"Staircase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this!" murmured the little lady, as she came down the staircase ready for dinner. She rang for the maid. "Take that thing away and wash it well, and put in fresh ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... their polished floors and deep window-seats, their carved paneling and marble mantels; and when, in the afternoon, he found himself alone for a few minutes in the vast hall, he paced off its sixty feet of length and its twenty of width to know their number, studied the winding staircase with its white pilasters and mahogany rails, scanned hurriedly the portraits in their tarnished frames, some with the signatures of Sir Joshua Reynolds, some with Stuart, and others of lesser fame, which hung above the wainscoted walls; and as he looked he did not wonder ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... had tented therein, so both the wights fell to shaking and sweeping for three days' space till they had cleaned away all the webbing and dust of years; after which the elder man took the younger and entered a closet. Herein he came upon a trap-door which the two uplifted, when behold, they found a staircase leading below; so they descended and walked till they ended at a place with four open halls, one and all fulfilled with gold, and amiddlemost thereof rose a jetting fount twenty ells long by fifteen broad, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... Lease Farm. There are three doors. One opens to the staircase, one to the garden and a third into the back kitchen. At a table in the middle of the room EMILY stands ironing some net window curtains. JESSIE and ROBIN lean against the table watching her. By the open doorway, looking ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... dun herd of armoured cars stood under the trees in the court-yard, engines going. The long, bare, dimly-illuminated halls roared with the thunder of feet, calling, shouting.... There was an atmosphere of recklessness. A crowd came pouring down the staircase, workers in black blouses and round black fur hats, many of them with guns slung over their shoulders, soldiers in rough dirt-coloured coats and grey fur shapki pinched flat, a leader or so-Lunatcharsky, Kameniev-hurrying along in the centre of a group all talking at once, with ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... the entertainment offered us at the Maison Doucieux, as we learn from the rudely-written handbill which hangs at the entrance. Through a long, winding, narrow, dark and dirty passage, up a rickety stone staircase, through another passage, and we stand in a crowded hall, at whose lower end a rude stage is erected, on which a ragged man is bawling a comic song. In the midst of it there is a disturbance: a drunken man has climbed upon the back of a seat to light his pipe at the chandelier, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... his loud cry brought a response which came to me before I was quite in readiness for it. As I reached the last step of the wide staircase, under the bright light I raised my eyes, and behold, the Gouverneur Faulkner to whom I had descended for the purpose of mortal ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a month, as Ayola was sitting up alone in his chamber, and his companions sleeping quietly in their beds, he heard at a distance a noise as of several chains dragged along upon the ground, and the noise advanced towards him by the great staircase; he recommended himself to God, made the sign of the cross, took a shield and sword, and having his taper in his hand, he saw the door opened by a terrific spectre that was nothing but bones, but loaded ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... been told that a gentleman was waiting to see her down-stairs, who had declared himself to be a policeman immediately on entering the shop. To escape was of course her first idea, but she was soon made to understand that this was impracticable. In the first place there was but one staircase, at the bottom of which was the open door of the room in which the policeman was sitting; and then, the woman of the house was very firm in declaring that she would connive at nothing which might cost ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... vision enough to discern Mrs. Dyer from the other comely gentlewoman who lives up at staircase No. 5; or, if you should make a blunder in the twilight, Mrs. Dyer has too much good sense to be jealous for a mere effect of imperfect optics. But don't try to write the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Commandments, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the north staircase. Fronting us was a portrait of Mr. Beckford's father, the Alderman and celebrated Lord Mayor of London. Mr. Goodridge asked him if he knew a book, just published, denying the truth of his father's famous speech to George III. He seemed astonished, and ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... can speak more at ease," said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting there engaged in sewing up sheets ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aperture which opened straight on to the steep, short flight of steps connecting his chambers with the stone staircase of the big old house. This latter-like set of steps had a door top and bottom, but the lower door, which gave on to the landing, was generally left open. Turning out the light in the lobby, Sherston put his left hand on the banister ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... of the "study-boys" were allowed to sit up till half-past ten, and their bedrooms were elsewhere. The consequence was, that in these dormitories the boys felt perfectly secure from any interruption. There were only two ways by which a master could get at them—one up the great staircase, and through the lavatory; the other by a door at the extreme end of the range, which led into Dr Rowlands's house, ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when you lived that way it was grand but lonely—you didn't meet people on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... deal better that than—" But the blow fell upon the empty air; for Mrs. Grantly had already escaped on to the staircase while Olivia was ringing the bell for the servant to ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... It was not, however, till we stood almost beneath it that we really felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the old man, whose face was bathed in tears, she descended the staircase, at the foot of which she found the two earls, Sir Henry Talbot, Lord Shrewsbury's son, Amyas Paulet, Drue Drury, Robert Beale, and many gentlemen of the neighbourhood: the queen, advancing towards them without pride, but without humility, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... slim white hand the woman held out to him, and a moment later they ascended the great oak staircase to their ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... said that he knew himself to be so as he passed down the staircase and outward to the entrance with that dead resignation on his face, that brooding, rigid look set on his features, and gazing almost in stupefaction out from the dark hazel depths of eyes that women had loved for their luster, their languor, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... ten minutes or so, but nobody ran after it. There was a decent procedure; and it was felt that Bofield—he was dry-goods, too—in putting in an elevator was just a little unnecessarily in advance of the times. Bofield had only two storeys, like everybody else, and a very easy staircase, up which people often declared they preferred to walk rather than wait in the elevator for a young man to finish serving and work it. These, of course, were the sophisticated people of Elgin; countryfolk, on a market day, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the parapet—that immovable rampart over which we have peeped so often and so cautiously with our periscopes—and clamber up a sandbag staircase on to the summit. We note that our barbed wire has all been cut away, and that another battalion, already extended into line, is advancing fifty yards ahead of us. Bullets are pinging through the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... grotto was shown without figures, which were added by Gaudenzio, later on; they were probably among his first works. The place is so dark that they cannot be well seen, but about noon the sun comes down a narrow staircase and they can be made out very well for a quarter of an hour or so; they are then seen to be very good. They have no fresco background, nor yet is there any to the Shepherd's chapel, which confirms me in thinking these to have been among the earliest works undertaken. Colombo says that the infant ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... up a dark staircase into a curious little sitting-room. It was scrupulously clean, but about it hung the faint odour which the French eloquently describe as "shut in," and even on this beautiful hot day the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different parts of the house; they seemed to focus their monotonous activity especially on his hearing. Extraordinary recollections swept him. He remembered having heard an old nurse, Sarah Teale, describe how her aunt ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... prizes from the Messrs Wilson, and by the presence of Mr J. P. Wilson, the little self-constituted school progressed considerably, until it reached the number of thirty; then a large old building was cleared out, a rickety wooden staircase taken down, an iron one put up in its stead, and a lofty school-room, capable of holding about 100 or more, made in the place of two useless lumber-rooms. The making and furnishing that room amounted ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... Mr. Smith, herding his charges and driving them up the small staircase. "Send young Joe for some. Send up three glasses." They disappeared upstairs, and Joe appearing at that moment from the kitchen, was hastily sent off to the "Blue Jay" for the rum. A couple of curious neighbors helped him to carry it back, and, ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the 'new house.' It is about forty feet in width by two hundred in depth, and has the roof of the chateau for its ceiling. At one end is the great portal, with a high-arched window over it: at the other is the wide and beautiful staircase, leading to a gallery which on either side of the hall gives access to the second floor of the building. The walls are divided into panels by the columns and brackets supporting the gallery, and these panels are ornamented alternately by trophies of arms and entire suits ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... and your tears crocodile when you pretended to weep over their biers. But Cuthbert's feelings were so human that I mentally apologized to the nobility. As to High Staunton Manor, I adored it. It is mostly Jacobean, but with an ancient Tudor wing, and it has a chapel and a ghost and a secret staircase and a frightfully beautiful and wicked ancestress hanging in the hall—I mean a portrait of her—and quantities of oak paneling quite black with age, and silver that was hidden in the family tombs when Cromwell's ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Martin, which stands in the heart of the old town. It is a building of the 12th century in the Romanesque style of Limousin, with three narrow naves of almost equal height. The ecclesiastical seminary occupies a graceful mansion of the 16th century, with a facade, a staircase and fireplaces of fine Renaissance workmanship. Brive is the seat of a sub-prefect [v.04 p.0619] and has a tribunal of first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a communal college and a school of industry. Its position makes it a market of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and splashing fountains, it was a conspicuous landmark for miles. The interior was full of architectural beauty. The stately entrance hall, hung with ancestral portraits, was of noble proportions and a superb staircase, decorated with statuary led off to tastefully decorated reception rooms above. To-night the house was brilliantly illuminated and there was considerable activity at the front entrance, where a footman in smart livery stood opening the ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... diamond-hilted knife lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry away something wherewith to accredit his story, he reached out his hand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The archer had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a thousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found himself buried ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... stairs, crossed the study and living-room, and after a comprehensive glance over the little kitchen ell with its simple batterie de cuisine went up the main staircase, and entered the room over the study. Here again was a surprise, for this room was completely furnished in delicate, light bird's-eye maple, fit for a marquise, all dainty lemon-tinted curves. The exquisite bed was framed for a ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... passage of rain and snow, and kept out much of the cold. There was a narrow passage between the atrium and the peristylium; this was called the fauces. Above the chambers round the atrium was a second story, approached by a staircase from the peristylium; here were the apartments of the ladies and of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... the alarm bell rang. He staggered to his feet, and in the condition of a man suddenly aroused from sleep drew on the overalls so that back was front and front was back. In the excitement of the moment he forgot all about his abnormal condition. Coming down the staircase of the burning building he had the misfortune to slip and fall heavily to the ground, in a heap of cinders. His companions eagerly asked him if he was hurt. "No," he replied, with true Scotch canniness. "No, chaps, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... hands warmly—then unloosed them; and I heard his step descending the staircase. The room seemed to darken ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... visit; when the work is done it will answer, I can tell you. We shall make two flights of steps in the snow, one from the ship and the other from outside; when once we've cut out the steps we shall pour water over them, and it will make them as hard as rock. We shall have a royal staircase." ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the door closed upon him. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fortunately, waterproof. We quickly exchanged our damp clothes for dry ones, and groped our way together along the corridors, helped by the moon, which shone through their uncurtained windows, to the main staircase. Here we came on a scent of roasting meat—appetising to us after our day in the open air—and at the foot found our host waiting for us. He had donned his Highland dress of ceremony—velvet jacket, phillabeg and kilt, with the tartan of his clan—and looked (I must ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... their white employers, she related how with his own hands, bringing a crude carpentry into play, her master ripped out certain dark closets and abolished a secluded and gloomy recess beneath a hall staircase, and how privily he called in men who strung his ceilings with electric lights, although already the building was piped for gas; and how, for final touches, he placed in various parts of his bedroom tallow dips and oil lamps to be lit before twilight and to burn ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... staircase insinuated itself under my feet somehow. Command is a strong magic. The first human beings I perceived distinctly since I had parted with the indignant back of Captain Giles were the crew of the harbour steam-launch ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... practically part of the castle, and the keep, or Queen Anne's Tower, is the most distinctive feature remaining. This keep is of four stories, and is over a hundred feet high, the last story being reached by a spiral staircase. What was once the oratory of the Duchess Anne is now the guard-room. There are still several dungeons whose original gruesomeness has been left untouched, and whose use in bygone days can ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Marwitz opened the door to the dark little staircase and closed it. In the cloaking darkness she paused and leaned against the wall. "Bon Dieu!" she ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... are led by our laws, customs, and usages to dwell without ceasing on a fellow-creature's death? There are men who put the weight of a coffin into their deliberations as they bargain for Cashmere shawls for their wives, as they go up the staircase of a theatre, or think of going to the Bouffons, or of setting up a carriage; who are murderers in thought when dear ones, with the irresistible charm of innocence, hold up childish foreheads to be kissed with a "Good-night, ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... lifted by force of youthful sap straight above the hedgerow to sink of its weight presently and progress with crafty tendrils; swifts shot through the air with outstretched wings like crescent-headed shaftless arrows darted from the clouds; the chaffinch with a feather in her bill; all the living staircase of the spring, step by step, upwards to the great gallery of the summer, let me watch the same ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... he had heard a person worthy of credence say that the dome of Norcia was much more beautiful, and made with greater art. Which words so much exasperated Tasso that, pulling the abbot backwards with force, he made him tumble down the staircase, and he took care to let himself fall on him (!) and calling out that the frater was mad, he got two cords, with which he bound his arms, his legs, and all his person, so that he could not move, and then taking him, hanging over his shoulders, carried him to a room near, and, stretching him on ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... temple, which is our pride, has been converted into barracks for the German soldiers. A small part of it, becoming smaller every day, is reserved for the courts. The Magistrates and lawyers have access to it by a small private staircase. ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... the visitor found himself in a broad and lofty hall, containing a grand old staircase, with a richly carved, wooden balustrade—a good deal broken and defaced now, like everything else in this doleful Castle Misery. The walls had been elaborately frescoed, representing colossal figures of Hercules supporting brackets upon which rested the heavily ornamented ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the life I lead has but a very remote resemblance to that of a civilized creature, a quondam dweller in the two great cities of the world and frequenter of polished societies therein, it has some recommendations of its own. To be sure, so it should have; for I inhabit a house where the staircase is open to the roof, and the roof, unmitigated by ceiling, plaster, skylight, or any intermediate shelter, presents to my admiring gaze, as I ascend and descend, the seamy side of the tiles, or rather wooden ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... them through the doors into the hall where, in a wide chimney place, the embers of a drift-wood fire glimmered like a heap of dusty jewels. Bars of sunlight slanted on wall and rug, on stone floor and carved staircase, on the bronze foliations of the railed gallery above, where, in the golden gloom through a high window, sun-tipped tree tops against a sky of azure stirred like burnished foliage ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a broad strong ledge of stone to this grating where the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet above the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and half lying, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Clerks for Scraps. The extraordinary Observance and Diligence of the Boy, made the Society willing to do him Good. He appeared very ambitious to learn to write; and one of the Attornies got a Board knocked up at a Window on the Top of a Staircase; and that was his Desk, where he sat and wrote after Copies of Court and other Hands the Clerks gave him. He made himself so expert a Writer that he took in Business, and earned some Pence by Hackney-writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his Faculties, and fell to ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... my hostess informed me that the lady for whose delectation I had been invited to sing was ill in bed, and that I would have to serenade her from her bed-room door. I was made to stand up on the staircase landing. Pointing to a closed door the widow said: "That's where she is." And I gave voice to that Behaga dirge facing the mysterious unknown on the other side. Of what happened to the invalid as the result I have ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... Gresham party entered the ante-room into which the staircase opened, they found Miss Dunstable standing there surrounded by a few of her most intimate allies. Mrs. Harold Smith was sitting quite close to her; Dr. Easyman was reclining on a sofa against the ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... sit contented in the companionship of the beloved object. For lunch I had the choice of two places, one Bohemian, the other select, even aristocratic, where I had still my reserved table in the petit salon, up the white staircase. In both places I had friends who treated my erratic appearances with discretion, in one case tinged with respect, in the other with a certain amused tolerance. I owed this tolerance to the most careless, the most confirmed of those Bohemians (his beard had streaks of grey amongst ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... a compartment of the revolving door incoherent yells began to echo down the staircase well. At length it had occurred to those above to ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... alley near by, where he turned in, and with some difficulty found his way to the dingy staircase. Opening the door to Jennie's gentle "Come in," he said, "I have brought you a handful of flowers to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... "Savage Club." It was situated next door to the "Whistling Oyster," and faced a side entrance to Drury Lane Theatre—a fairly large first-floor room, looking larger by reason of its low ceiling, but well lighted by its three high windows. When I visited it in 1893, the wooden staircase had been replaced by a steep stone-way; but the approach and the ascent were still steep enough to make one wonder how the portly Lemon could, without difficulty or fear of accident, scale the classic heights, and twist his ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... said, with emphasis, “is my greatest consolation; I retire into the fields, and there I read it.” It was impossible not to commiserate the fate of Ignazio Mugio, the Lombard refugee. A very different character was old Pietro, the steam-boat agent. Groping our way with some difficulty up a gloomy staircase, in the dusk of the evening, we found him, spectacles on nose, poring over a gazette by a feeble oil lamp. The old man was so eager for news that it was difficult to fix him to the object of our inquiries; and then he expatiated on ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... not even nowadays to be procured in England, so thickly covered with tracery of leaves and flowers and birds and butterflies in a delightful tangle, that the underlying colour was more felt than seen. A short staircase of wide shallow steps ran up one side, disappearing apparently into the wall, and up this staircase, rather to Jacinth's surprise—for there were several doors in the hall leading, no doubt, to the principal ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... she was accused of murder, but all other authorities say that poor Rose's "wickedness" had consisted of lighting a fire under the staircase of her master's house, with, or so it was asserted, "a malicious intent." One sees that it was quite easy to get hanged in those days,—especially if you happened to be a negro! The great elm tree, on a branch of which Rose was hanged, stood intact in the Square until ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the main staircase into the hall! Everybody in the place knows it by this time—she took good care they should. I don't know how she can have been robbed—so far as I can learn she's scarcely been out of these rooms since ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... the hall as she spoke, putting little things to rights. Then she passed up the circular staircase. At the bend she looked back and caught him watching her. She waved her hand with a little less than her usual frankness. Tallente had forgotten for a moment his whereabouts, his fatigue, his general weariness. He had turned around in his chair and was watching her. She found something in the very ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... manoeuvre gave him any pleasure, and an association was thus established which led to shoe-fetichism (Hammond, Sexual Impotence, p. 44). A government official whose first coitus in youth took place on a staircase; the sound of his partner's creaking shoes against the stairs, produced by her efforts to accelerate orgasm, formed an association which developed into an auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... way by the foot of the staircase and along a line of cupboards to the kitchen. The window of this looked out upon a backyard piled with refuse timber, packing-cases, and plaster statuary broken and black with soot. Within, the hearth ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the case with cliff-dwellings in the southwestern part of the United States. Where caves are difficult of access, the Indians may place a wooden ladder, or rather, a notched tree trunk, which is the national style of staircase. Once I saw steps cut into the soft "rock" (solidified volcanic ash), leading up to a dwelling. There was also a kind of settee cut ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... shaking his damp, dishevelled hair, he who had never felt compassion for any one determined to seek his father, that he might have some one to whom he could relate his misfortunes,—some one by whose side he might weep. He descended the little staircase with which we are acquainted, and entered Noirtier's room. The old man appeared to be listening attentively and as affectionately as his infirmities would allow to the Abbe Busoni, who looked cold and calm, as usual. Villefort, perceiving the abbe, passed his hand across his brow. He recollected ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... effect; a stalwart guide toiling all the weary time, cutting steps in hard blue ice, the fragments hissing and spinning down the long straight grooves in the frozen snow till they lost themselves in the yawning chasm below; and step after step taken along the slippery staircase, till at length he triumphantly sprang upon the summit of the tremendous wall that no human foot had scaled before. The little black knobs that rise above the edge represent for him huge impassable rocks, sinking on one side in scarped slippery surfaces towards ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... smiled, nodded, and then tripped up the staircase. I think there was an unspoken understanding between these two on the subject of the Commonstone ball. Jim Bloxam had before known his sisters take part with the authorities against their private ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... enters by the door under the Horseshoe staircase, which has 46 steps on each side. To the right, the longer of the 2 iron bars in the wall represents the height of FrancisI. The first place entered is the Chapelle de la Trinit, built by FrancisI. in 1529, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... and many pearls. Opposite the gate which is on the east side of the front of the open space, and in the middle of it, there are two buildings of the same sort as the House of Victory of which I have spoken; these buildings are served by a kind of staircase of stone beautifully wrought, — one is in the middle and the other at the end. This building was all hung with rich cloths, both the walls and the ceiling, as well as the supports, and the cloths of the walls were adorned with figures in the manner of embroidery; these buildings ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... the principal entrance a doorway opens into two square rooms with gratings, where the wild beasts were probably kept. Another very narrow corridor ran from the street to the arena, near which it ascended, by a small staircase, to a little round apartment apparently the spoliatorium, where they stripped the dead gladiators. The arena formed an oval of sixty-eight yards by thirty-six. It was surrounded by a wall of two yards in height, above which may still ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... up, my father and mother, who occupied apartments in the same hotel as the Lambs,—Meurice's,—were driven into the court-yard just as Lady Caroline's carriage had drawn up before the staircase leading to her rooms, which were immediately opposite those of my father and mother. A ruisseau or gutter ran round the court-yard, and intervened between the carriage step and the door of the vestibule, and Mr. Lamb, taking Lady Caroline, as she alighted, in his ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... windows built very high, and arched after the ecclesiastical fashion. One of the sides had windows similar to those at the end. The school-room was entered from the house by a lobby, up into which lobby, terminated a wide staircase, from the play-ground. The school-room was therefore entered from the lobby by only one large folding door. But over this end there was a capacious orchestra supported by six columns, which orchestra contained a very superb organ. The orchestra might also be entered from ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... palace. Vast pictures by gloomy old artists, pictures of men in armour, men in ruffs, women without armour or ruffs, or even a rag of chiffon, pictures worth millions of dollars no doubt, hung from the walls of the landing, and the wall flanking that triumphant staircase. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... read aloud 'The Old oak Staircase,' which had been kept to begin when Dolores came, Hal taking the book in turn with his mother. And so ended ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the hall and staircase were of gray stone, as were the steps which led echoingly up to the second story of the house. My sister exclaims in delight concerning the whole scene: 'This villa,—you have no idea how delightful it ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... four; she is shrewd enough always to keep you waiting. In her house you will find everything in good taste; her luxury is for hourly use, and duly renewed; you will see nothing under glass shades, no rags of wrappings hanging about, and looking like a pantry. You will find the staircase warmed. Flowers on all sides will charm your sight—flowers, the only gift she accepts, and those only from certain people, for nosegays live but a day; they give pleasure, and must be replaced; to her they are, as in the East, a symbol and a promise. The costly toys of fashion ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... that impeded his hearing, he could distinguish the distant sound of carriages and hum of life. Presently a door creaked, and he apparently entered a garden, for there was a smell of flowers and a rustling of leaves; then he ascended a staircase, and was conducted through cool lofty apartments, and through doors which seemed to open and shut of themselves. Suddenly his companion let go his hand. Federico stood for a minute in silent expectation, then, groping around him with extended arms, he said in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of the Duke of Chandos was erected in the eighteenth century. This magnificent structure with its decorations and furniture cost L230,000. The pillars of the great hall were of marble, as were the steps of the principal staircase, each step consisting of one piece twenty-two feet long. The establishment of the household was not inferior to the splendour of the habitation. Notwithstanding the three successive shocks which his fortune received by his concern in the African Company and the Mississippi and South Sea speculations ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... herself in her sensible way, as she carried this habitual thread of thought with her along the street, past the little front gardens, where there were so many mothers with their children. On the other side of the way the genteel houses frowned darkly with their staircase windows upon the humility of Grove Street; and Mrs Morgan began to think within herself of the Miss Hemmings and other spinsters, and how they got along upon this path of life, which, after all, is never lightsome to behold, except in the future or the past. It was dead present with the Rector's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... many-colored robe, he took staff in hand, and moved pretty vigorously to the head of the staircase. As it was somewhat steep, and but dimly lighted, he began cautiously to descend, putting his left hand on the banister, and poking down his long stick to assist him in making sure of the successive steps; and thus he became a living illustration ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... kicked off the sabots which covered his felt shoes, but still wearing his large apron, set open the door into the long narrow hall which ran through the back of the house, widening in the middle where the tower and staircase ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... think grim and spectral in this ceremonious ascent to the empty chamber. Children had once occupied that silent floor for there was a little balustraded gate across the top of the staircase. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and Rejang Rivers. He was very lame at the time, but had no walking to do, only now and then to get out of his large boat and scramble up into a Dyak house. How he managed it under the circumstances I never could imagine, for the staircase from the water to a high Dyak house is only the trunk of a tree with a few notches in it, and, at low tide, a case of slippery mud; this, placed at a steep angle, without any rail, is not easy climbing for any one, but a stiff knee made it still ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... carriage. Oh, golly, golly, they'm coming," cried Vic, wild with delight; and away the two darkies went down the great staircase and into the hall, where the honors of the house ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... dream as she reaches the foot of the stone staircase, she says abruptly, but with a lovely smile playing round ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... couldn't—I hadn't the courage. I think I found out that she was afraid or something. We'd taken rooms in that hotel you were in in the Place d'Armes. We were sitting together in the lounge—you know that big lounge on the first floor with the glass partition in it along the staircase—you can see people through it going up and down stairs. She'd got up suddenly and stuck out her hand and said good night. And there was a look in her eyes—Fright, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... Edith found herself following a gentlemanly sort of man in black, down a long hall, up a great staircase, along a carpeted corridor, and into an elegant private parlor. The man lit the gas and went, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... wide doors into the broad hall, up the grand staircase, through the luxurious rooms goes the high Priestess of the Temple of Love. It is a lonely house. For it is still in a state of social siege. So far as Harvey is concerned, no one has entered it. So they live ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... as The Golden Staircase, E.V. Lucas's Book of Verses for Children, and others, we must go to the Bible for poems like the Song of Miriam, or of Deborah, and the Psalms; to Shakespeare for such songs as "Where the Bee Sucks," "I know a Bank," ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... of them was Mr. Merewether, the Tory candidate. He was nearly of the same height as Mr. Bradlaugh, and well built. His friends were holding him back, but he broke from them, exclaiming, "Hang it! I will have a look at him." He stood at the very foot of the staircase and looked hard at Mr. Bradlaugh ascending. His expression was one of good-tempered insolence. After a long look at Mr. Bradlaugh, he returned to his friends, shouting, "Well, I'm damned if he's ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... attraction, which, from her first entrance on our scene, she evinced for Zenobia, had lost nothing of its force. I often heard her footsteps, soft and low, accompanying the light but decided tread of the latter up the staircase, stealing along the passage-way by her new friend's side, and pausing while Zenobia entered my chamber. Occasionally Zenobia would be a little annoyed by Priscilla's too close attendance. In an authoritative and not very kindly tone, she would advise her to breathe ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the way up a spiral stair that might almost have gone inside the newel of the great staircase. Up and up they went, until Donal began to wonder, ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... is going on. To the extreme left in the background, and at a distance from the scene, two women-servants who are looking on. To the right a cupboard with its usual contents—all scrupulously clean.... A wooden staircase leading to the upper floor. In the foreground near the feet of the mother, a hen leading her young ones, to whom a little girl throws crumbs of bread; a basin full of water, and on the edge of it, one of the small chickens with ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... consider only the actual structure of a house itself. A man may march up in a rather bored way to bed; but at least he is mounting to a height from which he could kill himself. Every rich, silent, padded staircase, with banisters of oak, stair-rods of brass, and busts and settees on every landing, every such staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder running up into the Infinite to a deadly height. The millionaire who stumps up inside the house is really doing the same thing as the tiler or roof-mender ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... find a back-staircase," she thought, "I would soon be enjoying myself! Arthur, lucky wretch, said something about playing ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... unforeseen event had well-nigh exposed the whole mystery. One day the Queen desired M. Campan to go down into her closet to fetch something that she had forgotten; he was dressed for the character of Crispin, and was rouged. A private staircase led direct to the entresol through the dressing-room. M. Campan fancied he heard some noise, and remained still, behind the door, which was shut. A servant belonging to the wardrobe, who was, in fact, on the staircase, had also heard some noise, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... an hour later, Captain Barker came out and closed this door gently, Dr. Beckerleg, who waited on the landing, forbore to look a second time at his face. Instead he stared fixedly at the staircase ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with her wizened face enfolded in her yellow kerchief, her skinny neck, and her distaff in the bony fingers, looks as if she had stepped out of some Renaissance painting of the Three Fates in a Florentine gallery. Crimson carnations in earthenware pots stand on the steps of the outside staircase, giving a touch of refinement to the squalid home, and from the balcony overhead the glossy-black, yellow-billed passer solitario, the favourite cage-bird of the Neapolitan poor, chirrups with apparent ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... some one to help," Rosalie said, rising to her feet, as she saw Charley come slowly down the staircase, his face white with misery. She ran and took his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ma'am—he said he was more comfortable when I came away." And with an almost imperceptible glance round the room he was in, Reuben turned and bounded lightly up the staircase. But all was dark there and in Mr. Linden's room. Reuben could not execute his commission so; and was turning to come down stairs again, when he encountered in the dim ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... upon the man's face And then mounted the great staircase with laborious steps. Passing the door of the room in which Alban slept, he listened intently for a moment as though half of a mind to enter; but abandoning the intention, went on to his apartment and there, when the footman had attended to his requirements, he locked the door and helped ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... at all. There is a wide, old-fashioned hall, with a dark carpet in it and a table and several chairs, and engravings on the walls, and a broad staircase that leads to large, pleasant rooms above; and there is a small room on the top of the house where you can go up and see vessels entering the harbor. Down-stairs the long parlor is the room that I know best; ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... watching faces than for mere idle amusement might have guessed them in trouble, from the anxious look which followed the momentary smiles on their charming faces. Raoul, who did not fear the bailiffs at night, appeared, pale and ashy, with anxious eye and gloomy brow, on the step of the staircase where he regularly took his stand. He looked for the Countess in her box and, finding it empty, buried his face in his hands, leaning his elbows ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... style. Over the gateway was a gallery filled with the band of the Scots Fusilier Guards; and over the portico of the house door hung the grapnel which brought up the 1865 cable, made resplendent to the eye by a coating of gold leaf. A handsome staircase, newly erected, permitted the guests to pass from the reception-room to the drawing-room. In the grounds at the back of the house stood the royal tent, where the Prince of Wales and a select party, including the Duke of Cambridge and Lady Mayo, wife of the Viceroy of India at that time, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... lumps of coal in the slide, and a cobwebby rope hung ominously from one cross beam, giving him a passing shudder. It seemed as if the spirit of the past had arisen to challenge his entrance thus. He took a few steps forward toward a dim staircase he sighted at the farther end, and then a sudden noise sent his heart beating fast. He extinguished the match and stood in the darkness listening with straining ears. That was surely a step he heard on the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... be covered with Staffordshire tiles. Lead lights will be largely used in the windows. Internally, the finish will be almost entirely in real woods, including walnut for the dining-room and vestibule, pitch-pine for the large hall, staircase, and billiard-room, ash for the morning-room, and oak for Mr. Armitage's own room. In all these the ceilings and dados are to be in wood. The contract for the whole of the above work, amounting to 6,507, is let to Mr. James Herd, of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... best, we will," answered the mother. And Frederic, the tall footman, was summoned to carry the little girl down the long staircase and out of the house. Then, once out-of-doors, the two women, supporting the child tenderly between them, led her through the ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... together with his father and his brother, he stepped, dejected, on board. A little later, he was more dejected still. The crossing was a very rough one; the Duke went hurriedly below; while the two Princes, we are told, lay on either side of the cabin staircase "in an almost helpless state." At Dover a large crowd was collected on the pier, and "it was by no common effort that Prince Albert, who had continued to suffer up to the last moment, got up to bow to the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... drove round to the door, the coachman and the horses adorned with white favours, and the guests drifted towards the house and into the big hall. Walter and Dick came down the staircase, and Muriel and her mother and Cicely followed immediately afterwards. Muriel's eyes were wet, but she was merry and talkative, and Mrs. Graham was more brusque in her speech than usual, but very talkative too. Every one crowded round them, and Walter ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... their original state, others touched up with more or less skill and knowledge, mingle harmoniously with those of more recent date. Very singular are the best preserved, representing hunting parties and banquets of the Grand Princes, and scenes from the earthly life of Christ. But they are on the staircase leading to the old-fashioned gallery, and do not disturb the devotional character of the decoration in ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... staircase, clinging to the handrail and dragging her feet like a very tired old woman instead of a dear little happy girl. She felt herself trembling. Over and over she thought of what she had just said to Helen of her grandmother: "I am sure she means to be kind." Yet here, without a word ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... house. My companion pointed it out to me as the end of our nocturnal walk. We passed the principal entrance of the house, entered a little door, which the stranger carefully locked behind him, and now ascended in the dark a narrow spiral staircase. It led towards a dimly lighted passage, out of which we entered a room lighted by a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... having become a prefect, and wishing to dazzle the old man with his fine position, attempted to force the door; then followed a drama mysterious and without witness, at the end of which the old man was found lying at the foot of his staircase, with his head split ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... the proud Egyptian king who ordered a colossal staircase built in his new palace, and was chagrined to find that he required a ladder to climb from one step to the next. A king's legs are as short as those of a beggar. So, too, a prince's ability to enjoy the pleasures of life is no greater than ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... observer. We then stepped into a hackney-coach which had been stationed at a little distance. Thence, according to our plan, we drove to a miserable quarter of the town, whither the poor only and the wretched resorted; mounted a gloomy dirty staircase, and, befriended by the fog, still growing thicker and thicker, and by the early hour of the morning, reached a house previously hired, which, if shocking to the eye and the imagination from its squalid appearance and its gloom, still was a home—a sanctuary—an asylum from treachery, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a giant staircase, each step of which must have been at least seven or eight feet in height. More than once the lasso was called into use; but all obstacles were at last safely overcome. I can not describe the joy I felt upon once more seeing pine-trees. We sought in vain for any traces ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... the next morning when the hammering of the 'boots' outside the door roused Mark to a miserable sense of the unwelcome duty before him. He dressed by candlelight, and, groping his way down the silent staircase, hunted about in the shuttered coffee-room for the coat and hat he had left there, and went shivering out into the main street, from which he turned up the hill towards the Hoe. The day had dawned by that time, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... thrust itself into, was scarcely effected, ere another series of knocks at the door, and batch of invectives from Mr. Adolphus Casay, hurried the partial sacrificer to the Graces, at a Derby pace, over the cold stone staircase, to discover the cause of the confounded uproar. The door was opened—a confused jumble of unintelligible mutterings aggravated the eager ears of the shivering Adolphus. Losing all patience, he exclaimed, in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... up, round and round the inner spiral staircase he climbed, in a creepsome darkness, invaded by moonbeams, hardly less creepsome, admitted through window-like openings set in every face of every storey. With each inrush of light, each flash of his torch, in deepest darkness, those thronging figures, weirdly distorted, sprang at ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it is thought too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Nur-el-Din's voice raised high in anger struck on his ears. He stole softly to the door and opened it. Before him lay the staircase deserted. He tiptoed down the stairs to the first landing and listened. The murmur of voices reached him indistinctly from the room below. Then he heard Nur-el-Din crying out again ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... awaits you." The man pointed to the garden, and turned back with his smoking lamp up the broad staircase that clung to one side of the court. Across the strip of garden lay a bar of ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... staircase that has known her hand And in the hall her presence made complete, The home her life endowed with memories sweet Where everything has heard her sweet command And seems to wear her beauty, I shall stand Wondering just how to greet him when ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... the central public square, where were the Capitol building and principal stores. The lobby was large and had been recently redecorated. Both floor and wainscot were of white marble, kept shiny by frequent polishing. There was an imposing staircase with hand-rails of walnut and toe-strips of brass. An inviting corner was devoted to a news and cigar-stand. Where the staircase curved upward the clerk's desk and offices had been located, all done in hardwood and ornamented by novel gas-fixtures. One ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... first-born. At least that's the way I understood it. Another one was called "The Striving Soul," to which the prof played something livelier. Vernabelle went round and round, lifting her feet high. It looked to me like she was climbing a spiral staircase that wasn't there. Then she was a hunted fawn in a dark forest and was finally shot through the heart by a cruel hunter—who was probably nearsighted. And in the last one she was a Russian peasant that has got stewed on vodka at the Russian county fair. This ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... headlong up the staircase that spiralled through the dim cavern. "No mistake about it," he muttered. "I saw something moving outside that hole. Two little leaks before, and now this big one. There's something a lot off-color going on ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... her hearth, that he was the most liberal gentleman that had ever crossed her threshold in the way of business, since Julius O'Brien (commonly called the tippling exciseman,) had unexpectedly departed this life by mistaking the steep staircase of the Mermaid for a single step, one night when his brain was more than usually beclouded. The arrival of the stranger, however, had nearly caused a schism between the hostess and her leading customers; for the former had whilst he honoured the Mermaid with his presence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... to a meal at the convent, where, after the meal was over, the members of the K.K.K. surrounded Pecheche and 10 of his officers and killed them with bolos or tied them and threw them out of the windows and down the staircase. Some priests were held captive in the building where this took place and were informed of what had taken ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... slowly and with impressiveness; then breaking off abruptly he led the way up a winding iron staircase and the boys, still pondering his words, followed him ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... after Grandfather had told the story of his great chair, there chanced to be a rainy day. Our friend Charley, after disturbing the household with beat of drum and riotous shouts, races up and down the staircase, overturning of chairs, and much other uproar, began to feel the quiet and confinement within doors intolerable. But as the rain came down in a flood, the little fellow was hopelessly a prisoner, and now stood with sullen ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... conducted into a great hall, up a noble staircase, through several elegant rooms, filled with beautiful and costly things, strange enough to poor Robert, but his eyes were too full of tears and his heart of grief to notice them. A chamber door was opened softly before him, and Robert saw his friend lying on a couch by the window, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... wall with it, and said, "Cleave, wall!" and a hole came in the wall large enough for Hulda to creep through, and she found herself at the foot of a staircase hewn in the rock, and, after walking up it for three hours, she came out in the old ruined castle, and was astonished to see that the sun had set. The moment she appeared her father and mother, who had given her over for lost, clasped her in their arms and wept ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... very mannered, and quick to attitudinize. A flight of framed photographs of her followed the staircase upward step by step, in which she registered at a considerably younger period such staple states as ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... somebody knocking. Makhar has gone out; 220 I am sitting alone now. I go to the door And look out. In the courtyard A carriage is waiting. I ask, 'Is he coming?' 'The lady is coming,' The porter makes answer, And hurries away To the foot of the staircase. A lady descends, 230 Wrapped in costliest sables, A lackey behind her. I know not what followed (The Mother of God Must have come to my aid), It seems that I fell At the feet of the lady, And cried, 'Oh, protect us! They try to ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... low, she would sit in state on almsgiving morning, which was the day after Christmas; and the more decent of her bedesmen and bedeswomen would be admitted to her presence to pay their duty, and drink her health in a cup of warm ale on the staircase. Also the little children from Lady Viellcastel's charity-school would be brought to her by their governante to have cakes and new groats given to them, and to sing one of those sweet tender Christmas hymns which surely fall ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... hour set for the departure of the Pope, who was to reach Notre Dame before the Emperor. The Sovereign Pontiff, clad in white, went down the staircase of the Pavilion of Flora and entered his carriage, which was drawn by eight horses; above it was a large tiara. At Rome it was the custom that when the Pope went forth to officiate at one of the great churches,—for instance, to Saint John Lateran,—for one of his chamberlains to start ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... all abroad at the sudden meeting. A minute before Gladys came down that staircase, if you'd asked me whether I cared for her I'd have said no; it was all burned up long ago. But now I'd seen her again, thin and sallow and changed as she was, it had all come back with a rush. Do you know that kind of love? It's because of the way it rushes ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... more dignified if the organist had not made a face at Judith and Percival as he went out at the door, and if he had not danced a fantastic but noiseless dance on the landing behind the incumbent of St. Sylvester's, who was feeling feebly in the dim light for the top step of Mrs. Bryant's staircase. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... half hoping that she would thus save him the mortification of an interview. But it turned out otherwise: the contessina was at home, and De Pretis was expected, as usual, to give the lesson. Slowly he climbed the great staircase, and ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... spacious staircase he paused in front of the mirror, half hidden behind exotics, and pressed down his wig behind either ear. Then he ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... pretty face and wavy auburn hair under the sun-helmet. Then turning away and picking up her whip she left the dressing-room and, passing the door of her husband's bedroom where he lay still sleeping, descended the broad marble staircase of the Residency to the lofty hall, where an Indian servant in a long red coat hurried to open the door of the dining-room ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... lake, I rather suppose that it was the sacred lake of Guatavita, on the east of the mines of rock-salt of Zipaquira, into which the gilded lord was made to enter. I saw on its banks the remains of a staircase hewn in the rock, and serving for the ceremonies of ablution. The Indians said that powder of gold and golden vessels were thrown into this lake, as a sacrifice to the adoratorio de Guatavita. Vestiges are still found of a breach which was ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... lords, all kneeling at her feet, as queen, she shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the ground. The next Monday, July 10, the royal barges came down the Thames from Richmond, and at three in the afternoon Lady Jane landed at the broad staircase of the Tower, as queen, in undesired splendour. But that same evening messages came saying that Mary had declared herself queen. She had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance to come ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... young man's room was heard every day;—finer and finer it sounded. As early spring came on, he grew very poorly; the little old monk used to bring him his meals into his chamber, because it tired him to go up and down the long stone staircase to the great eating-room. There never was anybody so kind as the ...
— The Pearl Story Book - A Collection of Tales, Original and Selected • Mrs. Colman
... cares?" said Martin to himself, and he followed the girl up the narrow, ill-lighted staircase covered with shabby carpet. Two or three inches of white stockings gleamed above the drab uppers of her high-heeled boots. Outside the open door of a room on the first floor there was a line of milk bottles, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... self-confidence to hire an office in State Street, as so many of his friends did, and doze there alone, vacuity within and a snowstorm outside, waiting for Fortune to knock at the door, or hoping to find her asleep in the elevator; or on the staircase, since elevators were not yet in use. Whether this course would have offered his best chance he never knew; it was one of the points in practical education which most needed a clear understanding, and he could never reach it. His ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a while in the hall, shaken with his anger; then mounted the staircase and went into his own bedroom with the satinwood furniture and nattier blue hangings. God! what a bedchamber for a man! He would have liked to throw bombs into the nest of effeminacy. But his mother had arranged it, so in a way ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... to ascend he rushed to the staircase, and sweating with terror gained the street and bribed a loafer to find ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... leprous beggar. Lindsay, when he had surmounted these, found himself at the entrance to a quadrangle which was positively dark. He waylaid a sweeper slinking out; and the man showed him where an open staircase ran down against the wall in one corner. It was up there, he said, that the "tamasho-mems"[2] lived. There were three tamasho-mems, he continued, responding to Arnold's trivial coin, and one sahib, but this was ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... turn of the staircase, Chris remained in its shadow while he stared with unbelieving eyes at the room and figure before him. If this is a dream, he said in himself, it's the best one I've ever had—the ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the bandage was taken off Amram's eyes. He found himself in a small room with painted walls, some seats, and a cupboard. A richly-carved ebony door divided this room from a larger one which on one side opened on to a broad staircase leading down to a ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... said the man, "it will be best for you to cross our Valley and mount the spiral staircase inside the Pyramid Mountain. The top of that mountain is lost in the clouds, and when you reach it you will be in the awful Land of ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... it should be," Will went on. "Now I propose that we camp out in the breaker. There must be a cozy corner somewhere, under the chutes, or in back of a staircase, or away up under the roof, where we can camp out while we are going through ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... impotent. He mused a moment, and, slipping a piece of gold into the porter's hand, said that he was commissioned to seek the Signor Zanoni upon an errand of life and death, and easily won his way across the court, and into the interior building. He passed up the broad staircase, and the voices and merriment of the revellers smote his ear at a distance. At the entrance of the reception-rooms he found a page, whom he despatched with a message to Zanoni. The page did the errand; and Zanoni, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the fine old rococo time, with successive scenes of the same history painted over the fireplaces throughout the suite; the drawing-room was elegant with silk hangings and carved mirrors; and the noble staircase, whose landing was honored with the bust of the French king of the chateau's period, looked as if that prince had just mounted it. All these splendors, with the modern comfort of hot and cold water wherever needed, you may have, if you like, ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... was sitting at dinner with the king and all the courtiers, eating from her little gold plate, there came a sound of something creeping up the marble staircase—splish, splash; and when it had reached the top, it knocked at the door and cried, "Youngest king's daughter, open ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... on the chimney. It showed her rock-built domicile, plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue china on the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the north wall. A corner staircase led to the second story of the tower, and on its lowest step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and panting. She was peculiarly dressed in the calico bloomers which the King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little ...
— The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a wall built by man, ran round the vale and seemed to reach to heaven. Pushing aside the thick brushwood, Marie stood beside the rock, and by some invisible movement, a low door flew open and disclosed a winding staircase. ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... reprimand! But no, I cannot; 'twould be like healing slightly the festering sore that threatens the citadel of life. I must be faithful to my God-given trust, however trying to my feelings. Ah, there she is!" as a little figure appeared at the top of the staircase and hurried across the intervening space to the ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley |
