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More "Staircase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... visit to a near relation of the Shah's, who was the guest of the local Head Mullah. The approach to the Mullah's palace was not attractive. I was conveyed through narrow passages, much out of repair, until we arrived in front of a staircase at the foot of which lay in a row, and in pairs, shoes of all sizes, prices, and ages, patiently waiting for their respective owners inside the house. A great many people were outside in the courtyard, some squatting down and smoking a kalian, which ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... among the walls as I walked about the court. I entered the keep by a low and frowning doorway: the lower floor consisted of a large dungeon-like room, with a vaulted roof; on the left hand was a winding staircase in the thickness of the wall; it looked anything but inviting; yet I stole softly up, my heart beating. On the top of the first flight of stairs was an arched doorway, to the left was a dark passage, to the right, stairs leading still higher. I stepped under the arch ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... heavy swell of sea for the operations in hand. A landing was, however, made this morning, when the artificers were immediately employed in scraping the seaweed off the upper course of the building, in order to apply the moulds of the first course of the staircase, that the joggle-holes might be marked off in the upper course of the solid. This was also necessary previously to the writer's fixing the position of the entrance door, which was regulated chiefly by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lifted him down; his mother took his hand. They seemed to wade together up that stream of light. Then came a staircase and room with a bed in it, which, oddly enough, turned out to be his own. He stared at the pink roses on the curtains. Yes; certainly it was his own bed. And satisfied of this, he nestled down in the pillows and slept, to the long ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... meantime Margaret, with the little babe, to-morrow to be her godchild, lying gently in her arms, came out into the matted hall, and began to mount the broad shallow-stepped staircase, protected by low stout balusters, with a very thick, flat, and solid mahogany hand-rail, polished by the boys' constant riding up and down upon it. She was only on the first step, when the dining-room door opened, and there came out a young man, slight, and delicate-looking, with ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... Psmith and Mr Bickersdyke belonged was celebrated for the steadfastness of its political views, the excellence of its cuisine, and the curiously Gorgonzolaesque marble of its main staircase. It takes all sorts to make a world. It took about four thousand of all sorts to make the Senior Conservative Club. To be absolutely accurate, there were three thousand seven hundred and ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... this copying for her employment, sitting at the pleasant open window, and losing herself in dreamy out-looks into the gardens and woods, quivering in the noontide heat. The house was so still, in its silence it might have been the 'moated grange;' the booming buzz of the blue flies, in the great staircase window, seemed the loudest noise in-doors. And there was scarcely a sound out-of-doors but the humming of bees, in the flower-beds below the window. Distant voices from the far-away fields in which they were making hay—the scent of which came in sudden wafts ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of the entrance lay the staircase leading to the bed-rooms on the second floor, and to the left a door opened into the school-rooms, a recent addition to the dwelling, and in which the Rabbi's fifty-odd pupils were daily instructed ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the public library. The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in here, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the staircase. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... could assume on the occasion. But while his son was in this state, Sir Austin considered that he would hardly be brought to see the virtues of the act, and did not make the requisition of him, and heavy Benson remained drawn up solemnly expectant at doorways, and at the foot of the staircase, a Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a step in advance of the young man, while Richard heedlessly passed him, as he passed everybody else, his head bent to the ground, and his legs bearing him like random instruments of whose service he was unconscious. It was a shock to Benson's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of autumn now stole with its own peculiar power to soften and subdue. As these recollections came across her, her step faltered and her colour faded from its glow: she paused a moment, cast a mournful glance round the room, and then tore herself away, descended the lofty staircase, passed the stone hall, melancholy with old banners and rusted crests, and bore her beauty and her busy heart into ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to her cousin, as she opened the door in a little closet, and showed a dusky room which had no window but a small one high up in the wall of a back staircase, "here is one room into which I never could get Poldie without the greatest trouble. I gave it up at last, he always trembled so till he got out again. I will show you such a curious place at the other ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... ball-room in the Castello, and the wedding fetes, and the tournaments in which Messer Galeazzo sought his help. And in this year—1492—we find Leonardo at Vigevano with the Moro in March, making designs for a new staircase for the Sforzesca, and studying vine-culture, and later in the summer drawing plans of a bath-room for Duchess Beatrice, and of a pavilion with a round cupola for the duke's labyrinth in the gardens of the Castello. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... time manifest volcanically at the bottom of the staircase, but before he comes in Lord Pellew has time to say so is his nasturtium granddaughter a good swimmer. He has thirteen, and has christened each of them after a flower. He hopes thirteen isn't unlucky, and then Major Roper comes in apologetic. Sally can just recollect having seen him before, and ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... the furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good feather-beds and blankets. The women—especially the elder women—go to great trouble, and pinch ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the splash of a horse and buggy through the mud, a monotonous voice mingling with the steady tick of the telegraph machine, some distant barnyard chatter, and the mysterious, invisible stir of spring shaking out upon the air damp sweet odours calling the earth to colour and life. Descending the staircase which connected the railroad station with the hill road on which it was perched, I joined a man who was swinging along in rubber boots, with several farming tools, rakes and hoes, slung over his shoulder. A repugnance I had felt in resuming my toil-worn clothes ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... pictures, including Wilkie's Duke of Wellington, Van Somer's James I. and Charles I., and Kneller's Peter the Great; (3) Great Banqueting Hall; (4) Summer Dining Room, near the foot of the great staircase; the bust of Burleigh, in white marble, is above the door; (5) the Armoury, full of treasures "rich and rare," suits of armour, relics of the Spanish Armada, various arms, etc. Other pictures in various parts of the house include (1) William III., and Lady Ranelagh, by Kneller; (2) half-length ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... legality of every importation. I therefore resolved to try my chance, and—entered the body of Augustus Tomlinson, as a piece of stolen goods. Faith! the first night I was shy,—I stuck to the staircase, and ogled an old maid of quality, whom I had heard announced as Lady Margaret Sinclair. Doubtless she had never been ogled before; and she was evidently enraptured with my glances. The next night I ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conducted into a great hall, up a noble staircase, through several elegant rooms, filled with beautiful and costly things, strange enough to poor Robert, but his eyes were too full of tears and his heart of grief to notice them. A chamber door was opened softly before him, and Robert saw his friend lying on a couch by the window, with ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... grease they could find, and making it an easy matter for the fire to catch and hold. The smoke, driven along in front of the flames, quickly became so intolerable that they had to fly for relief to the staircase at the farther ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... our pride, has been converted into barracks for the German soldiers. A small part of it, becoming smaller every day, is reserved for the courts. The Magistrates and lawyers have access to it by a small private staircase. ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... the room, treading softly. A little way up the staircase that led from the landing to the upper parts of the house a light flickered down to them, and they perceived the pale face of the housemaid diligently regarding them. Julian ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... men's conversation was abruptly ended. A loud, strident voice was heard from the head of the wide oak staircase, which was at some distance from ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... if you'll go up The staircase, you will find her; She won't look round: she never does, So you can ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... deep flush of satisfaction dyes her cheeks; all her natural self-reliance and determination return to her; with a little laugh at her own image (on which she builds her hopes), she defies fate, and, running down the staircase with winged feet, finds herself on the last step, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... time the manoeuvre gave him any pleasure, and an association was thus established which led to shoe-fetichism (Hammond, Sexual Impotence, p. 44). A government official whose first coitus in youth took place on a staircase; the sound of his partner's creaking shoes against the stairs, produced by her efforts to accelerate orgasm, formed an association which developed into an auditory shoe-fetichism; in the streets he was compelled to follow ladies whose shoes creaked, ejaculation being thus produced, while to ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Staircase 8 contained a stand of coarse pottery and a small coarse saucer (XII, 31, 44), the rough handmade vase (XII, 23), fragments of large water-jars of better ware, and two alabaster bowls, one of the sharp-edged type (XI, 33), the other of the common ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... is at the further end of this passage, on the left facing the main staircase. Good-night, sir. I am extremely obliged. I will bring you your shaving-water when ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... adapted by Alan de Walsingham. 14. Tomb of Bishop Kilkenny (1250). 15. Tomb of Bishop Redman (1505). 16. The Reredos, designed by Sir G.G. Scott, presented by John Dunn Gardner, Esq., in memory of his wife (1851). 17. The spiral Staircase leading to the organ loft: the organ was built by Hill and Son, of London. 18 and 19. The Stalls—very ancient, though the carved panels above them are modern; the north side represents a series of pictures from the New Testament; on the south side are illustrations of the Old Testament; they were ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... lock it now, unseen and unheard before the nearing step should pause! But the very attempt were folly; no, I must stand my ground and—Ah! the step has paused, but not at my door. There is a third one on this hall, communicating, as I knew, with a covered staircase leading to the attic. It was at this she stopped and it was up this staircase she went as warily and softly as its creaking boards would allow; and while I marveled as to what had taken her aloft so late, I heard her steps over ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... there's one of her party, anyway," interposed Falfani, and he called his attention to a female figure standing a little aloof in the shadow of the staircase, and ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... with eager words and tender hands, Kate was made ready for the evening meal, and went down, clinging on one side to Mary, on the other to Sylvia—a matter of no small difficulty on the narrow staircase, and almost leading to a general avalanche of young ladies, all upon the head of little Lily, who was running up to greet and be greeted, and was almost devoured by Kate when at length they did ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little group of men to the far end of the hall, where the staircase screened us from the light of the candle. How to begin, what to say, I did not know. With one arm about her slender form, I pressed kisses on her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... but when I gave them this air of barbarous bas-reliefs, they succeeded to a miracle: it is impossible at first sight not to conclude that they contain the history of Attila or Tottila, done about the very aera. From hence, under two gloomy arches, you come to the hall and staircase, which it is impossible to describe to you, as it is the most particular and chief beauty of the castle. Imagine the walls covered with (I call it paper, but it is really paper painted in perspective to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... nature of the tumult, called out to Francisco de Chaves, an officer high in his confidence, and who was in the outer apartment opening on the staircase, to secure the door, while he and his brother Alcantara buckled on their armour. Had this order, coolly given, been as coolly obeyed, it would have saved them all, since the entrance could easily have been maintained against a much larger force, till the report of the cavaliers who had fled had ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... his bended knees, By the pale spectre pushed, And, wild as one whom demons seize, Up the hall-staircase rushed; Entered his chamber—near the bed Sheathed steel and fire-arms hung— Impelled by maniac purpose dread ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... gilt], beasts and birds, knights and idols, and sundry other subjects. And on the ceiling too you see nothing but gold and silver and painting. [On each of the four sides there is a great marble staircase leading to the top of the marble wall, and forming the approach to the Palace.] ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in his pocket and advanced stealthily across the room. His feet were encased in list slippers and his tread was perfectly noiseless. As he approached I backed away, and grasping the newel-post of the staircase gave it a sharp pull, whereat the whole of the balusters creaked loudly. Then I slipped behind the curtain that partly divided the hall, poised the concussor as a golf-player poises his club, and gathered in ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... slowly she went from them, Went down the staircase grim, With trembling heart and limb; Her footfalls echoed In the silence vast and dead, Like the notes of a requiem, ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... The staircase, she remembered, was at her right; and feeling out before her with her hands, she reached the stairs, and began to mount them. She went slowly, very slowly. They were bare, the stairs, and unless one were extremely careful they would creak ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... passages and remote lobbies. One morning, Cecilia, on her way to the china closet, found Kenelm gazing very intently upon a female portrait consigned to one of those obscure receptacles by which through a back staircase he gained the only approach from the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... granite cornices. The upper story consisted entirely of small arches, forming a gallery; between the arches were iron gratings enriched with escutcheons; whilst upon the gables of the house more coats-of-arms were displayed. The broad external staircase, of tinted bricks, abutted on the square. At the foot of it sat guards, who with one hand held their halberds upright, and with the other supported their drooping heads, and in this attitude more resembled apparitions ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Paris. By a somewhat whimsical coincidence, the Count de Stedingk, who, from having been one of the intended hunting-party, had been admitted into the antechamber, rushing down-stairs in his haste to spread the intelligence, met the Countess de Provence on the staircase. "It is a dauphin, madame," he cried; "what a happy event!" The countess made him no reply. Nor did she or her husband pretend to disguise their mortification. The Count d'Artois was a little less open in the display of his discontent, which was, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... tempered by mixing with the warmer air of the room—Stoves in halls and staircases are useful, because they warm the air before it enters the rooms; and they prevent the hurtful chills often felt on passing through a cold staircase from one warm room to another. It is important to admit no more cold air into the house than is just required for the fires, and for ventilation; hence there is great error in the common practice of leaving all the chimneys that are not in use, quite open; for each admits as much ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... quarter of an hour, which was spent up-stairs in perfect silence, there came a message. Would Lady Anna have the kindness to go to the Serjeant in the dining-room. In silence she left the room, and in silence descended the broad staircase. The Serjeant and Mrs. Bluestone were sitting on one side of the fireplace, the Serjeant in his own peculiar arm-chair, and the lady close to the fender, while a seat opposite to them had been placed ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... humours of that memorable entertainment! How, when the company were assembled, it was discovered Mr. Pilkington was missing, and a party, headed by Lawless, proceeded to his rooms, which were on the same staircase, and brought him down, vi et armis, in a state of mind bordering on distraction, picturesquely attired in a dressing-gown, slippers, and smoking-cap, of a decidedly oriental character; and how, when they had forced him into a seat of honour ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... each other's shoulders, they descended the broad staircase, just as Mrs. Power, in answer to William's summons, was crossing the ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... court. Besides, heaven help the foreigner who tries to learn all the German tongues to be found in the empires of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg. Luncheon will be served to you in the dining hall; the first door to the right at the foot of the grand staircase. I shall send you a ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... away and walked into the house. I leant against the wall, and remained buried in thought till my uncle returned. He was in a hurry to go, and desired me to look for Alice. Not finding her in the rooms below, I went up the narrow staircase, opened the door of what had once been her bed-room, and looked into the closet within. There was the view of the church, such as she had once shown it me from that window: she was on her knees, and her head was resting on her hands; the sound of a deep sigh caught my ear. I looked at ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... which, under other circumstances, might hardly have entered into it as a principle of education at all. The rooms M. Linders had taken were on the third floor of a large palazzo with many occupants, where a hundred feet daily passed up and down the common staircase, the number of steps they had to tread increasing for the most part in direct proportion to their descent in the social grade which, with sufficiently imposing representatives on the first floor, reached its minimum, in point of wealth and ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... consisted of a landing from which a lift and a staircase descended, a waiting-room for clients, pleasantly furnished, a room in which two female clerks worked, and off this a small room tenanted by an office boy. You may also add in imagination an excellent lavatory for the clerks, two telephones (one in the partners' room), ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... romance, that not even my Chartism can quench. Once, and once only, I remember creeping, under the guidance of an elder boy, up to the 'dark room' in the turret; but the fear that we should really see the ghostly Lady caused us to run down the staircase, with beating hearts, as soon as we had reached the door and ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Justice, Force, Prudence, etc. The outer hall, the "Salle des Pas-Perdus," is surrounded by 16 columns of red marble. The Prfecture is a splendid edifice in the Renaissance style, 300 ft. long by 260 ft. wide, adorned with statues and bas-reliefs, and furnished with a grand staircase, escalier d'honneur, communicating with handsome ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... she said, 'it needs a woman to see. It is but two o'clock. Let us ascend the glacier, like a staircase; and presently we shall stand upon the summit of the mountain. Those last little peaks above the ice can ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... but no historical remembrance being attached to this mountain lake, I rather suppose that it was the sacred lake of Guatavita, on the east of the mines of rock-salt of Zipaquira, into which the gilded lord was made to enter. I saw on its banks the remains of a staircase hewn in the rock, and serving for the ceremonies of ablution. The Indians said that powder of gold and golden vessels were thrown into this lake, as a sacrifice to the adoratorio de Guatavita. Vestiges are still found of a breach which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... made some of the proper cake to pacify the lions, and one night went up to her room very early, pretending that she was going to bed; but instead of that, she wrapped herself in a long white veil, and went down a secret staircase, and set off all by ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... Jim between his teeth. 'Gang upstairs wi' ye.' And he pointed to a door in the wall concealing a staircase to the upper storey. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that even one God-fearing but not God-loving old man should think him unfit to sit in the church in which his father and mother had been married, from which they had been carried side by side for their long rest. It was midnight when he went up the broad staircase to ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... broad lawns, wide-spreading shade trees and splashing fountains, it was a conspicuous landmark for miles. The interior was full of architectural beauty. The stately entrance hall, hung with ancestral portraits, was of noble proportions and a superb staircase, decorated with statuary led off to tastefully decorated reception rooms above. To-night the house was brilliantly illuminated and there was considerable activity at the front entrance, where a footman in smart livery stood opening the doors of the ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... and splendour. The apartments were in general furnished with all the cheerful ease and brilliancy of the modern mansion of a noble, but the grand gallery of the seventeenth century was still preserved, and was used on great occasions as the chief reception-room. You ascended the principal staircase to reach it through a long corridor. It occupied the whole length of one of the wings; was one hundred feet long, and forty-five feet broad, its walls hung with a collection of choice pictures rich in history; while the Axminster carpets, the cabinets, carved tables, and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... slipped quickly from the room, feeling her way down the dark staircase to the kitchen. It was dusky and quiet there. Mahailey sat in a corner, hemming dish-towels by the light of a smoky old brass lamp which was her own cherished luminary. Mrs. Wheeler walked up and down the long room in soft, silent agitation, both hands pressed tightly to her breast, where there ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... Heaven to witness the truth of her words, that there is nothing to eat in the house—that the Germans have eaten up all her store of food, and that her old mother is already beginning to starve. Yet certain appetizing smells, which come down the staircase from upstairs when the door is opened, lead me to believe she is deceiving us. I do not blame her for treasuring what she has for her own flesh and blood; but I certainly could enjoy a couple of ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... saw a sign lettered HOTEL. Brett went up to the revolving door, pushed inside. He was in a dim, marble-panelled lobby, with double doors leading into a beige-carpeted bar on his right, the brass-painted cage of an elevator directly before him, flanked by tall urns of sand and an ascending staircase. On the left was a dark mahogany-finished reception desk. Behind the desk a man stood silently, waiting. Brett felt a wild surge ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... having eaten and drunk as much as she could by her single self, and growing wearied with efforts from which so little resulted, proposed to Fanny to retire to rest. She opened a door to the right of the fireplace, and lighted her up a winding staircase to a pretty and comfortable chamber, where she offered to help her to undress. Fanny's complete innocence, and her utter ignorance of the precise nature of the danger that awaited her, though she fancied it must be very great and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... darker end of the outer cave there was a staircase, partly natural, and partly improved by art, which led upward into ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... difficult to match Rowardennan Castle for a scene of beauty and revelry. Everything went merrily till we came to Hynde Horn, the concluding tableau, and the most effective and elaborate one on the programme. At the very last moment, when the opening scene was nearly ready, Jean Dalziel fell down a secret staircase that led from the tapestry chamber into Lady Ardmore's boudoir, where the rest of us were dressing. It was a short flight of steps, but, as she held a candle and was carrying her costume, she fell awkwardly, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... never shall forget his effort to ascend the staircase of the Commissioner's house on Friday morning after his victory at Milwaukee the night before. The veteran Warrior had to rest his head and hands on the rail and pray 'My Lord.' It was clear to me that the chill he had sustained ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the door, nor had long to wait before a serving-maid appeared, who seemed to be of English nativity; and in reply to his request for Doctor Portsoaken bade him come in, and led him up a staircase with broad landing-places; then tapped at the door of a room, and was responded to by a gruff voice saying, "Come in!" The woman held the door open, and Septimius saw the veritable Doctor Portsoaken in an old, faded morning-gown, and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gables. The ground floors had once had trellised porches, but these had been found inconvenient and were removed, and the lower story consisted of a large hall, and strong vault, with a spacious room behind it containing a baking-oven, and a staircase leading to a wooden gallery, where the family used to dine. It seems they slept in the room below, though they had upstairs a ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... find the dead body of Arnold Armstrong, the son of the owner, on the circular staircase. Following the murder a bank failure is announced. Around these two events is woven a plot of ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... passed into the chamber of the mourners, and thence to the head of the staircase, to make the funeral prayer. It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopes that the music of a heavenly harp swept by the fingers of the dead seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister. ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... upon the table, and followed Comus. He conducted her and her companion, who was only a confidential maid, down a back staircase, used as an exit, and leading into a different street from that by which the two women had come in; but the coachman, who had been told beforehand of this circumstance, was awaiting them at the door, and they had only to step into their carriage, which bore ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... unquestionably the finest was the Fairy Garden, with a quite beautiful back-cloth by R. MCCLEERY and a bewildering (and, to tell truth, largely bewildered) bevy of butterflies, decked by COMELLI, fluttering in a flowery pleasaunce. And there was also a clever variation on the now inevitable staircase motif as a finale. But the Harlequinade of happy memory has deplorably declined to something like a mere display of advertisements—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... my earliest recollections. It stood upon the staircase at home (I call it home still mechanically), nigh sixty years ago. I like it for that; but it is not on that account, nor because it is a quaint old thing in a huge oaken case curiously and richly carved, that I prize it as I do. I incline ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... mansion. But one day, clad in deep sables, she went with George to visit the deserted house which she had not entered since she was a girl. They went into the great blank rooms, the walls of which bore the marks where pictures and mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great stone staircase into the upper rooms, into that where grandpapa died, as Georgie said in a whisper, and then higher still into George's own room. The boy was still clinging by her side, but she thought of another besides him. She knew that it had ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... round to a small entrance at the side of the house, and presently the door opened and Jane beckoned him to enter. A staircase close to the door led direct to one end of the painted gallery, which was close to Maud's room, and here Harry sat down in the broad window-seat to wait her coming. He did not have to wait long. In a minute or two her chamber-door opened, and the young ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... continued to beat with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire for action of any sort had possessed itself of his spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed. What could be more natural than to mount the staircase, lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? At least he would be dealing with something tangible; at least he would be no longer in the dark. He stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through the flowery paths of the hanging-gardens. He stopped at the parapet end cautiously opened a hidden trap-door, admitting to a secret staircase which wound down through one of the huge pillars supporting the hanging-gardens, and which had probably been intended by their original designer as a means of reaching his wife's apartments unobserved from the shores ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of how they had sailed the seas and seen many people and many lands. There was the story of the old house within the iron gates—built by convicts more than fifty years ago—and of how the sea-captain had bought it and built a tower and spiral staircase and a roof promenade, which he called his "deck." And of how he and his small daughter settled down in the great house together; and how her wardrobe was always full of beautiful clothes and her purse full of real sovereigns; and two ponies she had to her name, and a great ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... and into the room where they slept; but they were up and out of the room. The ball come through the window, which it mashed to pieces, with part of the framework; went through the opposite wall near the head of the bedstead; crossed the staircase to another room; but meeting with a beam in the wall, came back and went a part through the side wall, and then dropt down on the stairs. A thirty-two pounder, supposed coming from the Powlis Hook battery, fell into Sr. Barnard's garden, just before her door. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... into the dark depths of the building. Is it possible to climb to the top of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the city? At all events the attempt is worth making, and the chances are that the door of the staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a deeply sleeping janitor lies across the threshold, face turned to the Moon. A rat dashes out of his turban at the sound of approaching footsteps. The man grunts, opens his ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... held charge of the property for the King before the Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase, through several stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off,—very indistinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... windows of the hotel to its historic associations to the purity and the grandeur of its architecture, to the Venetian sumptuousness of its halls and chambers (including the green saloon of the Doges) to the magnificence of its Atrium and staircase—preserved in its original XVth cent. condition, must now be added the important works of restoration and embellishment just completed by the present proprietors who by the aid of clever architects, artists and decorators, have studied the means of bringing into requisition all ...
— A Summary History of the Palazzo Dandolo • Anonymous
... the desert. And, indeed, the desert was near—that realistic desert which suggests to the traveller approaches to the sea, so that beyond each pallid dune, as he draws near it, he half expects to hear the lapping of the waves. Presently, when, having ascended that marvellous staircase of the New Year, walking in procession with the priests upon its walls toward the rays of Ra, I came out upon the temple roof, and looked upon the desert—upon sheeny sands, almost like slopes of satin shining in the sun, upon paler sands in the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... seize the King, which they immediately obeyed by forcing him into the next room. They forgot, however, when they locked the door, that there was a private entrance, out of which the King immediately escaped, and appearing on the staircase, below which the Author was standing, he called loudly for help. Some of the conspirators, however, with great presence of mind, called to the soldiers on duty, "The King is mad;" on which they again secured him, and in the evening he was removed to Drottningholm, ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... eventually executed in colour was an incident in the foreground which dealt with the "Battle of the Standard." One of the many supposed copies of a study of this mural painting now hangs on the south-east staircase in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It depicts the Florentines under Cardinal Ludovico Mezzarota Scarampo fighting against the Milanese under Niccolo Piccinino, the General of Filippo Maria Visconti, on ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... rustle attendant upon her ascent of the staircase had died completely out, the colonel turned toward Pen. He spoke quietly enough, but with an emotion ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... timberwork trailing behind her. It was in itself, without picking up another plank, more than sufficient to supply all the carpenter's needs for the roof of the house, "besoides making the ladies a prisint of a staircase for the front door," as Mr ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... with outside grilles, either of bars or of wrought-iron scrollwork. From this patio, which in the wealthier houses is paved with marble, the doorways of the lower apartments open. The houses are of two storeys, and access to the upper is gained by a broad staircase which terminates on a wide balcony, or, rather, gallery, above the patio. From this gallery the doors of the upper rooms open. A balustrade runs round the outer side of the gallery, and this is generally covered with flowering plants, ferns, and palms, in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... sense of rhythm is entirely dominated by the sense of colour. He manipulates the French language with a freedom sometimes barbarous, 'dragging his images by the heels or the hair' (in the admirable phrase of Leon Bloy) 'up and down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified syntax,' gaining, certainly, the effects at which he aims. He possesses, in the highest degree, that style tachete et faisande—high-flavoured and spotted with corruption—that he attributes to Goncourt and Verlaine. And with this audacious and barbaric profusion of words—chosen ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... kitchen, now dark and deserted. The flickering light of the candle was reflected here and there on the curves of the copper pots and glass bowls. The house was sleeping. We crossed the hall, and went up a broad wooden staircase, polished ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... scampered from room to room, uttering little cries of contentment. Often as she had seen and admired the house during the last few weeks, it had never seemed so perfectly delightful as it did to-day: with its low-ceiled cozy little rooms at the back, its high and imposing rooms in front, its broad staircase and square landing, it would be quite a little palace when all had ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... just it," replied I. "Now it puts all my fear in action, and imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty for you to go and stand where it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... exercises as the fox trot and the one step. Further, let me draw your attention to the old Elizabethan dormer window from which it is reported that the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh hung his cloak to dry, after the lady had trodden on it. On the staircase can be seen the identical spot where the dog basket belonging to the aged pug dog of the eighteenth Countess of Forres was nightly placed, to the intense discomfiture of those ill-behaved and rowdy guests who turned the hours of sleep ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... the passage. Mr. Fentolin bade his guest a somewhat restrained good night, and Gerald mounted the staircase to his room. Hamel, however, had scarcely reached his door before Gerald reappeared. He had descended the stair-case at the other end of the corridor. He stood for a moment looking down the passage. The doors were all closed. Even ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... treble doors, padded with leather to exclude the cold and guarded by two 'proud young porters' in severe cocked hats and formidable batons, into a broad hall,—threw off our furred boots and cloaks, ascended a carpeted marble staircase, in every angle of which stood a statuesque footman in gaudy coat and unblemished unmentionables, and reached a broad landing upon the top thronged as usual with servants. Thence we passed through an antechamber into a long, high, brilliantly lighted, saffron-papered room, in which a dozen card-tables ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... absence, from her own scanty store of edibles across the hall, she prepared a meal for him. Absorbed in this occupation she gave little heed to the steady tramp of feet ascending the staircase. A peremptory knock recalled her from her world of ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and there, on his knees, to kiss either her shoe-buckle or her lips; "whichever he likes best!" ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... stands, in a fat, flat country about ten miles from Cologne, to which city it bears much the same relation that Hampton Court bears to London, or Versailles to Paris. Stucco and whitewash had been lavished upon it inside and out, and pallid scagliola did duty everywhere for marble. A grand staircase supported by agonised colossi, grinning and writhing in vain efforts to look as if they didn't mind the weight, led from the great hall to the state apartments; and in these rooms the bad taste of the building ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... But the staircase was full of people, and I dived under to go below and find my cabin, which I now resentfully remembered ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... the main staircase into the hall! Everybody in the place knows it by this time—she took good care they should. I don't know how she can have been robbed—so far as I can learn she's scarcely been out of these rooms since she came into them yesterday afternoon. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... fullest extent. She may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... four eyes, which for forty minutes had scarcely left the entrance staircase, were rewarded. She came, in furs, gleaming white kid gloves, gold chains, a gold bag, and ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... rustic staircase which leads from the garden, WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... writing "Sans souci" over the gate; but where is the gate through which Care has not slipped? She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the sentry-box: she whispers the porter sleeping in his arm-chair: she glides up the staircase, and lies down between the king and queen in their bed-royal: this very night I dare say she will perch upon poor old Goody Twoshoes's meagre bolster, and whisper, "Will the gentleman and those ladies ask ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the bell, the girl drew off her wooden gloves, laid them on the keyboard, turned slowly in her seat, listening. A slight sound coming from the spiral staircase of stone set her heart beating violently. Had the suspected man violated his word? She drew the automatic pistol from her holster, rose, and stole up to the stone platform overhead, where, rising tier on tier into the darkness, the great carillon ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... of that gallery. Did you know that? At the other end, in exactly the same position, hidden in the deep arch, there is a second door. There is also a winding staircase, which leads to the street on the opposite side of the mosque. Foreigners are never admitted by that side, but it is barely possible that the door may have been open. Alexander Patoff may have gone down that way, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... a defeat for Eric, formally recorded by Barbara with that glint of triumph which was beginning to fill him with misgiving. They drove in silence to a side street off Shaftesbury Avenue and groped their way through the stage-door down a cork-screw staircase and along several short passages which branched disconcertingly to right or left as soon as Barbara fancied that she could walk ahead with impunity. From above came the mechanical runs and flourishes ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Don Pietro Casale's house, the last on the right, with the steep staircase running up outside the building to the second story. And the staircase has an iron railing, and so narrows the lane that a broad shouldered man can just go by to the cabbage garden beyond without turning sideways. On the landing at the top, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... whitewashed, looking as they approached it more like a garrison for several regiments than a residence for a few families, and a store-house for agricultural implements and crops. The lower floor of this long building was taken up with stables and offices, but mounting a wide stone staircase, our artists found themselves in a large room scrupulously neat, with whitewashed walls, very high ceilings, and whips, guns, dogs, tables, account-books, stone floors and rough seats, making a curious mingling of monastery, squire's office, sportsman's chamber, and social ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of good nights and good wishes, the great hall doors are shut, and they all troop up the wide walnut staircase quite as if an evening party had broken up. Floyd Grandon, though not a demonstrative man, lingers to give his mother a parting kiss, and is glad that he ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio, Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter. Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase, Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft. There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... as we have seen, were four in number, each opening into the other. Access was given to them by a large scale staircase, as they were then called, of unusual length and height, which had its landing-place at the door of an antechamber, shaped somewhat like a gallery. This apartment the abbot had used as an occasional council-room, but it was now beautifully wainscoted with dark, foreign wood of a brown ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... have much difficulty about that," the man replied. "When we have taken round supper our work is done for the night, and half of us are free to go out and spend the evening. You turn down the first staircase you come to, follow it to the bottom, then take the corridor to the right and go on until you come to an open door. Two soldiers will be standing there on sentry, but they ask no questions of the warders. You had better wait when you get in sight of the door till you see that no one ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... before the girl's lagging footsteps had carried her halfway up the staircase, "I'm sure your strong young arms can help us with this big elephant. Will you ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... and those of his wife, which were immediately over them, at the Tuileries, had communication by means of a private staircase; and it was the custom of the Emperor himself to signify, by a tap on the door of Josephine's sitting-room, his desire to converse with her in his cabinet below. In the days of their cordial union the signal was often made, most commonly ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... subway station up-town, and finally caught an express back again to Fourteenth Street. Here he entered without hesitation a small, foreign-looking restaurant which intruded upon the pavement only a few yards from the iron staircase by which he descended from the station. There were two faded evergreen shrubs in cracked pots at the bottom of the steps, soiled muslin curtains drawn across the lower half of the windows, dejected-looking green shutters ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came Kriemhild begirt with many a maid, When from the lofty staircase young Giselher thus said, "Send back your maidens, Kriemhild, this bus'ness is your own; On this the king, our brother, would speak with ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... still the same loathsome smell as under the archway. In Anna Akimovna's childhood, when her father was a simple workman, she used to live in a building like that, and afterwards, when their circumstances were different, she had often visited them in the character of a Lady Bountiful. The narrow stone staircase with its steep dirty steps, with landings at every story; the greasy swinging lanterns; the stench; the troughs, pots, and rags on the landings near the doors,—all this had been familiar to her long ago. . . . One door was open, and within could be seen Jewish tailors in caps, sewing. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... remains near the pulpit in the church of Ashby-Folville, in this county (Leicester). It is fixed to the wall containing the staircase to the rood-loft. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... ascended a doorless staircase, across the entrance of which a blanket, stretched angularly from the wall to the chimney, afforded a kind of screen; and presently he stood within a chamber which the dark and painful genius of Crabbe might have delighted to portray. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... externally as we see it to-day. This puts the date of the completion of the keep between 1146 and 1171. The floors are now a store for the uniforms and accoutrements of the soldiers quartered at Richmond, so that there is little to be seen as we climb a staircase in the walls 11 feet thick, and reach the battlemented turrets. Looking downwards, we gaze right into the chimneys of the nearest houses, and we see the old roofs of the town packed closely together in the shelter of the mighty tower. A few tiny people are moving ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... being alarmed by some of the Indian servants, desired de Chaves to shut the doors of the saloon and the hall, while he retired to put on his armour. De Chaves was so much confused, that instead of fastening the doors he went out to the staircase demanding the reason of the noise; on which one of the conspirators wounded him. "This, said he, is not the usage of a friend," and immediately drew his sword, but was soon overpowered and slain. The conspirators immediately rushed into the hall, whence ten ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the dark depths of the building. Is it possible to climb to the top of the great Minars, and thence to look down on the city? At all events the attempt is worth making, and the chances are that the door of the staircase will be unlocked. Unlocked it is; but a deeply sleeping janitor lies across the threshold, face turned to the Moon. A rat dashes out of his turban at the sound of approaching footsteps. The man grunts, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... trunk, and in the lock of the door was a key. A brilliant idea at once occurred to Mr Whittlestaff. He shoved the big box in with his foot, locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. At that moment the heads of the gardener and the groom appeared up the back staircase, and ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... went and fetched a light, drew his faithful sword from the scabbard, whistled Blaireau, and bravely seized the rope which served as a balustrade for the staircase, requesting me to remain below. Great as was my repugnance to entering the room again, I did not hesitate to follow Marcasse, in spite of his recommendation. Our first care was to examine the bed; but while we had been talking ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants' staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped any interview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... finds named in the houses "of the richer sort," is the entry. This was apparently always bare of furniture, and indeed well it might be, for it was seldom aught but a vestibule to the rest of the house, containing, save the staircase, but room enough to swing the front door in opening. Dr. Lyon gives the inventory of John Salmon of Boston in the year 1750 as the earliest record which he has found of the use of the word hall instead of entry, as we now employ it. In the Boston News Letter, thirty one years earlier, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... whose Eesa proprietors scowled fiercely at us, and stalked over the plain with their long, heavy spears: for protection against these people, the citizens have erected a kind of round tower, with a ladder for a staircase. Near it are some large tamarisks and the wild henna of the Somali country, which supplies a sweet-smelling flower, but is valueless as a dye. A thick hedge of thorn-trees surrounds the only cultivated ground near Zayla: as Ibn Said declared in old times, "the people have no gardens, and ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... on the same staircase with me; his door is opposite. I never thought he would make me ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens
... in the middle of the tomb. One by one he took the stones and piled them up in a corner. When he had knocked down the whole sepulchre he proceeded to dig at the earth, and beneath where the sepulchre had been I saw a trap-door. He raised the door and I caught sight of the top of a spiral staircase; then he said, turning to the lady, "Madam, this is the way that will lead you down to the spot which I told ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... the top, however. He sprang from the edge of the precipice, unable to look down, threw himself on his face, and panted and trembled, as if he had never before climbed anything less safe than a staircase. Never before, indeed, had he done anything like this. The feat was performed,—the islet was not to him inaccessible. This thought gave him strength. He sprang to his feet again, and whistled loud and shrill. He could imagine the comfort this must be to Peder; and he whistled more and more ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... somewhat dazed when he went up the narrow staircase to his swept and garnished room. Never, in all of a life that had been active,—until recently,—had he been so conscious of friendliness and kindly interest. He expanded under it. Some of the tired lines left ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have provoked the criticism of the captious. It became the fashion in college to chant this martial ode whenever Hyacinth was seen approaching. It was thundered out by a choir who marched in step up and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in his ear while he tried to note the important truths which the lecturers impressed upon their classes. One night five musicians relieved each other at the task of playing the tune on a concertina ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... a beggar at describing the hurly-burly and most admired disorder amidst which I performed the descent of the staircase in a savage perspiration, my elbows and heels unmercifully jostled by a dense, unruly horde, and going with nose in pocket, from trepidation due to national cowardice, while the seething mob clamoured and contended for overcoats and hats around very exiguous aperture, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Raise that curtain; you will find a door which opens on a staircase in the wall; go down twenty steps, then stop, pass your hand over the wall until you feel a spring; press it, and it will open. You will find a small window concealed within the room by the carving, and you can hear every word that ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... and with impressiveness; then breaking off abruptly he led the way up a winding iron staircase and the boys, still pondering his words, ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Edith, having given certain necessary orders for arranging matters within the Castle, had followed the dead-alive up to the stranger's apartment attended by as many of the guests, male and female, as could squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. Athelstane, however, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... hers ran on! Well, somehow or other it ended at last And, licking her whiskers, out she passed; 325 And after her—making (he hoped) a face Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin, Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace Of ancient hero or modern paladin, From door to staircase—oh, such a solemn 330 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... taken; the attempt was so unconspicuously made, the failure so stoically supported. Sympathy is not due to these steadfast iron natures. If he failed to gain his son's friendship, or even his son's toleration, on he went up the great, bare staircase of his duty, uncheered and undepressed. There might have been more pleasure in his relations with Archie, so much he may have recognised at moments; but pleasure was a by-product of the singular chemistry of life, which only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lead him through a great vaulted vestibule toward a staircase. At the stairs though he halted, and casting a glance at Jurand, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... constitution. The Prince of Scotland was not to be murdered, as Ramorny had expressed himself on another occasion, he was only to cease to exist. Rothsay's bedchamber in the Tower of Falkland was well adapted for the execution of such a horrible project. A small, narrow staircase, scarce known to exist, opened from thence by a trapdoor to the subterranean dungeons of the castle, through a passage by which the feudal lord was wont to visit, in private and in disguise, the inhabitants ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... He sank down on the lower steps of the wide staircase and hid his face in his hands. Brian, who had been passing him by without remark, seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and stopped short before his cousin. The lad's shrinking attitude touched ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... say who received the company, and with what grace SHE did so, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sable stole; for the widow's weeds have not yet been doffed for the robes of saffron—with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene and ample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among her hair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... away just as she was at her breakfast, and all she knew of him was the resounding slam of the hall door, which came echoing up the staircase. Very often in the evening he came hastily into the nursery to say good-bye on his way out to some dinner-party, and at night she woke up to hear his step on the stairs as he came back late. But when he dined at home Ruth ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... interior court. The ground floor, except for the serdab, is given up to kitchens, store-rooms, servants' quarters, stables, &c. The principal rooms are on the first floor and open directly from a covered veranda, which is reached by an open staircase from the court. These constitute the winter residence of the family, reception rooms, &c. The roofs of the houses are all flat, surrounded by parapets of sufficient height to protect them from the observation of the dwellers opposite, and separate them from their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... have all the questions poured on me that would be sure to come. Moreover, I was curious to see how far Miss St. Clair's judgment would be verified. The marble hall was undoubted; it was large and square, with a handsome staircase going up from it; but the parlour, into which we were ushered the next minute, crossed all my expectations. It was furnished with dark chintz; no satin, red or blue, was anywhere to be seen; even the curtains were chintz. The carpet was not rich; the engravings ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... felt the grandeur of this great arch, including so large a space of the blue sky in its airy sweep. At a distance it impresses the spectator with its solidity; nearer, with the lofty vacancy beneath it. There is a spiral staircase within one of its immense limbs; and, climbing steadily upward, lighted by a lantern which the doorkeeper's wife gave us, we had a bird's-eye view of Paris, much obscured by smoke or mist. Several interminable avenues shoot with painful ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the staircase, attended by her ladies, Yolande was waiting to greet her disappointed friend. Charles dismounted and kissed each member of the family in order of precedence, the little duke, his brother, then the duchess, her daughter, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... together, but parted in the hall. Mrs. de Vaux stayed to speak to the housekeeper for a moment, and Paul ascended the broad staircase alone. On the first corridor he paused, standing before the deep-cushioned sill of a high-arched window, and gazing at the ruined portion of the abbey. The air outside was frosty and clear, and though the moon as yet was only faintly yellow, every arch ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the day he saw with beating heart a courier gallop up to the staircase of the main entrance, dismount, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... have little attraction for his noble nature. His heart remained unspoiled. He was most generous to those who could not afford to pay for his lessons, most pitiful to the poor, most dutiful and affectionate to his mother. Coming home late from some grand entertainment, he would sit outside on the staircase till morning, sooner than awaken, or perhaps alarm, her by letting himself in. But in losing his father he seemed to have lost a certain method and order. His meals were irregular, so were his lessons; more so were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to construct the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... slope of the hill on one side, and the rising ground in the rear on the other, to increase the effect of the buildings and meet the difficulty of the levels. The two portions—old, etched, and new, shown as black—are connected together by a handsome staircase, which is carried up in the tower, and affords access to the various levels. The materials are red brick, with Bathstone dressings, and weather-tiling on the upper floors. Black walnut, pitch pine, and sequoias have been used in the staircase, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... Somerset lived in a detached house in the north-west part of fashionable London; and ascending the chief staircase the young man branched off from the first landing and entered his father's painting-room. It was an hour when he was pretty sure of finding the well-known painter at work, and on lifting the tapestry he was not disappointed, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... struggled back to him, he could see the bare wooden-like walls of his sleeping-room, the locker, the one window bright with sunlight, the open door of the tank-room, and the little staircase to the tower. There was a strange smoky and herb-like smell in the room. He made an effort to rise, but as he did so a small sunburnt hand was laid gently yet restrainingly upon his shoulder, and he heard the same musical cry as before, but this time modulated to a girlish ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... a concierge. The upper floors of the huge Genoese house are let out in large or small apartments to mysterious families, of which the younger members are always to be met carrying jugs carefully up and down the greasy, common staircase. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... Blanche read a chapter to him from her pocket-Bible, and with a few words of advice and comfort to the woman, and a picture-book for the children, she went from the unwholesome room up a crazy staircase to one a shade better, because kept with some degree of cleanliness. A young man arose and gave chairs to the lady and the child, and his mother welcomed them with a joy which the poor never feign toward a true friend. "How is John's cough?" said Madame La Blanche. "It seems ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... deal; a knock was heard at the door. "There's Mr. Ludgate, I do suppose," said Mrs. Pimlico, continuing her deal. Mrs. Ludgate left her cards, and went out of the room without speaking. She stopped at the head of the staircase, for she heard a scuffle and loud voices below. Presently all was silent, and she ventured down when she heard the parlour door shut. The footman ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... has since stated, was long and painful, and the two children at length introduced their mother, and placed her in his arms. The unhappy woman had awaited his decision at the door of a small back staircase, extended at almost full length upon the stairs, suffering the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the time I speak of, he stood in profound silence, and had that statue-like air which mental greatness alone can bestow. As he turned to enter the building, and was ascending the staircase leading to the Congressional hall, I glided along unperceived, almost tinder cover of the skirts of his dress, and entered instantly after him into the lobby of the house, which was of course in session to receive him. On either hand, from the entrance, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller letters, "Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in the ground-floor ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... crashed outwards, precipitating him into a large, bare room. He crossed this, managed to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the milky way like the tail of a starry serpent. Followed the opening of the dread prophetic seals; but, after an angel had descended from heaven, his face as the sun and at his ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... yet it is true, all true, I tell you, to-day, at last, after so much waiting. To-morrow they will come to my lodging to fetch me—a court carriage or two, and many officials who will treat me with the old respect I was used to long ago. They will come up my little staircase, bringing money, immense quantities of money, and the papers and the parchments and the seals. How they will stare at my poor lodging, for they have never known that I have been so wretched. Yes, one will bring money in a black leathern case—I know just how it will ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... conformity with my own wishes, we accepted the scheme of the Commissioners; 5thly, in dining with an old friend at Clare College; 6thly, in adjourning to the weekly meeting of the Ray Club, from which I returned at 10 P.M., dog-tired, and hardly able to climb my staircase. Lastly, in looking through the "Times" to see what was going on in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... mind. He had not even been aware of its existence. Then, with the woman who had accompanied him to his rooms, came the husbandry of circumstance. She fed the seed. She watered it. Before her foot had finished tapping on the wooden staircase, before the street and the thousand lights had swallowed her up again, his mind had grasped the knowledge of the need that was ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... door she could scarcely see the bed.—She made her way to it, however, got old Martha out of the room, and with great difficulty brought the bewildered, decrepit creature, safely down a small staircase, which the flames had not then reached.—Nothing could exceed her gratitude; with eyes streaming with tears, and a head shaking with strong emotion, she delighted in relating all these circumstances, and declared that none but Miss Caroline could have persuaded her to go down that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... lying on a marble table; and wishing to carry away something wherewith to accredit his story, he reached out his hand to take it; but no sooner had he touched it than all was dark. The archer had shot with his arrow, the bright jewel was shivered into a thousand pieces, the staircase had fled, and the priest found himself buried ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... a piece of information. This morning while you descended the King's staircase on one side, Father Joseph ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... coat of arms above the grand staircase was untouched, while the staircase itself was just splintered bits of marble. On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent stag's antlers. Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases that had been priceless. Even the remnants were valuable. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... little more restraint. You had better go now." There was a finality of dismissal in her tone as she passed him and crossed to the great staircase. He followed her: ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior's Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior's lodging, the Porter's gate, the Norman staircase of the King's school and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including the remains of the Archbishop's ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... reached a large, splendid house. My companion pointed it out to me as the end of our nocturnal walk. We passed the principal entrance of the house, entered a little door, which the stranger carefully locked behind him, and now ascended in the dark a narrow spiral staircase. It led towards a dimly lighted passage, out of which we entered a room lighted by a ...
— The Severed Hand - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Wilhelm Hauff
... his visitors. The taller lady had a familiar appearance. He gazed steadily, and then, to his surprise and embarrassment, recognized the Queen. Far from being offended, she respected his devotion to his art, and before she left the shop she gave him a commission for a royal staircase. I am going to ask the Little Genius to take me to see his work, but, alas! there will be an unsurmountable barrier between us, for I cannot utter in my new Italian anything but the ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... placed them in candlesticks in the shape of a circle, they deposited in the midst a silver tankard, with some pieces of eight, and some corals tipped with gold, and other jewels of small value. They then told the lady, that it was necessary for them all to return to the staircase by which they had descended to the cellar, and there they uplifted their hands, and remained for a short time as if engaged ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... now, I fancy I see them speeding up and down that departed staircase, trying to help the men carry water to pour on the roof. The earnestness of their faces is very striking as Susy brandishes a pail, Dotty a glass pitcher, and Prudy a watering-pot, in the delusive hope that they are ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... hither, and we can speak more at ease," said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the office door after him with considerable energy. And the letters of the word PRIVATE like a row of white eyes seemed to stare after his back sinking down the staircase ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... whistle made him start. He leant over towards the staircase that climbed the terrace, a staircase cut out of the rock, by which people coming from the side of the frontier often entered his grounds so as to avoid the bend of the road. There was nobody there nor anybody opposite, on the roadside slope all ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... surname in this parish: there was, however, Tobias Chalfont, Rector of Giston, who died 1631. "Chal" appears to be a common prefix. In Chalfont (St. Peter's) is an inscription to Sir Robert Hamson, Vycar, alluded to in Boutell's Brasses. In a cupboard under the gallery staircase is a copper helmet, which, prior to the church having been beautified in 1822, was suspended on an iron bracket with a bit of rag, as it then looked, to the best of my memory. I have heard that it belonged to the family of Gould of Oak ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... Bolkesoe until ten o'clock at night. When we stopped before an insignificant-looking peasant's cot, and I remembered my Icelandic night-accommodations, whose exterior this resembled, my courage failed me; but I was agreeably disappointed when the peasant's wife led me up a broad staircase into a large clean chamber furnished with several good beds, some benches, a table, a box, and an iron stove. I found equal comforts on all the stations of ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... of the eyes which had seemed to look up from the black well of the staircase—I thought of the horrible end of this man whose book lay upon the table ... and I thought I heard a faint sound ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... inside, after many a vain summons, I was at length admitted by an old labourer. The house contained every contrivance for luxury and accommodation. The kitchens were a model; and there were hot closets on the office staircase, that the dishes might not cool, as our Scottish phrase goes, between the kitchen and the hall. But instead of the genial smell of good cheer, these temples of Comus emitted the damp odour of sepulchral vaults, and the large ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... bracelets and other trinkets of feminine wear she put on, one after the other, till her neck and arms were loaded—and literally blazed with the myriad scintillations of different-colored gems. I marveled at her strange conduct, but did not as yet guess its meaning. I moved away from the staircase and drew imperceptibly nearer to her—Hark! what was that? A strange, low rumbling like a distant earthquake, followed by a sharp cracking sound; I stopped to listen attentively. A furious gust of wind rushed round the mausoleum shrieking ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... on, until a bustle and sounds of voices and laughter in the hall, and boots clattering over the marble and up the staircase, at last found their way ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hall and went slowly upstairs. The March twilight lay upon the landings, but the staircase was almost dark. The top landing was quite dark and silent. There was no one about. It would be quiet in her room. She could sit by the fire and be quiet and think things over until Eve and Harriett came back with the parcels. She would have time to think about the journey and decide ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... am a carriage. Oh, golly, golly, they'm coming," cried Vic, wild with delight; and away the two darkies went down the great staircase and into the hall, where the honors of the house were ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... ribbon. Now the old house is sadly dilapidated; it is shorn of its piazzas, the sign "To Let" hangs often in the windows, and the cupola is adorned with well-filled clothes-lines. Partitions have cut the house into tenements; one runs through the hall, but the grand old staircase and the smaller one are still there, and the marble floor, too, lends dignity to the back hall. A few of the carved balusters are missing, carried away by relic hunters. In this house, which was the residence of Governors Shirley and Eustis, Washington, Hamilton, Burr, Franklin, and other notables ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... new Lady Anstruthers was half led, half dragged, in humiliated hysteric disorder up the staircase, he took his mother by the elbow, marched her into the nearest room and shut the door. There they stood and stared at each other, breathing quick, enraged breaths and looking particularly alike with their heavy-featured, thick-skinned, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her feet, as queen, she shook, covered her face with her hands, and fell fainting to the ground. The next Monday, July 10, the royal barges came down the Thames from Richmond, and at three in the afternoon Lady Jane landed at the broad staircase of the Tower, as queen, in undesired splendour. But that same evening messages came saying that Mary had declared herself queen. She had sent addresses to the peers, commanding them on their allegiance ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... hardly time as I passed to note the large hall, the handsome staircase, and the wide parlors that hung rich with drapery, but in darkness. I was led beyond and behind them, and in a moment was ushered into a small, plainly-furnished room; and at a desk covered with papers sat Doddridge Knapp, the picture of the Wolf in ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... much. From Planchet's shop to the Louvre was not far—they arrived in ten minutes. It was a dark night. M. de Friedisch wanted to enter by the wicket. "No," said D'Artagnan, "you would lose time by that; take the little staircase." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple. I am sorry to see that you differ from Him upon ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... Golden Beard and Ali Baba appeared, caught sight of Sengoun and Neeland above, and opened fire on them instantly, driving them back from the head of the staircase flat against the corridor wall. But Golden Beard, seeming to realise now that the garret landing was held and the way to the roof cut off, began to retreat from the foot of the garret stairs with ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he was forced to rest two or three times. If he dies of it—and how should he not?—it will sound very silly when Hercules or Theseus ask him what he died of, to reply, "I caught my death on a damp staircase at a ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Ascending the rustic staircase which leads from the garden, WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE takes you past the library into the drawing-room, in the upper parts of the leaded windows of which are inserted panels of rare old glass, cunningly obtained by melting superfluous Welsh ale bottles. He leads you to a table, as round ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... Alfonso and his friends had time to examine a little further the great steamer that was to float them to the Old World. When his party hurriedly entered the dining-saloon, the grand staircase was entirely overlooked. How wide and roomy it was, and how beautifully carved and finished, especially the balustrade and newel posts, the whole being built of selected white oak, which mellows with age, and will assume ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... whimsical coincidence, the Count de Stedingk, who, from having been one of the intended hunting-party, had been admitted into the antechamber, rushing down-stairs in his haste to spread the intelligence, met the Countess de Provence on the staircase. "It is a dauphin, madame," he cried; "what a happy event!" The countess made him no reply. Nor did she or her husband pretend to disguise their mortification. The Count d'Artois was a little less open in the display of ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... through it to a wide, empty hall, and up the wide, empty staircase. Now at the top of the staircase there was a wide, empty gallery at one end of which were wide windows with the sunlight streaming through them from a beautiful garden, and at the other end a narrow door, over the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... Caracalla; and, as Caesar himself had promised to be present at the sacrificial rites, none but the priests or "Caesar's friends" were admitted to the court-yard. The litter was therefore carried up a staircase and through a long hall forming part of the library, with large windows looking down on the open place where the beasts were killed and the entrails examined. Diodoros saw and heard nothing, for the injury to the skull had deprived him of all consciousness; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stairway. And, in that darkness, thoughts ran in his head. Disaster was here. But what? Privy Seal called for him. He had no time for Privy Seal. Culpepper was gone to Kat Howard's room. Viridus there had taken him. There was no other room up the winding staircase to which he could go. Here was disaster! For whether he stayed Culpepper or no, Privy Seal must know that he had betrayed him. As he ran swiftly the desperate alternative coursed in his mind. Rich, the Chancellor of the Augmentations, and he had their tale ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... because she sorely needed it but the more readily because she knew somehow—intuitively—that the arm was a woman's. A voice assured her from time to time: "Not much farther ..." And she was sure it was a woman's voice.... Then she was being helped to ascend a steep, long staircase.... ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... door; and hired a small car that found its way across the hills towards Naphill. But as night blackened and frost brightened and hardened it I found the way increasingly difficult; especially as the way was an incessant ascent. Whenever we topped a road like a staircase it was only to turn into a yet steeper road like ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... proceeded to inspect its rotting, naked, and unfinished walls. I found them all in the one condition. A fine house had once been planned and nearly completed, but it had been abandoned before the hearths had been tiled, or the wainscoting nailed to its place. The staircase which ran up through the centre of the house was without banisters but otherwise finished and in a state of fair preservation. Seeing this and not being able to resist the temptation which it offered me of inspecting the rest of the house, I ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Tancred made a search, and discovered a staircase leading up to the roof. It was somewhat besprent with blacks; but there the child could take an airing, unterrified, in a solitude a trois, and in a very fresh air, when a south or west ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... rattled and sounded. The young man walked back to the alley and saw the woman reach the farther end, where she began to mount—not without receiving the obsequious bow of an old portress—a winding staircase, the lower steps of which were strongly lighted; she went up buoyantly, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... one else, Dolly showed Dotty the piecing inside, and putting her finger on her lip, shook her head as an admonition to be silent. Then she returned the cap to Tod, who hadn't noticed the incident especially, and on the upper landing of the great staircase, the children said their gay good-nights and went off ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... into the garden with his card, her master stood examining the picture on the staircase of that Madonna by an early Italian painter, name unknown, picked up by him at Orvieto, who was so much like his tenant. It really was remarkable, the likeness. Of course his tenant that day in London had had her hat on, but he was pretty ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... Rivers. He was very lame at the time, but had no walking to do, only now and then to get out of his large boat and scramble up into a Dyak house. How he managed it under the circumstances I never could imagine, for the staircase from the water to a high Dyak house is only the trunk of a tree with a few notches in it, and, at low tide, a case of slippery mud; this, placed at a steep angle, without any rail, is not easy climbing for any one, but a stiff knee ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... touchingly simple woman, not a poet qui court apres l'esprit, but a woman who looked at the world through conciliatory and poetical glasses. She was a good conversationalist, and there was always a poetic charm in all she did. There hung on the staircase a most beautiful sea picture, which I greatly admired while the Queen talked to me about the sea, about her little villa at Constanza, which, built on the extreme end of the quay, seems almost to lie in the sea. She spoke, too, of her travels and impressions when ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the first landing of the staircase, Sir Hugo passed across the hall on his way to the library, and saw her. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... church built on the outer side of the rock from which flows the miraculous fountain is a basilica of sumptuous proportions, representing an outlay of many millions of francs. Its portico, with horse-shoe staircase in marble, spans the opening of the green hills, behind which lie grotto and spring. We are reminded of the enormous church now crowning the height of Montmartre at Paris; here, as there and at Chartres, is a complete ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... possible. The lad groped about and found two rings beside the door, and to these I tied up the horses. Then, bidding him lead the way, and begging mademoiselle to follow, I plunged into the darkness of the passage and felt my way to the foot of the staircase, which was entirely unlighted, and smelled ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Monday, Jan. 26.—PLUNKET undoubtedly the most successful Commissioner of Works of recent times. A little coolness sprung up between him and CAVENDISH BENTINCK about those staircases in Westminster Hall. But chacun a son idea of a staircase. PLUNKET quite as likely to be right as C.B. Always doing something to improve arrangements of House. Does it quietly, too; Members know nothing about it till they come down and find new Smoking-room, fresh arrangements ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... his way into a great courtyard, paved with marble, and mounting the staircase entered the guardroom. Here the guards were lined up on either side in two ranks, their muskets on their shoulders, snoring their hardest. Through several apartments crowded with ladies and gentlemen in waiting, some seated, some standing, but all asleep, he pushed ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... of me rose a staircase, steep and narrow. There was sufficient evening light to enable me to see up the staircase, and to distinguish two black bedroom doors, now closed, on the landing. I stood on the wet threshold till my nerves grew calmer. On my right and on my left ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... must remember," answered she, "the large lime-tree near our native town, in which was a ball-room. We used to ascend to it by a wooden staircase. Could you not contrive something of the sort in one of these gigantic trees, where we might sleep in peace, fearing neither jackals nor ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... or a conservatory of music. There are many such establishments in Prague, though he was not acquainted with any in which the internal arrangements so closely resembled those of a luxurious private residence. But there was no time for hesitation, and he ascended the broad staircase with a firm step, glancing at the rich tapestries which covered the walls, at the polished surface of the marble steps on either side of the heavy carpet, and at the elaborate and beautiful iron-work of the hand-rail. As he mounted higher, he heard the quick rapping ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... and the royal personages then passed up the grand staircase to the Throne-room, where her majesty was joined shortly before eight o'clock by her Royal Highness the Duchess of Gloucester. The remainder of the company continued in the Green Drawing-room. The queen wore ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... number was a serious hindrance to this laudable purpose. The spacious consistorial hall was by far too small to contain so many. On the 25th of June, however, they came to the hall, crowding its approaches, the passages, the great staircase and the outer court. The Holy Father, desiring to show his respect and affection for so many pilgrims of the sacred order of the priesthood, came to the assembly in more than usual state. The throne was raised a few steps, in order to afford an opportunity of seeing ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... a filthy staircase that climbed to the warm darkness of an upper chamber, in the ward that is behind Azim Ullah's tobacco-shop. Those who know it call it The Birdcage—it is so full of whisperings ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... entrance hall was still full of arrivals, while up the wide central staircase trooped masks and dominos in a changing kaleidoscope of form and colour. Eager heads thrust this way and that, picturesque figures grouping and greeting, cavaliers of all periods, maidens of all nations, monks, barbarians, ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... proved a stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to despise propriety and violate the laws of structure. The same may be said with even greater truth of the Laurentian Library and its staircase. The false windows, repeated pillars, and barefaced aiming at effect, that mark the insincerity of the barocco style, are found here almost ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... eight men stepped out with him and passed through the door of H. Rifkin's loft, while Abe sought the stairs leading to the floor below. He walked to the westerly end of the hall, only to find that the staircase was at the extreme easterly end, and as he retraced his footsteps a young man whom he recognized as a clerk in the office of Henry D. Feldman, the prominent cloak and suit attorney, was pasting a large sheet of paper ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... reference to the interior arrangements, there are four large and well-proportioned rooms for refreshments, &c.; a spacious hall, leading through a screen of Doric columns to a large and elegant staircase of stone, and on each side of the staircase are retiring rooms of convenience for gentlemen. The entrance to this floor is from the abovementioned terrace and portico in front; and also, at the back, by an entrance which forms a direct communication through the building. The first floor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various
... rises the height of about 350 feet, and is said to be three feet and a half out of the perpendicular. The adventurous traveller may ascend to the top by a laborious staircase of 500 steps. Those steps were trod by the late amiable and excellent Sir James Edward Smith, who has described the view presented at the summit. 'The day was unfavourable for a view; but we could well distinguish Imola, Ferrara and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... at once, in European carriages, to the Maharajah's palace. The look of it astonished me. It was a strange and rambling old Hindoo hill-fort, high perched on a scarped crag, like Edinburgh Castle, and accessible only on one side, up a gigantic staircase, guarded on either hand by huge sculptured elephants cut in the living sandstone. Below clustered the town, an intricate mass of tangled alleys. I had never seen anything so picturesque or so dirty in my life; as for Elsie, she ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... or two of my friends. We accordingly entered a second rate cafe, when, I made up to the garcon and demanded of him whether orders for viewing the Tuilleries were to be obtained there: he made no reply, but my friend of the street, who had by this time partly ascended a staircase at the extremity of the room, beckoned, and anxiously besought me to accompany him. I did so, notwithstanding I was aware that Paris, as well as London, had its "frauds." We entered a large room, the first impression of which, on some minds, would have been that of terror. In ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... prince, during the exit, placed himself at the bottom of the great staircase. He had enlisted two of his friends. "Come," he had said to them, "I will show you the most beautiful woman in Paris." While he was speaking, two steps away from the prince was an alert young man who was attached to a morning paper, a very widely-read paper. The young ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... earliest of all Dam's memories in after life—for in a few years he forgot India absolutely—was of the Sword (that hung on the oak-panelled wall of the staircase by the portrait of a cavalier), and of a gentle, sad-eyed lady, Auntie Yvette, who ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... were in the right-hand wing. The opposite corridor was seldom used, for the left-hand wing was the oldest portion of the house, and in the march of years too many legends had gathered about it. The large bedroom was there with its private hall beyond, and a narrow, enclosed staircase, descending to the library. Originally it had been the custom for the head of the family to use that room. Its ancient furniture still faded within stained walls. For many years no one had slept in it, because it had sheltered too much suffering, because it ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... just come to the newel-post of the staircase, and, when she looked into Daniel's face, blushed like the red, red rose, losing her self-possession ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... aside for her to pass. She looked back down the staircase carefully and with the greatest caution; then she entered and went on tiptoe, noiselessly, down the passage into the sitting-room. There could be no doubt that she was thoroughly enjoying the part of a conspirator and resolved to ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... down on one of the office chairs, and amused herself for about the space of ten minutes in studying the shipping advertisements that were hung round the walls. She turned eagerly at last when a footstep was heard upon the staircase. Was it the manager of the Tower Line, she wondered, and would he after all be willing to engage her for the work she desired? Her heart beat and throbbed as the door swung open. But instead of a stranger appeared the familiar figure of her ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... accident, Lord Elmwood returned unexpectedly home when Matilda was descending the staircase, and, in her affright, she fell motionless into her father's arms. He caught her, as by the same impulse he would have caught anyone falling for want of aid. Yet, when he found her in his arms, he still held her there—gazed on her attentively—and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... he love as well to play at "nuts"? "Nuts," or thimble-rigging, is only a graceful and crafty game, too crafty for a dreaming and careless little boy. It calls for watchfulness and presence of mind. Grown men play at it as well as children. A step of a staircase is used as a table by the players, or the pavement of a courtyard. Three shells are laid on the stone and a dried pea. Then, with rapid baffling movements, hands brown and alert fly from one shell to another, shuffle ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... was close to mine, and his breath, death-laden, entered my vitals. For a moment I was overcome, my head was bowed by aching nausea; till, reflection returning, I sprung up, threw the wretch from me, and darting up the staircase, entered the chamber usually inhabited by my family. A dim light shewed me Alfred on a couch; Clara trembling, and paler than whitest snow, had raised him on her arm, holding a cup of water to his lips. I saw full well that no spark of life existed in that ruined form, his features were ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... great-grandam, who with her wizened face enfolded in her yellow kerchief, her skinny neck, and her distaff in the bony fingers, looks as if she had stepped out of some Renaissance painting of the Three Fates in a Florentine gallery. Crimson carnations in earthenware pots stand on the steps of the outside staircase, giving a touch of refinement to the squalid home, and from the balcony overhead the glossy-black, yellow-billed passer solitario, the favourite cage-bird of the Neapolitan poor, chirrups with apparent ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... nothing. The cabin was dark. Three round ports glimmered greenly beyond the staircase on the cabin's forward side. The glimmer was occasioned by the refracted rays of the Hankow's dazzling searchlight. But these were ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... The rooms, large and airy, were carpeted with velvet, and adorned with costly marble and rosewood furniture. The windows, which were constructed in the French style, that is, reaching to the floor, were curtained with richly-embroidered lace. Let us ascend the winding staircase, and enter the dressing room of the owner of ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... am all alone; I have lost my way,"—and I was going on with my explanation, when he, as if quite indifferent to it, led the way up a great stone staircase, as wide as many rooms, and having on each landing-place massive iron wickets, in a heavy framework; these the porter unlocked with the solemn slowness of age. Indeed, a strange, mysterious awe of the centuries that ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... A narrow and dark staircase admitted her into the gardens of the Riverola mansion. These she crossed with a step so light and free, that had it been possible to observe her in the darkness of the evening, she would have been taken for the most elegant and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... view, believe me. But I am ready to do your bidding. Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?" asked Marien, as he took her down the staircase leading to his dining-room. ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... one in it except the woman and the servant who had been up to my room. The servant was a poor London drudge, who was left in charge by the owners of the house, and who had been forbidden to speak to me. After a while I heard her heavy, shambling footsteps coming slowly up the staircase, and passing my door on her way to the attics above; they sounded louder than usual, and I turned my head round involuntarily. A thin, fine streak of light, no thicker than a thread, shone for an instant in the dark corner ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and when everybody was asleep, Edred got up and dressed. He put his bedroom candle and matches in his pocket, crept down-stairs and out of the house and up to Beale's. It was a slow and nervous business. More than once on the staircase he thought he heard a stair creak behind him, and again and again as he went along the road he fancied he heard a soft footstep pad-padding behind him, but of course when he looked round he could see no one was there. So presently ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
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