"Stairs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and I am not sure that they are not of wood even now. No traces of Gaudenzio's frescoes remain. The chapel seems to have been reconstructed in connection with the replica of the Scala Santa up which Christ is going to be conducted. We have seen that the design for these stairs was procured from Rome in 1608 by Francesco Testa, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... flights of stairs; then, as he was coming up again with the water-bottle filled, he sat down, in his nightshirt, on a step of the stairs where there was a draught, and drank, without a tumbler, in long pulls like a runner who is out of breath. When he ceased to move the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... like the corner up-stairs office amazingly—provided, it has one fine, large front room superbly carpeted, for the safe and a $150 desk, or such a matter—one handsome room amidships, less handsomely gotten up, perhaps, for records and consultations, and one good-sized ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... on with his painting by himself for a while, but it seemed to him Harriett was gone a long time. He called his mother once, and she came to the foot of the stairs and told him she ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... undoubtedly thought the grin gave him a pleasant and carefree expression. It didn't. "Suppose I go have a look for Gerda myself," he said casually, heading up the stairs toward the temple entrance. "After all, you're so busy looking at books, you might ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the marble stairs to her chamber to seek her there, but only found a sewing-maid, ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... gilds, whose names are still seen inscribed upon it, with the number of places reserved for each. In the Colosseum there were three maeniana above the podium, separated from each other by terraces (praecinctiones) and walls (baltei), and divided vertically into wedge-shaped blocks (cunei) by stairs. The lowest was appropriated to the equestrian order, the highest was covered in with a portico, whose roof formed a terrace on which spectators found standing room. Numerous passages (vomitoria) and small stairs gave access to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... have gaps in them—walls' buttressed that totter—and floors propped that shake; cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their stairs since they first went up them; and I never made a better ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... the Neshamony left Snug Cove, as Mark had named his little haven, at the foot of the ravine, which, by the way, he called the Stairs, and put to sea, on her way to Rancocus Island. The bearings of the last had been accurately taken, and our mariners were just as able to run by night as by day. It may as well be said here, moreover, that the black was a capital boatman, and ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... were heard coming down the stairs, and, as Martinez and Dar Hyal entered, Terrence ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... narrow stairs, and he was informing me that his establishment was connected both with the prefecture and the police, with the one on account of the local expenses, with the other from its connexion with the public health, we were obliged to stand close against the wall ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... the Treasury and the Bank reached the Emperor on the day after the battle of Austerlitz. The alarming accounts which he received hastened his return to France; and on the very evening on which he arrived in Paris he pronounced, while ascending the stairs of the Tuileries, the dismissal of M. de Barbs Marbois. This Minister had made numerous enemies by the strict discharge of his duty, and yet, notwithstanding his rigid probity, he sunk under the accusation of having endangered the safety ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... with the Petersens, but on the point of taking his leave, the sound of crutches had been heard on the stairs; and Johnny, turning ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Margot's hand, I stumbled through a doorway into a spacious hall—a mysterious, fusty-smelling cavern of a place—along a passage, and then up a flight of worn stone stairs. It was one of those old houses where one could feel the silence and hear the shadows. The steps came out upon a bare landing with oak-lined walls, lit only by a solitary flickering candle, and Margot, halting before a locked door, opened it ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... projectiles. "That child will make a true man," said Cluseret, the war delegate. Ah, yes! provided he is not a corpse ere then. Shots are fired from window to window. A house is assaulted; there are encounters, on the stairs; it is a horrible struggle in which no quarter is given, night and day, through all hours. The rage and fury on both sides are terrific. Men that were friends a week ago have but one desire—to assassinate each other. An inhabitant ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... side of one wall ran a ladder, and Hawkins commenced the perpendicular ascent with the same matter-of-fact air that one would wear in walking up-stairs. ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... incarcerated for six months as a vagrant (being unfortunately mistaken for another gentleman), had a very melodious and plaintive tone of voice, which, though it is now somewhat impaired by gruel and such a getting up stairs for so long a period, I hope shortly to find restored. I have taken down the words from his own mouth at different periods, and have been careful to preserve his pronunciation, together with the air to which he does so much justice. Of his execution of it, however, and the intense ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... merely, in the wall, which led to no room. Just inside it steep steps showed in the moonlight, leading upward. Nicanor listened a moment to make certain that all was still, and, as one sure of himself and what he meant to do, ran up them,—past where a landing opened on the stairs, with glimpses of a pillared gallery beyond; and still up, until the flight ended in a long and bare passage. Here it was very dark, with only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy glass. Nicanor ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... our rooms was close and foul, and all were longing for a breath of our cooler northern air, while the men were moaning in pain, or were restless with fever, and our hearts were sick with pity for the sufferers, I heard a light step upon the stairs; and looking up I saw a young lady enter, who brought with her such an atmosphere of calm and cheerful courage, so much freshness, such an expression of gentle, womanly sympathy, that her mere presence seemed ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... began Laura, indignantly, but here Mrs. Mason interfered with a "Sh-sh-sh, children, mercy, goodness, you nearly drive me wild. Here. Laura, take mother's bonnet and shawl up-stairs. ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... Ravenslee hastened on down-stairs, returning neighbourly nods and greetings as he went, but staying for none, and so, crossing the court, turned into the avenue. On the corner he beheld the Spider, hard at work on his eternal chewing gum, cap drawn ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... the last evening before Edward's departure, the family could not be assembled so regularly as usual. Mrs. Bernard was engaged with Edward up stairs, arranging his clothes, and other matters that were necessary, preparatory to his journey. Mr. Bernard, in the mean time, devoted himself exclusively to the other children below. Little Sophy was allowed to make one of the party, and amused them with her cheerful vivacity, till Jane came ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... home." She had never rejoiced at the sound before, nor ever before entered the passage, nor walked up the stairs, with any wish of giving pleasure, but in conferring obligation, or of deriving it, except in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... there in the light, in African postures of terror,—Alfred, and Sambo, and Mammy Easter, and Ned. They lifted the limp figure in gray, and carried it into the hall chamber, his eyes closed, his face waxen under a beard brown and shaggy. Heavily, Virginia climbed the stairs to break the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... veil to a maid, and return to Mrs. Carleton before she had missed me, and it was most laughable to see the dear lady go in search for me, peering in everyone's face. But she did not find me, although we went down the stairs and in the drawing-room together, and neither did one person in those rooms recognize me during the evening. Lieutenant Joyce said he knew to whom the hair belonged, but beyond that it was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... regatta, there marched into Mrs Jenkins's open doorway, a bewildered looking gentleman, shaking off the dust from his feet in testimony of having had a long walk, and enquiring for Hanmer. Gwenny, with her natural grace, trotted up stairs before him, put her head in at the "drawing-room" door, (she seemed always conscious that the less one saw of her person the better,) and having announced briefly, but emphatically, "a gentlemans," retreated. Hanmer had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... great hubbub arose in the castle, and servants began rushing up and down stairs. Rudolf, who was still half dressed, went out into the corridor, and came face to face with ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... and the Son.. Mean while Satan alights upon the bare convex of this Worlds outermost Orb; where wandring he first finds a place since call'd The Lymbo of Vanity, what persons and things fly up thither; thence comes to the Gate of Heaven, describ'd ascending by stairs and the waters above the Firmament that flow about it: His passage thence to the Orb of the Sun; he finds there Uriel the Regent of that Orb, but first changes himself into the shape of a meaner Angel; and pretending a zealous desire to behold the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hang down stairs but after her marriage my father had it brought up here. He kept the door locked until the news came that she was dead, then he turned it into a guest room. He never comes in himself; he won't look at ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... might have been taken, had not a figure in a floating lilac-and-white garment, with two long braids of dark hair hanging over its shoulders, appeared upon the staircase landing. Burns looked up, saw it, and was up the stairs to the landing before ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... at daybreak, not forgetting his duty to Farmer Ashton's sheep, and when he got down-stairs he found his kind old friend waiting for him with a crust of bread ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... assistance to recover a jeweled sword. The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desirous of discovering where her husband was on the night of February 14; and last night"—he lowered his voice slightly—"a lodger in this very house, meeting me on the stairs, wanted to know why ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... the roof of our house doesn't come down stairs to play with the kitchen floor and let the rain in on the gold fish, I'll tell you next about Uncle Wiggily and ...
— Uncle Wiggily in the Woods • Howard R. Garis
... elections; and was at that very time engaged in deliberations with regard to this expedient. Cromwell in a rage immediately hastened to the house, and carried a body of three hundred soldiers along with him. Some of them he placed at the door, some in the lobby, some on the stairs. He first addressed himself to his friend St. John, and told him that he had come with a purpose of doing what grieved him to the very soul, and what he had earnestly with tears besought the Lord not to impose upon him: but there was a necessity, in order to the glory ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... rang at the bell, Dick skipped down the area steps, and presently opened to him with a mock start of surprise. "Beg your pardon," said he, "but I took you for the rates, or the broker's man." He winked as he ushered in the visitor. The running click of a sewing-machine sounded above stairs, and up from the basement floated an aroma of fried ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she said, hardly able to draw her breath, she had run quickly up the stairs. 'Dear one! dear one!—so this is where you live? I've quickly found you. The daughter of your landlord conducted me. We arrived the day before yesterday. I meant to write to you, but I thought I had better come myself. I have come for a quarter of an hour. ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... Patty down the stairs and out of the house, and placed her with care, but a bit unceremoniously, in the tonneau of a waiting motor-car. He jumped in beside her, and pulled the lap robe over her. The car started at once, and was well under ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... made their appearance, it was again concealed in Largy, an old Castle at Sir H. Brooke's deer-park. Father Antony Maguire, a priest of the Roman Church, dug it up from under the stairs in this old castle, after the battle of the Boyne, deposited it in a chapel, and it was ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... disgust, she told me to run away, so that I returned to the damp passage, which was now deserted by Jane. After waiting there what seemed a long time, I saw Captain Knowlton on the stairs. After bidding me good-bye, he let himself ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on the upper step of the long flight of stairs which lean precariously against the scarred face of the frame residence upon the second floor front of which the lares and penates of the Shane family are crowded into three ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seats of the spectators, a flight of stairs was constructed, which was called the Charonic, and by which, unseen by the audience, the shadows of the departed, ascended into the orchestra, and thence to the stage. The furthermost brink of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of my visit which I enjoyed the most was when Admiral Piazza took us across the bay, on a Detroit-built submarine-chaser, to a Franciscan monastery dating from the fifteenth century. We were met by the abbot at the water-stairs, and, after being shown the beautiful Venetian Gothic cloisters, with alabaster columns whose carving was almost lacelike in its delicate tracery, we were led along a wooded path beside the sea, over a carpet of pine-needles, to a cloistered rose-garden, in which ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the stairs, while they were following the waiter to the private sitting-room for which Mr. Walford had asked It was a neat little room on the first floor, looking into a stony city square, ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the heavy outer door and crossed over to his house, while the boy went whistling down the street in the dusk. Slowly the artist mounted the stairs, pondering, as he went, on the many emotions of the day, and at last repeating his conclusion, that he was glad that ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... indeed one of our trio differed; but this member of the party had already exposed herself to the charge of being too fastidious by declining to descend from the carriage at Chaumont and take that back-stairs view of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... name, they won't tell it," replied the other. "Now, I'll first tell you mine, which is Lieutenant Wilson, of the navy; and now let's have yours, that I may ask for it; and tell me what stairs you ply from." ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... lawyers, or graver divines—a likeness running through all, and showing they belonged to one line—a huge carved mantelpiece, massive tables of walnut or oak, and black and shining as ebony, set round with high-backed chairs. Here, also, above stairs, there were long corridors looking out through lattices upon the court, and communicating with the almost countless dormitories; while, on the floor beneath, corresponding passages led to all the principal chambers, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square and still untrodden street, Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stairs with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... his teeth would chatter although he bit his lips and his fingers shook as he undressed, and his stud slipped and he could not undo his braces—and always his ears were open for the sound of the step on the stairs. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... their round, Since curious thousands thronged to see Her mother on the gallows-tree; And mocked the palsied limbs of age, That faltered on the fatal stairs, And wan lip trembling ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... he climbed the shallow stairs three at once, he told himself that his father had no need to speak severely to him. He had only been as other young men, and had not got into serious debt or trouble. Tom had almost persuaded himself, in fact, that he had been on the whole a very estimable sort of youth, ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Gospel of St. John." They all knelt down and the lady of the house began: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." There was a terrible clap of thunder. All started; then there was a terrible scream and noise up the stairs. "For God's sake! Is something burning?" cried Frau von S., and sank down with her face on the chair. The door burst open and in rushed the wife of Aaron the Jew, pale as death, with her hair wildly disheveled, dripping with rain. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... already at the bottom of the stairs. A valet called him back, and Gaudinet, after bringing out the little girl, introduced him ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... he came stamping down the stairs and slouched into the front room, where, upon his catching sight of me, a frightened look crossed his face, followed, almost instantly, by a queer expression, a mixture of relief and cunning that gave his face a grotesqueness ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... him admission into her house. One evening, walking, as was his custom, in the street that she inhabited, he saw the door of her house by accident open; he entered it, and finding no person in the passage to hinder him, went up-stairs to salute her. She discovered him before he entered the chamber, alarmed the family with the most distressful outcries, and when she had by her screams gathered them about her, ordered them to drive out of the house that villain, who had ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... about looking into the shops for full half an hour, but it was apparent to Cyril that he paid little attention to their contents, and was really waiting for someone. When the clock struck three he started, stamped his foot angrily on the ground, and, walking away rapidly to the stairs of London Bridge, took a seat in a boat, and was rowed up ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... withdrawing his head in a fluster. "It can be no common prince, this, with such a jaw-breaking name. Here Francesco, Rosa, wife, all of you! hurry, haste down stairs as quickly as ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... in front of the house. Once or twice when he sat late on the verandah, with his feet upon the deal table on a level with the lamp, reading the seven months' old copy of the North China Herald, brought by Lingard, he heard the stairs creak, and, looking round the paper, he saw her frail and meagre form rise step by step and toil across the verandah, carrying with difficulty the big, fat child, whose head, lying on the mother's bony shoulder, seemed of the same size as Joanna's own. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the old-fashioned clock I had noticed on the stairs strike three. The reverberation seemed to last a long time, then all was silent again. "A dream," I muttered to myself, as I lay down upon the pillow; "Madeira is a heating wine. But what can ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... into his pocket. Then he took the dead woman up in his arms, went out into the hall, and started to go up the stairway. The body was relaxed and heavy, and for that reason difficult to carry. He doubled it up into an awful heap, with the knees against the chin, and walked slowly and heavily up the stairs and out into the bathroom. There he laid the corpse down on the tiled floor. Then he opened the window, closed the shutters, and lighted the gas. The bathroom was small and contained an ordinary steel tub, porcelain ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... how well! with what pain I crawled to it on all fours, and slid down stairs on my back without any assistance. In this way I managed to reach the sick-room, and the first object that attracted my attention on entering, was a convict at the point of death. A stream of blood was rushing from his mouth, which choked him just as I was placed in the next ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... each other with pale, sad faces, before either spoke. No cries followed the few words that were said, but silently, swiftly, a room was made ready, while the men lifted from the straw and carried up stairs an unconscious figure, the arms of which hung down with a horrible significance as they moved. He was not dead, for the heart beat feebly and slowly; but all efforts to restore his consciousness were in vain. There was concussion of the brain the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... waiter went before them up the narrow stairs and led them into a dusky, fady, gloomy-looking chamber, whose carpet, curtains, and chair coverings seemed all of mingled hues of browns and grays, and from their fadiness and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... shelter afforded in her old age, Mrs. Woolper felt that she could not do too much in her benefactor's service. She had already shown herself a clever managing housekeeper; had reformed abuses, and introduced a new system of care and economy below-stairs, to the utter bewilderment of poor Georgy, for whom the responsibilities of the gothic villa had been an overwhelming burden. Georgy was not particularly grateful to the energetic old Yorkshirewoman who had taken this burden off her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the congregation to sell and build elsewhere. On other accounts the church was always very pleasant to me. It was of moderate size, holding seven or eight hundred people, and became in the course of a year or two quite full. The stairs to the galleries went up on the inside, giving it, I know not what, a kind of comfortable and domestic air, very social and agreeable; and last, not least, it was easy to speak in. This last consideration, I am convinced, is of more importance, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... how heavily my feet went up the stairs. I was not very strong yet in body, and now the strength seemed to have gone ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... story of how I came to this house in Adelphi Terrace. There is mystery in it, you must admit, my lady. Once or twice since that uncomfortable call I have passed the captain on the stairs; but the halls are very dark, and for that I am grateful. I hear him often above me; in fact, I hear him as I ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... thief; for, hearing my landlady cry out, I flew from my chamber to her help, and met him running down stairs, and then he turned back to the balcony, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... all her life fathomed the Contessa's intentions at a glance. "That boy!" she said to herself as she followed up the great staircase. Lucy divined the Contessa, and the Contessa divined that she had divined her. She turned round when they reached the top of the stairs and paused for a moment looking at Lady Randolph's face, lit up with the light of her candle. "My sweetest," said the Contessa, "you do not approve. It breaks my heart to see it. But what can I do! This is my way, it is not yours; but to me it ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... and trying to find some possible explanation. The more I thought, the more extraordinary and inexplicable did it appear. I was still puzzling over it when I heard the door gently close again, and her footsteps coming up the stairs. ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... way up the stone steps on to the quay, and as speedily disappears down a sort of trap which gapes in the open street, in the immediate vicinity of the landing-place. Let him alone; Tom knows the way. We follow him down an almost perpendicular flight of stairs into a spirit kellar, and gratify Tom's little ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... was rendered endurable by the general familiarity with cruelty. In every Roman palace, the slave was chained to the doorway; thongs hung upon the stairs, and the marks of violence on the faces of the domestics impressed the great that they were despots themselves. They were accustomed to the sight of blood in the sports of the amphitheatre. They ruled as tyrants in the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... lamp, shining the beam down the stairs. The steps were thick with dust and rubble. At the bottom ...
— The Gun • Philip K. Dick
... though he scorned to show it, was too agitated even to suggest an event to fit the disconsolate date, and poor Coote had to totter up the stairs, hopelessly convinced that he had nothing at his fingers' ends ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... Strand Bridge formed part of the public highway; and through it, according to Maitland, "ran a small watercourse from the fields, which, gliding along a lane below, had its influx to the Thames near Somerset Stairs."[1] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... He petitioned to be spared it, on the plea, firstly, that it expressed want of confidence; secondly, that it took him in the stomach. The handkerchief was tight across his eyes while he was speaking. His hand was touched by the woman, and he commenced timidly an ascent of stairs. It continued so that he would have sworn he was a shorter time going up the Motterone; then down, and along a passage; lower down, deep into corpse-climate; up again, up another enormous mountain; and once more down, as among rats and beetles, and down, as among ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... jolly!" they murmur; and they hurry in from the conservatory, and come up from the stairs, and go and fetch each other from all over the house, and crowd into the drawing-room, and sit round, all smirking ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... but which even the most illiterate despised. To have known George Warrington, to have mingled familiarly in the society of George Washington, to remember the picture of Beatrix Esmond coming down the stairs—I am not speaking of Du Maurier's travesties of that delightful book—to have seen the old ladies in "Cranford," sucking their oranges in the privacies of their rooms, made one despise foolish little tales about ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... eye of the rebellious girl, and the elastic firmness of youth in her tread, but above stairs, in her own lonely rooms, her courage faded away quickly. But she wrapped her sorrows in her own proud young heart and turned her eyes to the far East. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... than that which borders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... irreverent ribalds in the far end of the room were disturbing the solemnity of all this communion with the shades, and at my suggestion we went up-stairs to Mrs. Cameron's own sitting-room, where we could be quiet. Seizing a moment when Mrs. Harris was free from the "influence," I woke her and told her what we were about to do. She followed Mrs. Cameron readily, although she seemed a little dazed, and five of us continued the sitting, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... saddled; and had told the groom to let no one know that he had left the palace. He then went up to his room, dismissed his valet, and locked the door, as the servant had related to Signor Fortini. Then descending to the stables, by one of those private doors and stairs so frequently to be found in old Italian palaces, and generally contrived to communicate with the principal sleeping chamber of the dwelling, he mounted his horse, and rode furiously to the Pineta, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... name of this woman?" inquired Don Antonio. "Cornelia," replied Santisteban. Down stairs at once went the page who had discovered the hidden woman, and who was not much of a friend to Santisteban, and entered the room where sat the duke, Don Juan, and Lorenzo, and, either from simplicity or malice, began to talk to himself, saying, "Well caught, brother page! by Heaven they have ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... bulging up the harbor, not sixty minutes from deep water. Mr. James found McMurtagh already in the office and the mail well sorted, but he insisted on McMurtagh finding him a broom, and, wielding that implement on the second pair of stairs (for the counting-room of James Bowdoin's Sons was really a loft, two flights up in the old granite building), was discovered there shortly after by Mr. James Bowdoin. The staircase had not been swept in some years, and the young man's father made his way up through a cloud of aromatic dust ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... President goes down-stairs to lunch, and on his way to the private dining-room passes through the East Room to see the sovereign people congregated there. There are queer mosaics of humanity at these daily impromptu receptions, generally including a few persistent place-hunters, who are invariably ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... lately, and had the firm any special work in view? To which questions Miss Higham replied with caution and reserve, so that frequently the responsible individual came out of his office, walking with her down the stairs in the endeavour to obtain useful information. As a rule, the discussion ended with a command that she should look in again when it chanced she was passing by. At Great Titchfield Street, when Miss Rabbit and Gertie happened ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... recovered himself, he hurried to the spot, and De Montaigne followed. The latter, as they descended the stairs, laid his hand on ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... outward circumstances might afford him. A brief account of this visit is prefixed to the volume entitled "English Traits." He took a short tour, in which he visited Sicily, Italy, and France, and, crossing from Boulogne, landed at the Tower Stairs in London. He finds nothing in his Diary to publish concerning visits to places. But he saw a number of distinguished persons, of whom he gives pleasant accounts, so singularly different in tone from the rough caricatures ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... out, and Noel, leaving his door open, listened to the sound of his footsteps as he descended the stairs. Almost immediately the cry of, "Open, if you please," and the banging of the door apprised him that M. Tabaret had gone out. He waited a few minutes and refilled his lamp. Then he took a small ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... Majesty passed through the body of the church, and through the choir up the stairs to the theatre. He then passed his throne and made his humble adoration, and afterwards knelt at the faldstool set for him before his chair; at the same time his Majesty used some short private prayer: he then sat down (not on his throne, but in his chair before and ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... Richelieu was desired by the Queen-mother to compose her address to the King, which having been submitted to the Council and approved, the reply of Louis was in like manner prepared by the ministers. A flight of stairs alone separated the mother and the son: the footsteps of the stripling monarch could be heard in the apartment of Marie as he passed from one room to the other; and were not the subject too sad for ridicule, it would be difficult to suppress a smile at these puerile ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... it in vain. There are multitudes of professing Christians who never from end to end of the year visit any poor person. They never thread the obscure streets or ascend the grimy stairs in search of God's hidden ones. They have never acquired the art of cheering a dark home with a flower, or a hymn, or a diet, or the touch of a sympathetic hand and the smile of a healthy face. It would completely alter the Christianity of many if they ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... notwithstanding," says Gunton, "he forgat not to enlarge and beautify his monastery, for he built that goodly building at the east end of the church, now commonly known by the name of the new building,"[16] wherein he placed three altars, opposite three pair of stairs, descending from the back of the great altar. He likewise built a chamber in the abbey house, which is still called "heaven-gate chamber." He made also a beautiful window in the great hall "overlooking the cloyster." He added many pictures to those which were already in the chapel of St. Mary, ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... and crumbling, cracking off into the pool if the hand hung or the foot weighed on them. No safe way went to the water but at this lower side, where the riven, tumbled white blocks shelved easily to the bottom; and Luis and Lolita looked down these natural stairs at the portent in the well. In that white formation shot up from the earth's bowels, arbitrary and irrelevant amid the surrounding alien layers of slate, four black stones were lodged as if built into the wall by some hand—four small stones shaping a cross, back against the white, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the crest-fallen Edith crept disconsolately up the stairs, feeling that she had made a most ridiculous mistake, and wondering what the word COULD be that sounded so much like 'PHYSICS, and yet wasn't that at all. She know she had made herself ridiculous, and was indulging in a fit of crying when Mrs. Atherton returned, delighted to meet ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... a clear space and stopped before an immensely long but low-built house which seemed to ramble round a stone court. At first Mary thought that there were no lights at all in the windows, but as she got out of the carriage she saw that one room in a corner up-stairs showed a ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... struck?—never felt so joyous in all my life as when I smashed them two tear-bombs down on the deck here an' busted up that fightin' mob. Zowie! how quick they got a move on, every single man but the one lone dickey we found knocked out down below-stairs. Ev'rything movin' along like silk—who cares whether school keeps or not, with us boys on ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... said Julie, "will you go up-stairs, please, and fetch me that book from my room that has your little drawings ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... almost simultaneously a heavy fall, Henry hurried through the long passage and threw open the door. One glance sufficed, and then he rushed down the stairs in ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch |
