"Stair" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... heart, sae smooth his speech, His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair. And shall I see his face again? And shall I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... call to-day on the Sultan. His Highness met us at the bottom of the stair, and as he shook hands a brass band, which he got at Bombay, blared forth 'God save the Queen'! This was excessively ridiculous, but I maintained sufficient official gravity. After coffee and sherbet we came away, and the wretched band now struck up 'The British Grenadier,' ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... unconscious of the fearful change, Delirious with the promised joy, he speeds Back to Mirandola. His flying steed By starlight gains the gate. Tumultuous sounds Of music, dance, and jocund revelry Ring from the walls of the illumined palace. With faltering steps he mounts the stair; and now Behold him in the crowded nuptial hall, Unrecognized! Amid the reeling guests Pietro sat. An angel at his side— An angel, whom he knows, and who to him Even in his dreams, seemed ne'er so beautiful. A single glance revealed what once was his— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... cottage, within which all was hushed and still; the sounds of an active household were not heard. They ascended the little stair, and Beverly pushed gently open the door of an apartment and motioned to Philip to enter. He paused at first, for as he stood on the threshold a low sob reached ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... with a freezing spectacle-gleam that fixed me to the stair-carpet—my right foot two steps above the left. "You have just come in, I suppose. Have ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the other hand, her views as to what was most to be desired in life were simply the result of the atmosphere in which she had lived; and she confessed to him that the most beautiful thing she had ever seen was the arrivals at a Mansion House ball—the coloured stair-cloth, the beautiful ladies, the brilliant uniforms. Her knowledge of politics was entirely derived from the cartoons of the comic journals in the shop windows; and she had any quantity of vague and vulgar prejudices about Catholics, Radicals, and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... 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 out ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... What's all the rumpus?" says the Baronet, outside at the stair-top. The sounds of the voices are pleasant and welcome to him, and he courts their banishment of the past his old fiancee had dragged from its sepulchre. Bury it again and forget it! "What's all the noise about? What's all the chatterboxing?" For the good ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with me. So the King took him into the armoury, and he chose for himself a sword almost as long as he was tall. But he threw away the scabbard, saying: This would only be in the way: and now, I am prepared. And then the King led him away, and up a winding stair. ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... way to the foot of the steeper slopes, above the tree line, hesitated, eyed me, then started up a narrow little passage that led up between two cliffs. A rock-slide cluttered this granite stair. Stable footholds were impossible for the loose rocks slipped and slid, rolled from beneath the sheep's feet and bounded down ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... lute and he forewent her, till he came to the house of easance, and behold, therein was a door and a stairway. When Tuhfeh saw this, her reason fled; but Iblis cheered her with discourse. Then he descended the stair and she followed him to the bottom thereof, where she found a passage and they fared on therein, till they came to a horse standing, Teady saddled and bridled and accoutred. Quoth Iblis, '[Mount], in the ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... light crunch of wheels on the red kunker drive outside and a switch past the bunch of sword ferns that grew beside the door. The muffled crescendo of steps on the stair and the sound of an inquiry penetrated from beyond the portiere, and without further preliminary Duff Lindsay came into ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... great cellar, which served as a warehouse, and extended under the whole house. He made his way through the boxes and bales to the darkest corner of the great cellar. Here he pulled up a flag and showed another narrow stair, at the bottom of which a torch was burning. Bidding Lionel descend he followed him, lowered the flag behind him, and then led the way along a narrow passage, at the end of which was a door. Opening it Lionel ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... wife whom he had sworn to love always. For all that she was beautiful, possessed of ample fortune, married to the man of her choice and, by reason of her youth, full of the joy of life, Cicily Hamilton was a very wretched woman, as she strolled slowly down the broad, winding stair, and entered the drawing-room, where ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... superintendents determined, nevertheless, to give him the commission for the work, but on condition that he should show the staircase;[5] whereupon Filippo, removing the morsel of wood which he had placed at the foot of the stair, showed it constructed as it is now seen, within one of the piers, and presenting the form of a hollow reed or blow-pipe, having a recess or groove on one side, with bars of bronze, by means of which the summit was gradually ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... town is large, and has a striking appearance, owing to the picturesque and varied forms of the houses and public buildings of which it is formed. From the summit of the great steeple, to which you are conducted by a stair of 353 steps, there is a magnificent view over the adjacent country to a great distance. It is for the most part green, owing to the immense quantity of land under pasturage, and clothed in every direction with extensive woods. At a considerable distance we were shewn the woods and heights ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... one hand on his chair, his blanched face strained, listening. Again! Is it a footstep or simply a delusion of the ear? He rises, pushes aside the curtains into the inner library, where the lamps have almost burnt away, creeps up the wooden stair, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the drawing-room to one of the gorgeous panels that decorated the wall, and touched a hidden spring. A door flew open, disclosing a stair heavily carpeted that led down to the huge vaulted foundations of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution. Now, if you demand my opinion and metaphysics of their natures, I confess them very shallow, most of them in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures; for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; between plants and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... added with great joy that it must be a light in the Passage-house; and so we found it; for in about ten minutes afterwards we landed, and, on reaching the house, learnt that a servant maid had been accidentally talking to some other person on the stair-case, near a window, with a candle in her hand, and that the light had appeared to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... cockcrow next morning Nick slipped out of his straw bed, into his clothes, and down the winding stair, while his parents were still asleep in the loft, and, sousing his head in the bucket at the well, began his work before the old town clock in the chapel tower ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... bureau looked out on to the vestibule and the big staircase. And full in sight of the window Mrs. Tailleur was sitting on a seat set under the stair. She had her hat on and carried a sunshade in her hand, for the day was fine and warm. She was waiting for somebody. And as she waited she amused herself by smiling at the little four-year-old son of the management who played in ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... gestures to drink and be happy too. I awoke my servant (always a work of difficulty), and with some trouble ejected the visitors, happily without setting the house on fire. I heard them toppling head over heels down the stair, which I afterwards had drawn up to prevent further intrusion, and in spite of their drunken orgies, was soon lulled to sleep again by the music ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... in the office below was the only disturbing sound. Out through the open office door a dull bar of yellow light streamed across the lower steps. Like a ghost she stole silently down, treading so softly not a stair creaked beneath her cautious footfalls. The next moment she had opened the door, and was alone in the ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... mean-looking houses, which seem to be toppling to their fall; and the pavement is strewn with garbage which is seldom cleared away. Many of the windows of the houses are broken; many of the doors hang ajar, for the floors are let out in flats, and there is a common stair for at least five and twenty families. It is a dreary-looking place, and the dwellers therein look as ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... wheat and selling plows, she sat brooding, her thin fingers playing a tattoo on her cheeks. She saw in Gopher Prairie a Georgian city hall: warm brick walls with white shutters, a fanlight, a wide hall and curving stair. She saw it the common home and inspiration not only of the town but of the country about. It should contain the court-room (she couldn't get herself to put in a jail), public library, a collection of excellent prints, rest-room and model kitchen for farmwives, theater, lecture ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... on the ruined stair now hastily retreated downwards; the watchers on the open place around ran to the side of the building where Johnny Darbyshire had thus disappeared, but had scarcely reached the next corner, when ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... they must have at least partially educated audiences. Give either of them Whitefield's auditory, and these effects become impossible. Here we come upon the inert masses, which cannot by any possibility be induced to ascend one single stair in any upward movement, but must be swayed this way or that way upon a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... language?" said the jeweller, giving him a good kick between two features that luckily were not made of glass. The apprentice tumbled over on to a stair in a way that induced him to discontinue his studies in the language of chests. The shepherd, accompanied by the good jeweller, carried all the baggage to the water-side without listening to the high eloquence of the speaking ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Will answer softly, 'It was known to Me.' God's alchemist, old Time, will merge to calm That bitter anguish; but there is no balm Save the sweet certitude that each long day Is one step in a stair That circles up to where ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words—"An ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the first mate, Mr. Singleton, who was on duty. He had been drinking. I asked him to call the captain, but he did not. He got his revolver, and we hurried down the forward companion. The body of the captain was lying at the foot of the steps, his head on the lowest stair. He had been killed like Mr. Vail. His cap had been placed ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Lord Stair cannot conceal his hatred of Mr. Law, and yet he has gained at least three millions ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Faucitt. The poor old man was wearing such an expression of surprise and dismay as he might have worn had somebody unexpectedly pulled the chair from under him. He was feeling the sick shock which comes to those who tread on a non-existent last stair. And Sally, catching sight of his face, uttered a sharp wordless exclamation as if she had seen a child fall down and hurt itself in the street. The next moment she had run round the table and was standing behind him with her arms round his neck. She spoke across ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... to the loft back of him that night, as they were going to bed, Joel turned around on the upper stair. "We'll play bull ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... a senile lunatic, and herself for a poltroon. She became defiant of peril, until the sound of a step on the stair beyond the door threw her back into alarm. But when the figure of Miss Ingate appeared in the doorway she was definitely reassured, to the point of disdain. All her facial expression ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... to the gates To welcome any other, Nay, not Lord Life, his brother; But still his hour awaits Each several guest to find Alone, yea, quite alone; Pacing with pensive mind The cloister's echoing stone, Or singing, unaware, At the turning of the stair Tis truth, though we forget, In Life's House enters none Who shall that seeker shun, Who shall not so be met. "Is this mine hour?" each saith. "So be it, gentle Death!" Each has his way to end, Encountering this friend. Griefs die ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... underground habitation, he suddenly found himself in darkness again. The explanation came to him at once, the entrance to the cellar had been blocked from the light. Yet he had heard no sound except the footsteps of people in the street above his head. He turned and faced the stair steps. As he did so, the light streamed down again; the obstruction had been removed, and that obstruction had not been the trap-door as Faversham had suspected, but merely the body of some inquisitive passer-by. He recognised ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... swung on his heel, and leaving his company behind as a guard, headed toward a stair which led upward from one side of the amphitheatre, and which was protected by a door of heavy, grilled metal work. The stairway seemed to be spiral, and was all enclosed. Kirby realized that it must lead ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... that I will," cried the little girl; "here, let us sit on this lowest stair; I don't think many people will be passing up now, and then I shall see mother when she ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... house is twenty-four feet square with a lean-to as kitchen. The dining and drawing-rooms are each twelve feet square, separated by sliding-doors; A——'s bedroom, the entrance-hall, and stair-case dividing the remainder of the house. Our front-door is not quite in the centre; but, thanks to the verandah, one does not perceive it. Above, looking due south, we have a bed-room, dressing-room, and large cupboard for our clothes. There are two other rooms at the ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... he had ance spoken to her on the subject, the company was announced at the hall door. The six ladies all came in a coach-and-six, and were as fine as princesses, but still wore their gowns of green. The gentleman was very polite, and showed them up the stair with a pair of wax candles in his hand. And so they all sat down to dinner, and conversation went on very pleasantly, till at length the husband, becoming ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... darkness—for the stair lights had been extinguished—staggered a woman; a woman whose pale face exhibited, despite the ravages of sorrow or illness, signs of quite unusual beauty. Her eyes were wide opened, and terror-stricken, the pupils contracted almost to vanishing point. She wore ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... could give the alarm, a terrible catastrophe would occur. He realized this, and made the supreme effort of his life to avert it. But fate was against him. In his mad haste to leap down the stair-way to give warning, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong to the floor of the lower deck, his temple, coming in contact with the railing, rendering him unconscious. Heaven was merciful to him that he did not realize what took place at ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... rocks lay crouched in the grass, like fossil monsters of some ancient world, and seemed to stare at him with still and angry brows. Upward still, to black terraces of lava, standing out hard and black against the grey cloud, gleaming like iron in the moonlight, stair above stair, like those over which Vathek and the Princess climbed up to the halls of Eblis. Over their crumbling steps, up through their cracks and crannies, out upon a dreary slope of broken stones, and then,— before he dives upward into the cloud ten ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... him a short veesit," Mrs. Blatherwick went on. "I cam hame but twa nichts ago. He's lodged wi' a dacent widow in Arthur Street, in a flat up a lang stane stair that gangs roun and roun till ye come there, and syne gangs past the door and up again. She taks in han' to luik efter his claes, and sees to the washin o' them, and does her best to hand him tidy; but Jeamie was aye that partic'lar aboot his appearance! And that's a guid thing, special in a ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... sent for Tula who would give the letter to no one,—not even to me. The guard divided their dinner with me while I waited; if they were doing work for their general I was doing work for mine and learned many things in that hour! At last Tula came walking down that great stair made from one garden to another where laurel trees grow, and with her walked a woman out of the sun. There is no other word, senor, for that woman! Truly she is of gold and rose; her mother's family were of old Spain and she is ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... making for the steeple,—the old soldier and his people; The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking stair; Just across the narrow river—O, so close it made me shiver!— Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... round of them all with candles, and Anthony refreshed his memory; they visited the little one in the chapel first, then the cupboard and portrait-door at the top of the corridor, the chamber over the fireplace in the hall, and lastly, in the wooden cellar-steps they lifted the edge of the fifth stair from the bottom, so that its front and the top of the stair below it turned on a hinge and dropped open, leaving a black space behind: this was the entrance to the passage that led beneath the garden to the garden-house on the far side of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... direction, Calton—his eyes now somewhat accustomed to the gloom—could discern a gaping black chasm, which he presumed was the stair alluded to. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... came a heavy step up the stair. He had but a moment in which to scramble back into the interior of the great stove, when the door opened and the two dealers entered, bringing burning candles with them ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... half included in the building, were completely circular within, and contained the winding stair of the mansion; and whoso ascended them, when the winter wind was blowing, seemed rising by a tornado to the clouds. Midway between the towers was a heavy stone porch, with a Gothic gateway, surmounted ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... upon a little recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality, and eager to shew himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the stair-case in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand, and conducted her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... cried, gaily, to her mother, as a porter with a trunk on his shoulder led the way up the spiral stairs. "It makes me think of the old song you used to sing me about the spidah and the fly, 'The way into my pahlah is up a winding stair.' Nobody but a circus acrobat could run up the whole flight without getting dizzy. It's a good thing we are only goin' ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Janet, "rise up when I bid you; and go to the sofa, and I'll go up the stair for ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... give us a true relation how he wheedled the people of the next world into the absurd ridiculous undertaking of building a Babel; how far that stupendous stair-case, which was in imagination to reach up to Heaven, was carried, before it was interrupted and the builders confounded; how their speech was alter'd, how many Tongues it was divided into, or whether they were divided at all; and how many subdivisions or dialects have been ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... thy barge for Whitehall Stair; Salute th' Exchequer Barons there, Then summon round thy civic chair To dinner Whigs and Tories— Bid Dukes and Earls thy hustings climb; But mark my work, Matthias Prime, Ere the tenth hour the scythe of Time Shall amputate, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... that he could scarcely speak, and as they mounted the stair he had to take firm hold of the railing; his happiness made him ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... Biltmore, for no reason in particular except that the entrance was at hand, and ascending the wide stair found a seat in an alcove. He was furiously aware that he had been snubbed; he was as hurt and angry as it was possible for him to be when in that condition. Nevertheless, he was stubbornly preoccupied with the necessity ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Tusher. I pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports (which I heard in Europe, and was then too young to understand), how this person, having left her family and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of the Pretender, betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George's ambassador, and nearly caused the prince's death there; how she came to England and married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favourite of King George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Berners and myself will run down to your rescue. But in order to make that practicable, you must always leave that lower stair door unfastened; and you may do it with perfect safety, as it leads nowhere but ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... have not always been broken with impunity. Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair, secretly engaged herself to Lord Rutherford, who was not acceptable to her parents, either on account of his political principles, or his want of fortune. The young couple broke a piece of gold together, and pledged their troth in the most solemn manner, the ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... long, winding rickety stair Cigarette approached her castle, which was very near the sky indeed. "I like the blue," said the chatelaine laconically, "and the pigeons fly close by my window." And through it, too, she might ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... The barrenness and uniformity did make it very easy to get lost, for even while they were talking, Joe was heard roaring to know where they were, nor would he stand still till they came up with him, but confused them and himself by running to meet them by some deluding stair. ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resemblance to the entrance of nothing at all, to borrow the memorable expression of the principal tenant, this Jondrette had said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the same time portress and stair-sweeper: "Mother So-and-So, if any one should chance to come and inquire for a Pole or an Italian, or even a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... transformed into ponies and the other half into drivers, and flying teams will go cavorting around to the tune of "Johnny, Get your Gun," and the "Jolly Brothers Gallop," as they are ground out of the music-boxes by little fingers that but just now toyed feebly with the balusters on the golden stair. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... pair of wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty but for some dull scarred pewter and scraps of salt meat. On the narrow stair that led above, a small, touselled form was sleeping—one of the cast boys at ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... connects England with the war. George sent a body of British and Hanoverian troops into the field to support Maria Theresa of Hungary. The troops were under the command of Lord Stair, the veteran soldier and diplomatist, whose brilliant career has been already described in this history. George himself joined Lord Stair and fought at the battle of Dettingen, where the French were completely defeated; one of the few creditable events of the war, so far as English ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... the homely old 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 was—tick one tick and never mind ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... old butler with the white-fringed head came at last to show him the way to his luxurious lodgings on the second floor of the mansion. With a touch of hospitality which carried Blount back to his one winter in the South, the hostess went with him as far as the stair-foot, and her "Good-night" was still ringing musically in his ears when the old negro lighted the candles in the guest-room, put another stick of wood on the small fire that was crackling and snapping cheerfully on the hearth, and bobbed and bowed his way to the door. Blount saw his last chance ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... to inform him that you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next. Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... just unsuccessfully attempted a descent upon Scotland. The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud for their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he resolved to set out and traverse France secretly. Agents, posted by the English ambassador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him, perhaps of murdering him. Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the post-mistress of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at Dunkerque, too late to bring even moral support to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the room, opposite the altar, was a sort of wide wooden stair, on which prisoners used to sit during service at the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... me is but a void; I have felt much, and want to feel no more; My soul is hungry for some poorer fare— Some earthly nectar, gold not unalloyed:— The little child that's happy to the core, Will leave his mother's lap, run down the stair, Play with the ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... heavy foot of her uncle Jonathan was heard upon the stair, and as he entered the room she bent the closer to her work. He glanced at the green fagots with a sneer, and looked askance at the bed and the white sheets, at the strip of carpet laid, like an island, on the great expanse of the stone floor, and at the broken glazing of the casement clumsily repaired ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from room to room of the palace; but, unless he wrapped himself up in a curtain, there was nothing for him to wear when he went out in the rain. At last he climbed up a turret-stair in the very oldest part of the castle, where he had never been before; and at the very top was a little round room, a kind of garret. The prince pushed in the door with some difficulty—not that it was locked, but the handle was rusty, and the wood had swollen ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... three hours late—it was afternoon when we arrived in Portland. Following the directions of my colored friend, I went up an extremely dirty stair into a very dirty office, found an innocent young man smoking a cigar. He did not know anything, you know, so sat grimly down to wait for the arrival of some one who did. Such a one soon appeared and took a comprehensive glance of the passenger ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... to listen!" and ran out and beckoned to the constable who stood on the steps below. He bade him first shut me up in one dungeon, seeing that I was an eavesdropper, and then return and thrust my child into another. But he thought better of it when we had come halfway down the winding-stair, and said he would excuse me this time, and that the constable might let me go, and only lock up my child very fast, and bring the key to him, seeing she was a stubborn person, as he had seen at the very first hearing which he ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... broom and a dirty tangled debris of scrub-cloths lay on the topmost stair, as if an aching slavey had not found the strength to remove them. They caught the heel of her shoe, pitching her forward so that she fell sharply against her own door. In the gloom she paused for a palpitating moment, her hands pressing her breast, listening; then ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... mother, who had both dressed hastily, came to the stair-head, holding a glimmering light over the darkness beneath. Behind them crowded their few scared domestics, and odd the whole scene looked, although, indeed, between keeping off the barking dogs and wondering ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... Besides, I want the drawing-room for my Dick. He has come back, and they'll be after him quite likely. He was seen, they say. So he must lie low till we've arranged the alibi, as they call it. Everybody has to have an alibi. And so my Dick'll have one, just to make sure. Mind your head against the stair." ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... uncommon wild last night, sir," he whispered in confidence to Osborne, as the latter mounted the stair. "He wanted to fight the 'ackney-coachman, sir. The Capting was obliged to bring him upstairs in his harms like a babby." A momentary smile flickered over Mr. Brush's features as he spoke; instantly, however, they relapsed into their usual unfathomable calm, as he flung open the drawing-room ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat half-way down the stair-case, holding Ursula March across her knees. The poor creature was insensible, or nearly so. She—we learnt—had been composed under the terrible discovery made when she returned to his room; and when all restorative means failed, the fact ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... curvature, thought he might look from the tower into-the port of Cadiz. The tower is riven, and it may be climbed along the edges of the crack. We got to the top of it; thence descended the curious Mediterranean Stair—a zigzag, mostly of steps down a steeply falling slope, amid palmetto brush, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... and left me. I was obliged to sit down on the stair—I trembled so. My own reply frightened me. I tried to find out why I had said Yes. I don't remember being conscious of meaning anything. It was as if somebody else had said Yes—not I. Perhaps I was provoked, and the word escaped me ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... "The secret stair," said he, "by which your fathers brought in their stolen women. Your Stronghold is honeycombed ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... this when in the dark I stumbled, and striking my legs against a stair I hurtled forward. I recovered almost immediately, but, in my frenzy of haste to make up for the instant lost, I stumbled a second time ere I was ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... mowers, on the amber air, A dark-green beech-wood rises, still and fair, A white path winding up it like a stair. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... heart, sae smooth his speech. His breath like caller air; His very foot has music in't As he comes up the stair— And will I see his face again? And will I hear him speak? I'm downright dizzy wi' the thought, In troth I'm ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... morning mist still lingered in the valleys and clung about the river banks as the Reverend Alan Stair, returning from his matutinal dip in the sea, swung up the lane and pushed open the door giving access from it to the Rectory grounds. The little wooden door, painted green and overhung with ivy, was never bolted. In the primitive Devon village of Crailing such ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... in the palace flare; The musicians played: The red guards slashed and sabred the stair, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... him, broad and muscular, climbing the gallows stair with his peaked cap, deathly white, and looking up at the sun as if he dreaded its eye. There was the muttering of prayers, the spasm of one spectator taken sick at the crisis, and the dull thump ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... on the north side now leads into a stone gallery, erected in 1891 in the place of a dilapidated wooden structure, which runs first westward to the angle between the tower and north transept, then along the west face of the transept until it reaches a door leading into the stair turret, which may be seen from the exterior. At the bottom of this is a door opening into the transept. This stair turret projects slightly into the transept. The lowest stage of the tower consists of four ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... sweet, so low, so exquisitely modulated, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... out the big centre china jar to the table on the stair-case, and have put my goddess in the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Venner, in the pursuit of his interesting project, arose and lighted a lamp. He wrapped himself in a dressing-gown and thrust his feet into a pair of cloth slippers. He stole carefully down the stair, and arrived safely at the door of Elsie's room. The young lady had taken the natural precaution to leave it fastened, carrying the key with her, no doubt,—unless, indeed, she had got out by the window, which was not far from the ground. Dick could get in at this window easily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... less and less marked; then it became a mere trace, with a footmark here and there; then it ceased altogether. He sang no more, but struck forth a path for himself, until it reached a mighty wall of rock, smooth and without break, stretching as far as the eye could see. "I will rear a stair against it; and, once this wall climbed, I shall be almost there," he said bravely; and worked. With his shuttle of imagination he dug out stones; but half of them would not fit, and half a month's work would roll down because those below were ill chosen. But the ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... faith beholds A golden stair, like that of old, whereon Fair spirits go and come; God's angels coming down on errands sweet, Our angels ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... at the door—ages ago. He looked hesitatingly around the room. Several students were scrutinizing him curiously, as though expecting something. Oh, yes—that recalled him. He must go—home. He hated to interrupt the lecture, but he must. He got up unsteadily, and started down the stair, groping his way uncertainly, as a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the stranger, "is whar we watches for the County Delegations when they come in to a meetin'." And with this remark, pointing with a stubby thumb up a well-worn stair, he departed before Stephen could thank him. Stephen paused under the awning, of which there were many shading the brick pavement, to regard the straggling line of stores and houses which surrounded and did homage to the yellow pile. The brick house in which Mr. Lincoln's office was had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as of shadowy shapes that passed and repassed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was not lifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostly hands that came toward me from between the spindles of ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there. She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his face—always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... and full of mirth, she was rewarded by the sound of a door creaking, and a stealthy footstep approaching the stair. She crushed back into her hiding-place. She could not help wondering even in the midst of her excitement how John could ever move so quietly. She held her breath as the owner of the soft footfall came into view. And then it returned in a little gasp of astonishment. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... engaged in his calculations when a quick eager step was heard on the stair, and Donald, his countenance glowing with health and ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... the circle of guests towards a door, looking for a weapon while he ran, but none could he find. King Pellam followed closely behind him, and so they ran from chamber to chamber, and up the narrow stair within the wall, until at the last Balin found that he was near the top of the tower, and thought that now he must surely be slain, for ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... your starry steep On golden stair to gods and storied men! Ascend! nor care where thy traducers creep. For what may well be said of prophets when A world that's wicked comes to call them good? Ascend and sing! As kings of thought who stood On stormy ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... approach of human beings. The crowd surges upward. The King vouchsafes a gracious glance, but from a very lofty elevation. All powerful, imperial, he makes one step towards them with a smile of infinite condescension. Could Charles V, could Maria Theresa appear thus at the head of this ascending stair, who would not bow their heads before ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... the interview, we were seated in readiness, much perplexed to know whether he would take any notice of our invitation. We had waited three quarters of an hour, when we heard a heavy lumbering step ascending the stair. The door was thrown open to its widest extent, and in the centre of the door-way stood a short stout-built man, and the very broadest I ever beheld—staring at us with bold inquiring eyes. His salutation was something to ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... cleared off by man, gigantic grasses usurp the clearances. None of the sylvan vegetation can stand the annual grass-burnings except a species of Bauhinia, and occasionally a large tree which sends out new wood below the burned places. The parrots build thereon, and the men make a stair up 150 feet by tying climbing plants (called Binayoba) around, at about four feet distance, as steps: near the confluence of the Luamo, men build huts on this same species of tree for safety against ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... "The French are thrifty. The owner of this house had splendor below, and he has kept provision for it above, almost concealed by the narrowness of the door and stair. But we'll find a broader stair on the other side, and then we'll descend through the ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... let me don some artificial bloom, And turn the lamps down low, and make a gloom That spreads from library to hall and stair; Thus do I look my best—but ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... (whatever sense that was) in which it had overtaken his fellow-delegates, was after all averted. He did not disappear into silence as they had. On the contrary, the kindly old woman who had rushed from the front window and bent over him as he lay unconscious on the stair-head, saw him presently open his eyes and stir, and heard the faint, bewildered murmur of "to hell with the Pope," which is what Orangemen say mechanically when they come to, as others may say, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... husband had lost, running to the head of the stairs and talking to the cook, the day passed away pretty well till four o'clock; when, as before, Mrs Handycock screamed, the cook screamed, the parrot screamed, and Mr Handycock rapped at the door, and was let in—but not by me. He ascended the stair swith [sic] three bounds, and coming into the parlour, cried, "Well, Nancy, my love, how are you?" Then stooping over her, "Give me a kiss, old girl. I'm as hungry as a hunter. Mr Simple, how do you do? I hope you have ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... no further, but he thought more deeply still. All the way from the Teknik to the house where he lodged he was thinking. As he climbed the stair to his attic room ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... want to speak to me about?" she asked coolly, not turning. And, to her own surprise, she brought her other foot up on the stair. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... 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 are said to have been squared. In the reign of Edward III, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... your bridges, Pioneers! Upon the ridges Widen, smooth the rocky stair,— They that follow far behind Coming after us, will find Surer, easier footing there; Heart to heart, and hand with hand, From the dawn to dusk of day, Work away! Scouts upon the mountain's peak,— Ye that see the Promised ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... rubbish. We find a dead Snail-shell among the stones. Is it inhabited by the Resin-bee or not? The outside tells us nothing. The Anthidium's work comes at the bottom of the spiral, a long way from the mouth; and, though this is wide open, the eye cannot travel far enough along the winding stair. I hold up the doubtful shell to the light. If it is completely transparent, I know that it is empty and I put it back to serve for future nests. If the second whorl is opaque, the spiral contains something. What does it contain? ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 were busy in the hospital ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... three of us stole up the uncarpeted attic stair. It was unknown territory to us, having been forbidden from the first by Mrs. Handsomebody, and all we had ever seen from the hall below was a cramped passage, guarded by three closed doors. Time and time again we had been tempted to explore it, but there was a sinister aloofness about ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... those reports (which I heard in Europe and was then too young to understand), how this person, having LEFT HER FAMILY and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of the Pretender betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George's Ambassador, and nearly caused the Prince's death there; how she came to England and married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favorite of King George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a Dean, and then ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... she's fit to see you," she said when I spoke of her mother. And on the instant, Ina Vandeman's clear, high voice called down the stair, ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... the orchestra ceased. The lights were turned low in the body of the house. The curtain went up. As it did so a cold draught drew from regions behind the stage, laden with that indefinable odour of gas, glue, humanity, flagged stair and alleyways, paint, canvas, carpentry, and underground places the sun never penetrates, which haunts the working part of every theatre. Poppy smiled as she snuffed it, with a queer mingling of enjoyment and repulsion. For as is the smell of ocean to the seafarer, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... arrests and confiscations so multiplied, that the courts found a difficulty in getting through the immense increase of business thus occasioned. It was sufficient for an informer to say that he suspected any person of concealing money in his house, and immediately a search-warrant was granted. Lord Stair, the English ambassador, said, that it was now impossible to doubt of the sincerity of Law's conversion to the Catholic religion; he had established the inquisition, after having given abundant evidence of his faith in transubstantiation, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... moment the two men were in the stuffy atmosphere of the unventilated loft. Beneath them they heard Mrs. Shorter dragging the commode back to its accustomed place, and then the sound of her footsteps descending the stair. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... incessant toil, he cursed it wherever it might be, and unceremoniously swept the bones, which the document asked him not to disturb, into a corner of the tomb, in order to ascertain whether there was not, perhaps, some stair beneath them. ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... yards square and the ceiling was very low. It was barely furnished as an office, but evidently Mr. Parker's business was not of a nature to detain him here. There was a second door to be unlocked; and beyond it appeared a flight of narrow stairs—at some time the servant's stair of the partially demolished house which had occupied that site in former days. Relocking this door in turn, Mr. Parker mounted the stair and presently found himself in ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... is heard. The old stair creaks, and Serafino's head appears above the railing. We look up, aroused from our enchantment. The afternoon lights are slanting across the Campagna. It is time to go. I have overpaid the waiter. He honestly offers to rectify it. Isabel laughs, seeing that I am ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... for that he had not tasted food since he parted from his father. So he said in himself, 'Surely, the like of this palace will not lack of victual,' and leaving the horse there, went in quest of somewhat to eat. Presently, he came to a stair and descending it, found himself in a court paved with white marble and alabaster, that shone in the light of the moon. He marvelled at the place and the goodliness of its fashion, but heard no sound and saw no living soul and stood in perplexity, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... attendance, so in her absence her roomers "made hay," as David termed it, cooking their provender and illicitly performing laundry work in the bathtub. Still, there must always be "on guard" duty, for Mrs. Tupps was a stealthy stalker. One saw her not, but now and then there was a faint rustle on the stair. David's eyes and ears, trained to keenness, were patient and vigilant, so he was generally chosen as sentinel, and he acquired new caution, adroitness, and a quietness ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... "two thousands" sat. Then "nine hundreds" were not far from the front, so that it was not far that that frightened girl, dressed all in black, and heavily veiled, had to walk, who answered to this call. Mr. A—— met her, helped her up the stair upon the stage, took from her her ticket, and read, "Jerusha Stillingfleet, of Yellow Springs, who, at her death, as it seems, transferred this ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... a dismal silence in the room as Alice Worthington glided out into the great hall. Standing on the lowest stair, she turned, a desolate and pathetic figure, with the golden hair rippling over the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... best thoughts I had while looking at the dull blood-stain and blocked-up secret stair of Holyrood, at the ruins of Loch Leven castle, and afterward at Abbotsford, where the picture of Queen Mary's head, as it lay on the pillow when severed from the block, hung opposite to a fine caricature ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... there beyond it, a drawn scimitar in his hand, stood a tall Moor on guard. Inez spoke a word to him, whereon he saluted with his scimitar and let them pass across the landing to a turret stair that lay beyond, which they descended. At its foot was another door, whereon she knocked four times. Bolts shot back, keys turned, and it was opened by a black porter, beyond whom stood a second Moor, also with drawn sword. They ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... ports, that no suspicious person should enter or leave the kingdom, and then put his wits to task to prove the falsity of the whole neatly-wrought tale. Two of those concerned in the murder of the princes were still alive,—Sir James Tirrel and John Dighton. Sir James claimed to have stood at the stair-foot, while Dighton and another did the murder, smothering the princes in their bed. To this they both testified, though the king, for reasons unexplained, did not ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
