"Stairway" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stairway leading up to the boat deck stood two of the factors in Cressida's destiny. One of them was her sister, Miss Julia; a woman of fifty with a relaxed, mournful face, an ageing skin that browned slowly, like meerchaum, and the unmistakable "look" by which one knew a Garnet. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... came through the crowd and passed me. He had, I suppose, been belated at the Foreign Office. He seemed to be in haste and went behind a screen and into a room on the side of the hall. A little later the music up-stairs ceased. I heard cries of fire. People rushed down the stairway screaming. There was a jam in the hall and a terrible crush at the outer doors. A curtain had been blown across a console and taken fire; that was all, but the alarm and confusion were dreadful. Women fainted. One or two men made brutal efforts to escape. I have a temperament which leaves ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... triumphal arch, while the eyes of men followed her and the women grew pale with envy. And he led her into the stately home, where bowing, silvery-haired servants stood drawn up along the side of the broad stairway and where the table laden for the feast groaned under the ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... passed through a gate, crossed a lawn, and reached a long, steep flight of steps leading straight up the face of a cliff, to the grounds attached to a villa. With her hand clasped tightly in his, Mr. Dunbar and Beryl slowly mounted the abrupt stairway, and when they gained the elevated terrace, a man who was walking up and down ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... rain-washed woodland of the Neosho Valley was in its richest green. I did not notice that the bushes hid me until, as I turned, I caught a glimpse of a red blanket, with a circular white centre, sliding up that stairway. An instant later, a call, my signal whistle, sounded from the rock above. I stood on the ledge under the point, my heart the noisiest thing in all that summer landscape full of soft twilight utterances. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... separated from the law courts by a wall fifteen feet high, with an opening let into the middle of the receding wall, closed by a massive oaken door, to admit prisoners without taking them round by the street. The jailer, we say, crossed the yard to a winding stairway in the left angle of the courtyard which led to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... his place and Armande advanced cautiously towards the foot of the stairway. The men were huddled together on the ground floor, irresolute as to what course they ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... when your trunks can be removed. Then, Miss Montague, you are to put on a wrap belonging to my sister, and tie a thick veil over your face. I will come to take you to the carriage, and no one will suspect but that you are Marie. Meantime she will slip down another stairway, and out of the private entrance; then away we will speed to the steamer, and all will be well. Now, good-night, ladies, and a good sleep to you," he concluded, cheerfully, as he quietly left ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... l'Hery, second floor, Boulevard Haussmann. Furniture rich as at the Tuileries, blue satin on all the walls, Chinese ornaments, pictures, curiosities, a veritable museum, indeed, overflowing even on to the stairway. The service very smart: six men-servants, chestnut livery in winter, nankeen livery in summer. These people are seen everywhere at the small Mondays, at the races, at first-nights, at embassy balls, and their name always in the newspapers with a remark upon the handsome toilettes ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... players were all in one part of the hotel, along the same hall. Joe and Rad were together, near the stairway going down. ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... Cyrus W. Field's country place, where a dinner party was appointed; and jumping up, hurried away. The light in the hall shone down on the President's pale, high forehead, as he walked toward the stairway leading to his apartments, and I saw ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... hall opened straight before me, with a stairway leading to the second floor. A lamp with burnished reflector was burning brightly midway down its length. Another just like it fully lighted a big room to my left,—the dining-room, evidently,—on the floor of which, surrounded ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... tale tells how upon the stairway by which you descended from the Women's Garden to the citadel—people called it the Queen's Stairway, because it was builded by Queen Rudabeh very long ago when the Emperor Zal held Nacumera—Demetrios waited with a naked sword. Below were four ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... They climbed the stairway. They knocked at Mr. Cavendish's door. A boy opened it, and took in their cards. Mr. Cavendish was busy, but would see them in fifteen minutes. Mr. Belcher sat down in the ante-room, took a newspaper from his pocket, and began to read. Then he took a pen and scribbled, writing his own name with ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... woods at night. But now I trembled as I felt my way down the ladder, and groped and stumbled through the black attic for the stairs. Every noise I made seemed louder an hundred fold than the battle had been, and when I barked my shins, the pain was sharper than a knife. Below, on the big stairway, the echo of my footsteps sounded again from the empty rooms, so that I was taken with a panic and fled downward, sliding and falling, until I reached the hall. Frantically as I tried, I could not unfasten the bolts on the front door. And so, running into the drawing-room, I pried open the window, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... floor was almost completely carpeted with skins, they gave their weapons to a couple of footmen; and as they did so he saw the slim and yet stately figure of a woman coming down the winding stair which led into the hall from a broad gallery running round it. As she reached the bottom of the stairway she threw her head back a little, and held out both her hands towards the man who had come in second. As the light of a great swinging lamp above the stairway fell upon her upturned face, he recognised the Countess Hermia von Zastrow, the reigning European beauty whose portrait ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... in expectation of the birth of an heir, had withdrawn to the sumptuous chateau which General Arlington had hired for them near Compiegne, and Undine was at least spared the sight of their bright windows and animated stairway. But she had to take her share of the felicitations which the whole far-reaching circle of friends and relations distributed to every member of Hubert's family on the approach of the happy event. Nor was this the hardest of her trials. Raymond had done what she ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the last, as if loth to retire to his own particular den. In summer he sate in the passage, or on the broad tessellated pavement of the portico. On the right hand on entering the front door you saw a small room in which an aged or invalid guest might repose without ascending the stairway, and in which Gen. Jackson and Mr. Randolph lodged at various times. And adjoining this room was the parlor, a single room of twenty by twenty, containing probably the same furniture he purchased when he first ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... the right of it, sir," he gestured. "As you see, the local military are already keeping the route clear of onlookers. We thought it would be most impressive if your party were to descend the outer stairway from the palace balcony here ... ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe
... called and they took Picard away. Julie and Suzanne followed von Arnheim to a stairway, and John was left alone with medievalism. The man wore no armor, but when only they two stood in the room his feeling that he was back in the Middle Ages was overpowering. Here was the baron, and here was he, untitled ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the corridor I found a spiral stairway leading to the floors above and below. The three had evidently left the floor by this avenue. That they had gone down and not up I was sure from my knowledge of these ancient buildings and the ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... steps or terraces used repeatedly for ornamental or ceremonial purposes. Some stairs are large enough to be used by man; others are in miniature. Frequently the steps were cut into the sacred boulders consecrated to ancestor worship. It was easy for an Inca architect, accustomed to the stairway motif, to have conceived these curious doorways on Koati and also the cross-like niches between them, even if he had never seen any representation of a Papal cross, or a cross nowy quadrant. My friend, Mr. Bancel La Farge, has also suggested a striking resemblance which the sedilia-like ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... girl's eye a look which seemed to brook neither delay nor familiarity, for he turned and went along the passage and up the stairway. ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Cousin Chilian looked approval, and followed up the stairway, where her feet sank in the carpet. There were several rooms, with the air blowing through delightfully, and there was fragrance everywhere from vases ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... is called the Dead Sea. Here you gaze upward at vast cliffs sixty feet high and one hundred feet long, above which you go with cautious tread, then up a stone stairway that leads to the river Styx, a body of water forty feet wide and four hundred feet long, which is crossed by a natural bridge. A beach of finest yellow sand extends for five hundred yards to Echo river, the largest of all, being from twenty to two hundred feet wide, ten to forty ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... lamb was not neglected, and slept in peace. We are encompassed with mercies; the physician who drives over from Manchester is as skilful as he is conscientious; this house is admirably adapted to sickness, the stairway only nine feet high, plenty of water, and my room, which I have given her, admits of her lying in a draught as the doctor wishes her to do. While the nurse is sleeping, as she is now, A. and I take turns sitting out on the piazza, where there is ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... beamed upon her through the open door-window which led out on the stairway to the garden; her approach had been seen by her little nephews, who had admitted her through ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... "It's a moving stairway, precious," added his mother. "I suppose you want to ride on it. Well, first I must get Daddy some handkerchiefs, for we never packed him a one. And we'll find out on which floor ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... at the old stone stairway, which seemed to invite them to a higher region, but still as narrow ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... front of the residence being at the opposite side, the whole of the space at the townward gable, to the width of seventeen feet, was a noble hall about forty feet long, lofty, and with pilasters in architectural style, and lighted by two great windows in the gable and the square window on the stairway. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Visitors appeared upon the stairway and sought admission. Herman and Verman took position among the exhibits, near the wall; Sam stood at the entrance, officiating as barker and ticket-seller; while Penrod, with debonair suavity, acted as curator, master of ceremonies, and lecturer. He greeted the first to enter ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... that it is a sign of good luck to tumble up stairs. I am glad of it; for, what with my long skirts, and what with the broken stairway, and the pitch darkness, I did nothing but tumble. However, it's my motto never to give up; so, of course I gained the top at last, and, opening a door, found myself in a garret, piled up as high as my waist ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... but if you will look closer you'll see the hoof marks. Horses do not have split toes, my boy. In fact, I have no doubt this is the regular stairway of the goat family that lives on this mountain. Like enough they've been down in here to get some different sort of grass or water. They've evidently been using ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... as the two women were sobbing despairingly upon the snow, the silence of the twilight was broken by a shout from near Donner Lake! In an instant every person forgot weakness and infirmity, and clambered up the stairway! It was a strange voice, and in the distance the discovered strange forms approaching. The Reed and the Breen children thought, at first, that it was a band of Indians, but Patrick Breen, the good old father, soon declared that the strangers ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... well let us go up replied Bernard and he led the way up many a winding stairway till they came to an oak door with some lovly swans and bull rushes painted on it. Here we are he cried gaily. Ethels room was indeed a handsome compartment with purple silk curtains and a 4 post bed draped with the same shade. The toilit set was white and mouve and there were some ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford
... downstairs, but in a little while the searchers went out of the house. Their tone had changed since their disappointment, and loud threats floated up the dark stairway to the prisoners still ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... wife must think of these things!' to which the husband good-naturedly assented, while the daughter, a well-grown good-looking girl of fourteen, looked up from her household duties, much interested in our visit. The husband, on his part, had contrived a convenient wine-cellar under the stairway. 'It will not hold much wine,'he said with a smile; 'but it is too large for all the wine I drink.' 'Ah!' said the wife archly, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... It will not be safe for you to enter," and pushing her gently back he ran up the exposed stairway, into the parlor, noticing with dismay the general wreck and ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... down the ancient, darksome stairway, where owls hooted and bats flittered in their faces. Now they were at the last flight, which descended to a little recess set at right angles to the steps and flush with the floor of the basement, for once the door of the stairway had ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... word to brace yourselves for the dive!" bawled Mr. Farnum below, and Eph, stationed at the bottom of the spiral stairway, yelled the word to ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... slipped in his sweating hands, but he managed to turn it. The elevator wasn't at his floor, and he couldn't stop for it. His feet pounded on the stairs, taking him down the three floors to the street at a breakneck pace. The walls of the stairway seemed to be rushing together, as if trying to close the way. He screamed at them, until they were behind, and he was charging ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... of the University all to myself, and might study unmolested the blazons of the noble youth who have attended the school in different centuries ever since 1200, and have left their escutcheons on the walls to commemorate them. At the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools from the court is the statue of the learned lady who was once a professor in the University, and who, if her likeness belie not her looks, must have given a great charm to student life in other times. At present there are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... myself on the street with two weeks' pay in my pocket. It is true that my departure had been hasty and unpleasant, for the stairway from the office to the street is long and dusty; but I recalled what Professor Tagore had said about vicissitudes being the true revealers of the spirit. My hat was not with me, but I remembered the creed pasted in it. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... lover had come to claim her at last! How great his stupefaction, could he have seen his daughter standing midway on the stairs, one hand on the baluster, the other raised to her heart in petrifying fear! It was fortunate indeed for Felicity that she had time, unobserved in the shadow of the stairway, to regain her self-control. Had she descended a moment earlier, had she been at the door when Lena threw it open, she could ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... was all over Frau Nirlanger beckoned me, and she, Dr. von Gerhard and I stole out into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairway, discussing our plans for the future, and trying to smile as we talked of this plan and that. Frau Nirlanger, in the pretty white gown, was looking haggard and distrait. The oogly husband was still in the dining room, finishing the beer and punch, of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... religious opinions, was bought by Edmund Quincy. His grandson, who bore his name, enlarged the house, and lived in it until his death when it descended to his son Edmund, the eminent jurist and father of Dorothy. The old-fashioned furniture, utensils and pictures, the broad hall, fine old stairway with carved balustrades, and foreign wall-paper supposed to have been hung in honor of the approaching marriage of Dorothy to John Hancock, are still preserved in their original place. Of the Quincy family, whose sedate jest it was that the estate descended from 'Siah to ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... a case as mine, I was not again troubled with delirium, nor did I experience any other set-back of any kind; on the contrary, I made such excellent progress that within the fortnight I was able to be up and about again, although it was something of a task to climb the companion stairway to the deck, even with the help of Billy. But, that task once achieved, I made rapid headway, and was soon my old self again. Upon my first visit to the deck after my illness I sustained something of a shock. My last view of the brigantine had shown her all ataunto, and although ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... clothing so that his mad condition would not be too apparent when they went outdoors. It was a hard task, but Zita soon accomplished it and, half supporting, she led him through a door on the farther side of the room. They crept down a back stairway and so away from ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... and, going to the darkened window, looked out across the orchard. There, in the greenness, lay the old house. It called on her to come. It seemed to Dilly that she could not make haste enough to be there. She slipped softly down the narrow stairway, and across the kitchen, where the shadows of the moonlit windows lay upon the floor. A great excitement thrilled her blood; and though quite safe from discovery, she was not wholly at ease until she had entered ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... black scowl on her face, Linda climbed the dingy back stairway in her stocking-feet. At the head of the stairs she paused one minute, glanced at the gloom of her end of the house, then she turned and walked to the front of the hall where there were potted ferns, dainty white curtains, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that we could not hope to reach it unnoticed in the darkness, before the step would be upon us again. Besides, the lock was out of order, so that even if we could have summoned courage to shut it, it could not be fastened. The stairway, too, was at such a distance beyond our door, that we did not dare to try that way of escape, bringing us, as it would, face to face with our unseen visitor. There was nothing left but silent endurance, and thus we lay counting the footsteps through the long ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... to my room," the woman directed from the foot of a stairway; "where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mocked unmercifully; and, finally, in spite of his softness, he got angry. Schmoll is without rancor. It is a virtue of his race. He does not bear ill-will to those whom he persecutes. One day, as he went up the stairway of the Institute with Renan and Oppert, he met Marmet, and extended his hand to him. Marmet refused to take it, and said 'I do not know you.'—'Do you take me for a Latin inscription?' Schmoll replied. Marmet died and was buried because of that satire. Now you know the reason why his ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... mistaken. I have seen you go into Green Valley parlors and every other room in the house. I watched you move that clumsy old sideboard of Mrs. Luttins down that narrow stairway and then through the little side gate. You never chipped a bit of plaster or trampled a flower beside the walk. Why, you never even tore a bit of vine off the gate. And yesterday I saw you walking your horses ever so carefully to the station ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... their confidence, they secretly left the house, and made their way to the place of rendezvous, which, as has been said, was but a short distance away. All three were soon established in the cramped and narrow little stairway which Marguerite had described, and waited with no small trepidation the arrival ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... was still, Monseigneur Jules Emile Gautier, a very learned gentleman of the town, who had been chosen for that purpose, ascended two steps of the stairway which curved up and around the richly carved pulpit, and announced the name of the person who was ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... black bag and the wings on his left arm walked the length of the platform, gained the steel stairway which led to the main floor of the depot, and when he had climbed half-way stopped to rest and to look down ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... 260; channel, passage, avenue, means of access, approach, adit[obs3]; artery, lane, alley, aisle, lobby, corridor; back-door, back-stairs; secret passage; covert way; vennel[obs3]. roadway, pathway, stairway; express; thoroughfare; highway; turnpike, freeway, royal road, coach road; broad highway, King's highway, Queen's highway; beaten track, beaten path; horse road, bridle road, bridle track, bridle path; walk, trottoir[obs3], footpath, pavement, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... him he led the way upstairs. I simply could not keep the slippers on my feet so took them off and carried them, one in each hand. At the top of the stairway a door slid open and a Japanese lady began laughing. I expect she is telling yet about a foreigner who once came to the hotel who thought slippers were to wear on his hands. On reaching the rooms, amidst profuse apologies, he named ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... he had helped her down the Indian stairway; and when she held up her hand, passively, he dropped a forget-me-not ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... annual spring exhibition in the Palazzo delle Belle Arti, Rome, 1903, this artist exhibited four works: a life-size "Study of the Head of an old Roman Peasant"; a "Sketch near the Mouth of the Tiber at Finniscino"; "An Old Stairway in the Villa d'Este, at Tivoli"; "A View from the Villa ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... only three doors; one opened on the private stairway, another into the banker's bedroom, and the third into the main vestibule. It was through this last door that the banker's clients and visitors ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... stairway in wonder. She was very good to look at as she stood so. Her soft hair was drawn loosely back from her face, and hung in a long, fair plait down her back. She was not beautiful, only wholesome looking, with a clear, healthy color, and large, honest eyes. Her dress was a simple, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... you mean!" She drew herself up very finely—very stately. Very lovely she was to look at in that half-light, with the shadows of Tippoo Tib's* old stairway hiding her tale of years. But I felt my regard for her slipping downhill (and so, I rather think did Yerkes). "You look well, Lord Montdidier, trapesing about the earth with a leash of mongrels at your heel! Falstaff never picked up a more sordid-looking pack! What do you feed them—bones? ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... elevator-man had to be shaken awake, and when he had set the car in motion he let it run past the designated floor. Blount swore impatiently, and instead of waiting to be carried back, darted out and ran to the stairway. When he reached the lower corridor and was hurrying toward his suite in the corner of the building, there was a dull crash, as of a muffled explosion, and two or three of the glass doors in the street-fronting suite were shattered. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... window, it laid an arabesque of delicate shadow upon the polished floor. In the room beyond, where Madame's crystal ball lay on the mahogany table, with a bit of black velvet beneath it, the sun had made a living rainbow that carried colour and light into the hall and even up the stairway. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... to Boston, as a matter of course, I spent much of my time in surveying "the lions," dipping into this, and peeping into that; promenading the Common and climbing the stupendous stairway of Bunker Hill; ransacking the forts, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... so glad to go sleighing!" burst out Jessie Wadsworth, as she came bounding down the broad stairway of the mansion to meet him. "Isn't ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... that he must make his escape instantly or be caught helpless like a rat in a trap to be done to death. He fled with all his speed, and Jim was no slouch of a runner. Down the narrow stairway he sped, and along the hall to the second floor. The question was, could he reach the library where he had climbed in, before the gang in the banquet hall came rushing up ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... there was a low, "all right now," from Joe, and Arthur threw the door wide open. For an instant the guests coming from the dark stairway into the brightly lighted room could hardly see; then as they took in the general appearance of their hosts the room ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... even more marked than that of the street, a silence as heavy and profound as the grave's, so that sheer instinct prompted Lanyard to tread lightly as he made his way down the passage and across the courtyard toward the stairway; and in that hush the creak of a greaseless hinge, when the concierge opened the door of his quarters to identify this belated guest, seemed little ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Silken Ladies Ascend One Stairway, and a Lonely Wayfarer Ascends Another and Comes Face ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... whom I had enshrined in my heart of hearts as a god, so unworthy. He would go to a felon's cell—perhaps to an ignominious death—and me, where could I go? I left the dreadful thing uncovered; as I backed away from it toward the stairway, those glittering witnesses grinned at me. I walked the floor all night—I could not rest. The angel of sleep had fled, frightened at the discord in my frame, and the angel of death was spreading ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... face cleared as by magic when the slender, white-clad figure appeared round the last bend of the stairway. He had half feared that at the last moment the strain of the day's emotion might exact its penalty, and Diana prove unequal to ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... Marriage, the return of a conquering hero, the visit of a great statesman, the birth of Christ—we find in all these things a reason for calling on the cooks to do their damnedest. Even the dyspeptic forgets his doctor's orders in the general excitement and chases oysters down the narrow stairway of his throat with thick soup, follow thick soup with lobster, and lobster with turkey and turkey with a savoury, and the savoury with a pche Melba, and at the end of it will not reject cheese ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... morning, and I went on busying myself about things at home. Pretty soon there came a deprecatory cough from the stairway—the local method of announcing a visitor. Outside of Manila knocking or ringing does not seem to appeal to the Filipinos. In the provinces the educated classes come to the foot of the stairway and call "Permiso!" and the lower-class ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Then, after sending his little daughter out on to the beach to romp with her collie companion, he continued: "Come on and we'll inspect your new quarters." And, with Mr. Herrick in the lead the scouts filed out upon the pier and down a long iron stairway ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... have cut away their locks. All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great, Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate:— As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep. And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep. ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... had veiled every nook and corner within, and the nooks and corners were many. These cobwebs hung in ghostly festoons from the low-beamed ceiling of the living room, opening out upon the wild garden. They continued up the narrow stone stairway leading to the old-fashioned stone-paved bedrooms; they had been spun in a labyrinth all over the generous, spooky, old stone-paved attic, whose single eye of a window looked out over the quaint gables and undulating tiled roofs ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... What's that?" The outlaw chief pushed his way through the dense mob at the door and reached the stairway. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... has two large reddish towers at either end, connected by a long main building with casement windows, the stone mullions of which, being roughly carved, bear some resemblance to vine-shoots. The stairway is outside the house, at the middle, in a sort of pentagonal tower entered through a small arched door. The interior of the ground-floor together with the rooms on the first storey were modernized in the time of Louis XIV., and the whole building is surmounted by an immense ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... or freight; but the quality of his voice made it seem as if, in calling Victoria, Edward, George, Mary, and Albert, he were summoning a corporeal bevy of kings and queens to do his instant bidding. The excitement reached its climax when an aged bishop descended the stairway, which was under some circumstances as perilous as a ladder. The bishop's quaint hat and gown and hood of various colors made him seem like a benign figure in comic opera; and perhaps because of his dignity or his multiplicity of luggage, all the boats ardently desired ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... they gave it provender enow—the host bade them undo the door and hold Sir Gawain's steed there without. The harness was in place, whereof I have told ye that it was so traitorously handled; then came forth the knight, who had arisen, and clad himself in fair robes, and descended the stairway. Little thought had he of the treason which in short while befell him. The seneschal held in his hand the false sword, well hidden in its sheath, and the while Sir Gawain made him ready did he gird it at his side—for that was the knight ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... refrigerator, though the bottle's place was in the sideboard, and closed the door carefully. Then he paused again and said under his breath, "You, Judge Nickols Morris Powers!" He smiled at himself with humorous pity and tiptoed past me into the front hall and up the stairway to his ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Polly! ISN'T he dear?" whispered Rose, when together they climbed the stairway to help Nora to choose what they would ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... gay laughter and tender jests, and at length Marietta heard the house-door open and hurried steps mounting the stairway. It was the maid who had returned. Marietta's heart beat so violently that she could scarcely ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... act with caution, and taking the weapons tended him by his companion, he boldly pushed his way down the rough stairway ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... a Saturday night dad was usually the worse for wear. Both listened. There was a heavy step. Then the sound of voices—a woman's raised voice, and dad's. It was evidently a row. Sally ran to the door, and they listened to what was passing. Down the half-lighted stairway they could just discern two figures, faintly outlined in the wavering flutter of gas. Obviously dad was drunk, for he was haranguing a rather hysterical Mrs. Clancy, who stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted after him. She said that he was drunk, that he ought not to ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... old capitol the halls of legislation were on the second floor, the house on one side and the council on the other, with an open hall between them and a stairway leading up from below. The height between the floors was about sixteen feet. It had been arranged that a keg of whisky should be put into the council chamber, to be presided over by the sergeant-at-arms of the council, who was an enormous man, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... lead into the building. There was a man in uniform, with a cocked hat upon his head, who stood in the passage way to guard the entrance. He made no objection, however, to the party's going in; and so they all went on up the stairway. ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... followed Garvey down the stairway. She had confidently expected that he would show some appreciation of her toilette. She knew she had never in her life looked so well. In the long glass in the dressing-room, while Garvey was gone to send the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of economy that one should bear in mind when planning a house are: first, a rectangular ground-plan; second, a one-chimney plan; third, to have only one stairway; fourth, eliminate as many doors as possible; fifth, the bathroom should be above the kitchen so as to reduce the cost of plumbing; and lastly, the rooms should be few and large rather than small and many ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... entry led directly to a toy stairway, and by a door on the left into a toy living-room. In the toy living-room a man of forty-odd was saying to a ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... only from the courtyard and with a much-shadowed stairway rising from the further end, Commines pushed open a door on his right, fastening it ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... for Cairo on the Red Cloud, a packet in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small companionway that led through the ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... that he was concealing some injury from her. He rearranged his disordered collar and tie while she insisted upon dusting off his coat. He felt the brush of her fingers in every vein, and stepped almost brusquely towards the stairway. As a matter of fact he was none the worse for his tussle save for a good-sized bump which was growing on the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... bed in the guest room. I was scared to death when I opened the door and spotted him but I thought of that girl's advice and pulled my gun and shot him. Couldn't have missed the fellow across a bedroom. As I ran down the stairway he took a shot at me; that's what's the matter with my shoulder. I got up to Portland and a doctor I know there fixed me up and kept the thing dark. I passed at the hospital as the victim of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... into the shadow of the stairway, and not seeing his father with the three guests, he began again to ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... glance, was already descending the steep ladder-like stairway whose steps creaked, when Claude turned abruptly into his studio, closing the door with a bang, and shouting to himself: 'Ah, those ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Forgetful of all else, the man dropped the bag, sprang to the door, and disappeared in the hall beyond, leaving his visitor alone. In less than two minutes he returned, saying that his mother had slipped and fallen on the lowest step of the stairway she was descending. She had broken a cup and saucer, but was herself unhurt, for which he was deeply grateful. As the sheriff made this brief explanation, he cast a relieved glance at the leather bag ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... knew what work was afoot, and, if she knew it, by what channel of soul or sense she learnt it, no man can say. That she was conscious of the presence of many strangers is certain, and when the men from the Kasbah brought the roll of white linen down the stairway, with the two black women clinging to it, kissing its fringe and wailing over it, she broke away from Israel and rushed in among them with a startled cry, and her little white arms upraised. But whatever her impulse, there was no need to check her. The moment she had touched her mother she crept ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... dinero"; and, with a shrug, "Tontos! no cogieron no mas que polvo, mucho polvo, mucho trabajo" (bad men, thieves, who were looking for money. Fools! they got nothing but dust, plenty of dust and plenty of work). And with a chuckle: old Tomas would lead the way up the next rickety stairway. ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... an outside stairway to inform a neighbor. We rushed into the house and found the frantic mother sobbing and wailing over her baby apparently in ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... of the cliff for a minute. The ledge jutted out from the towering wall approximately twenty feet above our heads, but it could be reached by a series of jagged points and knobs; a sort of natural stairway—though some of the steps were a long way apart. Boulders of all shapes and sizes lay bedded in the soft earth where ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... years to finish his task of remaking the world, and he would need every day of it that his medical staff could borrow or steal for him. He made an eye-baffling practice draw with the stun-pistol, then holstered it and started down the spiral stairway to ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... and carried the sticks for his own grate upstairs, making two trips of it. The stairway was dark; his room dark and damp, and filled with the smell of farm boots and working clothes left wet in the closets. Groping his way to the mantelpiece, he struck a sulphur match, lighted a half-burned candle, and kneeling down, began to ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... flights—without pause or rest; and that might account for her laboured breathing. But not for the flush on her cheek, and the sparkle in her eyes. These came from a different cause, though the same one which had carried her up the long stairway without pausing to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... with eyes now fixed upon the ground, now turning towards the cliff and gazing mechanically upon that serried line, like the stairway of some gigantic spider—those long ladders, planted with so much pains, climbed only once, and never to be ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... warm evening light. Immediately beneath the windows ran a broad graveled terrace, which was evidently raked smooth every day, and a row of urns in which hyacinths bloomed stood upon its pillared wall. From the middle of the terrace a wide stairway led down to the wonderful velvet lawn, which was dotted with clumps of cupressus with golden gleams in it, and beyond the lawn clipped yews rose smooth and solid as a ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss |
