"Ground floor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to let the little ones go out all day. Therefore Turkey and I, when the darkness began to grow thick enough, went prowling and watching about the manse until we found an opportunity when she was out of the way. The moment this occurred we darted into the nursery, which was on the ground floor, and catching up my two brothers, I wee Davie, he Allister, we hoisted them on our backs and rushed from the house. It was snowing. It came down in huge flakes, but although it was only half-past four o'clock, they did not show ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... In 1804 Albany House, in Piccadilly, long occupied by the Duke of York and Albany, was converted into sets of bachelor chambers, and the gardens behind were also built over with additional suites of rooms. Byron's were in the original house on the ground floor, No. 2. Moore, writing to Rogers, April 12, 1814 ('Memoirs, etc'., vol. viii. p. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... up from the beach was a joyous-lookin' hotel with shaded verandas all 'round and a banana grove in the yard, and on a second look a cantina shinin' with mirrors and glasses and colored bottles on the ground floor, and on another look spacious-lookin' suites o' rooms such as were befittin' to senors of wealth and leisure on the floor above. And over these premises I cast one sailor-like view, and through the for'ard gangway of that glass-mounted cantina I hove my clothes-bag ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... Gladstone. He despatched a telegram to him and ascertained that he would be willing to receive me at Hawarden on the morrow, and armed with a brief letter of introduction, I set out next day, and found the great Liberal statesman placidly dozing in an armchair in a little study on the ground floor of the house. At first he hardly seemed to recognise why I was there, but in less than a minute he became astonishingly alert, and providing himself with hat and walking-stick took me out into the park. He walked at an extraordinary pace and plied me with questions in those ringing, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and they completely overhauled the ground floor—hall, dining-room, studies, passages, vestibules, everywhere that was not barred to them; but they were no wiser at the end of their search than at the beginning; there was not the slightest clue as to the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up, one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby; for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed them. Thus in the space of two or three minutes the room on the ground floor was deserted quite. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... easy-running "elevators" or lifts. (By the way, the persistent manner in which the elevators are used on all occasions is often amusing. An American lady who has some twenty shallow steps to descend to the ground floor will rather wait patiently five minutes for the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... opened the door which led from the Grifoni apartment into the public hall of the old palace and crept silently down the long, dark stone stairs to the ground floor, where Pietro, the porter, lived with his wife and six children. Pietro opened the door of his own apartment and stepped into the public hall just as the two dark figures came stealthily down the last flight. Beppo was certainly in a mood for ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... to my inquiries, that every article was plentiful, and very cheap. Wood, which is so dear in every other part of France, is here very cheap, the country being overspread with forests, and the river furnishing a ready transportation. Houses are good and cheap: the rent of a house consisting of a ground floor, two stories above, and attics, the windows in front of each floor being from six to eight, with coach-house, stables, garden and orchards, is about 20l. English money, the taxes from 1l. 10s. to 2l., and parish rates about 10s. annually. I should not forget to mention, ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... establishment of Tiffany & Co., an iron building, erected at an immense cost, and filled with the largest and finest collection of jewelry, articles of vertu, and works of art in America. In the middle of the block above, occupying the ground floor of Decker's Piano Building, is Brentano's, the "great literary headquarters" ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... but not from Santa Sophia, which was not begun till 532 A.D. The central space is almost circular. Between each of the piers which support the octagonal clerestory at the base of the cupola is an apsidal recess, with three arches on the ground floor opening into the encircling aisle, and three upper arches opening into the gallery above the aisle. On the east side of the central space this arrangement is broken, and one tall arch opens into the chancel, which ends in a projecting apse, semi-circular ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... front of it. The huts were in a very dilapidated condition, but they would still afford some shelter to the garrison; while a stone tower in the centre, also surrounded by a trench, formed a sort of citadel as well as a storehouse. It comprised a ground floor, with a vault beneath, which served as a magazine, and two stories above without any divisions. In one of these were a few rough articles of furniture, which had been intended for the use of officers; and in the upper story, which had been used as an hospital, ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... was delivered in a loud tone, came from the lips of Frau von Eschenhagen of Burgsdorf, while sitting with her son and mother at breakfast. The great dining-room lay on the ground floor of the old mansion, and was an extremely simple room, with glass doors leading out upon a broad stone terrace, and to the garden beyond. On the brightly tinted walls hung a number of antlers, which bore witness to the sporting ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... frequent mention. There is nothing in the tales referring to buildings or house construction which lends support to the contention of those who seek to class the Tinguian as a modified sub-group of Igorot. [45] The Bontoc type of dwelling with its ground floor sleeping box and its elevated one room kitchen and storage room is nowhere mentioned, neither is there any indication that in past or present times the Tinguian had separate sleeping houses for the unmarried men and boys, and for the ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... November 3 and was at once transferred to Fort Santiago, at first being held in a dungeon "incomunicado" and later occupying a small cell on the ground floor. Its furnishings had to be supplied by himself and they consisted of a small rattan table, a high-backed chair, a steamer chair of the same material, and a cot of the kind used by Spanish officers—canvas top and collapsible frame which closed up lengthwise. His meals were ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... big room that the President and I occupied was on the ground floor, and was heated by a huge box stove. As we entered it to go to bed, the President said, "Oom John, don't you think it ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs
... The ground floor of the Hightower Hotel reproduces this magnificent, brutal indifference. One might live years in its mile or so of stately corridors and its acre or so of resplendent cafes, parlours, reception-rooms, and restaurants, elbowed by thousands, suffocated by that dense air ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... badly hung, and not badly sold. On the other hand a creditor, not less unwise than hard, had taken possession of the Knight, and he had passed from stage to stage, first lying much in the way in a fine suite of rooms on the ground floor in the Rue St. Petersbourg, then packed off to a stable at Batignolles, and now shivering under a cowkeeper's shed at Levallois, where from time to time the sculptor and his family went to pay ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... penitentiary—concealing the tremendous work as it progressed—it required a bold imagination to conceive such an idea. Hines had heard, in some way, a hint of an air chamber, constructed under the lower range of cells—that range immediately upon the ground floor. He thought it probable that there was such a chamber, for he could account in no other way for the dryness of the cells in that range. At the first opportunity he entered into conversation with Old Hevay, the deputy-warden mentioned before. This ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Brookline, on a terrace built by an enterprising man who had made his money in New South Wales. Forty-two houses were perfectly and equally warmed by one great furnace, and all the public rooms of the ground floor, dining, and drawing rooms, library, and hall were connected by folding doors, nearly always open, which gave a feeling of space I never experienced elsewhere. Electric lighting and bells all over the house, hot and cold baths, lifts, the ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... subject to three of his friends. He was sick of the Stock Exchange, the men, the women, the drinks, the dances—everything. He was as indifferent to the price of shares as to the rise and fall of the quicksilver in his barometer; he neither desired to go in on the ground floor nor to come out in the attics. He simply wanted to get clean away. Besides he foresaw a slump, and he would be actually saving money on the veld. At this point Teddy Isaacs strolled up ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... nothing but ruined walls, save the chapel of the thirteenth century, of which the main part subsists intact, and the lower hall of the King's Lodge, under the Hall of Anointment, (of the end of the fifteenth century.) The anointment rooms on the ground floor, reconstructed in the seventeenth century, contained a great number of historical portraits and furniture of various periods, which were all a prey to the flames. It was the same in the apartments of the Archbishops, which also contained numerous ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... more isolated than the others. It consists of a ground floor and a first floor, with an immense studio attached. Three years ago, Number 6 was leased to Monsieur Jacques Dollon, then a student at the Fine Arts School. It has been continuously occupied by the tenant and his sister, Miss Elizabeth Dollon, who has kept house ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... of the great house, to pay his respects to The Chobb. Before he left the hotel, the landlord, with many apologies, had presented his bill for the dinner of the day before, which the military gentleman had forgotten to discharge. The door was opened, and he was shown into a parlour on the ground floor, and told to sit down till his arrival ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... that was jammed in between two tenements, which, relatively, in their own class, were even more disreputable than was the little frame house itself. A secondhand-clothes store occupied a portion of the ground floor, and housed the proprietor and his family as well, permitting the rooms on the second floor to be "rented out"; the garret above was ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... reached the ground floor, and we left it together. I was completely in the dark as to my companion's purpose, and yet it could have but one explanation—it must be connected in some way with the Holladay case. Unless—and I glanced at him again. No, certainly, ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... second storey, and bore the inscription, "Madame Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that led from the ground floor to the fifth story. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... as the guest of his "Uncle Charlie"; that he succeeded in obtaining an interview with the rich Miss Crown, that he "talked" oil to everybody with whom he came in contact, including Courtney Thane; that he declined to consider the appeals of at least a score of citizens to be "let in on the ground floor" owing to the company's irrevocable decision to sell only in blocks of ten thousand shares at five dollars per share; that he said good-bye to Mr. Webster at the end of his second day and departed—not for Chicago but, very cleverly disguised, to accept a job as an ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Mrs. Monty Thurber's box and dragged me 'round by the collar to introduce him. Planning a dinner at Martin's already. Gad, young Peter must have what he wants WHEN he wants it! I put in a word for you—told him you and I ought to be let in on the ground floor. Funny the luck some girls have about getting started. I believe this one'll take if she can manage to shake the Lipscombs. I think I'll ask to paint her; might be a good thing for the spring show. She'd show up splendidly as a PENDANT to my Mrs. Van Degen—Blonde ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... for Westhope Abbey?" said Hugh, trying to speak unconcernedly, as he followed his host to a back room on the ground floor. Lord Newhaven was collecting arms for the hall of ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... line of buildings to the east of this gateway is modern, but it harmonizes excellently with the ancient work. Near the Cathedral is some mediaeval work, and the office at the end, on the ground floor, has a good stone groined roof. This is believed to have been ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... Pengarth man sharply noticed, first that the gate of the enclosure was padlocked, Melrose himself supplying a key from his pocket; next that most of the windows of the front were shuttered; and lastly—strange and unique fact, according to his own recollections of the Tower—that two windows on the ground floor were standing wide open, giving some view of the large room within, so far as two partially drawn curtains allowed. As Melrose unlocked the gate, the house door opened, and three huge dogs came bounding out, in front of a gray-haired man, whom ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... parted to dress, Lady Esmondet being conducted to a luxurious room on the ground floor, opening on to a verandah; there was a suspicion of chilliness in the air, so a bright fire burned in the open fire-place; fresh flowers bloomed in old Roman jars, while the walls were gay in the brightness of a few ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... admit that my worthy competitor, whose name et cetera, does get an idea once in a while. But I don't want him beating us out again. We're in on the ground floor this time, and I want to hog the whole thing if ...
— By Proxy • Gordon Randall Garrett
... sir. I did not know what to do. Then I called at the offices round, but none of them seemed to know anything about it. Finally, I went to the landlord, who is an accountant living on the ground floor, and I asked him if he could tell me what had become of the Red-headed League. He said that he had never heard of any such body. Then I asked him who Mr. Duncan Ross was. He answered that the name was new ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... ground floor, and is surrounded by arbours, trees, and vines, so that it is almost concealed from view. I could not inspect the interior, as the ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... the case, you can call to mind how eloquently the promoter labors to convince prospective investors how they can get in on the ground floor and lay the foundation of a fortune to be made out of ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... energies was that of working the hoist. In New York the tall warehouses, those not supplied with an elevator, have a windlass at the top, to which is attached a heavy rope, that passes down through a wide opening to the ground floor. This rope, with a large iron hook at the end, is attached to heavy cases, or whatever is to be taken to any of the upper lofts. Another rope, passing over a big wheel, when pulled turns the windlass. This winds the main rope around it, and thus ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... here? God knows! Probably you would find a blanchisseuse on the ground floor, and on the fourth a poet or perhaps a musician, like our fiddler of Louise. This is the real Bohemia, you know—not the conscious Bohemia, but the true one, that is lawless simply because ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... that I was firm, he took his leave; and in half an hour I had something to eat. I took a mouthful, swallowed a glass of water, and found myself alone. My chamber was on the ground floor, and overlooked the court-yard. Dungeons here, dungeons there, to the right, to the left, above, below, and opposite, everywhere met my eye. I leaned against the window, listened to the passing and repassing of the jailers, and the wild song of a number of the unhappy inmates. A century ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... still burning from three flickering jets: thin blue petals of flame they seemed, rimmed with white fire. He turned them out, and, having thrown his hat and cape on the table, passed through the library towards the door of his bedroom, a large octagonal chamber on the ground floor that, in his new-born feeling for luxury, he had just had decorated for himself, and hung with some curious Renaissance tapestries that had been discovered stored in a disused attic at Selby Royal. As he was turning ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... above Cambridge, it must be from three such rooms; Greek burns here; science there; philosophy on the ground floor. Poor old Huxtable can't walk straight;—Sopwith, too, has praised the sky any night these twenty years; and Cowan still chuckles at the same stories. It is not simple, or pure, or wholly splendid, the lamp of learning, since if you see ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the volcanic condition of the island, the houses can not be built more than two stories high. The ground floor is of stone, and contains, besides the storehouse or a suite of living rooms, the stables, arranged around a tiled courtyard, where the carriages are washed. A broad stairway conducts to the main corridor above. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... cracking, the salt-herrings scalding, and the apple-dumplings tumbling about the pot,—d'ye mind me, you tief of the world, tell him that his dinner waits upon him."—"I'll be after doing that same, moder;" and forth from the ground floor of a mean looking house in Buckeridge-street, sprang an urchin without hat, shoe or stocking, and the scanty tattered habiliment he wore, fluttering in 105various hues, like pennants in the wind, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... reached the sanitarium they found the building dark, with the shutters on the ground floor tightly closed. Dr. Karley answered Tom's ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... be detached or it might stand in a street, like one of the tenement-blocks, with shops let into the less important parts of the outer wall of the ground floor. Much would naturally depend upon the means and dignity of the owner. In any case the interior portions would belong to the private residence. As a rule the exterior of the ordinary house was little regarded. No architecture was wasted upon it; decoration and other magnificence belonged to the interior. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... and its merchant princes traded with Sultans and Doges and such-like magnificoes of the Mediterranean. But nowadays its glory has departed. Below the great gothic windows spreads the awning of a cafe, which takes up all the ground floor. Hugging it tight is the Mairie, and hugging that, the Hotel de Ville. Hither does every soul in the place, at some hour or other of the day, inevitably gravitate. Lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, merchants, lovers, soldiers, market-women, loafers, horses, dogs, wagons, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... skimmed, and casually and carelessly skimmed at that. This region of the six counties alone will some day support a population of millions. In the meanwhile, O you home- seekers, you wealth-seekers, and, above all, you climate-seekers, now is the time to get in on the ground floor. ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... mansion formerly belonging to the Marchioness of Montesson, widow of the Duke of Orleans, to whom this lady had been united by a morganatic marriage. Great preparations had been made with extraordinary magnificence. Since the ground floor of the house was too small, a large ball-room of wood had been built, reached by a gallery, also of wood, leading from the body of the house. The ceiling of this gallery was covered with varnished paper, decorated ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... further he tapped on the shuttered window of the ground floor, and waited. Immediately the voices inside ceased. He tapped again, louder than before. A moment after, the shutter of the window above was cautiously opened, and against the dim light of the sky he saw a ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... sculptor, Hanel, whom I had known for a long time, and who had given me as a mark of friendship an ornament in the shape of a perfect plaster cast of one of the bas-reliefs from Beethoven's monument representing the Ninth Symphony, had taken the large rooms on the ground floor of a side-wing of this palace for his dwelling and studio. At Easter I moved into the spacious apartments, above him, the rent of which was extremely low, and found that the large garden planted with glorious trees, which was placed at my ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... there were usually two, and never more than three, rooms on the ground floor. The doorway opened into the great room of the house, parlor, dining-room, and kitchen combined. A "living" room it surely was! In the better houses, however, this room was divided, with the kitchen partitioned off from the rest. Most of the furnishings were the products ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... the dimly lighted hall into the brilliant cage of the elevator. It dropped, silently, swiftly, to the ground floor, somehow suggesting to the girl the workings of her implacable, irresistible destiny. So precisely, she felt, she was being whirled on to her fate, like a dry leaf in a gale, with no more volition, as impotent to direct ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, with Lady Somerson, a widow who was persistently hospitable because she could not bear to be alone. To-night she had a large party. When Doctor Isaacson came into the room on the ground floor where Lady Somerson always received her guests before a dinner, he found her dressed in rusty black, with her grey hair done anyhow, managing and directing the conversation of quite a crowd of important and interesting persons, most ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... the amount proposed to be taken for the present year is 15,000l.; leaving to be granted in future years 35,000l. The proposed building will be 461 feet in length and 56 feet in width in its extreme dimensions, and will consist of a centre and two wings. The western wing will contain, on the ground floor, rooms for the reception of records, and an entrance into the barrack-yard such as now exists. Above them will be the picture-gallery, divided into four rooms; one 50 feet by 50 feet; two 50 feet by 38 feet; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... manner of approach, for the simple reason that this part of the grounds lay unlighted, and he hoped, therefore, to pass unobserved through the shadows. The warm, red light that streamed from an uncurtained French window on the ground floor only deepened the uncertainty of everything. The man stepped warily, closing the gate behind him with stealthy care, and crept forward on tiptoe to lessen the sound of the crunching gravel beneath his heavy shoes. It was an undignified entry ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... very moment that Chia Se felt unable, along with a company of actresses, to bear the ordeal of waiting on the ground floor of the two-storied building, he caught sight of a eunuch come running at a flying pace. "The composition of verses is over," he said, "so quick give me the programme;" whereupon Chia Se hastened to present the programme as well as a roll of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... with one hand, and holding the promotion books in the other, filled the anteroom and the stairs, making such a buzzing, that it seemed as though one were entering a theatre. I beheld again with pleasure that large room on the ground floor, with the doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for three years. There was a throng; the teachers were going and coming. My schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... worst was already there, and it was through a mere accident that it never showed itself. The accident was this. The squire, for some unknown reason, had returned earlier than usual, and dismounting in the stable-yard, had walked round the garden on the turf which came close to the windows of the ground floor. Passing the drawing-room window, and looking in by the edge of the drawn-down blind, he saw his wife and Clem just at the moment described. He slipped round to the door, took off his boots so that he might not be heard, and as there was a large screen ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... a dreamy turn of mind; and my abundant leisure - for I am called to the Bar - coupled with much lonely listening to the twittering of sparrows, and the pattering of rain, has encouraged that disposition. In my 'top set' I hear the wind howl on a winter night, when the man on the ground floor believes it is perfectly still weather. The dim lamps with which our Honourable Society (supposed to be as yet unconscious of the new discovery called Gas) make the horrors of the staircase visible, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... restless move, he rose heavily and peered again into the court. Immediately it was evident what had occurred. The whole string of lights in the third story had been shut off, and now those of the middle story were following suit. Only the ground floor remained active with all its lights at the maximum, and every ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... death of Stradivari it was occupied by his sons Omobono and Francesco; and afterwards by the maker's youngest son, Paolo, who carried on there the business of a cloth merchant. Stradivari worked on the ground floor, and used the upper ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... gabled little houses, each with one dim yellow window, on the ground floor, surrounded the dark open space of a grass plot planted with shrubs and railed off from the patchwork of lights and shadows in the wide road, resounding with the dull rumble of traffic. Before the door of one of these ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... of going toward the door. "I never saw such a darling bungalow! I just love everything spread out on the ground floor. No stairs and ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... than to adopt the general form of the Wakefield Asylum, and as you are providing for only a small number, it deserves consideration whether all the rooms might not be advantageously placed on the ground floor. This plan affords great facilities to easy inspection, and safe communication with airing grounds, and the roof might project so far over the building, as to form an excellent collonnade for the patients; which seems peculiarly desirable under an ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... but went to my room, which now was on the ground floor, and sat watching the rooks sailing home in the sunset till the last one had gone, and the voices of the blackbirds grew less clamorous, and the trees began to look larger and larger in ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Virgin! For the sake of the most pure blood of Christ! By the miraculous Conception!—" The wretch! I dare not look up, but I feel that his eyes are fixed upon a gold watch and seals lying on the table. That is the worst of a house on the ground floor.... There come more of them! A paralytic woman mounted on the back of a man with a long beard. A sturdy-looking individual, who looks as if, were it not for the iron bars, he would resort to more effective measures, is holding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... opportunities of studying their habits of late. During many years' residence in the Currency Office, I never once found a mouse in my private quarters on the third story, although I frequently observed them in the vaults and strong rooms on the ground floor. During my absence at Simla in 1880 my quarters were unoccupied, as the Public Works Department were giving the building a thorough repair. It was then, I suppose, a few of the mice from the ground floor were driven upstairs, and, being unmolested by us, as we liked to see the little things playing ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... built up or rolled about in; the place was always in a romantic twilight; there were old, deserted spiders' webs hanging to the roof, looking like shops to let, which never did any business; and the ascent and descent of the perpendicular ladder from the ground floor was quite an adventure in itself. To picture a ship on which one had to go aloft to enter the cabin would seem rather a difficult task; but a child's imagination is the richest in the world, and though Valentine and his sisters had grown rather too old for this style of amusement, every fresh visit ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... single gas jet a half hour before, all had been dark outside. Now there was a flare of light from below. He arose and looked out. A wall loomed across the courtyard; and in the previous darkness he had thought it blank. But now he saw there were windows in it; and two of them, on the ground floor, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... one by and by, but in the meanwhile it includes the selling of timber in place of destroying it, and a doubling right off of the Somasco mill. It also takes in a gristmill, the recording of more timber rights, and most of you getting in on the ground floor of a new silver mine. There's to be an office down in Vancouver, and a desiccated fruit store, and the best men we can get hold of to run them. Now sit still while I read what might do ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... hastily approached the house of the Jew. This house, like all those of Lima, had but two stories; the ground floor, built of bricks, was surmounted with walls formed of canes tied together and covered with plaster; all this part of the building, constructed to resist earthquakes, imitated, by a skillful painting, the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... incorrect, conceivably treat me with contempt. I walked off a few paces. Perhaps it would be possible to read something on Fyne's face as he came out; and, if necessary, I could always eclipse myself discreetly through the door of one of the bars. The ground floor of the Eastern Hotel was an unabashed pub, with plate-glass fronts, a display of brass rails, and divided into many compartments each having its ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... sound must be the talk of the town. I'd find out where they had their office and go talk with them. A career with something like that would be the best thing I could ever hope to find. And getting in on the ground floor! ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen—in a great Louis XV. bed, and there were cupids above ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... The ground floor of the hotel was occupied by a large bar, a sort of restaurant freely open to all passers-by, who might partake of dried beef, oyster soup, biscuits, and cheese, without taking out their purses. Payment was made only for the ale, porter, ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... Rhin", a beautiful place overhanging the broad blue Rhine—there chanced to be staying the two sons of the late Duke of Hamilton, the Marquis of Douglas and Lord Charles, with their tutor. They had the whole drawing-room floor: we a sitting-room on the ground floor and bedrooms above. The lads discovered that Miss Marryat did not like her "children" to be on speaking terms with any of the "male sect". Here was a fine source of amusement. They would make their horses caracole on the gravel in front of our window; they would be just starting for their ride ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... the principles of Socialism pretty thoroughly, and we got up the Darwinian theory with the help of Britten's medical-student brother and the galleries of the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road. Those wonderful cases on the ground floor illustrating mimicry, dimorphism and so forth, were new in our times, and we went through them with earnest industry and tried over our Darwinism in the light of that. Such topics we did exhaustively. But on the other hand I do not remember any ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of the Medersas is always much the same: the eternal plan of the Arab house, built about one or more arcaded courts, with long narrow rooms enclosing them on the ground floor, and several stories above, reached by narrow stairs, and often opening on finely carved cedar galleries. The chief difference between the Medersa and the private house, or even the fondak,[A] lies in the use to which the rooms are put. In the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... made their way into the farmyard, and the foals began to neigh. On the ground floor two or three lanterns flashed and then disappeared. The workpeople were passing, dragging their wooden shoes over the pebbles, and the bell was ringing ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... some obstinate and radical property-holder. Occupying a limited space between two fashionable thoroughfares, it refused to conform to circumstances, but sturdily paraded its unkempt glories, and frequently asserted itself in ungrammatical language. My window—a rear room on the ground floor—in this way derived blended light and shadow from the court. So low was the window-sill, that had I been the least predisposed to somnambulism, it would have broken out under such favorable auspices, and I should have haunted McGinnis's Court. My speculations as to the origin of ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... please, sir,' replied the baronet; 'your bedroom is as usual in the west angle, on the ground floor, close to the bath, which is the situation ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... indigence, having been but niggardly provided for. They, together with an aged serving-woman, occupied the small warm rooms of one of the wings; besides them and the cook, who had a large apartment on the ground floor adjoining the kitchen, the only other person was a worn-out chasseur, who tottered about through the lofty rooms and halls of the main building, and discharged the duties of castellan. The rest of the servants lived in the village with the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... house from front to rear and a staircase went up at either side of the entrance, meeting in a bridge on the first floor. The huge drawing-room was on the ground floor to the right and was hung with tapestries representing birds and foliage. All the furniture was covered with fine needlework tapestry illustrating La Fontaine's fables, and Jeanne was delighted at finding a chair she had loved as a child, which ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... or two of the stores. These present great similarity in their arrangements, and indicate that the tribe of storekeepers was very inferior in wealth and comfort to that of our own time and country. They are for the most part very small, and sometimes without any interior apartment on the ground floor. The upper floor must have comprised one or two sleeping-rooms; but there is, as we believe, only one house in which the upper floor ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... called "ladylike looking houses." They rang the bell at No. 27, and a neat maid answered the door. She looked so respectable that Tuppence's heart sank. Upon Tommy's request for Mr. Carter, she showed them into a small study on the ground floor where she left them. Hardly a minute elapsed, however, before the door opened, and a tall man with a lean hawklike face and a tired ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... will get on, my little pearl," he said, putting together with extreme precaution two cards that looked absurdly flimsy between his big fingers. Little Nina watched him with intense seriousness as he went on erecting the ground floor, while he continued to speak to Almayer with his head over his shoulder so as not to endanger the structure ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... last, without further mishap, to Diamond St., and along Diamond St. to Mr. Forriner's house and store. Both in the same building; large and handsome enough, at least as large and handsome as its neighbours; the store taking the front of the ground floor. Mr. Forriner stood in the doorway taking a look at the day, which probably he thought promised him little custom; for his face was very much the colour ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... on the various barns and sheds clustered at the back of the ranch-house. The harness-room occupied the ground floor of the nearest shed, with a low, seldom-entered loft above, containing a single, narrow ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... current. Moreover, it was known for a long time—since, in 1842, the great American physicist Henry proved that the discharges from a Leyden jar in the attic of his house caused sparks in a metallic circuit on the ground floor—that a flux which varies rapidly and periodically is much more efficacious than a simple flux, which latter can only produce at a distance a phenomenon of slight intensity. This idea of the oscillating current was closely akin to that which was at last to lead to an entirely satisfactory ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... cabildo, located on the square, are built of stone. They are very sightly and have handsome halls. On the ground floor is the prison, and the court ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... extraordinary resources for society. Further description is unnecessary, since anyone may easily refer back to the New York newspapers of the following morning, where accurate plans of the house on the ground floor, will be found; while the illustrated newspapers of the same week contain excellent sketches of the most pleasing scenic effects, as well as of the ball-room and of the Princess smiling graciously from her throne. The lady just behind the Princess on her left, is Mrs. Lee, a poor likeness, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... departed from type that it possessed a small but undeniable bath-room. Besides this miracle, there was a cosy sitting-room, a larger bedroom on the floor above and next to this an empty room facing north, which had evidently served artist occupants as a studio. The remainder of the ground floor was taken up by kitchen and scullery. The furniture had been constructed by somebody who would probably have done very well if he had taken up some other line of industry; but it was mitigated by a very fine and comfortable wicker easy chair, ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... exclaimed Molly, "it must be all or nothing. You know how big our entrance hall is, Hester, and those great half-empty drawing rooms. The whole ground floor is to be at your disposal. If we do it at all, let it be a real merry-making. It will be nice to have a merry-making once ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... Dahlia," I said, with dignity, "if you don't want to be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... more than she had intended. She soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage, since they were nearer the noises of the street—in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the menage. His shirt ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... know him; he is a banker." And a banker, indeed, Martin Rigal was, dwelling in a magnificent house in the Rue Montmartre. The bank was on the ground floor, while his private rooms were in the story above. Though he did not do business in a very large way, yet he was a most respectable man, and his connection was chiefly with the smaller trades-people, who seem to live a strange ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... on the second floor crowded with men puffing cigarettes and drinking brandy and soda. Old Wegstaffe was a generous host, and knew what men liked best at a musicale. On the top floor four or five half-grown boys were playing billiards, and the ground floor fairly surged with women of all ages, degrees and ugliness. To me there was only one pretty girl in the house, Edith Wegstaffe; but of course I ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... The ground floor was thus thirty-four and a-half by forty-two feet. From the centre rose the chimney, about ten feet square at the base, with fireplaces on the sides and rear. South of it was the front entry, which, including the stairway, was ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... given to admit him at once into the reception hall on the ground floor. At the same moment Monmouth came out of his room completely disguised ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... pavilion, flanked on each corner by a bracketed turret upon which there is a wealth of Renaissance ornamentation. On the east side are the chapel and a small outbuilding, which form a double projection and enclose a little terrace on the ground floor. Over the great entrance door are carvings and heraldic devices, and over the whole facade of the chateau there is a rich luxuriance of ornamentation which, with the wide moat surrounding it, and the blooming parterres spread before it, give ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... for Montreux, Lausanne, and London that afternoon. He bent to kiss his wife at the moment of his departure, in the bare sitting-room that had been improvised for them on the ground floor of the hotel, and as she let her face linger ever so little against his she felt strong arms flung round her, and was crushed against his breast in a hungry embrace. When he released her with a flush and a murmured ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in advance at the Bijou, on the ground floor, for the sake of David's softened muscles, and they reached the town ahead of the regular Frontier Day crowds, allowing themselves plenty of time to get rested and to see ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... puffs, and paid poets. A large house might thus be taken, in some central situation, the upper floors of which might be fitted up as model lodging-rooms for the tailor's trade alone. The drawing-room floor might be the work-room; on the ground floor the shop; and, if possible, a room of call or registration office for unemployed journeymen, and a reading-room. Why should not this succeed, if the owners of the house and the workers who rent it are only true to one another? Every tyro in political economy knows that association involves a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... For on the ground floor was a public restaurant where there was served the best dollar dinner on earth. It ranked with the best and the others were in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night, almost everybody went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Every one who was any ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum |
