"Staircase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received. Neither of these two things took place. Balzac "n'y pensait deja plus." He talked with the greatest eagerness of the embellishments he had proposed to M. Decazes for his palace, and especially of a grand spiral staircase, which was to lead from the centre of the Luxembourg Gardens to the Catacombs, so that these might be shown to visitors, and become a source of profit to Paris. But of his ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... foreigner who tries to learn all the German tongues to be found in the empires of the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg. Luncheon will be served to you in the dining hall; the first door to the right at the foot of the grand staircase. I shall send you a trooper to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... nature. At last I saw it was almost a perpendicular opening, like a roughly excavated well, only very large. I could perceive no bottom; and it was not till the sun actually rose, that I discovered a sort of natural staircase, in many parts little more than suggested, which led round and round the gulf, descending spirally into its abyss. I saw at once that this was my path; and without a moment's hesitation, glad to quit the sunlight, which stared at ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... coat and hat were taken from me and I was reverently invited to ascend the huge staircase. I did so in silence. At the top of the flight a waiting-woman received me and ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... had seen the king, who did not stay long in the gardens, we walked up the broad terrace, and crossing the hall towards the great staircase, I had a sight which confounded me at once, as I doubt not it would have done to any woman in the world. The horse guards, or what they call there the gens d'armes, had, upon some occasion, been either upon duty or been reviewed, or something ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... that point when Sperry came down the staircase, ushering out the detectives and the medical man. He came to the library door and stood looking at me, with his face rather paler ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had made, it seemed to me that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... her knees with her back to him was washing the white stone floor of the hall at the foot of the staircase. Another servant, also with her back to him, was ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... was there. There were lights below, and lights above, but the second floor was dark, the shutters closed, and all about them a look of silence and desertion, which quickened Richard's footsteps to a run. Up the private staircase he went, and through the narrow hall, till he reached his door and found it locked. Ethie was surely gone. She had not expected him so soon. Mrs. Amsden had urged her to stay, and she had stayed. This was what Richard said, as he went down ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room, where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing. At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said, "Father, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the way the girl had entered, closing the door behind them. They were at the top of a narrow and rather steep staircase of many steps covered with rubber. Descending they were in a tunnel seven feet high and four in width, so long that in the distance the sides seemed to come together. Roof and walls were white; light was supplied from bulbs overhead. The atmosphere was fresh, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... a tour up the Batang Lupar and Rejang Rivers. He was very lame at the time, but had no walking to do, only now and then to get out of his large boat and scramble up into a Dyak house. How he managed it under the circumstances I never could imagine, for the staircase from the water to a high Dyak house is only the trunk of a tree with a few notches in it, and, at low tide, a case of slippery mud; this, placed at a steep angle, without any rail, is not easy climbing for any one, but a stiff knee made it ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... in the Rue de la Harpe a house called the Hotel de Luxembourg. It was the fragment of a very old palace which had borne that name. It had still a magnificent Renaissance staircase, which bore witness to its former glory. Washington Irving, in one of his earlier tales, describes this very house and the rooms which I occupied in it so accurately, that I think he must have dwelt there. He tells that a student once, during the Revolution, finding a young ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... A winding staircase, lighted by a skylight of colored glass, led to a large, round room containing four windows, and furnished by a circular divan covered with some brilliant Eastern stuff. A couple of curious old oaken chests, a Venetian mirror, some antique ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... supreme over this little dancing and gossiping world issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should appear at the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white cravat, and chapeau bras. On one occasion, the Duke of Wellington was about to ascend the staircase of the ballroom, dressed in black trousers, when the vigilant Mr Willis, the guardian of the establishment, stepped forward and said, "Your Grace cannot be admitted in trousers," whereupon the Duke, who had a great respect for orders ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... the passage. Mr. Fentolin bade his guest a somewhat restrained good night, and Gerald mounted the staircase to his room. Hamel, however, had scarcely reached his door before Gerald reappeared. He had descended the stair-case at the other end of the corridor. He stood for a moment looking down the passage. The doors were all closed. Even the light had ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the wide staircase. An ambulance had stopped and its burden was being carried in. The bearers rested the stretcher gently on the floor, and a nurse was immediately on her ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... closing the book with an involuntary shudder when I heard a light, almost girlish, laugh from above. I looked hastily, and saw the woman I had come to measure myself against standing poised like a bird on the top of the grand staircase. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... all, Mr. Raymond comes slowly down the staircase, followed by his son-in-law that is to be. Forrester and I have been ready ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... fire broke out!" cried Martens, and went up the staircase in a hurry. In a few minutes he came down with his ...
— The Youth's Companion - Volume LII, Number 11, Thursday, March 13, 1879 • Various
... the door and, bowing once more, ushered them into the hall, a large, old-fashioned hall with lofty ceiling and a mahogany railed staircase. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... descended the broad staircase. There was but little difference in their ages. In an instant I recognised the handsome Empress by the many photographs I had seen. The other, dark and also good-looking, was evidently a lady-in-waiting, a lady whom I afterwards met ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... from the dining-room up a back staircase, and paused before what looked like a portion of the wallpaper. There was a little discoloured spot about half way between the dado and the floor, and on this the doctor pressed a shaking thumb. A part of the wall fell away ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... eyes did not look as they had looked the day before. When Elder Kinney first saw her, she was coming down stairs. He was standing at the foot of the staircase and waited to say "Good morning." As he looked up at her, he started back and exclaimed: "Why, Draxy, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... impatient gesture; and as she did so she had the odd sensation of having already found herself in the same situation but in different surroundings. It seemed to her that she was again descending the staircase from Selden's rooms; and looking down to remonstrate with the dispenser of the soapy flood, she found herself met by a lifted stare which had once before confronted her under similar circumstances. It was the char-woman of the Benedick who, resting on crimson elbows, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the dock: prisoners came into it by a staircase at the back. Krevin came first: cool, collected, calmly defiant—outwardly, he was less concerned than any spectator. But Simon shambled heavily forward, his big, flabby face coloured with angry resentment and shame. He beckoned to his solicitor and began to talk ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... down the corridor, up a staircase, and through a door. With sudden alarm Alan found himself on one of the bridges linking the skyscrapers. The bridge was no more than a ribbon of plastic with handholds at each side; it swayed gently ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... little wheel is trochlea; from which Grecian and Latin term comes the English word truckle-bed.] at the least; and a servants' sitting-room. These were shut off into a separate section, with a little staircase (like a ship's companion- ladder) and a little lobby of its own. But the principal section on this upper story had been dedicated to the use of Sir Robert, and consisted of a pretty old hall, lighted by an old monastic-painted window in the door of entrance; secondly, a rather elegant ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... door-plate, with the name of "Montague" upon it; and a little mat, about as large as a half dollar, on the upper step! If we could make ourselves as small as dolls, we might walk in, and find out that the hall has a dark wood floor, some cunning little pictures hanging on the wall, a noble black walnut staircase, and is lighted with a real ...
— Funny Little Socks - Being the Fourth Book • Sarah. L. Barrow
... men and women who sup are mercurial things, and it was a gay leave-taking half an hour or so later in the little Moorish room at the head of the staircase. But Ernestine left her host without even appearing to see his outstretched hand, and he let her go without a word. Only when Francis would have followed her Trent laid a heavy ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at it, refused to give it to him till he was out of the cave. The African magician, provoked at this obstinate refusal, flew into a passion, threw a little of his incense into the fire, and pronounced two magical words, when the stone which had closed the mouth of the staircase moved into its place, with the earth over it in the same manner as it lay at the arrival of the magician ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... to be adduced from Graham's waking the next morning. He roused, reluctantly enough, but blithe and hungry. He sang as he splashed in his shower, chose his tie whistling, and went down the staircase two steps at a time to a ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... swiftest transition from one place to another, especially when effected by the downward movement, is not always the safest and the most agreeable. But afterward, none knew better than he what is meant by the word "landing," as applied to the staircase. "The Landing of Columbus" may be celebrated in pictures; but Mathew Mizzle accomplished landings that made very nearly as much noise as that effected by "the world-seeking Genoese," and the voyages of both were ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... hailed a motor-omnibus, and Marjorie carefully climbed the spiral staircase at the back. Her father followed, and sitting up on top of the 'bus, in the crisp, wintry air and bright sunshine, they went whizzing down ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... be out on the rock, but Peter Bligh was close upon my heels, and, wonderful to tell, the Italian almost as quick as any of us. To what gate of the sea the staircase was carrying me I knew no more than the others. The time was gone by when anything in Czerny's house could surprise me; and when at the stairs' head we found that which looked for all the world like a great port-hole with a swing door of steel to shut it, I climbed through ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... scenery for III. and IV. can be the same, the hall and the staircase. Please do just as you like about the scenery, I leave it entirely to you; I am amazed and generally sit with my mouth wide open at your theatre. There can be no question about it, whatever you do will be excellent, a hundred times better than ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... point Gertrude, who had forgotten her destiny in the joy of pictures, and was backing round the walls in silent ecstasy, saw—or rather did not see—her opportunity, and fell quietly downstairs. One special feature of Hildegarde's room was the staircase, her own private staircase, of which she was immensely proud. It was a narrow, winding stair, very steep and crooked, leading to the ground floor. When Gertrude disappeared down this gulf with a loud crash, Hildegarde was much alarmed, and flew to the rescue, ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... retortiis I was speaking about," remarked Victor Nelson as he paused to point out a tapering brass tube which was mounted on a platform above the long staircase up which he and Alden were toiling. "It's a big brute: see how small the gunners look beside it? These steam guns ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... staircase hung a great cluster of pansies, purple and white and gold. Mr. Whittier called our attention to their wonderful resemblance to human faces,—a resemblance which we so often see in pansies, and which was brought out with really startling ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... so as to get good air and the view of the city and the bay, which is very fine," Peter said. "And I have a staircase to the roof, so that in good weather ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... being those of the Dukes of Ormond and Norfolk in St. James's Square, which was built at this time; Berkeley House, which stood on the site now occupied by Berkeley Square, a magnificent structure containing a staircase of cedar wood, and great suites of lofty rooms; Leicester House, situated in Leicester Fields, subsequently known as Leicester Square, behind which stretched a goodly common; Goring House, "a very pretty villa furnished with silver jars, vases, cabinets, and other rich ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... such light as it got through a grating of iron bars fashioned like a pretty large window, by means of which it could be always inspected from the gloomy staircase on which the grating gave. There was a broad strong ledge of stone to this grating where the bottom of it was let into the masonry, three or four feet above the ground. Upon it, one of the two men lolled, half sitting and half lying, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of the entrance lay the staircase leading to the bed-rooms on the second floor, and to the left a door opened into the school-rooms, a recent addition to the dwelling, and in which the Rabbi's fifty-odd pupils were daily instructed ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... least—which opens on a wide terrace or balcony of white marble, extending right and left. From this a white marble stair lies straight in front of the window, and leads down to the garden. The balcony and staircase are quite ancient—of old Italian work, beautifully carved, and, of course, weather-worn through centuries. There is just that little tinging of green here and there which makes all outdoor marble so charming. It is hard to believe at times that it is ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... Benoit to wait. Robert's presence would have been a security for him, for the young man could not fail to insure the prosperity of a workshop; besides science and skill, he had the power of invention and bringing to perfection. His father had discovered among his drawings a new plan for a staircase, which had occupied his thoughts for a long time; and he even suspected him of having engaged himself to the Versailles contractor for the very purpose of executing it. The youth was tormented by this spirit of invention, and while devoting ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be the river. Rainham had a set of rooms in the house of his foreman, an eighteenth-century house, full of carved oak mantels and curious alcoves, a ramshackle structure within the dock-gates, with a quaint balcony staircase, like the approach to a Swiss chalet, leading down into the yard. In London these apartments were his sole domicile; though, to his friends, none of whom lived nearer to him than Bloomsbury, this seemed a piece ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from an ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its center the single word "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... the health of those men." This delicate attention reminds me of the description of an auto-da-fe in my possession. In that curious document a boast is made of the prodigality with which refreshments are distributed to the condemned, and of the staircase which the inquisitors have had erected in the interior of the pile for the accommodation of the relazados (the relapsed culprits.)) How great is the difference in the condition of the slave who serves in the house of a rich family at the Havannah or at Kingston, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that Hampstead had said to her had been passed on to her lover. Since that last interview the position of the two men had been changed. The chaplain had been turned out of the establishment, and George Roden had been almost accepted into it as a son-in-law. As they met on the foot of the staircase, it was necessary that there should be some greeting. The Post Office clerk bowed very graciously, but Mr. Greenwood barely acknowledged the salutation. "There," said he to himself, as he passed on, "that's the young man that's done all the mischief. It's because ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... appeared adroit and handsome. That night came a man who talked low to the mayor, and he, who ordinarily wore a grave and judicial air, suddenly had eyes as bright as those of a youth who sees the coming of his bride. He went down his staircase with four bounds, led out a band of old sailors who were come one by one, covertly, into the lower hall, and set out by dark night with several of the wardens, having closed the gates of the city for fear that some traitor, such as there are ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... side. The second floor consisted of a number of small bedrooms, each with just enough in the way of furnishings to provide for the comfort of the occupants, without adding to housekeeping cares. From this story a staircase of ladder-like steepness, led up to an unfinished garret, empty, except for a few pieces of dilapidated furniture and sundry piles of magazines and paper-covered books, which had undoubtedly contributed to the entertainment of ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... up-stairs toward Celia's room, listening to the younger physician's statement of the conditions under which he had been called, turning at the door to smile and nod back at Charlotte, who watched him from the top of the staircase with serious eyes. ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... not—at least she did not see her. But she lay in great excitement and perturbation; and was terrified, about an hour later, by a knock at her chamber door—not that opening into Una's room, but upon the little passage from the stone screw staircase. She sprang from her bed; but the door was secured on the inside, and she felt relieved. The knock was repeated, and she heard some one laughing softly ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the staircase we entered a hall brilliantly lighted. The floor was without a carpet, and exhibited a mosaic of the finest marble. The walls were painted of a pale blue colour, and embellished by a series of pictures from the pencil of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Madame Lalaurie's premises on the eastern side had a staircase window that looked down into her little courtyard. One day all by chance the lady of that adjoining house was going up those stairs just when the keen scream of a terrified child resounded from the next yard. She sprung to the window, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... little ten-year-old laddie made his way along the passage, towards the staircase. Presently sounds fell on his ears which sent all the colour from his face. Black Bill and his comrades were talking together in a room close by, the door of which was open; and to reach the lighthouse staircase he must pass ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... of fortune could not be honestly meant. But it went to her head, and she was so giddy with it as she caught the slippers from the floor, and ran down to Mrs. Atwell, that she knocked against the sides of the narrow staircase. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... little thing impressed itself upon my mind. I remember even the shape of the clouds that floated over us, remnants of the storm of the previous night. One was like a castle with a broken-down turret showing a staircase within; another had a fantastic resemblance to a wrecked ship with a hole in her starboard bow, two of her masts broken and one standing with some fragments of sails flapping ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... by a quick, almost infuriated gesture. At the very instant of his doing so the sound of footsteps coming along the corridor without can be heard. Mrs. Bethune steps quickly to a side-door, and passes noiselessly into a passage that leads her to a back staircase. As she runs along it softly, noiselessly, a great swell of delight ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... had arrived, and Madeleine had no little difficulty in making him comprehend her plan of completely shutting off the staircase which led to the exhibition and working rooms above, by means of drapery. She had felt bound thus far to consult the countess' desire for privacy. A separate entrance from the street was out of the question, but the draperies were to be ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... through the house from front to back, opening into spacious rooms on both sides through round-topped doorways with narrow double doors heavily paneled. An elliptical arch supported by fluted pilasters spans the hall about midway of its length, and a handsome staircase ascends laterally from the rear part after the common English manner of that day. Throughout the house the woodwork is of good design and execution, the paneled wainscots, molded cornices, door ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... with impressiveness; then breaking off abruptly he led the way up a winding iron staircase and the boys, still pondering his words, followed him silently ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... won by pictures of the war in the Crimea, notably by his "Battle of the Alma," now in the gallery at Versailles. The "Rouget de Lisle," painted in 1849, belongs to the French nation. Pils decorated the ceiling over the grand staircase ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... imprisoned poor men who couldn't pay their debts. "Tell me, shall we ever do without it all?" she asked, but at this point Katharine gently insisted that her mother should go to bed. Looking back from half-way up the staircase, Katharine seemed to see Denham's eyes watching her steadily and intently with an expression that she had guessed in them when he stood looking at ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... inevitable pig inside the kitchen. The people—to be just to them—seemed a little fluttered, if not ashamed, of the plight in which I found them. It was quite evident that since the new 80l. house was built not a drop of water had been expended on its interior. The wooden staircase leading to the bedrooms aloft was in such condition that I shuddered to touch its sticky surface, the floor so filthy that I instinctively gathered up the skirts of my overcoat, the bedsteads filled ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... It seemed to him that if he had to open his lips he would break out into horrible and aimless imprecations, start breaking furniture, smashing china and glass. From the moment he opened the private door and while ascending the twenty-eight steps of a winding staircase, giving access to the corridor on which his room opened, he went through a horrible and humiliating scene in which an infuriated madman with blood-shot eyes and a foaming mouth played inconceivable havoc with everything inanimate ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... our duty to give her hot biscuits and this became our daily offering to the idol, it became almost a sacred custom which bound us to her the more every day. Aside from the biscuits, we gave Tanya many advices—to dress more warmly, not to run fast on the staircase, nor to carry heavy loads of wood. She listened to our advice with a smile, replied to us with laughter and never obeyed us, but we did not feel offended at this. All we needed was to show that we cared for her. She often turned ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... staircase was full of people, and I dived under to go below and find my cabin, which I now ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... gentleman was still lingering in a country house situated at the base of the Tyrolese Alps, and purchased in the previous spring by the Duchess Cataneo. The house, erected by Palladio for the Piepolo family, is a square building of the finest style of architecture. There is a stately staircase with a marble portico on each side; the vestibules are crowded with frescoes, and made light by sky-blue ceilings across which graceful figures float amid ornament rich in design, but so well proportioned that the building carries it, as a woman carries her head-dress, with an ease that charms ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... of magic, unsubstantial, liable to go adrift and plunge into the canon. Even in the forest path, where the great tree trunks assure one of stability and long immunity, this feeling cannot be shaken off. Our party descended the winding staircase in the tower, and walked on the shelf under the mighty ledge to the entrance of the Cave of the Winds. The curtain of water covering this entrance was blown back and forth by the wind, now leaving the platform dry and now deluging ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ex-Inquisition. This also has been desecrated into utility. The Holy Office began in 1504, and became a free tribunal in 1567. Its palace was here founded in 1659 by Don Jose Balderan, and restored in 1787 by Don Diego Nicholas Eduardo, whose fine fronting staircase has been much admired. The Holy Tribunal broke up in 1820, when, the Constitution proving too strong for St. Dominic, the college-students mounted the belfry; and, amid the stupefaction of the shuddering multitude, joyously ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the neat maid up a wide staircase to a door with a screen just inside, and heard her name announced for the first time in her life. Sara Lee took a long breath and went inside, to ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Thorndyke, to whom I read the extract on his return from the hospital, "but a little awkward if it should induce our friends to deposit a few trifling mementoes in the form of nitro-compounds on our main staircase or in the cellars. By the way, I met Superintendent Miller on London Bridge. The 'cryptogram,' as Mr. James calls it, has set Scotland Yard in a ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... star-wheel was nothing but an ingenious movable staircase. But the Professor gave Talbot no time to marvel, nor did the latter try to linger. The corridor below was wider, more richly beveled and carved, and the statue of an heroic bird stood perched in the center of it. The lighting was soft and mellow, but Talbot could ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... porch and the transept are three two-light Decorated windows. The tracery of all these is alike, but differs from that of the two windows to the west of the porch. The most picturesque feature of the north transept is the turret containing the staircase by which access is obtained to the tower. This, before the church was enlarged in the fourteenth century, formed the north-west angle of the Norman transept: projecting towards the north, its base is rectangular. This rectangular portion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... up directly, so you can ask him; I really heard nothing of it. Hark, there are steps coming up the staircase now." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... off to that other woman. No, he said he would return. She must be brave, true to herself, whatever happened. She marched boldly up to the gate, gave the countersign and passed through, not heeding the curious glances cast upon her by the sentry; turned into the castle, up the grand staircase, and fled ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... a compartment of the revolving door incoherent yells began to echo down the staircase well. At length it had occurred to those above to utilize that means ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... her separate apartments on the ground floor, the same which she afterwards occupied as Empress. Beneath the suite of rooms occupied by the First Consul was the room of Bourrienne, his private secretary, which communicated with the apartments of the First Consul by means of a private staircase. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... the visit to Pavia, and the decoration of the ball-room in the Castello, and the wedding fetes, and the tournaments in which Messer Galeazzo sought his help. And in this year—1492—we find Leonardo at Vigevano with the Moro in March, making designs for a new staircase for the Sforzesca, and studying vine-culture, and later in the summer drawing plans of a bath-room for Duchess Beatrice, and of a pavilion with a round cupola for the duke's labyrinth in the gardens of the Castello. It was in this same year, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... sitting behind the tea-service, heard a soft, flowing, silken rustle sweeping down the staircase, and across the hall, and ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... beautifully adorned with the wearer's favorite flower. A large silver salver filled with sprigs of flowers awaited the young men in the reception-hall, and upon his entrance each selected according to his fancy a flower from the waiter and sent it up the decorated staircase to find its mate and the young lady wearing the matching one met him on the landing, pinned his chosen flower to the lapel of his coat and became his ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... announcing his decision, as follows. The letter was adorned with a sketch of an absurd cottage, "Ye House!" perched like a windmill on a kind of pedestal, and with members of the family painfully ascending a ladder to the upper story, above the ominous legend, "Staircase forgotten."] ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... to consider "to what extent would a staircase rising at an angle of 31 deg. 47' towards the Sun, with a gnomon so placed at the top as to cast a shadow to the foot of the lower step on the shortest day of the year be affected by a movement in a perpendicular direction of the point of light to the ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... may intertain missionaries in the attics and hold meetings of the Dorcas Society in the basement. She may give reformed burglars the run of the silver-closet, and allow curates and chorus-girls to mingle in sweet companionship on the staircase. But she must leave the library alone, and neither she nor her following must overflow through its double doors during what I ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... party left the opera shortly after ten o'clock, and a little while later drove into the courtyard of the Quirinal. Entering a side door, they ascended a long staircase, upon each step of which was stationed a royal cuirassier, all resplendent in embroidered coats, polished high boots, and veritable Greek helmets, which seemed to add still further to their unusual height. Between their immovable ranks the guests ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... running after her. "Why, Betty!" and the surprised, pained tone of his voice instantly stopped her on the staircase. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... her round behind the idol, pushed against one of the leaves of a flower in the carving, and the stone swung back, and showed a hole just large enough to get through, with a stone staircase inside the body of the idol, made no doubt for the priest to go up and give responses through the mouth. I hurried the girl through, crept in after her, and closed the stone, just as our pursuers came clattering into the courtyard. That is ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... had made a cursory visit to the rooms on the ground floor, and while they stood in the small kitchen examining various old dishes and glassware in the cupboard, Polly spied a very narrow staircase leading to the attic. ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... moccasins, and though I carried no superfluous flesh, my shoulders were as broad as my captain's and my muscles like whip-cords. Fortified by these considerations, I strode on boldly to the landing at the head of the wide staircase leading down to ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... we can speak more at ease," said Lucas, leading the way up the common staircase of a tall house, whose upper stories overhung the street. Up and up, Lucas led the way to a room in the high peaked roof, looking out at the back. Here Stephen recognised a press, but it was not at work, only a young friar was sitting there engaged in sewing up sheets so ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... any man who has any style to him at all these days can pass for a gentleman. All he had to do was to go to the opera-house, present his ticket, walk in and await the signal. I gave the man his music cue, and two minutes before the lights went out he sauntered down the broad staircase to the door of the Robinson-Jones box, and was ready to turn the trick. He was under cover of darkness long enough to get away with the necklace, and when the lights came back, if you had known enough to look out into the auditorium you would ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... doing here to-day?" he asked with a frown of displeasure, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the inner staircase—visible through the glass doors—down which Louise would come. "I haven't ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... girl!" Lady Mary exclaimed, looking toward the staircase. "We were just going in to breakfast without you, and on ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... because it seemed to you the prettiest. Even your mother and married sister who, "en grande tenue," have always seemed to you dazzling figures, have for the moment become, for all their brocades and jewels, merely background; and you alone are the center of the picture. Up the wide staircase come throngs of fashionables—who mean "the world." They are coming on purpose to bow to you! You can't help feeling that the glittering dresses, the tiaras, the ropes of pearls and chains of diamonds ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... door—opened it, and looked out on the staircase; shut it again, locked it, and returned to the bureau. His hand shook so that he took another pull at his grog, and then uncorking the phial he poured the contents into the flask, filled it up with whisky, screwed the top on, and put ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... cube. The only door by which it can be entered, and which is opened two or three times a year, is on the north side, about seven feet above the ground, for which reason one cannot enter except by means of a wooden staircase. The famous 'black stone' is enshrined at the north-eastern corner of the Kaaba, near the door, and forms one of the angles of the building four or five feet above the floor of the court. It is difficult to ascertain the exact nature of this stone, as its surface has been completely worn and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... way up the damp, ill-smelling stone staircase, and opened the door of the deserted room where we have seen him once before. Closing the door, and seating himself at the one rickety table which the room afforded, he motioned to the monk to be seated also; then taking ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to hasten her preparations for descent on this occasion. She met Marty at the foot of the staircase. The boy's face was actually pallid, and against this background his freckles seemed twice their ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... was always an early riser, and she heard his foot on the stairs before seven o'clock. She came out on the staircase, which met the flight which he was descending, and tried to speak, but her lips ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a kind of freehold in the cabin of an old negress yclept Zoe; but she seldom claimed it, for Zoe was outspoken; she preferred, instead, to lie down by night on a mat in Miss Emma's room, in a corner of the staircase, on the hall-floor, oftenest fallen wherever sleep happened to overtake her;—having so many places in which to lay her head was very like having none at all. She was at the bidding of every one, but seldom received a heavy blow; as for a round of angry words, she liked nothing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... San Gallo. No. 38 was a pretentious house, a tenement building trying to look like a palace, and it was plastered over with dingy yellow stucco. Olive went through the hall into a courtyard hung with drying linen, and climbed up an outside iron staircase to the fifth floor. There was a brass plate on the Frau's door, and Canova's Graces in terra cotta smirked in niches on either side. The large pale woman who answered the bell wore a grey flannel dressing-gown that was almost buttonless, and her light hair was screwed into an absurdly ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... girl," she said, "about three or four years old, I fell over the railing of a staircase, quite two storeys high, into the hall below. Everybody in the house thought I must be killed, but when they came to pick me up they found me quietly seated as if nothing in the world had happened ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... cobwebby rope hung ominously from one cross beam, giving him a passing shudder. It seemed as if the spirit of the past had arisen to challenge his entrance thus. He took a few steps forward toward a dim staircase he sighted at the farther end, and then a sudden noise sent his heart beating fast. He extinguished the match and stood in the darkness listening with straining ears. That was surely a step he heard ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... "Pereunt et imputantur," stood out, proud of its new gilding, in the bright afternoon sun of a frosty January day: which motto was raising sundry thoughts in his brain, when the porter came upon the right place in his list, and directed him to the end of his journey: No. 5 staircase, second quadrangle, three pair back. In which new home we shall leave him to install himself, while we endeavor to give the reader some notion ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... nothing remains of this, save the Cloister and Chapter House and Treasury attached to the Cathedral, the Castellum Aquae, now called the Baptistery, the Prior's Chapel, now the Chapter Library, the Deanery, once part of the Prior's lodging, the Porter's gate, the Norman staircase of the King's school and the fragmentary ruins scattered about the precincts, including the remains of the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... We went to Liverpool one day to visit the benevolent institution for men. There were some hundreds of men there housed in a huge building reminiscent of the early convict days. If not the whole, parts of it had been built by the convicts, and the massive stone staircase suggested to our minds the horrors of convict settlement. I have always resented the injury done to this new country by the foundation of penal settlements, through which Botany Bay lost its natural connotation as a habitat for ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... converge to this Hotel, which is therefore the most central in London. Frequent trains convey visitors direct to their beds. For the convenience of patrons arriving above ground or by District, the Directors have installed a superb moving staircase, thereby obviating the inconvenience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... Patty, whose spirits always rose when she encountered difficulties. She saw the staircase, now; a rough, wooden structure of unplaned boards, and no balusters. But she trudged up the long ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... I occupied, although contiguous to and on the same floor with Albert Pride's, was reached by another staircase. It was very narrow; but I was so familiar now with the house, that I did not wait for my hostess to bring a light, especially as I had candles in my room. As I entered my room, I fancied I heard a gentle tapping at the door, which was closed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... The people of Caen are indebted to M. V. Hugot, cure of St. Pierre, for this pulpit. 'A mon arrivee dans la paroisse,' he says (in a little pamphlet sold in the church), 'un des premiers objets qui durent appeler mes soins c'etait le retablissement d'une chaire a precher.' The pulpit and staircase are elaborately carved and decorated with statuettes, bas-reliefs, &c., which the pamphlet describes at length, ending with the information that it ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... feet, through which mesdames et mesdemoiselles were to be conducted. We made a rush at the first open door, and passed comfortably under the heels of some horses gathered under the arched court, and up a stone staircase, which turned out to be that of the Russian consul's house. His people welcomed us most cordially to his abode, and the ladies and the luggage (objects of our solicitude) were led up many stairs and across several terraces to a most comfortable little room, under a dome of its own, where ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her past the little group of men to the far end of the hall, where the staircase screened us from the light of the candle. How to begin, what to say, I did not know. With one arm about her slender form, I pressed kisses on ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... bizarrerie; and this chapel of the Medici, in spite of its grandiose simplicity, proved a stumbling-block to subsequent architects by encouraging them to despise propriety and violate the laws of structure. The same may be said with even greater truth of the Laurentian Library and its staircase. The false windows, repeated pillars, and barefaced aiming at effect, that mark the insincerity of the barocco style, are found here ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... me into the cold hall and up the winding staircase, where his candle made the shadows of the newel posts dance against the wainscot. I paused a moment at the landing to look back, but I could see nothing in the dark pit of the hall below us. Was it possible I could remember it alight with candles, whose flames made soft halos on the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... you learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great Methodist chapel. This is the sala. It has five windows and five doors, and is decorated with pictures ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... sepulchre in the middle of the tomb; he took away the stones one after another, and laid them in a corner; he then dug up the ground, where I saw a trap-door under the sepulchre, which he lifted up, and underneath perceived the head of a staircase leading into a vault. Then my cousin, speaking to the lady, said, "Madam, it is by this way that we are to go to the place I told you of:" upon which the lady advanced, and went down, and the prince began to follow; but first turning to me, said, "My dear cousin, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... cafe concert. A "Grande Soiree Lyrique" is the entertainment offered us at the Maison Doucieux, as we learn from the rudely-written handbill which hangs at the entrance. Through a long, winding, narrow, dark and dirty passage, up a rickety stone staircase, through another passage, and we stand in a crowded hall, at whose lower end a rude stage is erected, on which a ragged man is bawling a comic song. In the midst of it there is a disturbance: a drunken man has climbed upon the back ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... inevitable. The unhappy Empress received for the last time at the Tuileries, which she was to leave forever, in the morning of December 16. The reception was drawing to an end. Among those who were waiting on the grand staircase or in the vestibule for their carriages to be announced, there happened to be standing together M. de Semonville, a young man of some prominence in the court, and M. de Floret, a young secretary of the Austrian legation. Everybody imagined then that the marriage ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Book viii. chap, iv., Dr. Orkborne is described standing on the staircase of an inn absorbed in the composition of a paragraph whilst the party ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... through the studio and close the door behind him, and then I heard him open the door upon the public staircase. Presently he came back, shutting the door behind ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... two stairways, one up and another down, filling either corner of the small entry room in which I found myself. Observing that my vision was returned enough to see, the strange creature which had greeted me led me down the descending staircase for a short way, until we came into a cavern which was delved beneath the roots ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... an arm around each of the girls, and they all went down the broad staircase. In the hall below they met Cousin Jack, who looked at them with an expression of disappointment on ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... been removed, and nothing had been protected against the grimy dust of London. The occupiers might have walked out of it a few hours earlier. The effect of dark richness in the half-shuttered rooms almost overwhelmed Mr. Prohack. Nobody preventing, he climbed the beautiful Georgian staircase, which was carpeted with a series of wondrous Persian carpets laid end to end. A woman in a black apron appeared in the hall from the basement, gazed at Mr. Prohack's mounting legs, and said naught. On the first-floor was the drawing-room, a magnificent apartment exquisitely furnished ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Caryatides. The crowd which had paraded here an hour before was gone, and the vast echoing apartment, used at that date as a guard-room, was well-nigh empty. Only at rare intervals, in the embrasure of a window or the recess of a door, a couple talked softly. At the farther end, near the head of the staircase which led to the hall below, and the courtyard, a group of armed Swiss lounged on guard. Mademoiselle shot a keen glance up and down, then she turned to her lover, her ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... a month, as Ayola was sitting up alone in his chamber, and his companions sleeping quietly in their beds, he heard at a distance a noise as of several chains dragged along upon the ground, and the noise advanced towards him by the great staircase; he recommended himself to God, made the sign of the cross, took a shield and sword, and having his taper in his hand, he saw the door opened by a terrific spectre that was nothing but bones, but loaded with chains. Ayola conjured him, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet |
