"Stair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this was unconsciously forced into words by the vehemence of his passion, or whether the old Jewess heard, or pretended to hear, a footstep coming up the stair, she at all events sprang instantly ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... nothing of the sort. Why go on making a fool of myself? Why add fuel to the already pernicious flame? Of course I was not in love with her, the idea was preposterous. But, just the same, the confounded servants were beginning to gossip, and back stair scandal is the very worst type. It was wrong for me to encourage it. Like a ninny, I had just given Britton something to support his contention, and he wouldn't be long in getting down to the servants' hall with the latest exhibit in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... denied, Could only rob him of his mortal breath. How strange the splendor, though the man be past! His noblest inspiration was his last. The statues of the Capitol are there. As when he stood upon the marble stair And said those words so tender, true and just, A royal psalm that took mankind on trust— Those words that will endure and he in them, While May wears flowers upon her broidered hem, And all that marble snows and drifts to dust: "Fondly do we hope, fervently we pray That ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... everything for the night, but had not yet locked the outer gate, when looking out from his window into the courtyard by moonlight, he saw a band of robbers ride up to the door. He instantly took his measures, and seizing the great keys, ran up the little stair that leads to the azotea, locking the gate by which he passed, and, calling to the captain by name (for the robbers were headed by a noted chieftain), requested to know what he wanted at that hour of the night. The captain politely begged him to come downstairs ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to it gave her a pang of misgiving. A pair of white painted doors opened from the street level upon the foot of a broadish stair which took you up rather suddenly; there was space enough between the foot of the stair and the doors for a ticket-window, but it was too small to be called a lobby; an arc lamp hung there though, and two more—all three were extinct—hung just outside. What gave the place its air of vulgarity, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of one oriel. Some minutes later, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... summer-house with spacious rooms And a high hall with beams stained red; A little closet in the southern wing Reached by a private stair. And round the house a covered way should run Where horses might be trained. And sometimes riding, sometimes going afoot You shall explore, O Soul, the parks of spring; Your jewelled axles gleaming in the sun And yoke inlaid with gold; Or amid orchises and sandal-trees ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... I sleep on floor in Miss Blunt room. I eat food left ober from table. Dey nebber learn me to read and write. I ain't hab time for sech t'ing. I go to chu'ch in white Baptis' chu'ch. Nigger hab for sit up stair, white folks sit down stair. If nigger git sick, dey send for doctor to 'tend um. Mr. Blunt nebber lick me, but Miss Blunt cut my back w'en I don't do to suit her. Nigger git back cut w'en dey don't do wuk or w'en dey fight. Dey hab uh jail in town, run by Mr. McGraw. If nigger be too bad, run street ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... of her lamp, it was of the same spirit as her lamp—and had wings. The gold-green jet boat, driven by light, went throbbing before her through a long narrow passage. Suddenly it rose higher, and the same moment Nycteris fell upon an ascending stair. She had never seen a stair before, and found going up a curious sensation. Just as she reached what seemed the top, the fire-fly ceased to shine, and so disappeared. She was in utter darkness once more. But when we are following ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... upon the passage and passed the sitting-room door without looking in; I sat down in a rocking chair that had been placed near the stair-way, sat there and listened to a girl's laugh and the low mumble of a man's voice. "Let us go out where it's cooler," I heard Guinea say, and I got up with my ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Governor of the Tower. This she presented to the "beefeater" who stood by the first gateway, after they had crossed the great empty moat. The old man stepped to a tiny door behind him, opened it, disclosing a small, winding stair, and ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... through the shaded court, up the stair with its painted lords and ladies looking down upon them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... forgiveness in a more definite embodiment—as between a father and a son. For although God is so much more to us, and comes so much nearer to us than a father can be or come, yet the fatherhood is the last height of the human stair whence our understandings can see him afar off, and where our hearts can first know that he is nigh, ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... thought, "has done his business zealously and well. I will go to my room now and rest: but let me be aroused when this visitor comes, for I believe that I can deal with him." And she rose and walked away to the stair, with the hound ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... back, protesting faintly against appropriating the clothes of a person she had never seen; but finally she yielded to Bertha's vigorous pulls, and followed her down a winding stair, into a narrow room filled with a hubbub of girls in every stage of dressing and undressing. Viola Vincent fluttered up to her (it is difficult to flutter in a gymnasium suit, and only Viola's supremely butterfly quality enabled her to do it), a charming ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... by accumulation, hardly minor. There is a vast difference between Furetiere and Miss Austen, and a still vaster one between Scarron and Scott; but the two French books stand to each other, on however much lower a step of the stair, very much as Waverley stands to Pride and Prejudice, and they carry on a common revulsion against their forerunners and a common quest for newer and better developments. The Roman Bourgeois, indeed, is more definitely, more explicitly, and in further ways of exodus, a departure ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... when their master dropped his voice the heads disappeared suddenly, as though his words had kept them in place. In the depths of the garden close, Oom el Hasan, the nightingale, awoke and trilled softly. We listened awhile to hear the notes "ring like a golden jewel down a golden stair." ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... this umbrageous Avenue of eight rows, on the South side, to that corresponding one on the North, some thousand feet, more or less. All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be rammed down there, and shaped stair-wise into as many as 'thirty ranges of convenient seats,' firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;—and then our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped! Force-work with a vengeance; it is a World's Amphitheatre! ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... some curious stirs, Unless my fancy greatly errs, At restaurants and theatres When our distinctive turn-out Lines up with all the others there, And we look out with quite an air And order the commissionaire Kindly to put the little stair That hangs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... weaker when she returned. Mrs. Bartram said she had tired herself writing a letter. She had a wide-awake air as if she were watching for something, and her ear seemed to catch every step on the stair-way. It was toward the ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... operation of which there is certainly no record in his life. Just before we ascend, we glance up at those beautiful Caryatides, who give their name to one of the principal saloons, and, loitering for a few moments on the stair before a charming little group of Niobe and her children, are presently in the gallery above. There—omitting all minor objects of interest chronicled in the guide books, (which we have now no time to re-examine,)—we devote ourselves chiefly to the reconsidering two or three ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... heard a manly step on the stair, she started and turned pale, expecting nothing short of an armed messenger of the law. She never was in this danger for a single minute, but conscience ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... in a rather more ambitious costume than the page's suit wherein we made his acquaintance, seated himself in the opposite corner. How like Margery's voice the letter sounded, in that old hall at Lovell Tower!—so much so, that it seemed scarcely a stretch of fancy to expect her to glide down the stair which led from her chamber, where her child now lay sleeping. How well Richard could recall the scene when, six years before, she came softly down to receive from his hand the ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... father came up the steep stair, followed by a dozen of his comrades, she gave a cry of delight and was in his arms in a moment; and she was soon made such a pet of by the men there that they all wanted her to accept knives, and rings, and pocket combs, and even tobacco-boxes, because they had nothing ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... the girl had fled by a door at the back of the platform. Seeing that a fight was going on round the door, and desiring to escape from the broil, he went out by the door she had taken, followed a passage for some distance, went down a dimly-lighted stair, and issued through a door into the air. He found himself in a foul and narrow lane. It was entirely unlighted, and Harry made his way with difficulty along, stumbling into holes in the pavement, and over heaps of rubbish of ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... voice, and then her step upon the stair. She heard the sound of Harry Cresswell's buggy, and a scurrying at the front door. On came the dressmaker's footsteps—then her door was unceremoniously ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... beheld a bright light streaming from all the windows. My astonishment was still further increased by hearing the voices of persons within: they were silent, and I then distinguished the voice, I thought, of a priest, engaged in the performance of a service. From a turret, some way on, a stone stair led down into the chapel; and as the key of the door was attached to the one I held in my hand, I determined at once to solve the mystery. Hastening on, I opened the door in the turret, and descended noiselessly. I reached the bottom of the steps, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... English boats glided towards the little bridle path that led up to the rear of the city. Wolfe's Cove is not a path steep as a stair up the face of a rock, as the most of the schoolbooks teach; it is a little weed-grown, stony gully, easy to climb, but slant and narrow, where I have walked many a night to drink from the spring near ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and ascending the stair-case, he was ushered into the front room of the first floor, and there came forward to meet him a man rather below the middle height, but of a symmetrical and imposing mien. His face was grave, not to say sad; ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... you deal in small ones," said his friend; as, awakened from his reveries and calculations, Ramsay led the way up a little back-stair to the first storey, occupied by his ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... Soannen; for he had renounced family and the world, and for the sake of "accepted truth" which was false to him, endured helpless, solitary insignificance under the espionage of suspicious and unfriendly monks. The traveller remembered his tomb, that tomb in a small chapel near the foot of the stair-case in the famous Abbey far-away, and sighing, hoped that in his mournful exile, the Bishop may have realised that "they also serve who only stand ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... my departure I met on the stair A new patient, whom they were handling with care, A victim perhaps of some terrible wreck— 'Twas a Squash who had ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... abode there, attending to the business connected with the sale of fish from his home in Galilee. There Jesus might be found in the guest-chamber on the roof of the oriental house which was reached by an outside stair. Nicodemus had no invitation, such as Andrew and John had to Jesus' abode on the Jordan, but he had an equal welcome to John's home, whither he had come on a like errand, though with different views of Jesus, to learn of Him. He sees ...
— A Life of St. John for the Young • George Ludington Weed
... these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... intended to break the lock. She wondered whether she might safely risk the trip down-stairs after the scissors, or whether it would be better to take the box with her and hide it in her room. Before she had made up her mind, she heard a slow, heavy tread upon the stair. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller's call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 'Neath the starred and leafy sky; For ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... in this vein but beyond the door, whence Hart had just appeared, leading by a stair-way of cupids to the entrance to the palace, arose the sound of many voices ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... Peterkin, if you could only hear And answer us, one little word from little lonely Peterkin To take and comfort father, he is sitting in his chair In the library: he's listening for your footstep on the stair And your patter down the passage, he can only think of Peterkin: Come back, come back to father, for to-day he'd let us tear His newest book to make a ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... from his Seat, he began to pace up and down, while I ran up to Nan. But scarce had I reached the Stair-head, when we both heard a heavy Fall in the Chamber below. We cried, "Sure, that is Father!" and ran down quicker than we had run up. He was just rising as we entered, his Foot having caught in a long Coil of Gold Lace, which Anne, in her disorderly ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Balaam's ass, the helm of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped Prince Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's wax-work, whose motto was, "A rag to pay, and in you go," were given in a hall whose approach was by an outside stair. On the Muckle Friday, the fair for which children storing their pocket-money would accumulate sevenpence halfpenny in less than six months, the square was crammed with gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and monstrosities who were gifted with second-sight. There was ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... the crowd, long familiar with the way, rushed through the intricacies where so many feet of monks had trod before them, and where, perhaps, many a deed that shunned the day had been perpetrated. At length a spiral stair brought us to a large gallery, where our entrance was marked with a shout of congratulation; and tumbling over the benches and each other, we at length took our seats in the highest part, which, in both the club and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... mysterious temptation which he felt he wanted power to combat, but accident or fate prevented him. In a state of ghastly excitement he had, on the memorable night of Sir Wynston's murder, proceeded, as had afterwards appeared in evidence, by the back stair to the baronet's chamber; he had softly stolen into it, and gone to the bedside, with the weapon in his hand. He drew his breath for the decisive stroke, which was to bereave the (supposedly) sleeping man of life, and when stretching his left ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... toiling up yon weary stair, to get sic a glimpse as that, of the brave auld town?" said honest P. Gregg. "I'm jest thinkin' I must enlarge the stair, or diminish mysel, before I can venture through that narrow pass again. An', my dear leddy, I can do neither the one nor the other. ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... stair foot, for there was no other place to go to, we came to an understanding, the two gentlemen and Brand the keeper standing, and I seated on the step with my boy lying against me. I could not trust him out of my sight, nor, indeed, was he fit to ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dismount before the door, give the horse to the sleepy Barala ostler, and let himself into the bar. She heard him clink among the glasses and bottles. She heard his foot upon the three-step stair, and on the landing. It did not pass by. It stopped at the locked door of the room ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... mourners here for their dear ones who have died fighting for us; they will need your comfort. A Villeroy could not die better than doing his duty. It was not by man's hand that he fell, but God took him. His foot slipped in running down the stair from the wall, and he must assuredly have died without a pang. Take the priest with you; I will see to the wounded here. Father Gregory," he went on, raising his voice, "Dame Margaret has more need of you at the present moment than have these brave fellows. A ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... by an Italian man in the street, almost under the elevated station, and, as Flossie leaned over the stair railing to look down, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... the imperfections of a state of grace to glory. But this turning and turning still, displeases some much. They say it makes them giddy; but I say, Nothing like this to make a man steady. A straight stair is like the ladder that leads to the gallows. They are turning stairs that lead to the heavenly mansion. Stay not at their foot; but go up them, and up them, and up them, till you ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... without on the stair; the old man gave a relieved sigh, but when the door opened it was only ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... room; but every stair, as she descended to the kitchen, could bear witness that she did not quit the subject; and for an hour afterwards, she reasoned against the obstinacy and folly of man, and the chorus in the kitchen moralized, in conformity ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... growing and blooming in soil moistened by the melting snow. The notch in the summit of the mountains through which we had to pass was four miles distant from this point. The trail leading up was of a circular form, like a winding stair, turning to the left, and the entire distance was completely covered with snow, or more properly ice crystals as coarse as shelled corn, which made the road-bed so hard that a wheel or an animal's foot scarcely made an ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... be Peter Riney back from Skeighan with the range. Once he heard the birr of his father's voice in the lobby and his mother speaking in shrill protest, and then—oh, horror!—his father came up the stair. Would he come into the garret? John, lying on his left side, felt his quickened heart thud against the boards, and he could not take his big frighted eyes from the bottom of the door. But the heavy step passed and went into another room. John's open mouth was dry, and his shirt was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... tolerable auberge in any other place between this and Noli, which was at the distance of forty miles. We accordingly landed, and were conducted to the poste, which our gondeliere assured us was the best auberge in the whole Riviera of Genoa. We ascended by a dark, narrow, steep stair, into a kind of public room, with a long table and benches, so dirty and miserable, that it would disgrace the worst hedge ale-house in England. Not a soul appeared to receive us. This is a ceremony one must not expect to meet with in France; far less in Italy. Our patron going into the kitchen, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... if a crowd in the dog-days is pleasant, poor Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree. You could hardly move on the stair. Mrs. Sternhold broke in the banisters, and nearly fell through. There was such a noise and chatter you could not hear the singing of the Miss Gashleighs, which was no great loss. Lady Bungay could hardly get to her carriage, being entangled with Colonel ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the remoter regions were about. Some dry joke, or some act of benevolence, according to circumstances, was sure to be the result. As he was one day poking through the passages, he suddenly encountered an enormously big, fat servant-woman, engaged in cleaning a stair. She was steaming with perspiration. Eyeing her curiously for a moment, "Ho, ho!" he cried (his usual introductory exclamation), "do you bake the bread?" The woman, staring in astonishment, and, fortunately for her own self-complacency, not understanding the point of the strange question, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... apology and took his candle. On the top stair of the first flight he caught his foot in a loose piece of carpet, and stumbled, dropping the candlestick, which broke off at the base. In silence, Mrs. Benn fetched another, and handed it to him with an air of resignation, then, "You'll be sure and ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... was gone too far to hear or to understand; and, resuming her course, she hurried on, her head bowed. A few minutes' walking brought her to the foot of the stone steps that, in two parallel flights, led up to the low-browed door of her house. There, as she set her foot on the lowest stair, and wearily began the ascent, a man advanced out of the darkness and touched her sleeve. For an instant she thought it the man, and she caught her breath and stepped back. But his first word ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... pretence, Quartered in old armorial sort, Remains of rude magnificence. Nor wholly yet had time defaced Thy lordly gallery fair; Nor yet the stony cord unbraced, Whose twisted knots, with roses laced, Adorn thy ruined stair. Still rises unimpaired below, The courtyard's graceful portico; Above its cornice, row and row Of fair hewn facets richly show Their pointed diamond form, Though there but houseless cattle go To shield them from the storm. And, shuddering, still may we explore, Where oft whilom were captives pent, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... up the narrow stair-well in Servian, changing in a moment to German. He made a ludicrous figure, as he held his revolver at arm's length, craning his neck into the passage, and howling until he was red in the face. He paused to listen, then renewed his cries, while Armitage, with his back against the rack ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... Whig government, is a fact established by overwhelming evidence. In the course of the subsequent investigation before the Scots Parliament, letters were produced from Sir John Dalrymple, then Master of Stair, one of the secretaries of state in attendance upon the court, which too clearly indicate the intentions of William. In one of these, dated 1st December 1694,—a month, be it observed, before the amnesty expired—and addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... afternoon," she said, "and I was lying here, eyes wide open, seeming to feel the bed sway like the ship, I fell to counting the ticking of the stair-clock below, and thinking how each second was recording the eternity of my love for you. And as I lay a-listening and thinking, came one by the window singing 'John O'Bail', and I heard voices in the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... receptacle of stolen goods. There was a look of sober respectability about its dinginess that might have appertained to a suburban doctor with a large family and a small practice. An old oil cloth, whole, but with its pattern half washed off, covered the narrow hall—an old stair-carpet of originally good quality, but now thread-bare in places, covered the steps. This was all that could be seen from the open door by any chance caller. But upstairs all ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... fighting babies. An' maybe, if I went back, maybe I wouldn't have the nerve to leave her; I can't do it," he muttered, "I don't dare go back." But still he did not stir, but stood motionless, with one hand trembling on the stair-rail and the other clenched beside him, and so fought it on alone in the silence of the ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... accustomed to the restraints and comparative poverty of her northern kingdom, and able to surround herself with the splendour she loved out of her French dowry, rode out in all her bravery up the Canongate, where every outside stair and high window would be crowded with spectators, and through the turreted and battlemented gate to the grim fortress on the crown of the hill, making everything splendid with the glitter of her cortege and her own smiles and unrivalled charm. Sadder spectacles that ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... for the cresting of some large piece of furniture, or may be adapted to fill screens or partitions, stair newels, and balusters, or it may be used as a cornice decoration in the manner suggested by No. 26, where the pierced work can be backed by a hollow cornice which it ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... slidewalk as it glided past the Tower building and ran up the broad marble stair. At the huge main portal, Tom stopped and looked back over the Academy grounds. All around him lay the evidence of mankind's progress. It was the year 2353, when Earthman had long since colonized the inner planets, Mars and Venus, and the three large satellites, Moon of ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... his generous intent; but he is in for it; and he climbs the stair, sidles uneasily into the chamber where she sits at her work, stealing a swift, inquiring look into that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... magnificent attire, Bare-headed, breathless, and besprent with mire, With sense of wrong and outrage desperate, Strode on and thundered at the palace gate: Bushed through the court-yard, thrusting in his rage To right and left each seneschal and page, And hurried up the broad and sounding stair, His white face ghastly in the torches' glare. From hall to hall he passed with breathless speed: Voices and cries he heard, but did not heed, Until at last he reached the banquet-room, Blazing with light, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... him, he replied, 'For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We ought to be careful indeed in what we say. Our master cannot be attained to, just in the same way as the heavens cannot be gone up to by the steps of a stair. Were our master in the position of the prince of a State, or the chief of a Family, we should find verified the description which has been given of a sage's rule:— He would plant the people, and forthwith they would be established; he would lead them on, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... of broken rhythm which seemed always to die away short of fulfillment. A haunting thing of mystery and glamour, such mystery and glamour as had irradiated his long and wonderful night. He heard the door open and then her light footsteps on the stair outside. Hot-eyed and disheveled, he rose, staggering a little at first as ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected scene at the stair-head, two hours before. There he had helped a slim young femme de chambre support the Princess to her room, that royal lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and American high-balls—which, he knew, was ever an impossible combination. She had collapsed at the head ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... are so very difficult of kindling; but, when once kindled in sufficient quantity, they make a fire which is very durable. There are even some of them which, to common observation, seem to be altogether incombustible. I have of this kind a specimen from a stratum at Stair, which shall be ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... made the day's journey very wearisome, but the prospect of seeing the wonderful valley made all hardships of little consequence. Quite a large party were waiting to mount their donkeys and mules when we arrived. One of the attendants, a man about as thin as a stair rod, asked me if I was the lady who had ordered a strong horse; I being the stoutest of the party, he readily arrived at that conclusion, so my steed was promptly produced. But I knew enough of horses and riding to see at a glance that he was a failure, with his low withers and high haunches, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... children who insisted upon "seeing the baby's feet?" How should you like to have a dreadful pain under your apron, and have everybody call you "a little cross thing," when you couldn't speak to tell what was the matter with you? How should you like to crawl to the top stair, (just to look about a little,) and pitch heels over head from the top to ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... moulding above the central light in each triplet. The bays below are lighted by a similar series of larger windows of simpler construction, the moulding of the sides being carried over the lancet points in unbroken continuity. In the north-east corner there is a short hexagonal stair turret, but the opposite corner is simply supported by ordinary buttresses. The walls are made up of rubble and flints, with ashlar dressing, as is supposed to have been the case throughout the original church, where, however, the flints ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... say," replied Franz, taking up his candle and leading the way out into the hail and down the winding stair. They crossed the lower corridor, mounted another staircase and entered a large, handsomely furnished room, half studio, half library. The wall was covered with pictures and sketches, several easels stood piled ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... the Home convinced me that the regulations of the house, the work of the sisters, and the devotion to duty that characterize the mother-houses in Germany rule also in this home in the New World. The imposing entrance hall with the great stair-way, the floor and stairs of white marble, the wide halls and spacious reception-rooms and offices seemed at first almost incongruous surroundings for the modest active deaconesses, some of whom ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... one corner a broken stair, they clambered up to a gap in the east wall; and as they reached it, heard the sound of a horse's feet. Looking down .the road, they saw a gig approaching with two men. It had reached a part not so steep, and was coming ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... in the passage above, a subdued whistle, and her son Jim came clattering down the stair. He glanced at his mother, a slight pucker between his handsome brows. She returned the look with one of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... fire lay black and dead. The shrilling wind, ladened with snow, wrenched at the shutters. The room was bitter. He must get up to bed ... warm blankets. A chill touched him with an icy breath. It overtook him midway on the stair, and he clung to the railing, appalled at its violence in his fragile being. He got, finally, to his room, to the edge of his bed, where he sat waiting for the assault to subside. He wanted Rudolph, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shaken hands with Mr. Lanley and had kissed Mathilde, who, do what she would, couldn't help choking a little. All this time Adelaide stood on the stairs, very erect, with one hand on the stair-rail and one on the wall, not only her eyes, but her whole face, radiating an uplifted peace. So angelic and majestic did she seem that Mathilde, looking up at her, would hardly have been surprised if she had floated out into space from her ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... a dim light on the grass, like a glowworm, and then Arndt saw the elfin mound open again; but this time the palace looked like a dim, gloomy staircase. On the top stair stood the little Hill-man, holding the glowworm lamp, and making many low bows to his new master. Arndt glanced rather fearfully down the staircase; but then he thought of Reutha, and his love for her made him grow bold. He took upon himself a lordly air, and bade his little ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... that the magical tone vibrates on the ear like music. It was De Quincey, who held us entranced until darkness gathered around us, then bade us farewell, his kind words lingering on the air, as, with a flickering candle in his hand, he flitted up the winding stair, and vanished away. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... in the sheepskin that lay at the foot of his bed, and of being carried in Diccon Bowman's arms down the silent darkness of the winding stair-way, with the great black giant shadows swaying and flickering upon the stone wall as the dull flame of the lamp swayed and flickered in the cold breathing of the ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... who constructed this piece of work, unfastens the door in the wall and opens it for him, so that he has to use no strength or violence to force it; then, one stepping before the other, they descend by a winding-stair to a vaulted apartment where John used to do his work, when it pleased him to labour at anything. "Sire," he says, "of all the men God ever made, no one but us two has ever been where we are now. And you shall see presently how convenient the place ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... allowed the privilege of living in the basement. As soon as he was informed his gold, silver and jewelry were found, amounting to one hundred and seventy pounds sterling, he was so exasperated for the moment that he seized his gun and rushed to the stair steps with the determination to kill Cornwallis, but his wife quickly followed and intercepted him, thus preventing the most deplorable consequences—the loss of his own life, and perhaps that of his family. But the prudent advice of his wife, "Heaven's last, ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... the doughty little knight of the Good Turn, and several nurses watched him amusedly from the foot of the broad stair.... ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... of the window the moment that she had barred the kitchen door, and knew that he would be within the house. She could hear him knock at the parlour door, and then enter the parlour. But he did not stay there a moment. Then she heard him at the foot of the stair, and with a low voice he called to her by her name. "Linda, are you there?" But, of course, she did not answer him. It might be that he would fancy that she was not within the house and would retreat. He would hardly intrude into their bedrooms; but it might be that ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... opened, the steel landing stair snaked out, and the hefty Plekhanov stepped down, closely followed by Chessman. The others brought up the rear, Watson, Roberts, Stevens, Hawkins and Cogswell. They had hardly formed a compact group at the foot of the spacecraft than the ranks of the natives parted ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a matter of course that the defender of original sin should reject the doctrine of perfectibility. "When man attains the highest point of civilisation," wrote Chateaubriand in the vein of Rousseau, "he is on the lowest stair of morality; if he is free, he is rude; by civilising his manners, he forges himself chains. His heart profits at the expense of his head, his head at the expense of his heart." And, apart from considerations of Christian doctrine, the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... extended thousands of Yojanas on all sides. Indeed, O blessed one, it was equipt with many walls made of pure gold and decked with jewels and gems. There were many fine tanks of water furnished with flights of stair-cases made of pure crystal, and many rivers of clear and transparent water. He saw also many trees with diverse species of birds perching on them. That perpetuator of Bhrigu's race behold the gate of that region ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a moment as though she permitted the intelligence to assemble all the further facts that it entailed. Then she turned away and walked swiftly toward the well of the stair. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... are then," he cried the next moment, seizing Drysdale by the arm, as a rush of men came through the passage into the quadrangle, shouting and tumbling along, and making in small groups for the different stair-cases. The Dean and two of the tutors followed, and the porter bearing a lantern. There was no time to be lost; so Tom, after one more struggle to pull Drysdale up and hurry him off, gave it up, and leaving him to his fate, ran across to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... pocket holes. Their slippers, to match their dresses, had heels even higher and more unnatural than our own.... With bows and courtesies, and by the tips of their fingers, the ladies were led up the high stone steps to the wide hall, ... and then up the stair case with its heavy carved balustrade to the panelled rooms above.... Then, the last touches put to the heads (too loftily piled with cushions, puffs, curls, and lappets, to admit of being covered ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... immediately pushed from land. Ben had scarcely adjusted his oars, when the gleam of a lantern was seen moving towards the bank. A shout was heard at a little distance, and, the next moment, a person rushed with breathless haste to the stair-head. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it, but remembered I know thou hast been there, Hast seen the stately dwellings of the dead Rise in the twilight air, And crossed the shadowy bridge the spirits tread, And climbed the golden stair! ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... amazement, Ben skipped in through the hall and up the stair as fast as his wooden leg would allow him. He reached the office door. "Miss Margaret," he gasped, "Barney's at the door with a sick man. Wants a bed ready. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... Greville in trouble, I went to an evening party at Count le Moyne's. I was never there before, or only to call on the countess, and at that time talked a few minutes with the count. They have been here hardly more than a month. When I arrived there was a great crush in the hall and on the stair. As I waited to get rid of my wraps the count came through the crowd and passed me. He had, I suppose, been belated at the Foreign Office. He seemed to be in haste and went behind a screen and into a room on the side of the hall. A little later the music up-stairs ceased. I heard ...
— A Diplomatic Adventure • S. Weir Mitchell
... about him, he descended a winding stair and walked to where, in the centre of the garden, reposed his buried hope. No one was by to witness the breaking down of his pride. He knelt, and swift tears fell upon the earth ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... remain in absolute silence, motionless, tense, where he was on the stair, and to trust to the chance that the woman did not look up. But Miss Baylis neither looked up nor down: she reached a landing, turned along a corridor with decision, and marched forward. A moment later Spargo heard a sharp ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... to the Great Hall, which is decorated with paintings by the hand of a famous artist in his day—Verrio—celebrated by Pope for his proficiency in ceiling-painting. The effect of the hall is singularly good, with its grand stair and triple arches opening to the principal rooms. The sub-hall, behind, is embellished by a graceful fountain, with the story of Diana and Actaeon, and the abundance of water at Chatsworth is sufficient for it to be constantly ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... moment the rest of the roof fell in, hiding the tower in spouts and veils of flame. Here they might not stay if they would live. Lifting her mistress in her strong arms, as she was wont to do when she was little, Emlyn found the head of the stair, so that when the wind blew the smoke aside for an instant, those below saw that both had vanished, as they thought withered in ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Stair was the best bred man in Europe. "I shall soon put that to the test," said the king, and asking Lord Stair to take an airing with him, as soon as the door of the coach was opened he bade him pass and go in, the other bowed and ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... went on telling me things without end to drive me mad." That was in March. In August she writes, actually under siege: "Here I am quite alone in C. Square ... no carriage to watch for, no rap at the door ... and alas! no chance of hearing your step upon the stair.... Whilst I was regretting all this, suddenly, the knock did come, to my utter astonishment. I ran to the stair, and in a moment heard Sheridan's voice. I do not know why, but I took a horror of seeing him, and hurried Sally ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... parable of the clock on the stair that gave up ticking altogether because it began to calculate how many thousands of seconds there are in the year, and that twice that number of times it would have to wag backwards and forwards. The lesson that it learned ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... diversified with moss and lichen, it stood with one wall to the street in the angle of the Doctor's property. It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and patterns; the hand-rail of the stair was carved in countrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over the legendary history of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that sounded on the stair? Was that his knock I heard upon the door? I grow so tired I almost cease to care, And yet I would that ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... this island could be held, in case the French should discover its position; but the excellent Sergeant, though your father, and as good a man in his duties as ever wielded a spontoon, is not the great Lord Stair, or even the Duke of Marlborough. I'll not deny the Sergeant's merits in his particular sphere; though I cannot exaggerate qualities, however excellent, into those of men who may be in some trifling degree his superiors. Sergeant Dunham has ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... to take her in his arms and carry her up the stairway—it seemed the thing most worth doing in all the world—but he could only lean against the desk and see them go slowly stair by stair ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... retorted with a little flutter of a laugh. "My French heel caught on the stair; it was torn ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... to be cut dead. It produces the same sort of feeling as is experienced when one treads on nothing where one imagined a stair to be. In the present instance the pang was mitigated to a certain extent—not largely—by the fact that Phyllis looked at me. She did not move her head, and I could not have declared positively that she moved her eyes; but nevertheless she certainly looked at me. It was something. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... staircase, with a faded stair-carpet upon it. A door was partly open into a room on the right, but still there was nothing visible that looked ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... present time only a few of my papers have been asked to stay. The rest have gone the downward tread of your stair carpet and have passed into the night. My desk has become a kind of mausoleum of such as have come home to die, and when I raise its lid a silence falls on me as on one who ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... hasten back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch of a recumbent pine; then, scramble along the fallen trunk to a ledge barely wide enough for footing. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down the stair; and in the Italian parlor he said good-by ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... and moved him to the billiard table. Then Goodall sent to the barber shop for a hair clipper, and proceeded to operate in the following manner: first he clipped off one side of Finnegan's beard and moustache, and after that removed his long curls on one side, being careful to leave a stair pattern all up the side of his head. He concluded operations by removing the fringes upon one side of his buckskin shirt. Next morning Finnegan sobered up and when he saw himself in the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... could hardly detect the necessary interstices made by its lines of juncture with the floor. Malicorne had provided for everything: a ring and a couple of hinges which had been bought for the purpose, were affixed to the trap-door; and a small circular stair-case, packed in sections, had been bought ready made by the industrious Malicorne, who had paid two thousand francs for it. It was higher than what was required, but the carpenter reduced the number ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the Marquesan paepae-hae, or dwelling platform. The paepae is an oblong terrace built without cement of black volcanic stone, from twenty to fifty feet in length, raised from four to eight feet from the earth, and accessible by a broad stair. Along the back of this, and coming to about half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a covered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant in its bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lucid stair Came hovering to our sainted sires Now, in the twilight, glare The ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... erect little figure up the stair, which consisted of about a dozen steps, filling the entrance from wall to wall, a width of some twelve feet. Between it and the outer door there was but room for the door of the kitchen on the one ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... three days passed away. That third evening I was sitting within my bolted doors—you asleep on your pillow by my side—when a step came up the stair, and I knew it must be for me; for ours were the topmost rooms. Some one knocked; I held my very breath. But some one spoke, and I knew it was the good Doctor Voss. Then I crept to ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... would be this thing he could not see; that trailed a dream song in his heart and kept him groping toward the far lips of the singer. Yes, they would marry. She had refused to see him twice since the night he had wept on the stair, leaving her. But the memories of that night had adjusted themselves. He had seen love in the eyes of Rachel as he held her hand. She had laughed love to him, given him for an instant the vision of beauty-lighted ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... still large and surprisingly parallel to the mountain wall. Deep soft moss covered whatever was beneath, and sometimes this would yield and let the foot measure a crevice. Perilous pitfalls; but we clambered unharmed. The moss, so rich, deep, soft, and earthily fragrant, was a springy stair-carpet of a steep stairway. And sometimes when the carpet slipped and the state of heels over head seemed imminent, we held to the baluster-trees, as one after wassail clings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... mid-afternoon there is a breezy voice in the house, and a step comes up the stair which is not Grandon's. A light tap, and the partly ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas |
