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Outhouse   /ˈaʊthˌaʊs/   Listen
Outhouse

noun
1.
A small outbuilding with a bench having holes through which a user can defecate.  Synonyms: earth-closet, jakes, privy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Outhouse" Quotes from Famous Books



... excitement come here. Indeed, it will be profitable, for if they are active huntsmen, they can pay their expenses. A dead horse costs little, and in Spa, as they give very little to the horses to eat in summer, and nothing at all in the winter, they die fast. You have only to drag the carcass to an outhouse at a little distance from the town, and with your rifle watch during the night. The wolves will come down to prey upon the carrion, and it is hard if you do not kill your couple during the night, and then you are rewarded by the commune. I do not know what the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... her. The courtyard, which was planted with apple trees, was large and extended as far as the small thatched dwelling house. On the opposite side were the stable, the barn, the cow house and the poultry house, while the gig, the wagon and the manure cart were under a slated outhouse. Four calves were grazing under the shade of the trees and black hens were wandering ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... when Roger Allardyce had first addressed me, a friendship had sprung up between us, with a rapidity only possible to boys. We bathed together of mornings; he would come and chat to me when I was at my work; and the hours of work being over, he would lug me into a little outhouse he kept as his own, and show me his treasures—guns, and fishing tackle, a breastplate worn by his grandfather in the Civil War, an oak-apple from the tree in which King Charles had hidden after the battle of Worcester. He treated me as his equal, and once, when I alluded to my dependent ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... determined to gain it, feeling sure that his host would shelter him if he could. Passing through the house he issued into a courtyard, quickly stripped off his armour and accoutrements, and threw them into an outhouse. Climbing on the roof of this he got upon the wall, and ran along it until behind the house of the syndic. He had no fear of being observed, for the attention of all in the houses in the street he had left would be directed to ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... boarders and six backward sons of gentlemen resident in the town, and assembled daily in a large outhouse furnished with desks of a peculiar pattern, known to us as "scobs." Mr. Stimcoe, who had received his education as a "querister" at Winchester (and afterwards as a "servitor" at Pembroke College, Oxford), habitually employed and taught us to employ the esoteric ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... to the morning's cheerfulness Mungo was afoot whistling a ballad air of the low country, with a regard for neither time nor tune in his puckered lips as he sat on a firkin-head at an outhouse door and gutted some fish he had caught with his own hands in a trammel net at the river-mouth before Montaiglon was awake and the bird, as the Gaelic goes, had ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous bee- farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is gaily hanging the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and a machine which slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the obscure impulses of a dog's heart—atoned for by long and self-conscious remorse—he bit the poet; and tried, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... do not always carry their supplies home in this manner; they often hide them in the nearest convenient place. I have known them to carry a pint or more of hickory nuts and deposit them in a pair of boots standing in the chamber of an outhouse. Near the chestnut-trees they will fill little pocket-like depressions in the ground with chestnuts; in a grain-field they carry the grain under stones; under some cover beneath cherry-trees they collect great numbers of cherry-pits. Hence, when cold weather comes, instead of staying ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... was repeated. They pushed the lantern into an outhouse, and went back to the brink ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... is busy. There are drawings and diagrams to be made, MS. to copy, references to look up, parcels to pack and unpack. Someone is told off to take you round, and you visit the various rooms and see the treasures, inspect the outhouse with its workshop for carpentry, framing and mounting, casting leaves and modelling; one work or another is sure to be going on; perhaps one of the various sculptors who have made Ruskin's bust is busy there. Down at the Lodge, a miniature Brantwood, turret and all, the Severn ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... been doing the sick officers all day (or rather wounded). They are quite nice, but the lack of equipment makes twice the work. We are still having bright sunny days, but it is getting cold, and I shall be glad of warmer clothes. The food at the still filthy Inn in a dark outhouse through the back yard has improved a little! My Madame (in my billet) gives me coffee and bread and butter (of the best) at 7, and there is a ration tin of jam, and I have ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... odding about, he felt fidgety and restless. He peeped forth at times towards the outhouse where the box was lying, and as he passed he could not refrain from casting a glance from the corner of his eye through the half-closed door. The bloody clot he had seen dwelt upon his imagination; it haunted him like a spectre. He ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... any to give out; and to do those offices, whatever they be, in performing which all Irish ladies, bred, born, and living in moderate country-houses, pass the first two hours after breakfast in the kitchen. Thady took his rent-book and went into an outhouse, which he complimented by the name of his office, at the door of which he was joined by Pat Brady. Now Pat was an appendage, unfortunately very necessary in Ireland to such an estate as Macdermot's; and his business was ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... torn to pieces. However, his captors forced their way through the crowd, turned off from the street, and entered a court-yard, in the centre of which stood a house of larger size than the majority of those that composed the town. Edgar's legs were again tied, and he was thrown into an outhouse, where he lay for hours. He could hear almost continuous talking in the house, and the voices ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... 151 is shown the method of joining the top rails to the post of a tool shed or similar outhouse. The two rails, which are at right angles to each other, are half-lapped and mortised; the tenon on the post runs entirely ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... the Fiscal, who with much secret satisfaction had come to have that made plain which had troubled him so sorely before. So Boyd and Jerry brought Bridget Connoway in to the outhouse where the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... first one of the donkeys that was to take part in the sports, but was permanently incapacitated from any further participation either in sport or labor, then two pet lap dogs, in a couple of sharp shakes on the lawn, and crowned his career of murder with the stable cat, in an outhouse where Charles had at last incontinently and a little inconsiderately, as far as the cat ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... down myself, glad to be released from my stiff position, and hardly availing myself of his proffered help. He did not conduct us through the open door, but led us round the angle of the presbytery to a small outhouse, opening on to the court, and with no other entrance. It was a building lying between the porch and belfry of the church and his own dwelling place. But it looked comfortable and inviting. A fire had been hastily ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... once determined to encounter him. The animal was in the habit of passing along the narrow street of a village in the course of his nocturnal depredations. One night Jung posted himself on the roof of a low outhouse, and, as the huge brute walked under the roof, made a vigorous leap, which landed him on the neck of the elephant, and, in spite of all the efforts of the infuriated animal, there he maintained his position until he succeeded in blindfolding him with a cloth, and in securing him to a tree, amidst ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... the arrival of a headstone by carrier from the nearest town; to be left at Mr. Ezra Cattstock's; all expenses paid. The sexton and the carrier deposited the stone in the former's outhouse; and Ezra, left alone, put on his spectacles and read the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... hatch, and we boys hid our apples to ripen, both occasionally illustrating the sic vos non vobis; the shed, where the annual Tragedy of the Pig was acted with a realism that made Salvini's Othello seem but a pale counterfeit; the rickety old outhouse, with the "corn-chamber" which the mice knew so well; the paved yard, with its open gutter,—these and how much else come up at the hint of my far-off friend, who is my very near enemy. Nothing is more familiar ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and risking everything, he climbed to the roof of an outhouse, and tried a bedroom window. Here he succeeded. When the catch was forced, there were no further obstacles. In he went, pausing only to look around and see if any curious or alarmed eye was watching him. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... was that the girl had fractured her skull by a fall on the ice, had crawled to and lain in an unvisited outhouse of the farm, and on that Thursday night was wandering out, in a distraught state, not wandering in. Her story would be the result of her cerebral condition—concussion ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little outhouse to the hut which no one entered but himself—a dreary place, but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here, on a great gray sea of stretched ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... didn't you tell me before? Listen! Phillips is in trouble! Go help him! Call the boys! Hurry!" As Jim Driscoll, with a halt in his walk, left him, Tom Bell stole quietly to one of the tunnels and ran to the trap-door which opened into an outhouse. ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... which opened on a flight of broken steps where it was hard for more than one to pass at a time. Lovel heard the carriers of the dead grunting as they squeezed up with their burden. At the top another door gave on an outhouse in the yard of Somerset House between the stables and the west water-gate.... Lovel, as he stumbled after them with Oates' bulk dragging at his arm, was in a confusion of mind such as his mean time-serving life ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... to end without result. The children had been to the particular hiding- places each knew best, Tim to the dirty nook between the ilex and the larder window, and Judy to the scooped-out trunk of the rotten elm, and both together to the somewhat smelly channel between the yew trees and a disused outhouse—all equally untenanted. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... the spirit to pour. A game-cock in the stableyard, deprived of every spark of his accustomed animation, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a corner; a donkey, moping with drooping head under the narrow roof of an outhouse, appeared from his meditative and miserable countenance to be contemplating suicide. In the street, umbrellas were the only things to be seen, and the clicking of pattens and splashing of rain-drops were the only sounds to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... returned with him. The little side gate creaked. The miller appeared, a tall, fat-faced man with a bull-neck, round-bellied and corpulent. He agreed to my proposal. A hundred paces from the mill there was a little outhouse open to the air on all sides. They carried straw and hay there for us; the workman set a samovar down on the grass near the river, and, squatting on his heels, began to blow vigorously into the pipe of it. The embers glowed, and threw a bright light on his young face. The miller ran to wake ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... that he rose very early, before the household was stirring. The cook slept in a room off the kitchen, which was in an outhouse in the back yard. She was just stretching herself, preparatory to getting up, when Tom came to her window and said that he was going off fishing, to be gone all day, and that he ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... than the rest, and in the centre. These fires are dignified with the names of the Virgin Mary and twelve Apostles, the lady being in the middle; and while they are burning, the labourers retire into some shed or outhouse, where they behold the brightness of the apostolic flame. In this shed they lead a cow, on whose horns a large plum-cake has been stuck, and having assembled round the animal, the oldest labourer takes a pail of cider, and addresses the following lines ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... brought back by the fashion of the next. A little routing in attics and forgotten cupboards and chests had produced astonishing results. Chippendale chairs and settees had been brought down from the servants' bedrooms; two fine Dutch cabinets had been discovered amid a mass of lumber in an outhouse; a tall Japanese screen, dating from the end of the eighteenth century, and many pairs of linen curtains embroidered about the same time in branching oriental patterns by the hands of Mannering ladies, had ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... butcher locked him up in an outhouse—summit of indignity; resolving to make his ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... and through it them as he listened to the bitter complaints of the gaunt, hungry old women. In the back street by which he passed out of the town he saw a large "healthy" boy kicking a sick cat; the poor creature had just strength enough to crawl under an outhouse door; probably to die in torments. He did not find much satisfaction in thrashing the boy, but he did it with hearty good will. Further on, at the corner where the turnpike used to be, was a big notice, ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... situation accurately corresponded. It would have been more prudent to have instantly retreated; but the organ of inquisitiveness was, we presume, very fully developed in Smyth; he stepped forward a little to have a better survey of the locale, when the ground or rather turf roof of a sort of outhouse, suddenly gave way under him, and he gently descended among some hay, with which the place was nearly filled. It may be supposed his curiosity received a sudden check by this adventure. An imperfectly constructed partition divided him from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... the flight had not grown to a panic, but there were already far more people than all the boats going to and fro could enable to cross. People came panting along under heavy burdens; one husband and wife were even carrying a small outhouse door between them, with some of their household goods piled thereon. One man told us he meant to try to get away from ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... you what we will do," said Quidd. "There is in our outhouse an old wheeled chair which my mother used to ride about in when she was so long ill, a year or two ago. Now, I know old Dame Clackett is very lame just now, from having let fall her fender on her foot. I will take this chair down, and offer to draw her to church in it, and then, when we have ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... the cottage, he carried the dog to a corner of the garden, while he went in for a spade to dig its grave. While he was searching for one in the outhouse, his mother saw him. ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston

... an outhouse—a stable with a loft—- and climbed up into the loft. I climbed up after him. There was a little loose hay in the loft; we speedily stretched ourselves. I made Nick promise to be awake before sunrise, for I feared the place would be visited by ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... and were doubtless as the gallant knight had left them. Curiously, too, there were remains of an outhouse with a crenellated parapet, suggestive ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... men had been putting up telegraph wires on the other side of the canal and a shell had fallen and killed thirteen of them. He asked our men to carry the bodies back over the bridge and lay them side by side in an outhouse. The men did so, and the row of mutilated, twisted and bleeding forms was pitiful to see. The officer was very grateful to us, but the bodies were probably never buried because that part of the city was soon a ruin. We went on ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... Noticing that the side door was half open, the coachman gave a vigorous pull on the chain attached to the bell. At the sound of the rusty clamor, a furious barking was heard from an adjoining outhouse, but no one inside the house seemed to take notice ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... inclement weather, he imploring them earnestly to kill him to end his misery. A compassionate Mexican at last closed the tragic scene by shooting him. Stephen Lee, brother to the general, was killed on his own housetop. Narcisse Beaubien, son of the presiding judge of the district, hid in an outhouse with his Indian slave, at the commencement of the massacre, under a straw-covered trough. The insurgents on the search, thinking that they had escaped, were leaving, but a woman servant of the family, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... trap-door with its stout, iron bolt, he descended the rickety ladder to the cellar; thence, passing by a short tunnel, which Bonnemain had constructed with his own hands, he ascended a few rough wooden steps, and found himself in a lean-to outhouse close to a door in a high wall which led into ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... north, as well as in the masks, skulls, and war-cloaks from Bali, Lombook, and Sumbawa, the musical instruments and weapons peculiar to Celebes, and the spears and kreises from all parts. So badly arranged were they, however, and kept in such a dark outhouse, that it was impossible to appreciate their value properly. After inviting the owner—a superintendent of police—and his family to visit the yacht, we continued our drive among pretty villas and bungalows, surrounded by the usual tropical fence, with ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... doors and windows the moment that it was possible for a human being to breathe the smoke and live. One of the engines attached two additional lengths of hose, dragged the branch through the first floor to the back of the house, got upon an outhouse, in at a back window, and attacked the foe in rear. On the roof, Frank and Dale were plying their hatchets, their tall figures sharply defined against the wintry sky, and looking more gigantic than usual. The enemy saved them ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... behind some bags of grain in the outhouse until night-fall, when he sallied boldly forth and made his way to the house of a friend, who, although not a Christian, was too fond of him ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... secret was but in the mode by which the gas might be rightly administered. But now, all that I need is contained in this coffer, save one very simple material—fuel sufficient for a steady fire for six hours. I see even that is at hand, piled up in your outhouse. And now for the substance itself—to that you must ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... morning. Vanyusha was in the porch heating the samovar, and using the leg of a long boot instead of bellows. Olenin had already ridden off to bathe in the Terek. (He had recently invented a new amusement: to swim his horse in the river.) His landlady was in her outhouse, and the dense smoke of the kindling fire rose from the chimney. The girl was milking the buffalo cow in the shed. 'Can't keep quiet, the damned thing!' came her impatient voice, followed by ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... hundred, some fifty, some twenty, some ten—farmers whose corn had been a loss instead of a profit, whose hops had sold for less than the cost of picking them, little tradesmen who had a bill to meet, handicraft men who could not pay the men who worked side by side with them, cottagers who needed an outhouse built, and others who lacked the means to pay for a funeral. There seemed no one to whom he had not lent money for some purpose, besides the use of his name as security. Fortune had given to him, and he had given as freely to others, so ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... eating-room, a small private room, and two bedrooms. The windows were not glazed, but closed with skins every night. There was no chimney or stove in the house, all the cooking being carried on in a small outhouse. ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... be found in city residences. Fowls, and pigeons, trespass on our neighbors, and are a frequent cause of trouble. This objection does not hold good against the rabbit, which occupies so small a space, that where there is an outhouse there may be a rabbitry. English children are encouraged in their fondness for animals, as tending to good morals and good feelings, and as offering a home amusement, in ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... gone he visits the outhouse, where the steam-engine is driving the chaff-cutter, or peers in at the huge doors of the barn, where with wide wooden shovel the grain is being moved. Or he may be met with round the hay-ricks, dragging a log of wood by a piece of tar ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... Watson, whose father owned and inhabited the house immediately opposite to Mrs. Tyson's cottage in Wordsworth's time (see a previous note), told me that a tall ash tree grew on the proper right front of the cottage, where an outhouse is now built. If this be so, Wordsworth's bedroom must have been that on the proper left, with the smaller of the two windows. The cottage faces nearly south-west. In the upper flat there are two ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... aware that Langston, under some fresh shape, was watching him, and hastily throwing down the reckoning, he fled without his cloak or sword to Gage's house at Westminster, where he took horse, hid himself in St. John's Wood, and finally was taken, half starved, in an outhouse at Harrow, belonging to a farmer, whose mercy involved him ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... house very cautiously, and with much circumspection—not an outhouse, or other place of concealment, having been left unexamined—they were about to enter, when Reilly, thinking that no precaution on such an occasion ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... barbarous expression, and being all armed with either long knives, tomahawks, guns, or bows, they soon encircled and formed a guard for the Chief of their party. After a short time, they became very restless, and searched every corner and outhouse of the Fort, under the suspicion that some treacherous attack might be made upon them. A few of them then crossed over to the Company's Post, and no idea was entertained but that they would conduct themselves peaceably. Liquor was given them at ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West

... anything else fully to arouse the boys. It was like a dash of cold water, and though Peter still kept a tight grip of them, they ran along level with him of their own accord. Out into the yard they dashed, round one or two corners, over a fence at the back of an outhouse, and suddenly the man stopped dead and began pulling at something on the ground. It was a grating with a big iron handle. It stuck. The approaching tornado roared with anger while the man put out all his great strength. The booming sound ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... journey the already baked coffee-berry, until the crisp husk peels off and exposes a couple of whity-brown, hard, oval seeds, upon which are inscribed two straight furrows. There are winnowing-machines, for separating the chaff from the already milled grain. In that outhouse a group of dark divinities are engaged in the difficult process of sieving and sorting. See with what exceeding dexterity Alicia, Ernestina, and Constancia—the black workers have the whitest of Christian names—handle their big sieves. Alicia, cigar in mouth, takes an armful of the winnowed ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... anywhere else, nobody would have anything to do with him, so of course, for safety's sake, old Harry had to take him, and there they all lived together at The British Oak—all in one happy family. But they girls couldn't bide the sight of each other, so their father cleaned up an old outhouse in his yard that was used for carts and hens and put William and his Agnes out in it. And there they had to bide. They had a couple of chairs, a sofa, and a bed and that kind of thing, and the young one ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... sailmaker came to his brother John, express,[190] and in some fright; for he was absolutely warned out of his lodging, and had only a week to provide himself. His brother John was in as bad a case, for he was quite out, and had only[191] begged leave of his master, the biscuit baker, to lodge in an outhouse belonging to his workhouse, where he only lay upon straw, with some biscuit sacks, or "bread sacks," as they called them, laid upon it, and some of the same sacks ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... doors led into three inner rooms, in which the entire family slept. There were no other apartments, the kitchen being an outhouse. On the centre table was spread a substantial breakfast, from which the various members of the family had risen on the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... no doubt that they had been impressed by the clothes he wore; and having no wish to provoke similar comments from his grandmother and Hannah, Swithin took the precaution, on arriving at Welland Bottom, to enter the homestead by the outhouse. Here he deposited the cap and coat in secure hiding, afterwards going round to the front and opening the ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... him to join us at cricket, though, having found some stumps and a bat and ball in an outhouse on the Island, and got on very well for some time till, at a shout of "out, leg before wicket," the Wallypug (who had caught the ball very nicely on his shin) fell forward on to the Doctor-in-Law, crushing his hat well ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow

... his sister the first little white flower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in the morning, before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed her path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and brought the wood from the outhouse, where, to his perpetual astonishment, he found his store always replenished by an invisible hand. In the day, I believe, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer, because he often went forth and did not return until dinner, yet ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... foresight if anything is wanted. Yet I am loath to keep aloof from you altogether, seeing that, though I am but a woman, you have set your heart on finding some shelter here." After that Vigdis led him to an outhouse, and told him to wait for her there, and put a lock on the door. Then she went to Thord, and said, "A man has come here as a guest, named Thorolf. He is some sort of relation of mine, and I think he will need ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... me to a little outhouse, cunningly hidden among the rocks, and which could not be reached save by going through the kitchen, owing to a precipice behind. Arrived here she opened a box, and took from it a ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... The meadows for miles were a great lake, and there was no need to take off skates in order to get past mills and weirs. The bare, flat Bedfordshire fields had also their pleasures. I had an old flint musket which I found in an outhouse. I loaded it with hard peas, and once killed a sparrow. The fieldfares, or felts, as we called them, were in flocks in winter, but with them I never succeeded. On the dark November Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when there was not a breath of wind, and the fog hung heavily over the brown, ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... rusty hinges, it admitted him into a yard in which there was nothing to be seen but an outhouse attached to the ruined building, with a barred window in it. As there were traces of many recent footsteps under this window, and as it was a low window, and unglazed, Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within the bars. And there to be sure he had ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... good to me. I et in de kitchen when they got through or on a table out in de back yard sometimes. I slept in an outhouse they fixed up mostly, when ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... eye"—Shakespeare, or a celestial messenger of the wrong sort would have descended on the devout mariner. It was more than Mrs. Bazalgette could bear: she had now and then, not often, unladylike impulses. One of them had set her crouching behind the door of an outhouse, and listening through a crack; and now she had another, an irresistible one: it was, to take that empty flower-pot, fling it as hard as ever she could at the devotee, then shut the door quick, fly out at the other door, and leave her faithless swain in the agony of knowing ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... through the lower windows, and used every persuasion to induce them to deliver up their arms, which of course they refused. The peasants and colliers then directed showers of stones against the doors and windows, and also opened a fire of small arms from an outhouse. This was replied to by the police, who killed several and wounded many others. O'Brien was perfectly incompetent to give any useful direction, and his men began to retire before the sharp practice from the fire-arms of the police, when at last the latter, advancing under cover of some low walls ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to disappointment; for just as he had made up his mind to fly, just as he was looking all around to see if the coast was clear, he saw, to his deep distress, the two brigands approaching from the outhouse. They were carrying something which, on nearer approach, turned out to be a sheep, which they had just killed. Of course all thoughts of flight now departed, and Bob could only deplore his own stupidity in allowing that one chance of escape ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... passions. His parents lived in the city, but the youth had an inordinate desire for the country and was therefore sent to school in a village. On the second day after his arrival at school a farmer missed a sow which was found secreted in an outhouse on the school grounds. This was the first of many similar incidents in which a sow always took part. So strong was his passion that on one occasion force had to be used to take him away from the sow he was caressing. He did not masturbate, and even when restrained from approaching ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... that the work was to be done; so she dragged the body away thence, and across the brook, and a little way into the meadow, and then she went back and fetched mattock and spade from the outhouse, where she knew they lay, and so fell to digging a grave for the corpse of her dead terror. But howso hard she might toil, she was not through with the work ere night began to fall on her, and she had no mind to go on with her digging ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... to his room. His aunt, Marfinka, and Vikentev, who had just happened to turn up, drove to the hay harvest, and the afternoon peace soon reigned over the house. One man crawled into the hayrick, another in the outhouse, another slept in the family carriage itself, while others took advantage of the mistress's absence to go into the outskirts ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... time reached the ground, which was slimy and damp under the eaves; and he pushed his way, with an air of recklessness which hid some natural trepidation, into the outhouse, the door of which ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... I am speaking!"—she hissed, punctuating her words with the ominous head-shakes and pauses. "The first thing, miss, for you to do, will be, to take a course of lessons, in manners. Your present ones, may have done well enough, in the outhouse, to which you have evidently belonged. They will not do, here, in the company ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... and writing. Accordingly, having seen that the coast was clear—for they considered their parents (as the children of the hard-working often do) the natural foes to amusement—they carried the monster into an old outhouse, and ran to the veteran to beg him to come up ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Rauchnaechte (see also Chapter VIII.). In Tyrol these nights are Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany Eves. When night falls the Tyrolese peasant goes with all his household through each room and outhouse, his wife bearing the holy water vessel and the censer. Every corner of the buildings, every animal, |328| every human being is purified with the sacred smoke and the holy sprinkling, and even the Christmas pie must be hallowed in this way. In Orthodox ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... light was seen a short distance ahead, and there was a 'sound of revelry.' On approaching, the light was seen to proceed from a large fire, built on the floor of an old and dilapidated outhouse, and surrounded by a ragged, hungry, singing, and jolly crowd of paroled prisoners of the Army of Northern Virginia, who had gotten possession of a quantity of cornmeal and were waiting for the ash-cakes then in the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Malines. We met several people, gens-d'armes and others, but with the exception of some remarks upon my good looks, we passed unnoticed. Towards the evening we arrived at the village where we had slept in the outhouse, and as soon as we entered it we put on our stilts, and commenced a march. When the crowd had gathered we held out our caps, and receiving nine or ten sous, we entered a cabaret. Many questions were asked us, as to where we came from, and O'Brien answered, telling lies innumerable. I played the ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... dismay and anguish which this announcement caused. The old Irish chieftain and the Anglo-Irish lord still had some kind of home and shelter on their own estate—it might be but an outhouse or a barn; it was certainly on the worst and least cultivated portion of their land, for the old castle had long since been taken from them, and their broad acres transferred to others. Yet, though they tilled ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... be Hutton's duty to assure such as might be found there that they would not be disturbed in any manner. Guests of Mcintosh were commonly lodged in an outhouse in the yard; and Hutton, accompanied by two Indians, went to this building to see who might be sleeping there. They found a peddler in one bed, and Chilly, a son of General ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... corner lay in all directions the fragments of the mould which his own body had formed and filled. The bag of plaster and the bucket of water which the painter had been using stood beside. Lottchen gathered all the pieces together, and then making his way to an outhouse where he had seen various odds and ends of rubbish lying, chose from the heap as many pieces of old iron and other metal as he could find. To these he added a few large stones from the garden. When he had got all into the studio, he locked the door, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald

... edge of the sword. So these three drove them into a corner of the courtyard, and Eumaeus and Philoetius drew their swords to slay them. But Telemachus held them back saying: "Let them die in shame, even as they have lived." So they took a long ship's cable, which was lying in an outhouse, and stretched it across an angle of the wall; to this they attached twelve nooses, and left the women hanging there by the neck until they ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... I know, will never forget Sergeant Craig (he was made R.Q.M.S. just a few days before his death on Suvla). Craig found lice "doing squaderron drrrill up his legs," and he was pegged out in an outhouse ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... lighthouses, portable apparatus containing not more than four pounds of carbide, and other special conditions as approved by the Association, the acetylene plant, such as generators, storage-holders, purifiers, scrubbers, and for washers, shall be in a suitable and well-ventilated outhouse, in the open, or in a lean-to, having no direct communication with a dwelling-house. A blow-off pipe or safety outlet shall be arranged in such a manner as to carry off into the open air any overmake of gas and to open automatically if pressure be increased ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... windmills out of repair. Bring him back in the morning.' I took the old man back to the hotel, and we had a jolly good time together that day. I never put a string on him, only locked the door, but we slept together. The next morning I took him before the alcalde. Bean held court in an outhouse, the prisoner seated on a bale of flint hides. Bean was not only judge but prosecutor, as well as counsel for the defense. 'Killed a Chinaman, ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... but none of them had been tampered with; I tried the padlocks, but they were both secure. It thus became a problem how the thieves, if thieves they were, had managed to enter the house. They must have got, I reasoned, upon the roof of the outhouse where Northmour used to keep his photographic battery; and from thence, either by the window of the study or that of my old ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the ruins of the chateau at noon next day, having stopped for the night at Chemille, in order to rest their horses and keep them in condition for another long ride, if necessary. The outhouse had been left standing. Francois came out, on hearing the sound of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... an exploring expedition. He investigated every outhouse and shed, frightened the geese and turkeys into fits by rushing through their paddock shouting at the pitch of his voice, caught the superannuated mule by the tail, and made her fly off like a four-year ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan

... and Jeremy needed sleep and so did Narayan Singh. We offered to rent an outhouse for the night—a cellar—the roof, but there was nothing doing, and it was Yussuf Dakmar at last who solved the problem ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... lay in a row against the standing wall of the old outhouse, protected by a six- or seven-foot slant of board roof. They had eaten of a deer that they had shot in the morning, and they had a sense of comfort and rest that none of them had known before in many days. Henry's feelings were much like those that ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... an outhouse, looked up and down for something to eat, and at last espied a Hen sitting upon a perch so high that he could be no means come at her. He therefore had recourse to ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... laid down when the Hottentot came back to my thoughts, and I began to grow uneasy. I got up and went to the outhouse where my Kaffir slept. I woke him up and asked him where the Hottentot was. "Oh, he is gone," he replied, "to go and fetch his things ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... quiet, stubborn stare, and without further words mother and daughter went into the kitchen where the girls were at work. It was a long, low room, with one window looking on a small back-yard, at the back of which was the coal-hole, the dust-bin, and a small outhouse. There was a long table and a bench ran along the wall. The fireplace was on the left-hand side; the dresser stood against the opposite wall; and amid the poor crockery, piled about in every available space, were the toy dogs, some no larger than your hand, others ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... along against it until they came to a small outhouse, long and low. On the sheltered side of it they paused to take breath, and Feather Victor explained: "This is his hour in the gymnasium. To make the body strong required thought and care. Mere riding and running and swinging ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick

... shocked to find that a young man—a slave—had been accused by the medicine-men as having bewitched the chief and induced his sickness. In consequence of this he had been stripped, and bound hands and feet in an old outhouse, and thus kept for some days without food. I only learned this about one hour before the death of the chief, and it was well I heard it even then, as I learned that they had determined to shoot him, and a man had been told off who had his gun ready for the purpose. ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... out. For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust and contempt for the method. It was sin without genius, a puerile theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst. The really good have little idea how such fool's knavery looks to the shadily clever; it brings home to them the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... a little whitewashed cottage on the edge of the moorland just after the hedgerows ceased—the last house before the barren heath began, standing a full three hundred yards from any other dwelling. Its front faced the road, and at the back an outhouse and a wretched garden jutted out on the waste land. There was a light in each of its windows tonight, and as I passed down the road I heard the dismal ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... not allowed if you were going to be let out during the day, as I was most of the time. So there you sat again, freezing, till an orderly came and said your bath was ready, usually about 9.30 a.m.—three hours after you had left your bed. The bath was in an outhouse about fifty yards across the yard from the ward. In hail, rain or snow, you had got to go there. In it I was boiled in a bath, scrubbed all over with a nail-brush, and then smothered all over with sulphur—wet, greasy, stinking sulphur rubbed in all over me. I dressed by ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... an old outhouse they planted asters on one side and four o'clocks on the other. Asters, as all boys and girls know, are better if started inside early. Then they may be transplanted to the outside. In his way one gets a bit ahead of ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... her telling us of the last funeral in the neighbourhood. A man died, and, according to custom, he was laid out in an outhouse. The coffin, made by a peasant friend, was brought on a sledge, and, it being March with snow on the ground—"to the rumble of a snow sledge swiftly bounding," as they say in Kalevala. The corpse on the fourth day was laid in the coffin, and placed in front ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... was more like an outhouse than anything else, she had christened, "The Black Hole of Calcutta." The upper part, which was approached by a ladder as a loft would be, was used as a meeting-room, while the ground floor became a temporary stable for the horses ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... quandaries, and exceedingly afflicted with goblins that disturb his rest. Bless your honour's soul, he is a very oddish kind of a gentleman. I don't think he would marry the Queen of Sheba. Lackaday! sir, he won't suffer his own maids to speak in the garrison, but turns them into an outhouse before the watch ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... Hamel," he sighed, "but I suppose you must have your own way. By-the-by, you would only need to use the up-stairs room and the sitting-room. You will not need the outhouse—rather more than an outhouse, though isn't it? I mean the shed which leads out from the kitchen, where the lifeboat used ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... advantage, they speedily found it the reverse, for although they wandered from room to room, the treasure could not be discovered. The interior of Falkenberg was unknown to Roland, this being one of the strongholds where he had been compelled to sleep in an outhouse. At last they found the door to the treasure-chamber, for Roland suggested it was probably in a similar position to that at Rheinstein, and those who had accompanied Hohenfels' valet made search according to this hint, and were rewarded by coming upon a door ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... "Remnant" were believed, besides, to be "antinomian in principle," which might otherwise have been a serious charge, but the way public opinion then blew it was quite swallowed up and forgotten in the scandal about Buonaparte. For the rest, Gilbert had set up his loom in an outhouse at Cauldstaneslap, where he laboured assiduously six days of the week. His brothers, appalled by his political opinions, and willing to avoid dissension in the household, spoke but little to him; he less to them, remaining absorbed in the study ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... usual, in order to have the pleasure of being besought and entreated; but, when she was gained over, it was comparatively easy to induce old Milnwood to accept of a servant, whose wages were to be in his own option. An outhouse was, therefore, assigned to Mause and her son for their habitation, and it was settled that they were for the time to be admitted to eat of the frugal fare provided for the family, until their own establishment should be completed. As ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... notwithstanding an attempt at defence on the part of the dog, which the lieutenant's high boots rendered harmless, Snarleyyow was fairly or unfairly, as you may please to think it, kicked into an outhouse, the door shut, and the key turned upon him. After which Mr Vanslyperken returned to the parlour, where he found the widow, erect, with her back turned to the stove, blowing and bristling, her bosom heaving, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "Outhouse" :   outbuilding, earth-closet



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