"Uncarpeted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for us the not very attractive picture of the smoking-room of the old House of Commons—before the fire of 1834—in a letter to his sister dated in the summer of 1831. "I have left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs," he wrote, "and repaired to the smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables covered with green baize and writing materials. On a full night it is generally thronged towards twelve o'clock with smokers. It is then a perfect cloud of fume. There have I seen (tell it not to the West Indians), Buxton ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... small even for a Deputy-Director-General, and he knew that not one of the silk-stockinged, short-skirted, starling-voiced young women with bare arms and regimental badges, who acted as secretaries to Deputy-Director-Generals, would consent to walk up four flights of creaking, uncarpeted stairs to the dusty sparrows' nest on the housetop that ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... one final effort, and came down hard upon the middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until the last piece ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... boil. She got ready the cups. In turning she knocked two spoons down from a shelf. They fell on the uncarpeted floor. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the foot of the uncarpeted stairs. "Mister Rodriguez!" he called. His voice echoed up past the cobwebbed landing and seemed to go wandering aloft among unclean mysteries to the very ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is always one of license," she said, leading the way along an uncarpeted entry to a door at the end, from which, by a couple of steps, they went down into a square room; round three sides of which, ran a shelf, on which stood rows of wash-bowls and pitchers. Above were hooks ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... seated at a most comfortable breakfast of bread and butter and the excellent fish which abound in Kingston harbor, flanked by huge oranges of enticing sweetness, a shrivelled old negro woman, who was on her knees giving the uncarpeted floor its morning application of wax, and rubbing it into a polish with a cocoanut shell, suddenly rose to her feet and kissed her hand to me with a grace worthy of a duchess. Somewhat startled at this unexpected salutation from the fairer, or the softer sex—I am in some doubt ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the landings were grey stone, uncarpeted, for this was the cheapest block of flats in the road. Oh, money, money! ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... to find I had no idea, but his attention seemed to be more particularly directed towards the wainscot and the picture-rails of the empty and uncarpeted rooms which we entered. Whatever he had sought he failed to find, and at last we stood in a desolate apartment looking out into the tangled shrubbery before the windows. The back of the garage was visible from there and I viewed it dully, wondering what evil ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... whitewashed room, fitted up with furniture of unpolished oak. On the walls a few proof engravings of subjects taken from Sacred History. A small bookcase in one corner, and a prie-dieu in another. The floor uncarpeted, but polished after the French fashion. A writing-table; a large workbox; a heap of clothing for the poor; and lastly, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... to tell me now. The mere flash of electric light upon a hail of chaos and uncarpeted stairs, and on the face of Raffles as he sprang to switch it off, had been ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... this difference, that the imposing fluted columns and Corinthian capitals were a pathetic sham, being made of white pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door knob—discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an uncarpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen—in some instances five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany center- table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade—standing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of May, Nor all the clustering joys of June: Uncarpeted the bare earth lay, Unhung ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... ruffled, his great, dark eyes starting from their sockets, and both fists clenched in desperation, he gazed wildly around for some means of escape. There were none. Heavy footsteps sounded upon the uncarpeted stairs, yet if he attempted to jump from the window he would fall into the arms of the police, who had by this time surrounded ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... hitherto been so effectively concentrated; but the result was to emphasize rather than detract from the extreme desolation of the great room. The settle was a fixture, as I afterwards found, and was almost the only article of furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of uncarpeted floor. There was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid the shadows at the other end from where I stood, and possibly some kind of stool or settee; but the general impression made upon me was that of a completely dismantled place given over to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... its clear white steeple far above the trees, stood the village church, up the broad, uncarpeted aisle of which he had scores of times passed; and, as the thought that he might never again enter those sacred walls came to his mind, a tear glistened in his eye that he could ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... front door, instead of knocking—there was no bell—Graves drew a rusty key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. They found themselves in a small entry, uncarpeted and dingy. ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... the man started towards the window, limping pitifully. He disappeared out on to the veranda, leaving a trail of blood across the uncarpeted floor. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... that I remonstrated, and frequently, against the terrific noise they made every morning at seven o'clock when they clamped across the uncarpeted hall and down the stairs. But although they would tiptoe for a day they would forget again, and I finally resigned myself. I also did my share in training them to wait on a guest in her room! Not one when I arrived had anything more than a theoretical idea of what to do beyond making a bed, sweeping, ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... miserable a passage as ever I saw in my life. The walls were damp, and the paper hung down here and there in long, untidy patches. The ceiling was barely whitewashed; the stairs by which we passed were uncarpeted. The whole place had a most dejected and weary appearance. Then he showed me into a small sitting-room, in which one man sat writing at a table. He looked up as I ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a slow scrape of his chair legs on the uncarpeted floor, and soon he appeared standing at the ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... were on either side of this; their height was such that the merest strip of sky could be seen when Mavis looked up. She then came to an open door. Above this was a fanlight, which fitfully lighted a passage terminating in a flight of uncarpeted stone steps. It was all very uninviting. The girl looked about for someone of whom to make further inquiries. No one came in or went out; all that Mavis could see was one or two over-dressed men, who were prowling about on the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... me from the window, and bade me let Margaret take off my things. I got leave to go upstairs with Margaret and take them off there. So I ran up the low easy flight of stairs—they were wooden and uncarpeted—to a matted gallery lit from the roof, with here and there a window in a recess looking upon the lawn. Many rooms opened into this gallery. I went from one to another. Here were great wood fires burning too; here were snowy white beds, with light muslin hangings; and dark cabinets ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... from his recumbent position at the sound of the opening of the door. He watched Fenn with dull, incurious eyes as the latter crossed the uncarpeted floor of the bare wooden shed, threw off his overcoat, and advanced towards the side ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deal of unnecessary fuss, keeping an eye on the clock meanwhile. The boys wore the air of dogs who see their master coming to untie them; they jumped and quivered, making the benches squeak and rattle, and shifted their feet about on the uncarpeted floor, producing sounds of the kind most trying to a nervous teacher. A general expectation prevailed. Luckily, Miss Fitch was not nervous. She had that best of all gifts for teaching,—calmness; and she understood her pupils and their ways, and had sympathy with them. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... and Barnabas listened until the day declined to evening; until Barnabas began to hearken for Peterby's returning footstep on the uncarpeted stair outside. Even in the act of lighting the candles his ears were acutely on the stretch, and thus he gradually became aware of another sound, soft and dull, yet continuous, a sound difficult to locate. But as he stood ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... design on the landings. In such houses you are always met on the threshold by printed requests to wipe your feet and shut the door gently. They don't tell you to do as you're bid. That is taken for granted, or the police will know the reason why. There is always an uncarpeted back staircase for servants and tradespeople, and for the tenants who inhabit the poorer parts of the building. In houses where all the tenants belong to the poorer classes, you find notices that forbid children to play in the Hof, and command people not to loiter or to ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... luxuriously lodged. Four rooms sufficed him—to wit, the said ante-chamber, bare and uncarpeted, and furnished with three painted wooden box benches; a comfortable study lined throughout with shelves and lockers, furnished with half-a-dozen large chairs and a single writing-table, whereon stood ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... and down on the chamber floor in his heavy boots, which, as the floor was uncarpeted, made a terrible noise, The old man in the room below, just congratulating himself on his cunning move, grew pale as he listened. He supposed his nephew to be in a furious passion, and apprehensions ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... his high-backed chair, Luke Claridge seemed a part of its dignified severity. In the sparsely furnished room with its uncarpeted floor, its plain teak table, its high wainscoting and undecorated walls, the old man had the look of one who belonged to some ancient consistory, a judge whose piety would march with an austerity that would save a human soul by destroying the body, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... An Uncarpeted House.—M. Eveillan, formerly Archdeacon of Angers, was noted for his humane and charitable disposition towards the poor. On one occasion, when a friend expressed surprise that none of his rooms were carpeted, he replied, "When I enter my house in the winter, I do not hear any complaints of ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... a slight breeze which still came through the window, though the door was now shut, I shuffled across the uncarpeted floor, groping with hands held out before me as ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... hurry faster, but upon the ground I saw two winged shadows side by side, And all the world's spring passion stifled me. Ah, Love, there is no fleeing from thy might, No lonely place where thou hast never trod, No desert thou hast left uncarpeted With flowers that spring beneath thy perfect feet. In many guises didst thou come to me; I saw thee by the maidens while they danced, Phaon allured me with a look of thine, In Anactoria I knew thy grace, I looked at Cercolas and saw thine eyes; But never wholly, ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... most crowded part of Holborn, within a door or two of the Bull and Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... before or since. It was like the bellowing of the bulls of Bashan, the squeaking of pigs, the cackle of turkey-cocks, and the laugh of wild hyenas all at once; and, in addition, there was a great banging of furniture and scraping of many feet on an uncarpeted floor. People going by stopped and stared, children cried, an old lady asked why some one didn't run for a policeman; while the Miller girls listened to the proceedings with malicious pleasure, and told everybody that it was the noise that ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... stove-pipes that came from below and entered them; or the skylights that were thy only means of illumination save the window at "the Parson's" end, which looked out on the pleasant fields and the houses beyond; or the plain, uncarpeted floor, the washstands by the chimneys and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... had a fixed and strongly marked expression of suffering. Two children, a boy and a girl, the one about six, and the other a little over ten years of age, were seated listlessly on the floor, which was uncarpeted. They seemed to have no heart to play. Even the elasticity of childhood had departed from them. From the appearance of Thorne, it was plain that he was very sick; and from all the indications the room in which he lay, afforded, it was plain that want and suffering ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... young days, wonderfully like her son, and also like old Rehu, whose acquaintance I have just had the honour of making. The portrait has a somewhat depressing air of elegance, cold and polished, like the large uncarpeted room itself, with its sombre curtains and its outlook on a still more sombre courtyard. But in comes Madame Astier, and her friendly greeting brightens all the surroundings. What is there in the air ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... retreat, Mr. Magee took his shivering way across the uncarpeted floor and unfastened the window's catch. From the blustering balcony a plump little man stepped inside. He had a market basket on his arm. His face was a stranger to razors; his hair to shears. He reminded ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the new conditions, was a great trial to the boy. He had a certain luxuriousness of temperament, not in matters of meat and drink, but in the surroundings and apparatus of life. The bare, uncurtained, uncarpeted rooms, the big dormitory with its cubicles, the stone-flagged passages, all appeared to him mean and sordid. His schoolmaster was a man of real force of character, a tall stately personage, with a ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... little room without more words, his firm, even tread sounding down the uncarpeted stairs until the door of his own studio was heard to close after him. Mrs. Greyson stood before her clay wondering, and then, sinking into a chair, sat so long absorbed in thought that the short daylight faded about her and she was forced ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... past life; but the cool fresh air, the spicy perfumes which it wafted to him, and the brightness and verdure of the whole landscape, proved now more inviting than his pillow; and dressing himself hastily, he descended the clean but rude and uncarpeted stairs as gently as possible, lest he should arouse Miss Grahame from her slumbers. He found the front door open, showing that he was not the first of the household to go abroad that day. As he stepped out upon ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... handsomely furnished in the European style, except that the floors were uncarpeted, and were composed of polished boards. Everywhere were signs that the proprietor was a prosperous and wealthy man. Mr. Thompson had only one son, a lad of about the same age as Charles Hardy. To his care Mrs. Thompson now assigned the ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... door of an anteroom behind his office. The apartment was unfurnished except for one or two chairs. In the middle of the uncarpeted floor was a long wooden box from which the lid had ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inches. I felt as if again amid the Lagunes of Venice. After an hour and a half's riding, we reached Leghorn, where I took up my abode at Thomson's hotel, so well and so favourably known to English travellers. After my long sojourn in Italian albergi, whose uncarpeted floors, and chinky windows and doors, are but ill fitted to resist the winds and cold of winter, I sat down in "Thomson's,"—furnished as it is with all the comforts of an English inn,—with a feeling of home-comfort such as I ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... on his small-clothes, he took care to stand in the parallelogram of bright sunshine that fell upon the uncarpeted floor. The summer warmth was very genial to his system, and yet made him shiver; his wintry veins rejoiced at it, though the reviving blood tingled through them with a half-painful and only half-pleasurable titillation. For the first few moments after creeping out of bed, he kept his back ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... ... I have had some curious experiences of a similar nature; one was in an uncarpeted room, the house being deserted at that time. I stood still, planning certain things and humming softly to myself. Presently, a shadowy something caught my eye, and I discovered a little mouse, very young evidently, then another and another, until four were near. I did not attribute their ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... fact, almost at every step of the way, and on every landing, guards were on duty, either standing motionless, or marching wearily up and down, the clank, clank of their footsteps waking dismal echoes from the high vaulted roofs and uncarpeted stone corridors. At last they reached the Sala Clementina, a vast unfurnished hall, rich only with mural decorations and gilding, and here another Guard met them who, without words, escorted the Cardinal and his young companion ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... feet, we made our way in silence to the door of the square building. Michael Robartes opened it with a key, on which I saw the rust of many salt winds, and led me along a bare passage and up an uncarpeted stair to a little room surrounded with bookshelves. A meal would be brought, but only of fruit, for I must submit to a tempered fast before the ceremony, he explained, and with it a book on the doctrine and method of the Order, over which I was to spend ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... account to be shown at any of the windows, being almost certain to attract rifle-fire. By eight we were in total darkness, except for the dim little paraffin hand-lamp the Sisters kindly lent me, which, for precaution's sake, had to be placed on the floor. Extraordinary noises emanated from those long uncarpeted passages, echoing backwards and forwards, in the ceiling, till they seemed to pertain to the world of spirits. The snoring of the men on the relief guard was like the groans of a dying man, the tread of those on duty ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... time they had descended a long narrow flight of uncarpeted stairs, 'the back ones,' as Mysie explained, and had reached a slippery oak hall with high-backed chairs, and all the odds and ends of a family-garden hats, waterproofs, galoshes, bats, rackets, umbrellas, etc., ranged round, and a great white cockatoo upon a stand, who observed—'Mysie, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passengers in 1882. Our ship, the Britannia of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., was just over 4,000 tons, and we passengers congratulated each other loudly on our good fortune in travelling in so fast and splendid a vessel. The Britannia had no deck-houses, the uncarpeted, undecorated saloon was the only place in which to sit, and its furniture consisted of long tables with swinging racks over them, flanked by benches. This sumptuous apartment was illuminated at night by no less than forty candles, a source ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... with his friend, and following him down the uncarpeted stairs, said a few words at the door in favor of early rising, and departed to his place of business to make his own arrangements about ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... in that same sparsely-furnished and uncarpeted room of the Hotel des Trois-Dauphins that Napoleon spoke to Victor de Marmont, to Emery and Dumoulin about the money which had been stolen last year from the Empress and which he understood had been deposited in the cellars of the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... opportunity of those meagre days to broaden and uplift their mental and spiritual vision. Martin Conwell's thoughts went beyond his plow furrow, Miranda's further than her bread-board; and so the little home had an atmosphere of earnest thought and purpose that clothed the uncarpeted floors and bare walls ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of us stole up the uncarpeted attic stair. It was unknown territory to us, having been forbidden from the first by Mrs. Handsomebody, and all we had ever seen from the hall below was a cramped passage, guarded by three closed doors. Time and time again we had been tempted to explore ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... Jasmine, but a smothered exclamation from some one else; a heavy tread on the uncarpeted boards, and Dove, his face red, his shoes off, and something which looked like a screw-driver in his hands, came up and bent ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... looked shabby and poverty-stricken. There was no carpet upon the broad staircase, and nothing but worn-out oil-cloth on the floor. I had only time to take in a vague general impression, before the little girl conducted me to a room on the ground-floor. That too was uncarpeted and barely furnished; but the light was low, and I could see nothing distinctly, except the face of the child looking wistfully at ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... The stairs were uncarpeted, and had little feet-worn hollows in the middle of them. The banisters were rickety, and had been notched by the knives of reckless tenants. The first and second floors were occupied by different ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... easy task that. Only a ricketty chair, on which lay a pair of duelling pistols—one of the pairs found under the carriage cushions—and his hat hanging on its elbow. Not a thing more except a bottle, greasy around the neck, from a tallow candle that had guttered and burnt out, standing on the uncarpeted stone floor beside his own boots, just as he ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... what had been his home, its bareness made his heart sink. An hour or two had sufficed for this devastation; nothing remained upon the uncarpeted floors but the needments he would carry with him into the wilderness, such few evidences of civilisation as the poorest cannot well dispense with. Anger, revolt, a sense of outraged love—all manner of confused passions had sustained him throughout this day of toil; now he had ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... the pretty, peaceful scene impress itself upon his mind, to be remembered afterward for the cheer of bleak boarding-house Sunday afternoons. Then there was a sudden glancing up, a cry of joyful consternation, and the pan of currants rolled from Amy's lap like a broken necklace of rubies across the uncarpeted floor, while Arthur held mother and sister in a double embrace. And when at length the kissing had all been done, he established himself in his familiar boyish attitude on the window-seat, kicking his heels against the mopboard, with his elbows on his knees, and the three talked away steadily ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... intervals; and near her sat Diana, silent and gloomy. A settled gloom, as of the grave itself, brooded over the house. Mr. Sheldon flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He had sneered at the inconvenience involved in uncarpeted floors, but he was beginning to feel the aggravation of that inconvenience. These two women in his study were insupportable to him. It seemed as if there was no room in the house in which he could be alone; and just now he had ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... to his ruffled shirt and white drill trousers, presented the appearance from the opposite side of the table of having hastily risen to work in his nightgown. A glass with a thin sediment of sugar and lemon-peel remaining in it stood near his elbow. Suddenly a black shadow fell on the staring, uncarpeted hall. It was that of a stranger who had just entered from the noiseless dust of the deserted road. The Colonel cast a rapid glance at his sword-cane, which lay on ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... man moving rapidly across the lawn toward the building—saw it ascend the steps; then a projection of the wall concealed it. There was a noise as of the opening and closing of the hall door; he heard quick, heavy footsteps along the passage—heard them ascend the stairs—heard them on the uncarpeted floor of the ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... from his long black hair, and wondering if he could get any 'rum.' On seeing the lady he courteously made way, and, after, laying aside my wrappings, I seated myself before the fire, while waiting for dinner. It was a dim little room, uncarpeted, and poorly furnished with a looking glass, a map, and a few wooden chairs, and ornamented by a 'mourning piece,' which hung over the mantel, representing a bareheaded lady with a handkerchief at her eyes, standing beside a monument ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... uncarpeted stone and uneven, but the place was clean and tidy, and everything in order. Against the wall were rows of well-scoured cooking vessels; also shelves of china—evidently reserved for high days and holidays—and a ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... irons belonging to doll's houses, with a couple of dolls, much the worse for wear, mounting guard over them; besides a host of other nick-nacks, for which it were impossible to find names or imagine uses. Everything—from the old woman's cap to the uncarpeted floor, and the little grate in which a little fire was making feeble efforts to warm a little tea-kettle with a defiant spout—was scrupulously neat, and fresh, and clean, very much the reverse of what one might have expected ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... cheer inside, either. The sagging old floors, though scrubbed and spotless, were uncarpeted; the furniture meager. A pine table, a few old chairs, a shabby scratched settle covered by a thin horse blanket as innocent of nap as a Mexican hairless—these for essentials; and for embellishment a shadeless glass ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Up a long uncarpeted flight of stairs, and into a large lofty room on the second storey, Thord led the way for his newly-found disciples to follow. It was very dark, and they had to feel the steps as they went, their guide offering neither explanation ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... McKay at the time the formidable troop of North-Westers swept through the settlements. The old man was seated in the hall, parlour, drawing-room—or whatever you choose to call it—of Ben Nevis House. It was an uncarpeted, unpainted, unadorned room with pine plank flooring, plank walls, a plank ceiling, a plank table, and a set of plank chairs. Ornament was dispensed with in the hall of Ben Nevis House; for although Elspie would fain have ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... story of Prometheus's boon to mankind, and supported on either end by caryatides in the shape of vestal virgins bearing flaming brands in their hands. Overhead the ceiling showed great patches of bare lath, where the plaster had fallen away, and the uncarpeted floor was strewn with bread-crumbs and marked by a trail of coal-siftings from the stove to a closet-door from which the fire was replenished. The door to the closet was gone, and in its recess a pair of trousers hung limply, while Henrietta's scant wardrobe was ranged along the black-painted ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... the brave woman, in short, gave her of her heart's best. As far as human hearts could provide a bed for Fleurette, that bed was of roses. As a matter of brutal fact, it was narrow and nubbly, and the little uncarpeted room was ten feet by seven; but to provide it Aristide went to his own bed hungry. And if the bed of a man's hunger is not to be accounted as one of roses, there ought to be a vote for the reduction of the ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... to Prince Krapotkine, who lives at Harrow, in the suburbs of London. A friend of his, Mr. Lieneff, escorted us there. We found the prince, his wife, and child in very humble quarters; uncarpeted floors, books and papers on pine shelves, wooden chairs, and the bare necessaries of life—nothing more. They indulge in no luxuries, but devote all they can spare to the publication of liberal opinions to be scattered in Russia, and ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... tightly on the trunk of the ivy to which he was clinging. The door of the room had been closed with a slam. He could hear heavy footsteps on the uncarpeted floor. A shadow blotted out ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... glanced at her significantly. She held her skirts closely together and passed through it without looking at him. She stepped lightly down the ladder and without hesitation descended also a flight of uncarpeted attic stairs. Here, however, upon the landing, she ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bare X-ray room of the hospital, which happened to be vacant, Betty sat on the one straight-backed wooden chair, while a weeping damsel on the uncarpeted floor sobbed in her lap and confessed her sins ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... ring and knock were answered, so long that I had my finger on the bell again. But at that moment I heard footsteps walking somewhat uncertainly along an uncarpeted floor within. Still the door remained closed; but at a long narrow window, which was the duplicate of another on the opposite side of the door, I saw for an instant that a face was pressed against the ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... however slightly. Placing her ear to the panel, she could hear him tearing up papers of some sort, and a brighter and quivering ray of light coming from the threshold an instant later, implied that he was burning them. By the slight noise of his footsteps on the uncarpeted floor, she at length imagined that he was approaching the door. She flitted upstairs again ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Paul heard a heavy step on the uncarpeted stairway, and a tall, angular, hard-featured woman, with cold blue eyes and scanty light hair, entered the room. She looked at him steadily, as if there was something in ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... and in its day must have had great dignity; but in Blair's childhood its day was over. Above the dingy white wainscoting the landscape paper his grandfather had brought from France in the thirties had faded into a blur of blues and buffs. The floor was uncarpeted save for a Persian rug, whose colors had long since dulled to an even grime. At one end of the room was Mrs. Maitland's desk; at the other, filing cases, and two smaller desks where clerks worked at ledgers or drafting. The four French windows were uncurtained, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... that I had reached the place too late to see him in action. I had little or nothing to do in the office. The tedium of the long days was almost unbroken, and Stephen's "Commentaries" had become as monotonous and unattractive as the bare uncarpeted floor. The heat was tropical, and I was dozing when a knock startled me. A negro boy slouched in ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... amusing me by the peculiar manner in which his long legs clung to the ladder, and then wobbled about on the rolling deck until he attained the protection of the companion-way. A half dozen broad, uncarpeted steps led down into the after cabin, which was plain and practically without furniture, except for a bare table suspended from the upper beams and a few chairs securely resting in chocks. The deck was bare, but had been thoroughly scrubbed, the water not entirely dried, and forward there was ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... intolerant with him down that gloomy little alley, to the door of that comfortless lodging house. He rang, and was admitted into the narrow passage, then shown into the private study of the great man. The floor was uncarpeted, the window uncurtained, the room was almost dark; but a red-glow of fire light served to show a large writing table strewn with papers, and walls literally lined with books; also on the hearth-rug a little figure curled up in the most unconventionally ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... relatively small dining-room, bed-room, and study, which had been devised by subdividing one of the huge galleries of former days. In addition, the passage gave access to his Eminence's private chapel, a bare, uncarpeted, chairless room, where there was nothing beyond the painted, wooden altar, and the hard, cold tiles on which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... banged. Followed quick steps on the steep, uncarpeted stairs, and a knock on the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... watchfully studied, not merely the demands, but the half-conscious instincts of their guests, and had responded to them simply and adequately, in the spirit of Jackson's exterior and structural improvements. The walls of the new rooms were left unpapered and their floors uncarpeted; there were thin rugs put down; the wood-work was merely stained. Westover found that he need not to ask especially for some hot dish at night; there was almost the abundance of a dinner, though dinner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... covered with penciled dates, hung rainbow skirts, bodices with metallic flowers. The bike shone in a corner, half-buried under Lily's outdoor clothes. Tights hung beside it, like pink skins, gold spangles strewed the uncarpeted floor and scent hovered over everything.... Half-open doors admitted gusts of music from the orchestra; and Lily, opposite the glass, fumbled among her pots with the tip of her finger, stained her lips blood-red, fixed ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... along an empty passage, and, leading her past an uncarpeted staircase, opened the door of a room at the back of the house. The room was lighted by one window looking out on a yard; the walls were bare; the boarded floor was uncovered. Two bedroom chairs stood against the wall, and a kitchen-table was placed under ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was broken by few visitors. Uncles and aunts paid only short visits now; of course, they could not stay to meals, and the constraint caused by Mr. Tulliver's savage silence, which seemed to add to the hollow resonance of the bare, uncarpeted room when the aunts were talking, heightened the unpleasantness of these family visits on all sides, and tended to make them rare. As for other acquaintances, there is a chill air surrounding those who are down in ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... company the condition and prospects of the mine, and a quarterly dividend (if any) is paid. There is a matter-of-fact and Spartan-like air about this feast which commands respect. The room in which it is held is uncarpeted, and its walls are graced by no higher works of art than the plans and sections of the mine. The food is excellent and substantial, but simple. There is abundance of it, but there are no courses—either preliminary or successive—no ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... I reached the study, the door of the bedroom flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts, but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Up the uncarpeted stairs marched the great lady, down an equally bare hall lined on either side by bedroom doors, some marked by unblacked shoes others by tin trays holding fragments of late or early breakfasts, the flaring cap obsequiously ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in what seemed to be the middle of the uncarpeted floor, they waited for some indication of a clear passageway to the great room where the judge would undoubtedly be found in conversation with his strange guest, unless, forewarned by their noisy entrance, he should have risen already to meet them. In ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... under the roof, and the roof slanted so rapidly that it was possible to stand upright only in one part of the room. There was in one corner a truckle bed, which Agnes could hardly believe her father slept in, and in the midst of the uncarpeted floor stood the type-writing machine, the working of which the Major at once explained to Agnes. He told her how much he had already earned, and entered into a calculation of the number of hours he would have to work before he could pay off the debt he had incurred in buying the machine. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... his side. Trenta looked up sharply. His countenance suddenly fell; a purple flush covered it from chin to forehead, penetrating even the very roots of his snowy hair. His cane dropped with a loud thud, and rolled away along the uncarpeted floor. He thrust both his hands into his pockets, and stood motionless, with his eyes wide open, like ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... light step on the uncarpeted stair; went on making up Smith's bed; and smiled as her step-father came into the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... entered was a sitting-room, or coffee-room as it was announced to be by an appellation painted on the door. There was but one window to the room, which looked into the street, and was always clouded by a dingy-red curtain. The floor was uncarpeted, nearly black with dirt, and usually half covered with fragments of damp straw brought into it by the feet of customers. A strong smell of hot whisky and water always prevailed, and the straggling mahogany ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... not tell whether it was the barrenness of the room, or Milt's carefulness, that caught her. The uncarpeted boards of the floor were well swept. He had only one plate, one spoon, but they were scoured, and put away on newspaper-covered shelves in a cupboard made of a soap-box. Behind a calico curtain was his new suit, dismayingly neat on its hanger. On the edge of the iron sink primly washed ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... this—or only implied it in saying something else—the broken slats, the dirty windows, the uncarpeted floor, the universal untidiness, whispered in the mind ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... smaller room than the big ward, and sunny. It had an air of privacy, of comfort given by the sunshine only, for it was uncarpeted, and bare like the others. Four young women were sewing the stiff linsey skirts worn ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... wainscoted round the walls a few inches up, papered beyond in some common palish pattern. Laurie stood in the center of the uncarpeted boards, with his back turned to her, looking, it seemed, with an intense expectation at the very dull door in the wall opposite him. He was in his evening dress, she saw, knee-breeches and buckles all complete; and his hands were clenched, as they hung ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... fly-leaves in a book. Fortunately, my maid isn't with me much, and the man in the yard can't see my front window because of the tree. So I have only to listen to the guard in the next room. He is always walking up and down, and when he reaches the uncarpeted space near the door I know he is at the end and ready to turn back. For that one second I can chance throwing this letter out into the street. I shall load it with a cut-glass ball I found on my desk. It is a beautiful little paper-weight, but its beauty won't save it this ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand, walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and when he refilled his pipe half ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... she called out merrily, and flitted up the narrow, uncarpeted stairway. She stopped at the head of this, and stood till all had gathered about her in the dim little hall-way, then, with a graceful flourish, cried, "Behold then!" and threw wide ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the atrium, the atrium the peristyle, and the latter the last rooms which looked upon the garden. So in the later palace, the door from the first landing of the grand staircase opens upon an outer hall, uncarpeted, but crossed by a strip of matting, and furnished only with a huge table and old-fashioned chests, made with high backs, on which are painted or carved the arms of the family. Here, at least two or three footmen are supposed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... one in the dingy kitchen. All seemed quiet upstairs. Silvey bolted the basement door that they might not be pursued from that quarter, and Sid, as they returned to the hallway, cut off the avenue of escape to the street. John led the way up the winding, uncarpeted stairs. Silvey followed close at his heels and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... Phebe!" he cried, stretching out his hand towards her, as if blind and groping to be led. She stepped noiselessly across the uncarpeted floor and looked down on the face lying on the pillow. The smile that had been upon it in the last moment yet lingered about the mouth, and added an inexpressible gentleness and tenderness to its beauty. The long dark eyelashes shadowed the cheeks, which were ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... in the echoing stone corridors that opened through Gothic windows on a courtyard, in which statues of German super- people stared with blind eyes, there was nothing now but bald military neatness and economy. Hurrying up an uncarpeted stone stairway (Grim seemed to be a speed-demon once his mind was set) we followed a corridor around two sides of the square, past dozens of closed doors bearing department names, to the Administrator's quarters at the far end. There, on a bare bench in a barren ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy |
