"Flight of stairs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... houses occupy the center of the town. They are of frame construction, painted blue and white. The floors are made of rosewood and mahogany; the windows fitted with translucent shell. Storehouses occupy the first floor, while the living rooms are reached by a broad flight of stairs. A bridge connects the dining-room with the kitchen, where the greasy cook, often a Moro slave, works at a smoky fire of cocoanut-husks on an earth bottom, situated in an ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... one of the curiosities of Nantes, the Passage de la Pommeraye, consisting of three stories of iron galleries or arcades, uniting the Rue de Crebillon with the Rue de la Fosse. The second arcade communicates by a flight of stairs with the third, called the Galerie de la Fosse, opening upon ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... surely not be waived! If Nature had not planted in him prudence, if he had only not that vexatious habit of surveying duties in their wholeness, and balancing consequences, he might, at the moment, enter into Don Quixote's joy. But,—and here he was at the head of the flight of stairs that led to her chamber, face to face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... ordered; and Ernol preceded him down the corridor, up a flight of stairs, through another corridor and thence into the exercise grounds. On the other side of this was a small building, with no opening save one door, now bright with light. Inside, Ernol found the other men who had ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... chapter-house and cloisters formerly adjoined the south transept, and there was probably an entrance from the chapter-house leading down a flight of stairs into the transept. Billings says: "The modern casing at the base of the end of the transept (about 12 ft. high) shews the height of the Cloisters: and the doorway above, the level of the chapter-house floor. From this it would seem that the cathedral ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... chain—unambitious to add a charge of larceny to his other troubles, should Fate arrest him before the return of Rochester, he came down the corridor to a landing giving upon a flight of stairs, up which, save for the gradient, a coach and ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... the doorway the parlour was to your left, the house staircase in front of you, on your right the kitchen, at the further end thereof was a door, and, when that was opened, a flight of stairs led to a long slit of a loft which, Nash later declared, did not answer to Elizabeth's description, especially as there was hay, and, before Chitty, Elizabeth had mentioned none. There was a filthy kind of bed, on which now slept a labourer and his wife, Fortune and Judith Natus. Nash kept talking ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... no answer but groaned internally, and they went up the flight of stairs which led to their part of the house. The ground floor was occupied by somebody else. A little entry way at the top of the stairs received the wooden pail of water, and with the tin one Nettie went into the room used by the family. It was her father and mother's sleeping-room, their ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... him and was already ascending the broad flight of stairs leading from the reception hall. She had forgotten her key, she had forgotten to close the door. Dinney thoughtfully took the key out and placed it on a stand near. Then closing the door after him, he went ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... near the head of the first flight of stairs opened into what had evidently been the great banqueting hall in the old days when sumptuous repasts and numerous guests were not uncommon things in the chateau. A huge beam divided the lofty ceiling into two compartments, which were crossed at ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... good deal more trench before we reach the village which forms the head of a salient in the French line. This village is knocked all to pieces. It is a fearful spectacle. We see a Teddy-bear left on what remains of a flight of stairs, a bedstead buried to the knobs in debris, skeletons of birds in a cage hanging under an eave. The entire place is in the zone of fire, and it has been tremendously bombarded throughout the war. Nevertheless, some houses still ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... opened for us: the gaoler stands with his bunch of keys: the yard is empty, but clean—even the grass weeded away between the stone paving. We enter the waiting-room, where the prisoner is received: we are shown the bathing-room, into which he is first led. We now ascend a flight of stairs, and are in a large hall, extending the whole length and breadth of the building. Galleries run along the floors, and between these the priest has his pulpit, where he preaches on Sundays to an invisible congregation. All the doors facing the gallery are half opened: the prisoners hear the priest, ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... train or a boat and go somewhere—she don't care where—than to do any other thing on earth. Who has never seen anything and wants to see everything, and who, if anyone had told her a year ago she could go to New York, and then to Europe, would have slid down every flight of stairs head foremost from pure joy. And now she has the chance, she is not going. ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... the right in the Rue de Barrie, mounted one flight of stairs in a fine modern house, and gave their overcoats and canes into the hands of four servants in knee-breeches. A warm odor, as of a festival assembly, filled the air, an odor of flowers, perfumes, and women; and a composed and continuous murmur came from the adjoining ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... of this conversation the boys had sat down upon the upper step of a steep flight of stairs which led down from the promenade deck to the main deck. They could see pretty well where they were, but not so well, Waldron thought, as they could have seen ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... that. It would have been a delicate compliment, and he owed that much to you. I'm afraid he has been a politician long enough to be like all the rest—to walk up to power on men as one uses a flight of stairs, and then to put the stairs behind his back; for one doesn't ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... up and watched while Sinclair bent over the hole in the floor. He felt around inside with one hand and appeared to turn something. Suddenly the wall opposite the two cadets slid back to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading down. Sinclair motioned with his gun again. "Get going, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... The boudoir opened into a pretty little library, where all the books that I thought would please Agatha were arranged. There was a dressing-room, a bath-room and a sleeping-room, all en suite. Mr. Dickson had improvised a pretty flight of stairs leading into a small conservatory, and that opened ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... cathedral, west of the north door, at some little distance from the church (fig. 43). It was begun in 1489, when Thomas Heywood, dean, "gave L40 towards building a library of brick," and completed in 1493. It was about 60 feet long by 15 feet wide, approached by a flight of stairs. As the Chapter Order (9 December, 1757) which authorised its destruction speaks of the "Library, Chapter Clerk's House, and Cloisters," I suspect that it stood on a colonnade, after the manner of the beautiful structure at Noyon, a cathedral ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... shelter, if nothing more, for the night, and he repaired to its friendly but inhospitable roof. Entering the fish-house, he groped about for a suitable place to lie down, and blundered against a rickety flight of stairs in one corner. Hoping to find better sleeping accommodation in the loft than on the ground floor,—as literally it was, being composed of earth and rocks,—he ascended the steps. The stairs creaked and groaned, and it required some nerve to go up in the dark; but ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... coming near him in the darkness. Hands were laid upon him, and, presently, one took his arm and led him away. The two climbed a long flight of stairs and made hastily across a broad roof. At a railed opening they came to other stairs, and, descending, entered a passage, dark as had been the chamber. At its end the Roman received a password. Then a door swung and again he was on the pavements of Jerusalem, and, far away, ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... allow your servants to leave brooms, brushes, slop-pails, water cans, &c. in outside doorways, or at the head of a flight of stairs when engaged ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... person's imagination. Therefore I need only remind my readers that my bachelor chambers were, during most of my acquaintance with Hewitt, in the old building near the Strand, in which Hewitt's office stood at the top of the first flight of stairs; where the plain ground-glass of the door bore as inscription the single word "Hewitt," and the sharp lad, Kerrett, first received visitors in ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... there, in fact, as I've said before, you have to walk a long distance to git anywhere, but jest before we got there we see sunthin' that made us forgit for the moment our achin' limbs. On the side of a slopin' hill at the bottom of the long flight of stairs, that lead up to the north entrance of Agricultural Hall is the most wonderful clock that wuz ever seen on this globe, and I don't believe they've got anything to beat it in Mars ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... instant she re-entered the house Mrs. Garrison knew that during her brief absence some new trouble had come. Good heavens, could she never leave Nita's side that harm did not befall her! At the head of the broad flight of stairs stood her brother-in-law, a ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... their way through a maze of squares and streets southwards. At last Rice stopped before a house in a terrace of smoke-begrimed tenements, and led the way inside. They mounted flight after flight of stairs, pausing at last before a door on the topmost floor. Rice threw it open, and motioned his ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... great annoyance. And this is not to be wondered at, if we consider the physical weakness under which he was then labouring. When Chopin went before these matinees to Broadwood's to try the pianoforte on which he was to play, he had each time to be carried up the flight of stairs which led to the piano-room. Chopin had also to be carried upstairs when he came to a concert which his pupil Lindsay Sloper gave in this year in the Hanover Square Rooms. But nothing brings his miserable condition so vividly before us as his ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Beautrelet perceived the wells of two staircases, the same, no doubt, that started from the cave below. He could easily have gone down, therefore, and told Ganimard. But a new flight of stairs led upward in front of him and he had the curiosity ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... stood still, and considered what this really could mean, when a horrible noise, as if cats were sent with yells lumbering down the whole flight of stairs, and ended with a mighty blow against my door, put an end to my indecision. I took up the candle, and a stick, and went out. At the moment when I opened the door my light was blown out. A gigantic white figure glimmered opposite to me, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... to him—this hotel to which a man of moderate means is forced to go in the city. The dingy walls and threadbare carpet got geometrically shabbier at each succeeding flight of stairs, until at length the boy ushered him into a little room at the head of the stairway. It was unwarmed and had no lock on the door; but the bed was clean, and, as he soon found, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... hundred women, who had come out of different cells. All were dressed in white skirts, white jackets, and wore white kerchiefs on their heads, except a few who had their own coloured clothes on. These were wives who, with their children, were following their convict husbands to Siberia. The whole flight of stairs was filled by the procession. The patter of softly-shod feet mingled with the voices and now and then a laugh. When turning, on the landing, Maslova saw her enemy, Botchkova, in front, and pointed out her angry face ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... the face of the woman who helped, for she had her head wrapped up in an old shawl, I felt that it was the same which had looked out of the window at me, and went willingly enough when she began to draw me toward the house and up the first flight of stairs, though I could hardly help screaming every time my foot touched the ground. At the top of the first flight I stopped; I could go no further. The woman heard me pant, and pushing the covering from her eyes, she turned my face towards the light ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... within her power, then she was not a sane but an insane woman. She knew herself sane. Yet the decision was not arrived at when Sir Seymour rang the bell. Now he was waiting in the room underneath and the matter must be settled. An effort of will, the descent of a flight of stairs, a sentence spoken, and her life would be made fast to an anchor which would hold. And for her there would be no more drifting upon dangerous seas at ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... cunningly took the opportunity of sneaking away. He had got what he wanted—the opinion; but O'Connell had not got what he wanted—the fee. O'Connell at once followed the farmer, who had got the start by a flight of stairs. The rustic quickened his pace when he found that the counsellor was in chase. O'Connell saw that he could not catch the runaway client, who was now on the flight leading into the hall. He leant over the bannister, and made a grasp at the farmer's collar, ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... 2 and 3) was a favourite resort. Down one flight of stairs there was a comparatively large open space, the centre occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the carpenter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slaves to escape to Canada, and some of the wags at the military academy offered him a large sum of money if he would find it and conduct them to it, so that they might tear it up. Bud concluded that somewhere in the woods there must be a ladder or flight of stairs that led down to the railroad, and he spent days in looking for it. When Mr. Riley, taking pity on his ignorance, explained the matter to him, Bud was fighting mad; and ever since that time he had been watching for an opportunity to be revenged ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... apartments is better managed in Paris. There you always find a concierge, who tells you all you want to know, and who speaks several languages. In Rome you enter a narrow, dark passage, and look in vain for a door. Then you go up a flight of stairs, and see a door with a string; you pull the string, and a woman puts her mouth to a square hole, covered with tin punctured with holes, and asks what you want. You tell her, and she tells you to go up higher; ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... house. The triumph of inspiration is an unsealing of my own and of every mind, a delivery of the pupil to private inspiration. When the work of a master is masterly done, he abdicates therein, retires, and becomes unregarded as a flight of stairs behind. The statue is a failure, unless it makes me forget the statue,—the book, unless it makes me forget the book. All the rhyming, painting, singing of sentimental boys and girls springs from an intuition hardly yet more than instinct: that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... by old Maggie's hand, was marched away up two flight of stairs, through a long corridor and double baize doors, then down another narrower passage into a large square room. It seemed to Jeff that there was a great deal of heavy furniture everywhere, and thick carpets, and an excess of light flooding the ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... moodily down the broad flight of stairs leading to the basement. There, in the big, dimly lighted, cement-floored playroom, where the children held forth on rainy days, he met a boy from another room, who was likewise in no hurry to return. They hailed each other ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... experienced bachelor is always useful to a young grass-widow, and, moreover, the attendant hopeless adorer nourishes her hungry egotism as nobody else can. G.J. thought these thoughts, clearly and callously, in the same moment as, mounting the next flight of stairs, he absolutely trembled with sympathetic anguish for Concepcion. His errand was an impossible one; he feared, or rather he hoped, that the very look on his face might betray the dreadful news to that undeceivable intuition which women were supposed to ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... school-room and ascended the short flight of stairs leading to their bedroom, she heard Agnes and ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... conception. Where Vallejo street ran up Russian Hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a flight of stairs. It is unnecessary to say that no teams ever came up this street or any other like it, and grass grew long among the paving stones until the Italians who live thereabouts took advantage of this herbage to pasture a ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... to this beautiful site. It was two stories high, crowned with a French mansard roof. It faced the river and a country road which ran along the river bank. The visitor stepped upon a broad piazza, and then entered through a wide and ornamented doorway a large hall from which ascended a broad flight of stairs. On the left was a spacious drawing-room, carpeted with an imported Brussels and adorned with several oil paintings. It contained a piano, an instrument seldom seen in those days. Back of this room was the owner's study or private apartment. ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... minute the girl gazed, with a new and softened expression, upon the marble likeness of the last fair mistress of the castle, and then hurriedly crossed the old mosaic pavement, reaching a narrow flight of stairs, which she swiftly ascended. A door that yielded to the fool's shoulder led into a deserted court, on one side of which were the crumbling walls of the chapel. Here several dark birds perched uncannily on the dead branch of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wooden ones. Hugo opened one of the wooden doors and showed a small sitting-room, where a meal was laid, and a fire spread a pleasant glow over the scene. The other door opened upon another narrow flight of stairs, leading, as Kitty afterwards ascertained, to ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the excitement of this, they heard their aunt's voice calling to them from the middle of the last flight of stairs. There was something in her face, composed as it was, which alarmed them directly, and there they stood quite still, ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... steamer Christian VIII., of 180-horse power, to be a vessel dirtier and more uncomfortable than any with which I had become acquainted in my maritime excursions. Scrubbing and sweeping seemed things unknown here. The approach to the cabin was by a flight of stairs so steep, that great care was requisite to avoid descending in an expeditious but disagreeable manner, by a fall from top to bottom. In the fore-cabin there was no attempt at separate quarters for ladies and gentlemen. In short, ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... went together, he beside himself with the delight of accompanying her, and proudly carrying her box and satchel. How her little feet slipped in and out of her pretty dress—how, as they stood on the top of the great flight of stairs leading down into the court of the Louvre, the wind from outside blew back the curls from her brow, and ruffled the violets in her hat, the black lace about her tiny throat. It was an enchantment to follow and to serve her. She led him through the Tuileries Gardens and the Place ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shrine or two feebly lit up a few feet around it, they soon found the palace, the lower story of which held the post-office and various other offices. After passing a gendarme on guard at the door, they found themselves in a not very light hall leading to the second story; mounting a flight of stairs, there stood another soldier on guard; a door suddenly was thrown open, and then a burst of light showed them a large hall with lofty ceilings, the walls hung with red and golden tapestry and with its rich medieval groined arches and gilded cornices, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from the crowd, and putting the letter which he had carried in his bosom into the hands of one of the priests who was mixing with the mob, was beckoned by him into a corridor, and up a flight of stairs, and into a large, low, mean room, and there, by virtue of the world-wide freemasonry which Christianity had, for the first time on earth, established, found himself in five minutes awaiting the summons of the most powerful man south of ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... conclusion of business, he lingered in the rear of his retinue, conversing with some of the officers of the court. As the party was issuing from a little chapel contiguous to the royal saloon, and just as the king was descending a flight of stairs, a ruffian darted from an obscure recess in which he had concealed himself early in the morning, and aimed a blow with a short sword, or knife, at the back of Ferdinand's neck. Fortunately the edge of the weapon ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... when cold, frosty winter came, and the Snow Queen sailed down on the large white snowflakes from a gray sky, then no flowers bloomed in the window-boxes. And the balcony was so slippery that the children dared not venture to step out of their attic windows, but had to run down one long flight of stairs and up another to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... a flight of stairs lighted by starlight from a window somewhere high up. At the head of the flight they came to a door, and through the crack beneath it streamed a warmer light than starlight. Ivra opened that door gayly, and through it with her, Eric ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... wounds and scars. The two youths had time to put their hands in their pockets, and to distribute a few pence to the wretched-looking beings on their way; both pocket and heart, if that were possible, being made lighter thereby. On reaching the top of the flight of stairs, without stopping to contemplate the height they had ascended, they turned to the right, and took the way along the ramparts towards Fort Saint Elmo. There seemed not to have been the slightest necessity for their hurry, as they appeared to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the huge wine cellars beneath all. After descending the four flights of the service stairs, and traversing a long passage running parallel with the kitchen, the two found themselves opposite a door, which, on being unlocked, gave access to another flight of stairs. At the foot of this was the main entrance to the cellars. Outside the entrance was the wine-lift, for the ascension of delicious fluids to the upper floors, and, opposite, Mr Hubbard's little office. There was electric ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... and the inspector looked round at me in complete bewilderment. The flight of stairs was a long one, and well lighted by gas, so that to rush it was an impossibility. Suddenly my heart gave a bound and I held my breath, for out of an open door behind our quarry, a figure emerged slowly and noiselessly ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... her hand, the visitor asked the name of the lodger, but the girl replied that she was known to them only as "La Dentelliere," and lived quite alone in the right-hand room at the top of the third flight of stairs. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... I must lie down somewhere immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So I agreed to the proposal about the bed, and took the offered arm of the old soldier, carrying my money with my disengaged hand. Preceded by the croupier, we passed along some passages and up a flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand, proposed that we should breakfast together, and then, followed by the croupier, left ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... [Motion upwards] Ascent. — N. ascent, ascension; rising &c. 309; acclivity, hill &c. 217; flight of steps, flight of stairs; ladder rocket, lark; sky rocket, sky lark; Alpine Club. V. ascend, rise, mount, arise, uprise; go up, get up, work one's way up, start up; shoot up, go into orbit; float up; bubble up; aspire. climb, clamber, ramp, scramble, escalade[obs3], surmount; shin, shinny, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... that the artist within me had dictated this careful elaboration, as became evident a few minutes later when the doctor appeared at the head of a short flight of stairs and requested me to step up to his consulting-room. It was a small room, so that the window, over which a linen blind was drawn, occupied nearly the whole of one wall. As Dr. Stuart, having examined the cut on my scalp, descended to the ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... could hear the heavy tread of Sleeny completing the first flight of stairs and going around to the head of the second. He then shut and locked his door, and hung his hat over the keyhole. He turned up his lamp and sat down by the table to count his night's gains. The first package he took from his pocket had a shining ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... some time watching him climb as if he had been going up a flight of stairs, until he stood clear against the sky, when, with another wave of his ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... again and went up the first flight of stairs. There were two other good sized apartments there. One should be my bedroom, and the other a spare room. And then another flight with two more. One for the servant, when I had one, and the other for ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... they went up a short flight of stairs into the small apartment in which Stuart saw his patients. Dunbar looked slowly about him, standing in the middle of the room, then crossed and stared out of the window into ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... sentry on guard, and told him that I wished to see the General on important business. Turning my flashlight upon my face, I showed who I was. He told me that the General's room was in the second storey at the head of a flight of stairs in a tower at the end of the building. I went over there, and finding the door unlocked, I mounted the wooden steps, my flashlight lighting up the place. I knocked at a door on the right and a voice asked ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work —smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass. Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Cooper's English, he said: "Well, I have been parlez-vousing in a way to surprise you. These Frenchmen have my tongue so set to their lingo I have half forgotten my own language,' he continued in English, and accepted my arm up the next flight of stairs." They had some copyright and other talk, and Sir Walter "spoke of his works with frankness and simplicity"; and as to proof-reading, he said he "would as soon see his dinner after a hearty meal" ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... and ascending the flight of stairs, abrupt and steep, and quaintly fashioned as of old, they turned into the best room; the pride of Mrs Varden's heart, and erst the scene of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... resplendent sign at the head of the third flight of stairs, and obeying its directions I march into the north corridor and enter The Revolution office. Nothing so very terrible after all. The first face that salutes my vision is a youthful one—fresh, smiling, bright-eyed, auburn-crowned. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... corner a flight of stairs led to a gallery high up against the wall, over the rude railing of which looked the heads of a couple of legless statues. From this gallery the stairs continued to ascend until a door near the roof was reached, leading to unknown regions well up in the building behind which the studio had been ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... lady one thing struck me, and that was, that instead of the common candle which I would have expected her to use under the circumstances, the one she carried in its glass protector was evidently of fine wax. She took me down a long passage, and we came to a flight of stairs leading to the ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... the rooms; no crimson, no gold. Statues and columns were all around; no paintings, no flowers. Was I not in a great cave full of stalactites? Longing to tread once more the green earth, I ran down the broad flight of stairs; but the entrance door was closed, and I could not remember the word by which the lady had opened it. I went up the stairs and sought the old man, but every room was empty. At length I found a little wooden staircase, that led higher ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... the wide staircase I have described as passing close to my room was thence continued upward to the next floor. In my dream or vision I saw distinctly a woman in a white nightgown, with dark hair streaming down her back, rushing up this second flight of stairs in the most distraught and reckless fashion. In one hand she held a knife, and was trying to stab herself with it, as a musjig—in crimson coat—rushed after her, and endeavoured to wrench it out of her hand. Two or three other people ran up the stairs behind her, but only this peasant seemed to ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... little flight of stairs that led to the roof, Charlie, the janitor, turned to gaze down at Mary Louise, who was just behind, and keeping fearfully out of the ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... covered over with a roof of canvas, and the snow banked up all round so as to meet the lower edges of it and form a protection from the wind. Up one side of this bank of snow a flight of stairs had been cut, leading to the port gangway, and the prints of many feet were seen all round the ship converging towards the stairs, the steps of which were worn ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... not seen me, so quick was I, and so soft with the leather curtain; and going tiptoe across the cave I stumbled at hazard upon a door I had not observed before. It was nothing more than a big and jagged opening in the rock, but it showed me a flight of stairs beyond it, and twinkling lamps beyond that again. This, I said, must surely be the road to the sea, for the stairs led upward, and Czerny, as common sense put it, would occupy the higher rooms. So I did not hesitate any more about it, but treading the stairway with a cat's foot I went straight on, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... knew the people of the inn were Jews. 'Jews,' said I, 'here in Tarifa, and keeping an inn, I should be glad to see them.' So I left my acquaintance, and hastened to the house. We first entered a stable, of which the ground floor of the building consisted, and ascending a flight of stairs entered a very large room, and from thence passed into a kitchen, in which were several people. One of these was a stout, athletic, burly fellow of about fifty, dressed in a buff jerkin, and dark cloth pantaloons. His ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... step behind me, and a voice which I recognized to be that of Mr. Vigors. I broke from the charm by which I had been so lingeringly spell-bound, hurried on confusedly, gained the wicket-gate, from which a short flight of stairs descended into the common thoroughfare. And there the every-day life lay again before me. On the opposite side, houses, shops, church-spires; a few steps more, and the bustling streets! How immeasurably far from, yet how familiarly near to, the world in ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... walking along the boulevard, and she turned down a side street, then led him into another, poorer still, with cheap shops on the ground floor, and at last stopped. They climbed flight after flight of stairs. She unlocked a door, and they went into a tiny attic with a sloping roof and a small window. This was closed and the room had a musty smell. Though it was very cold there was no fire and no sign that there had been one. The bed was unmade. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... rough-house to be localised there. It's the end of the voyage, and they must forthwith go and cheer the General. They must cheer the Captain. Above all they must cheer Major Hardy, the old sport! The mass of subalterns flows down the first flight of stairs to the square gallery which overlooks the dining saloon, like railings looking down into a bear-pit. And, like the bears, the seniors were feeding in the bottom of the saloon. They look up from their nuts and wine to see a hundred flushed ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of rough-looking servants, a tall old man in a nightcap and furred gown was giving orders in a loud passionate voice. This personage, who was of a choleric complexion, with a face like mottled red marble, seized Odo by the wrist and led him up a flight of stairs so worn and slippery that he tripped at every step; thence down a corridor and into a gloomy apartment where three ladies shivered about a table set with candles. Bidden by the old gentleman to salute his grandmother and great-aunts, Odo bowed over three ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... details of Mary Ann's daily duties—these things disgusted him more with himself than with her. And yet he found himself acquiring a new and illogical interest in the boots he met outside doors. Early one morning he went halfway up the second flight of stairs—a strange region where his own boots had never before trod—but came down ashamed and with fluttering heart as if he had gone up to steal boots instead of to survey them. He might have asked Mary Ann or her "missus" who the other tenants were, but he shrank ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... put his bar in and bore on it, and just that minute when they were all bending over, and we boys got our heads well out over the edge of the triforium, there come a most fearful crash down at the west end of the choir, as if a whole stack of big timber had fallen down a flight of stairs. Well, you can't expect me to tell you everything that happened all in a minute. Of course there was a terrible commotion. I heard the slab fall out, and the crowbar on the floor, and I heard the Dean say ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... slowly over his head, but otherwise there was no response. Stumbling along, blinded, suffocated, not knowing at any moment whether he might not be precipitated down some steep flight of stairs or over some high gallery in the building, he struggled to follow what seemed to be a cooling breath of air which streamed through the smoke as though blowing in from some open door, and as he felt ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... staircase, and stepping across the body of Michael as it lay on the landing, raced up the second flight of stairs. For a moment he paused in the hall, in order to make doubly sure ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... Reading an accident had like to have put an end to his follies and his life together; for he had the ill-luck to fall from his garret down the whole flight of stairs; but being destined to lengthen out a useless life for some time longer, he escaped with only a ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... they rung for the old footman who had shown us in at first, and told him to take us to our rooms. So we went out of that great drawing-room and into another sitting-room, and out of that, and then up a great flight of stairs, and along a broad gallery—which was something like a library, having books all down one side, and windows and writing-tables all down the other—till we came to our rooms, which I was not sorry to hear were just over the kitchens; for I began to think I should be lost ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... blue robe around her, put on her slippers and softly opened the door. There was no light in the upper hall, and a turn from the first flight of stairs hid the dim light below. Directly at this turn a push-button connected with an electric drop lamp, and this button Dorothy touched as ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... daughter descended the one flight of stairs arm in arm, preceded by the impatient guide, who was calculating on every circumstance that might arise between Ninety-sixth Street and the Hoboken ferry. Katie trailed behind with bags and shawl-strap bundles. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... often up a flight of stairs, and consisted of a single large room with "tables set apart for divers topics." There is a reference to this in the prologue to a comedy of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... roused him. It floundered heavily against the bars, crawled through, and brushed across his nose. No! he was not dead yet, but the bluebottle soon would be. He leaped at it, and, to his amazement, fell short and missed. Yesterday, he had cleared a flight of stairs with one light-hearted bound, and left a bewildered kitten at the top. He sank back heart-broken, and the bluebottle circled solemnly ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... while he was lounging about in this moody state, that he stumbled upon a flight of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which he ascended without any thought about the matter, and so came into a little music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated post, which commanded the whole hall, he amused ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... the staircase is twenty-two feet—space sufficient to allow of ten horsemen ascending each flight of steps abreast. Altogether this ascent, which is on a plan unknown elsewhere, is pronounced to be the noblest example of a flight of stairs to be found in any part of the world. It does not project beyond the line of the platform whereto it leads, but is, as it were, taken out of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... no reply; but was closely examining the floor—back across the hall. "There is a mark; there is another," he said, "not made by boots, but by their native sandals." Then he went out from the door, and up the next flight of stairs. ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the foot of the third and last flight of stairs with a strange dizziness in her head and a sinking sensation ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... plates of Mr. Q. Karkeek, out of the straw-littered hubbub of the market-place, she climbed the long flight of stairs leading to the offices on the first floor. In one worsted-gloved hand she held a market-basket of multi-coloured wicker, which dangled a little below the frilled and flounced edge of her blue jacket. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... was no noise to speak of, really, except the clunk-clunk of one or two moored rowboats down below, and the sh-r-r-r-r-p (if that spells it) of their corrugated plank-sides, as they dipped and dripped alternately. They were close to the bottom flight of stairs, whose lowest step was left forlorn in the air, and had to be jumped off when a real spring-tide ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... would be pleased to receive the proffered instruction, she led the way up a flight of stairs and paused in the doorway of the hotel office, for the Hotel Dieppe was a hostelry of no great pretentions and occupied the upper stories of a building, the lower floors of which were devoted to a furniture emporium. Behind the counter ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... and girl may need to be restricted in their athletic pleasures, and dancing should often be prohibited. Young adults may generally, little by little, assume most of their ordinary habits of life; but carrying heavy weights upstairs, going up more than one flight of stairs rapidly, hastening or running on the street for any purpose, and exertion, especially after eating a large meal, must all be prohibited. Graded physical exercise or athletic work, however, is essential for the patients' future health, and first ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... let the footman into the hall admitted to a spacious foyer which set apart the entrance and—as the play of the electric torch disclosed—a deep and richly furnished dining-room. To one side a broad flight of stairs ascended: Lanyard went up with the activity of a cat, making ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... down the dim-lit corridor the way they had come, descended a flight of stairs and headed along another corridor—to pause suddenly and gasp with astonishment. For through the door whence they had entered the rocket poured ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... of Jerry's friends, and the soiled person, who now seemed dissatisfied that Jerry was alive, Winthrop helped to carry him up one flight of stairs and ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... 'bout a spoonful left in the bottom of my tumbler," said Abner, apologetically. "Them that drinks last drinks best," said he, as he took up his lamp. "I guess that nightcap won't hurt me," he muttered to himself as he stumbled up the flight of stairs that led to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... edifice against fire, let alone every picture and photograph on the wall of every chamber of greater or less dignity, with every notable table and chair. He certainly earned the peseta I gave him, but he would have done far more for it if we had suffered him to take us up another flight of stairs; and he followed us in our descent with bows and adieux that ought to have left no doubt in our minds of the persistence of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... connection that she presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat ledge of the roof—the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but practised ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... advertising for clients, or taking any means whatever to get them, except by establishing a reputation for professional learning and integrity. The only inducement which he ever put in the way of clients, was a series of signs, outside the street door, on the first flight of stairs, at the head of the first landing, on the second flight of stairs, at the head of the second landing, and so on to the fourth floor, where the firm name of "Overtop & Maltboy" confronted the panting climber for the eighth and last time, painted in large gold letters ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... the Grand Canal, crossed it, and dived into a labyrinth from which we finally emerged before our destination, the Trattoria di San Gallo. The perils of the landing were soon over; and, with the rest of the guests, my mercurial companion and I slowly ascended a long flight of stairs leading to a vast upper chamber. Here we were ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... just peep through one of the button-holes, and all at once I uttered a loud whine. You should have seen how the passengers stared at my master, who I know looked embarrassed, as he gave me a tremendous squeeze. We soon got out, and I was carried up a flight of stairs, and placed on a table in a room, the walls of which were covered with pictures of people's faces, all of which seemed to keep ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various |
