised Jem was when they went in! The house was splendidly furnished, the walls and ceiling of marble, the furniture of ebony inlaid with gold and precious stones, the floor of such smooth slippery glass that the little fellow tumbled down more ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... of his room opened, and that venerable personage made his appearance in a long night-gown, which reached to his heels, and wearing a long, starched night-cap, which nearly touched the ceiling. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... 'If you're a rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... the light of the dim yellow bulbs threaded from the ceiling of the big bare upper front room of Liberty Hall, Susan Mitchell told me of "the chivalrous woman." The countess is a daughter of the Gore-Booth family which owned its Sligo estate before America was discovered. As a girl ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... simple. The Bee examines the old cell to see what parts require repairing. She tears off the strips of cocoon hanging from the walls, removes the fragments of clay that fell from the ceiling when pierced by the last inhabitant to make her exit, gives a coat of mortar to the dilapidated parts, mends the opening a little; and that is all. Next come the storing, the laying of the eggs and the closing of the chamber. When all the cells, ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... autumn Eckbert was sitting with his friend and his wife, Bertha, around the hearth-fire. The flames threw a bright glow out into the room and played on the ceiling above. The night looked in darkly through the windows, and the trees outside were shivering in the damp cold. Walther was lamenting that he had so far to go to get back home, and Eckbert proposed that he remain there and spend half the night in familiar talk, and then sleep until ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... room was very small and dark, and the ceiling was covered with cobwebs. There was a horrible smell coming from a huge cauldron ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... wanted a house for. I tell you, Chris, you and Tom Innis shall have latch-keys just like mine, and there is a capital chamber there at the head of the stairs, so that you can be free to come and go. And here now's the library,—fancy this full of books and engravings from the ceiling to the floor; here you shall come just as you please and ask no questions,—all the same as if it were your ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his own tree-shaded lawn and the wide expanse of moonlit common beyond which he 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 ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... Sellwood, wife of Henry Sellwood, Esq., and mother-in-law of Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate. She died Sept. 30th, 1816. The roof is of Spanish chestnut, which was formerly completely hidden by a flat plaster ceiling. On the north wall of the chancel, over the north-east door, is a tablet to the memory of Sir Ingram Hopton, who, after unhorsing Cromwell, was himself slain at the battle of Winceby, the date of which is there wrongly given as “October ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... am ashamed to say I had never visited before. It shows a poor plastered front to the street, but the old place is there behind the plaster. I went into a tiny, dark chapel, with a high pillared pediment of carved wood behind the altar, a rich ceiling, and some fine columned alcoves where the dignitaries sit. Out of the gallery opens a venerable library, with a regretful air of the past about its faded volumes in their high presses, as though it sadly said, "I am of yesterday." Then we found ourselves in a spacious panelled Hall, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... broken by the balatak, he stepped gingerly off the trail and made his way upward, carefully avoiding every inch of ground that appeared suspicious. With each mile of ascent the way grew steeper, the forest deeper and darker, the green ceiling reared ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... a fresh contingent of voices in defiance of the late Professor Freeman. "Thou hast allowed the Emanuel Hospital to be knocked down, thou hast whitewashed the oaken ceiling of King Charles's room at Dartmouth, and threatened to destroy the view from Richmond Hill. Thou hast smashed cathedral windows, or scratched thy name on them, hast pulled down Roman walls, and allowed commons to be inclosed. Thou coverest the Lake ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... and leather. These may all be coloured without injury to their impression of permanency, although it is generally preferable to take advantage of indigenous or "inherent colour" like the natural yellows and russets of wood and leather. When these are used for both walls and ceiling, it will be found that, to give the necessary variation, and prevent an impression of monotony and dulness, some tint must be added in the ornament of the surface, which could be gained by a forcible deepening or variation of the general tone, ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... candle and followed the physician through the great empty rooms, and down the echoing staircase; under the ceiling where Jove, with upraised goblet, drank to his queen, while all the galaxy of the Greek pantheon circled his imperial throne. Upon how many a festal procession had those Olympians looked down since that famous house-warming, when the colours were fresh from the painter's brush, and when the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... misery she saw about her, but she had no time to make moan. Ray's amputated ankle was giving fresh trouble, and after that was well over, he still kept his room, refusing food or fire, and staring with hot, wakeful eyes at the cold ceiling. Vivia lingered, subdued and pale, beside the hearth, doing any quiet piece of work that came to hand; no one had seen her shed tears,—she had shown no strenuous sorrow; on the night of Ray's return she had slept her first unbroken sleep for months; her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the two blind fiddlers were playing the Downfall of Paris, a handbell rang, and up goes the green curtain; being hauled to the ceiling, as I observed with the tail of my eye, by a birkie at the side, that had hold of a rope. So, on the music stopping, and all becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a decent old gentleman at his leisure, well ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... before the stove, and pressing his shoulder against its brass doors, Colville managed to lull his enemy, while he studied the figures of the woman-headed, woman-breasted hounds developing into vines and foliage that covered the frescoed trellising of the quadrangularly vaulted ceiling. The waiters, in their veteran dress-coats, were putting the final touches to the table, and the sound of voices outside the door obliged Colville to get up. The effort involved made him still more reluctant about going ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... is almost white, and at first sight of the child they appear like rays, which make the eyes appear vivacious and sparkling. The accuracy of the inscriptions is much assisted by the stillness of the eye, on its being directed upwards, as to an object on the ceiling of the room, &c.; and with this aid the several letters may be traced with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... inside. In fact the outhouse, a large building, was filled from floor to ceiling with packing-cases, some of them very large indeed. Godfrey pointed to a small ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... shifting ardors. His soul was filled with automatic fire-extinguishers. He flared up quickly, but when his temperature reached a certain degree, sprinklers of cold water opened in his ceiling and doused the blaze, leaving him unharmed and hardly scorched. It had been so with ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the theatre, the other night, two tiny girls—mere babies they were—doing such feats upon a bar of wood suspended from the ceiling as made my blood run cold. They were twin sisters, these mites, with that old young look on their faces which all such unfortunates have. I hardly dared glance at them, up there in the air, hanging by their feet ...
— The Little Violinist • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Mrs. Moze, lying on her back, and looking up at the ceiling, "I've decided that your father's wishes must ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... American traveller, in the present case, declined to believe that his bedroom was in a complete finished state without a gas-burner. The manager pointed to the fine antique decorations (renewed and regilt) on the walls and the ceiling, and explained that the emanations of burning gas-light would certainly spoil them in the course of a few months. To this the traveller replied that it was possible, but that he did not understand decorations. A bedroom with gas in it was what he was used to, was ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... every place where the bugs are likely to 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
... carpet on the floor. The silk linings of the boxes and the curtains between them and the small salons in the rear were of fabrics specially made for the purpose. They had an old gold ground and large, raised figures of conventional design in a darker shade, with dark red threads. The tier fronts, ceiling, and proscenium were of a light color, the aim having been to obtain a prevailing tint of ivory. Amid the filigree designs of the pilasters, which carried the work above the curtain opening, were pictures of singing and ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... interesting spot in the village square. All the shops are somewhat alike, bare, black rafters, with earth or stone floor, and in this particular one a flock of swallows had their nests in every niche in the ceiling. Each of us had a bottle of beer on the pavement, alongside a French sentry whose sole duty was to see that no Frenchman had a drink. He seemed to think that it was unfair that his countrymen were not allowed to quench their thirst, so he defied the law by having a drink with us, and allowing ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... the surface of the dead monster the exterior elevation of Jonah's home. "Just behind this outer covering is a splendid living-room, 6 feet by 4, lighted by the phosphorescent glow of the interior walls. A whale is full of phosphorus. The ceiling is a little low, but the ventilation is perfect, without draughts, and the temperature is about what you would find in Florida in January. The humidity is a little heavy, so that when the whale runs too far North he may chill inside ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the open apartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... were fixed on the alcove at the end of the room. The light of the candle he had left there outlined sharply the edges of the two curtains which hung from the rod crossing the recess. At the ceiling their edges met, but, at a height of some two and a half feet from the floor, their folds were looped back to the wall in a style formally old-fashioned. And now, even before his mind became concerned, his eye was irritated by ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... his two hands and wrung them, and Peter knew that he had atoned for his crime against little Jennie. Peter was a martyr once more. He told how he had been put thru the third degree; and she told how the water from the washtub had leaked thru the ceiling, and the plaster had fallen, and ruined the dinner ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... bird this morning, January 28, 1772, at the house of Mr. Harvey, near Tutbury, in Derbyshire, I was told it always fainted away, when its cage was cleaned, and desired to see the experiment. The cage being taken from the ceiling, and its bottom drawn out, the bird began to tremble, and turned quite white about the root of his bill: he then opened his mouth as if for breath, and respired quick, stood straighter up on his perch, hung his wings, spread his tail, closed his eyes, and appeared quite stiff and cataleptic ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... kept there all night, I remarked, and only realized with the words that they disposed of my other explanations before they were uttered. It was a horrible moment for such a discovery. Fortunately the enemy was on the pavement, from which he could scarcely have seen more than the drawing-room ceiling, had he looked; but he was not many houses distant when a door opened and a woman gasped so that I heard both across the road. And never shall I forget the subsequent tableaux in the lighted room behind the low balcony and the ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... was as warm as summer, and swinging garlands of ferns and peonies concealed electric fans which were suspended from the ceiling. In the midst of the strong wind of the whirring fans, the dancers in the two long drawing-rooms appeared to be blown violently in circles and eddies, like coloured leaves in a high wind. For a few minutes after Stephen had entered, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... off again if I would let it. Whoa, there!" said he, again adjusting the mechanism. "I can make it rise, or sink, or steer, to one side or the other, just as I please. If you will kindly hold it for a minute, I will make it go up to the ceiling. Don't be afraid, ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... up into messes, and, after much waiting, filed off into the fore part of the ship, descended a noisome-smelling funnel by an iron staircase, and found ourselves on the troop-deck, very similar to that of the Montfort, only likely to be much more crowded; the same low ceiling, with cross-rafters for kit and hooks for hammocks, and close-packed tables ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... only chance, I acted deep devotion, Found magic in her every glance, Grace in her every motion; I wasted all a stripling's lore, Prayer, passion, folly, feeling; And wildly looked upon the floor, And wildly on the ceiling; I envied gloves upon her arm, And shawls upon her shoulder; And when my worship was most warm, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... me. He seemed strangely agitated: I guessed he had something to tell me, and yet I could never ask. Was it cowardice on my part? He sat in my shuttered room, the sunshine making pools on the red bricks and tremulous stars on the ceiling, talking of many things at random, and mechanically turning over the manuscript, the heap of notes of my poor, never-finished book on the Exiled Gods. Then he rose, and walking nervously round my study, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... mud and water between the crumbling walls. Here and there great patches of the roof had tumbled down, and in places he found that the masses of coal that had been left as pillars had been taken away, and the ceiling of the pit had come down bodily, so that he had to sit down and study his map to find a way round to the part he ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... time to look about the office. It was as clean as blackened, splintered planks could be made; even the ceiling had been attacked and every trace of ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... even before the firemen reached the scene, for it was constructed, as so many summer boarding-houses are at seashore and mountain resorts, of thin novelty-siding outside and oil-stained ceiling boards inside; these act like kindling wood once ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... fingering a Machzor, looked down for the last time on the crowded auditorium where the men sat in high hats and holiday garments. Tall wax-candles twinkled everywhere, in great gilt chandeliers depending from the ceiling, in sconces stuck about the window ledges, in candelabra branching from the walls. There was an air of holy joy about the solemn old structure with its massive pillars, its small side-windows, high ornate roof, and skylights, and its ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor. The Cat, following her instinct, leaped nigh to the ceiling, and with flattened ears and bared teeth backed in a corner ready to fight whatever terror might be loosed on her. But nothing happened. Through the long aching minutes nothing whatever happened, and her wire-brush tail returned slowly to ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... worthies like Pythagoras, Heraclitus; Empedocles, as being invited to witness Lulli's opera "Phaeton," at the Paris Odeon. In characteristic fashion, each in turn tries to explain the spectacular aerial flight of the actor in the title-role, from the floor of the stage to the ceiling. One says, that Phaeton is able to fly by the potency of certain numbers of which he is composed; another, that a secret virtue carries him aloft; still another, that Phaeton travels through the air because he abhors to leave a vacuum in the upper corner of the stage; ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... be-diamonded The scented dusk comes softly stealing; When you get up you strike your head Severely on the timbered ceiling. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a flickering gleam upon the wall, the ceiling, and ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in All Souls College Chapel, Oxford. It is the production of Raphael Mengs, and was purchased for the price of three hundred guineas of Sir James Thornhill, who painted the figure of the founder over the altar, the ceiling, and the figures between the windows. There may be other paintings by earlier masters on so interesting subject, but none can surpass this of Raphael Mengs in the truthfulness of what he has here delineated. The exact size of the picture ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... Schimmel like a knife, and as Melchior stood there looking up at the ceiling as if he expected it to open and disclose to him a sight of Heaven, he seemed so great, and unapproachable, and apart, that she feared him, though in years gone by she had tucked his luncheon into his knapsack before sending him off to school, and tremblingly she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... you let me join the Boy Scouts?" retorted her youngest born, gazing up at the ceiling with the face of an innocent cherub, and Mrs. Dashwood was obliged to smile as she looked at ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... besides drying to an extreme the leather, till it cracks or crumbles under the heat. The upper shelves or galleries of any library are most seriously affected by over-heating, because the natural law causes the heat to rise toward the ceiling. If you put your hand on some books occupying the highest places in some library rooms, in mid-winter, when the fires are kept at their maximum, the heat of the volume will almost burn your fingers. If these books were sentient ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... live-oak grows here at its best, and is to be seen everywhere, its trunk often twenty or more feet in circumference, its wide-spreading branches reaching out their tips to meet those of other trees of the same species, so that sometimes the whole world seems to have a groined ceiling of foliage, a ceiling which inevitably suggests a great shadowy cathedral from whose airy arches hang long gray pennons of Spanish ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... knowledge to the bending back into constitutional moulds of those despotic twists which new interests and false counsels had developed in the Tudor and Stuart dynasties. It was an exceedingly pretty place; and the kitchen, upon the ground story, which had a noble groined ceiling of stone, indicated, by its disproportionate scale, the magnitude of the establishment to which once it had ministered. Attached to this splendid kitchen were tributary offices, etc. On the upper story were exactly five rooms: namely, a servants' dormitory, meant in Sir Robert's day for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... had brought and across them a thick plate of cast iron, which was to support the front of the chimney. The back of the chimney and sides had the few stones found in digging the cellars, and on top of them was laid more brick until the ceiling was reached. Care had been taken to build in a crane to hang pots. From the floor of the loft squarely cut pieces of cedar, 2 inches thick, were laid in clay mortar, and as the work went on were plastered with the same mortar inside and out, until the top was two feet above the ridge-board. ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... brother seated at the piano, letting his fingers run lightly and carelessly over the key-board, and then looking up to the ceiling and muttering, "What key is it in again?" as if he were searching for the right one, a shiver always ran through Cousin Ola. For he knew that Hans had mastered three accompaniments, and no more—one minor and ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... too subtile. It is undefinable, unmeasurable; but we know that it pervades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says, "God comes to see us without bell;" that is, as there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and surrounded by numerous chambers of small dimensions, varying from 29 feet by 16, to 16 feet by 8. The walls of this small sanctuary, standing on the site of a more ancient one, are highly polished, sculptured, and painted, and the ceiling of stars on a blue ground, the whole exquisitely finished. The entire height of the hall, i. e., the central portion, is not less than 80 ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... illustrating my subject, and somewhat as the painter introduces human figures into his picture to give an idea of the height of a tower or the vastness of a cathedral, that I have found an abundant and even elegant table, under frescoed ceiling, in a cottage near the Illinois Central, and far south of the mid-line of this wonderful State, so lately a seeming waste through much of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Java, bears a very beautiful flower, and will live when pulled up by the roots. The natives suspend it by a cord from the ceiling, and enjoy its fragrance for years.' That's capital! That will do for the similes. Now ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe |
