"Ground-floor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and on the farther side stood the house,—a long, two-storeyed house with level tiers of windows stretching to the right and the left, and a bowed tower in the middle. Through one of the windows in the ground-floor Wogan saw the spark of a lamp, and about that window a fan of yellow light was spread ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... went to an entertainment at the house of Pepita. The cross which had stood at the door was now placed in a large saloon on the ground-floor, in which there is a piano, and Pepita presented us with a simple and poetic spectacle, one that I had seen when a child, but had ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... dealer in animals, birds, and snakes. He had a fancier's shop in Groome street, in the heart of the Bowery. This was on the ground-floor. His living abode was in the upper story of that house, and it was there that he kept the twenty-three cats whose necks were adorned with leather collars, and whose numbers had so recently been reduced to twenty-two. But it was not the fact that he possessed twenty-three cats with leather ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... stables. Natalie and her aunt heard Turlington dismiss the man for the night, an hour earlier than usual at least. His next proceeding was stranger still. Looking cautiously over the stairs, Natalie saw him lock all the doors on the ground-floor and take out the keys. When he went away, she heard him lock the front door behind him. Incredible as it seemed, there could be no doubt of the fact—the inmates of the house were imprisoned till he came back. ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... avenue, and it was something after eleven when he reached the house which he sought. The great cloud-bank in the north had then begun to expand and stretched its long misty arms eastward and westward over the heavens. The windows on the ground-floor were dark, but the sleeping apartments in the upper stories were lighted. In Edith's room the inside shutters were closed, but one of the windows was a little down at the top. And as he stood gazing with tremulous happiness up to that window, a stanza from Heine which he ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and partly polygonal; round as regards the outer wall of the main building and the inside and outside of the small Chapels in the Crypt, but polygonal in the interior walls of the main building in the Crypt; whereas on the ground-floor the main building and the Chapels are all polygonal.[3] An examination of the remains of the Eastern Arches, as seen above the last Norman piers eastward of the Choir, shows the direction of the lines distinctly, following as ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... one inconsiderable exception. His house stands on the public square of Gschaid where most of the larger dwellings are situated and its gray walls, white window-frames, and green shutters face the four linden-trees. On the ground-floor are the workshop, the workmen's room, a larger and a smaller sitting-room, the shop, and then the kitchen and pantry; the first story or, more properly, the attic-space, contains the "upper-room" which is also the "best room." In it there stand two beds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... my work. Ring at door in "Amelia Terrace." Maid appears—nice-looking girl, rather. "Have you"—I begin—when I see a boy at the ground-floor window. Don't object to boys, as a class, but this particular boy is pallid, with something round his throat, and an indescribable air about him of conscious deadliness, and pride in the unusual terror he inspires, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... to regret the musings she had hoped for; so out they went, after opening the window to give Charles what he called an airing, and he said, that in addition he should 'hirple about a little to explore the ground-floor ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bedroom,—the back room on the ground-floor, chosen because he could not walk up the stairs, but must have as little trouble in self-conveyance as possible,—staggeringly making his toilet for the meal to come, sitting patiently in front of his dressing-table by the light of a solitary candle. ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... had one small room allotted to him on the ground-floor, and Mr Slope had another. Into this latter Mr Harding was shown, and asked to sit down. Mr Slope was not yet there. The ex-warden stood up at the window looking into the garden, and could not help thinking how very short a time had passed since the whole of that house had been open to ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... party in Blake's large ground-floor rooms was kept up with a wild, reckless mirth, in keeping with the host's temper. Blake was on his mettle. He had asked every man with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, as if he wished to face ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... positive facts supplied by the excavations. For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do not even positively know whether there was any second story to Assyrian palaces at all. At all events, no traces of inside staircases have been found, and the upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor has regularly been either demolished or destroyed by fire. As to columns, it is impossible to ascertain how far they may have been used and in what way. Such as were used could have been, as a rule, only of wood—trunks of great trees ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... spanned by a pointed arch carrying the legend Stemmata Quid Faciunt. The modern exterior is, in fact, but a shell. All within dates from Henry VI.; and Mr. Robertson (but this is only a theory) would explain the sunken level of the ground-floor rooms by the action of earthworms, which have gradually lifted the surface of Dean's Yard outside. He contends the original level to be that of his office, which lies on the right of the adytum. A door on the left admits to two rooms occupied ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tender. Profoundly sad he could be: indeed his own head, in bronze, at the Accademia, might stand for melancholy and bitter world-knowledge; but seldom tender; yet the Madonna and Child in the circular bas-relief in this ground-floor room have something very nigh tenderness, and a greatness that none of the other Italian sculptors, however often they attempted this subject, ever reached. The head of Mary in this relief is, I think, one of the most beautiful things in Florence, none ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... annoyance of the wise magistrates, whose discussions were disturbed by the hammering that rang across the ill-paved square to the windows of the council-chamber; but, on the other hand, the idle hours of the watchmen under the arches of the ground-floor of the town-hall were sweetened by the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... promised well when Silver Shield was first exploited. Its promoters and agents showed high-grade ore, and reports of expert mining engineers promised abundance of it. All that was needed was development. "Come in now, on the ground-floor, and you'll be coining money in a year's time," said Mr. Breifogle, and to the number of seven the commissioned force at Fort Reynolds had "come." So long as they remained close to the spot all seemed going well. But Graham had been ordered ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... low white building, and had evidently been a private house at one time. The only change made had been in the shape and size of the windows on the ground-floor; and these were protected by green persiennes, fanned out like awnings, although the house was shaded by magnolia trees. There was no name over the open door, but the word "Antiquites" was painted in large black letters ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... by a church. From this Plaza run in straight lines eight streets, more or less broad, and these streets are crossed at right angles by others; all presenting the same uniformity as in Lima. The houses are roomy, surrounded by court-yards, and consist of a ground-floor and a story above, but very frequently of the ground-floor only. The walls are of brick, and the roofs are tiled. The churches are in very bad taste, with the exception of a few in the larger towns, which have a good appearance externally, and are richly decorated ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... everybody with proper respect. Some of the people, however, he knew of course better than others. Of these Mrs Wilson we know was one. But I believe I also mentioned that in the house in which she lived there were other poor people. In the room opposite to hers, on the ground-floor, lived and worked a shoemaker—a man who had neither wife nor child, nor, so far as people knew, any near relative at all. He was far from being in good health, and although he worked from morning to night, had a constant pain in his back, which was ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... answered, huskily, 'not a bit of it. My letter of credit, my room at the hotel, my dress suit, even my ticket to Coney Island, are at your disposal; but I think the partner of your childish joys ought first to be let in on the ground-floor of this enterprise, and informed how the deuce you manage to turn up in New York fifteen years subsequent to your obsequies. Is New York the hereafter for boys of your kind, or is this some freak ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... elevator at Pupp's had the characteristic of always coming up and never going down with passengers. It was locked into its closet with a solid door, and there was no bell to summon it, or any place to take it except on the ground-floor; but the stairs by which she could descend were abundant and stately; and on one landing there was the lithograph of one of the largest and ugliest hotels in New York; how ugly it was, she said she should never have known if she had not seen ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dilapidated cottage. Caroline had more than once passed it by under the impression that it was abandoned, or used perhaps for storing ice or wood; but to-day a thin curl of smoke stained the blue above it and through the open door of the one living-room that formed its ground-floor she saw a scarlet Navajo blanket, on which reposed a magnificent snowy Angora cat. A great green bough covered one of the walls, and a few chairs, a square pine table and a guitar flung against a pile of bright cushions, ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... beams, richly carved overhanging eaves, and soft-red tiled roofs, show little evidence of the ravages of time. The most famous of these houses was built, in the seventeenth century, by Jens Bang, an apothecary. The chemist's shop occupies the large ground-floor room, the windows of which have appropriate key-stones. On one is carved a man's head with swollen face, another with a lolling ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... allowed them by the queen, they returned to the house, where they found that Parmeno had entered on his office with zeal; for in a hall on the ground-floor they saw tables covered with the whitest of cloths, and beakers that shone like silver, and sprays of broom scattered everywhere. So, at the bidding of the queen, they washed their hands, and all took their places as marshalled by Parmeno. Dishes, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... incapable of opening my lips about anything else. My guardian said it was "hawk, hawk, hawking from morning till night." Not that I ever possessed a living falcon of any species whatever. My uncle resigned to me a corner of the outbuildings, on the ground-floor of which was a loose-box for my horse, and above it a room that I set apart for the falcons when they should arrive; but in spite of many promises from gamekeepers and naturalists and others, no birds ever came! ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... denote a range of granite, the rock which forms the ground-floor of the Sierra Leone peninsula and the Gold Coast, possibly varied by syenites and porphyries. It would probably contain, like the sea-subtending mountains of Midian, large veins of eminently metalliferous ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... reply, but entered a room on the ground-floor, in which the servants were now placing the wounded man upon a bed. As he did so, every one left the apartment, and the penitent remained alone with his confessor. The presence of Raoul's and De Guiche's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a spacious and cool apartment on the ground-floor, where a table was covered with all the varieties of a tropical breakfast, consisting of fried fish, curries, devilled poultry, salt meats, and every thing which could tend to stimulate ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... way into the ground-floor room. Here Mr Haredale struck a light, and kindled a pocket taper he had brought with him for the purpose. It was then, when the flame was full upon him, that the locksmith saw for the first time ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... won't give you land or rights to do nothing with, and it's quite likely the Charters people will file a notification that your workings are the obstacle. Still, they'd probably make you an offer first. If you let them in on the ground-floor—handed them a big slice of the valley or something of the kind—they'd let up on their timber rights. I'm not sure they could run good milling fir to ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... everything is at least more spacious than at home. The climate and the comparative cheapness of land give the colonists an aversion to height in their buildings, and even in the busiest parts of Melbourne most of the buildings have only two stories—i.e., a ground-floor and one above—and I can hardly think of any with more than three. The sums which banking companies pay for the erection of business premises are enormous. Thirty to sixty thousand pounds is the usual cost ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... loudly, with his knuckles and then kicked it with his boot. Vain hope! If a burglar with a sledge-hammer had driven the door in, he would have failed to tickle the drum of any ear there. The man evidently was aware of this, for, changing his plan, he went round to a back window on the ground-floor, and opened it at the top with some difficulty. Peeping in he gazed for some time intently, and then exclaimed under his breath, "Ha! it's open by good luck." Gathering a handful of gravel, he threw it into the ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the night; but early in the morning a neighbouring undertaker, with two other men, and Mr Grigg, the landlord, who lived on the ground-floor, carried away the light burden of the coffin which contained Meg's mother. She waited until all were gone, and then she locked the door carefully, and with baby in her arms, and Robin holding by her frock, she followed ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... officer,—and one trip of one wagon did the entire job,—for the emergency was one that called for action, and Major Miller was a man to meet it. The Forrests and the Posts, therefore, were now sole occupants of the south end of "Bedlam," and Lieutenant McLean's two rooms were on the ground-floor of the north end. The hall-ways ran entirely through from east to west, giving on the west side into court-yards separated from each other by a high board fence and completely enclosed by one of similar make. On ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... the side of the road leading from the West Moor colliery to Killingworth. The railway from the West Moor Pit crosses this road close by the east end of the cottage. The dwelling originally consisted of but one apartment on the ground-floor, with the garret over-head, to which access was obtained by means of a step-ladder. But with his own hands Stephenson built an oven, and in the course of time he added rooms to the cottage, until it became a comfortable four-roomed dwelling, in which ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... having a vacant lot on the east. The building was wholly detached, making it a comparatively easy matter to guard the prison securely with a small force and keep every door and window in full view from without. As an additional measure of safety, prisoners were not allowed on the ground-floor, except that in the daytime they were permitted to use the first floor of the middle section for a cook-room. The interior embraced nine large warehouse-rooms 105 x 45, with eight feet from each floor to ceiling, except the upper floor, which gave ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... young men were sitting in one of the most pleasant places in all the world in which to sit on a summer evening—in a ground-floor room looking out upon the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was in that short space of time, between six and seven, during which the Great Court is largely deserted. The athletes and the dawdlers have not yet returned from field and river; and Fellows and other ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... sight, but every one was thankful that no lives were lost. The scouts, both girls and boys, had worked so faithfully that all the silver and linen were saved, and the men had removed much of the best furniture in the ground-floor rooms. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to each course, rises two storeys above the ground-floor, and is particularly noticeable for a roof of four sides ending in a weather-vane, and broken here and there by tall, handsome chimneys, and oval windows. Perhaps this structure is the remains of some great mansion; but after examining ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... The ground-floor rooms were shuttered and bolted, but they knew that the police would probably force the front door. At the back there was no escape, only a narrow stable yard, where lanterns were already flashing. The roof only extended thirty yards either way and the police would ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... were then walking through, which, but for this, the occasional dim light of an oil-lamp hung in front of a shrine, the light from a wine or grocery shop, and the ruddy blaze of a charcoal-fire, where chestnuts were roasting for sale, would have been dark indeed. The ground-floor of very few Roman houses is ever occupied as a dwelling-place; it is given up to shops, stables, etc., the families residing, according to their wealth, on the lowest up to the highest stories; the light purses ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... day. At length, to conclude the inspection, lord Herbert and the master of the armoury held consultation with the head armourer, and the mighty accumulation of weapons of all sorts was passed under the most rigid scrutiny; many of them were sent to the forge, and others carried to the ground-floor ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... remark, that amongst the many suites of rooms which composed it, two occupied the two first stories of the main building; the first was raised some few steps above the ground-floor of the court, and was occupied by Valentine de Milan; and her husband, Louis of Orleans, generally occupied the second. Each of these suites of rooms consisted of a great hall, a chamber of state, a large chamber, a wardrobe, some closets, and a chapel. The ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1); which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital, yields nearly the above amount. This was a cheap dwelling. That a rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the theatre and returned to the Palace, under the expectation that I should speedily be wanted. Bonaparte soon returned home; and as intelligence of the affair had spread through Paris the grand salon on the ground-floor was filled with a crowd of functionaries, eager to read in the eye of their master what they were to think and say on the occasion. He did not keep them long in suspense. "This," exclaimed he vehemently, "is the work of the Jacobins: they have attempted my life.... There are neither nobles, priests, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... could be seen on the lower story, and the only entrance, which had the appearance of a gateway, with a portcullis, looked towards the mainland, to which access was obtained by a drawbridge, lowered and raised by two heavy chains. A broad veranda ran round the building above the ground-floor, on which the windows, unusually narrow, opened. From the part of the veranda above the entrance of the gate, projected the muzzles of two ship's guns, commanding the approach to the house on the opposite ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... lawyers once: but the laity have long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do not know that any of the principal legal firms have their chambers here. The offices of the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum Copper Mines occupy one set of the ground-floor chambers; the Registry of Patent Inventions and Union of Genius and Capital Company, another;—the only gentleman whose name figures here, and in the "Law List," is Mr. Campion, who wears mustachios, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... him from the carriage; only that "old chap," Don Jose, presenting a motionless, waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarfe did not know the Avellanos very well. They did not give balls, and Antonia never appeared at a ground-floor window, as some other young ladies used to do attended by elder women, to chat with the caballeros on horseback in the Calle. The stares of these creoles did not matter much; but what on earth had come to Mrs. Gould? She said, "Go on, Ignacio," and gave him a slow inclination of the head. He ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... narrow passage was cleared, and Miss Benson took Ruth into the sitting-room. There were only two sitting-rooms on the ground-floor, one behind the other. Out of the back room the kitchen opened, and for this reason the back parlour was used as the family sitting-room; or else, being, with its garden aspect, so much the pleasanter of the two, both Sally and Miss Benson would have appropriated it for Mr Benson's ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... kissed, as they wept, the remains of their gallant chief. This touching spectacle did not stop the coarse ribaldry of the Duke of Anjou and his favorites; and for two days the prince's remains were left in a ground-floor room, there exposed to the injurious action of the air and, to the gross insults of the courtiers. The Duke of Anjou at last consented to give up the body of Conde to the Duke of Longueville, his brother-in-law, who had it interred ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... they were following a sort of groom of the chambers, who, after looking into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, turned to Lord Sherbrooke, saying, in a ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... brickwork, set in a foundation of rock almost overhanging the river—on which, however, it turned its back; in design, an oblong of two storeys, with a square tower at each of the four corners, and the towers connected by a parapet of freestone. The windows along the front were regular, and those on the ground-floor less handsome than those of the upper floor, where (it appeared) were the staterooms. For—strangest feature of all— the main entrance was in this upper storey, with a dozen broad steps leading down to the unkempt carriage-way ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was ajar, and, far within, the music sounded so soft and delightful, one could really melt away in sweet thoughts from it. Yet it was like a piece of enchantment. And who lived there? Where was the actual entrance? The whole of the ground-floor was a row of shops, and there people could not ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... them. As for staircases, there seems to me to be one for each bedroom. I do nothing but lose my way—and the farmer says, drolling, that he must have sign-posts put up for me in every corner of the house from top to bottom. On the ground-floor, besides the usual domestic offices, we have the best parlor—a dark, airless, expensively furnished solitude, never invaded by anybody; the kitchen, and a kind of hall, with a fireplace as big as the drawing-room at our town lodgings. Here we live and take our meals; ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... with a great show of moral determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled. Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying at full length on the ground, smoking ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... almoner instead of the entertaining chat of my parrot, and to see the awkward bows and kneelings of my chaplains instead of the amusing capering of my monkeys. Add to this, that I am forced to transform into a chapel my elegant and tasty boudoir, on the ground-floor, where I have passed so many delicious tete-a-tetes. Alas! what a change! what a shocking fashion, that we are now ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... narrow, arched window, closed by two iron bars in the form of a cross, and looking on the square; the only opening which admits a small quantity of light and air to a little cell without a door, constructed on the ground-floor, in the thickness of the walls of the old house, and filled with a peace all the more profound, with a silence all the more gloomy, because a public place, the most populous and most noisy in Paris swarms and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor's carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... saw that I was in a typical "ground-floor front," with the usual cheap lace curtains, hideous wall paper, and slightly stuffy smell. At the back of the room, away from the ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... the palace Conde proceeded to the hall of the Council, which was on the ground-floor; and at the termination of the sitting ascended, as was his custom, to the apartments of the Queen-mother, where Louis, who had entered eagerly into the part that had been assigned to him, and who had just distributed with his own ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... was nothing left of all the old silver but a salad-bowl, which was used for the food of a horse called Brouska, that the exile had brought with him from Germany, and which was now allowed to roam in liberty through the rooms on the ground-floor. ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... Ferry Street, in which so many Italians live that one might think to find it under a softer sky and in a gentler air, and which I had always figured in a wide unlikeness to all other streets in Boston,—with houses stuccoed outside, and with gratings at their ground-floor windows; with mouldering archways between the buildings, and at the corners feeble lamps glimmering before pictures of the Madonna; with weather-beaten shutters flapping overhead, and many balconies from which hung the linen swathings of young infants, and love-making ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Mimosa flamed with lights from the top story to the ground-floor. The entrance gates stood wide-open. All along the drive, lamps flashed from unsuspected places beneath the yellow-flowering trees. One room only seemed shrouded in darkness and mystery, and around that one room was concentrated ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was lost, and they stumbled blindly among nondescript litter, which apparently represented the accumulation of centuries. But finally they turned a corner formed by a stack of rusty scrap iron, and found a long, low building before them. From a ground-floor window light streamed out upon the fragments of rubbish strewing the ground, from amid which sickly weeds uprose as if in defiance of nature's laws. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... this was the sudden closing of a door. Mr. Sax had taken refuge from me in one of the ground-floor rooms. I was so mortified, ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... every book, and no abatement made on any article." We ascend a broad staircase, which leads to "The Lounging Rooms" and to the first of a series of circular galleries, lighted from the lantern of the dome, which also lights the ground-floor. Hundreds, even thousands, of volumes are displayed on the shelves running round their walls. As we mount higher and higher, we find commoner books in shabbier bindings; but there is still the same order preserved, each book being numbered according to ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... required intellect, I should not be able to entertain them. But they said it was merely a game of chance, and required no mentality—so I agreed to make a trial of it. They appointed four in the afternoon for the sacrifice. As the place, they chose a ground-floor room with a large window in it. Then they went treacherously around and advertised the "sell" which they were going to play ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Conti, one of the secretaries of the Lord Duke Cosimo, he made many useful and beautiful improvements in his house at Florence; although it is true that in the two ground-floor windows, supported by knee-shaped brackets, which open out upon the street, Giuliano departed from his usual method, and so cut them up with projections, little brackets, and off-sets, that they inclined rather to the German manner than to the true and good manner ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... Nell Gwynne, besides her apartment at Whitehall, to which she was entitled by virtue of her office as lady of the bed-chamber to a most outraged queen. One of our friends remembers supping in the back room on the ground-floor of that very house, the said room being called "the Mirror Chamber," because the walls were panelled with looking-glass[C]. There are others who affirm that Nelly lodged at the opposite side of Pall Mall, because Evelyn gossips of her leaning ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... voice shrieked femininely up from the ground-floor, 'am I to send the soup to the bathroom or are you ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... had expected had happened. The office had been raided, and was now in the hands of the police. In answer to my inquiring look, the detective requested me to come in and speak to the inspector. In the ground-floor room three or four Italian comrades were gathered together. The one-eyed baker, Beppe, was addressing the others in a loud voice; as far as I could gather from the few words I caught, he was relating some prison experiences. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... about china-closets and pantries, and about a bedroom on the ground-floor,—for, like all other women of our days, she expects not to have strength enough to run upstairs oftener than once or twice a week; and my wife, who is a native genius in this line, and has planned in her time dozens of houses for acquaintances, wherein they are ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... one of the principal rooms on the ground-floor had been opened, and through the aperture he caught the glimpse of a moving light, which was suddenly obscured. As he was about to enter, the light again flashed out: he drew back just in time, carefully screened himself behind the shutter, and, through one of the chinks, observed what ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... surface-washing went briskly on. Our hosts assured us no hands could be found for this work, but the Headmaster made a descent upon Aberystwith and returned with the required number. A contractor was fitting the large coffee-rooms, the billiard-room and others, and the ground-floor corridor from end to end, with long narrow tables—plain deal boards on wooden trestles—for the accommodation of three hundred diners. Outside, the stables were converted into the school carpentery, and the coach-house into a gymnasium. Above all, a wooden school-room, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... out bright and inviting from the parlour on the ground-floor and from beneath the high gable of the hall as she came up the slope. Mistress Atherton, she knew, would be in one of these rooms if she had not already gone up stairs; and with an instinct of shyness still strong within her the girl slipped round to ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Clayhanger premises. The antique building had once been part of an old-fashioned pot-works, but that must have been in the eighteenth century. Kilns and chimneys of all ages, sizes, and tints rose behind it to prove that this part of the town was one of the old manufacturing quarters. The ground-floor of the building, entirely inaccessible from Clayhanger's yard, had a separate entrance of its own in an alley that branched off from Woodisun Bank, ran parallel to Wedgwood Street, and stopped abruptly at the back gate of a saddler's workshop. In the narrow entry you were like a creeping ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... unlike other people, the Maddens did not have their parlor on the ground-floor, opening off the front hall. Theron stood in the complete darkness of this hall, till Celia had lit one of several candles which were in their hand-sticks on a sort of sideboard next the hat-rack. She beckoned ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... wife, he took the precaution of having a careful survey made of the condition of the estate as it came into his hands. The manor-house had not been tenanted for thirty years. It had been a mansion of considerable pretension and two stories high; on the ground-floor the doors were all gone; on the upper floor the windows were open to the air; the chamber "vocata ladyes chambre" was roofless, the offices were too dilapidated to be worth repair. The enclosing walls and the moat had been utterly neglected. The offices had formerly been adapted for ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... kitchen was apt to be his resort. It was a long and low apartment on the ground-floor, and its wide fireplace, with stone settle beside the hooks and cranes for pots and kettles, had doubtless been as cheery a corner for the old monks to warm their toes after a foraging expedition as it was for Leo, who liked to ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... two, or a chest of drawers. No materials seemed to come amiss. A small craft laden with bricks was cast ashore, just as he was about to begin one of his rooms. This was therefore built with her cargo, as were several of the excrescences run out from the ground-floor, while rough stones, and especially wood cast on shore from wrecks, had been chiefly employed. Then his paint-brush was seldom idle; and, as he remarked, "variety is pleasant," he coloured differently every room, both inside and out, increasing thereby the gay appearance, ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... Saturday afternoon. Smiling and silent, she saw her luggage taken up to the bedroom; she paid the cabman; she beckoned her landlady into the parlour, which was on the ground-floor front. ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... we find our house very pretty, with a large garden adjoining, full of flowers, and rosebushes in the courtyard, but being all on the ground-floor, it is somewhat damp, and the weather, though beautiful, is so cool in the morning, that carpets, and I sometimes think even a soupcon of fire, would not be amiss. The former we shall soon procure, but there are neither chimneys nor grates, and I have no ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... together with those locked rooms on the ground-floor where the window-blinds are drawn down close, have been spared the general devastation. Mrs Pipchin has remained austere and stony during the proceedings, in her own room; or has occasionally looked in at the sale to see what the goods are fetching, and to bid for one particular ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... coloured in stripes of yellow, white, and red. Handsome carved doorways open from the street, and the doors are panelled in bold arabesque design, or enriched by metal studs and knockers of bronze. The windows on the ground-floor, which are usually small, are closed by a wooden or iron grating, and are placed too high in the wall for passengers to look through them, and frequently, even in the best houses, small recesses in the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... mingled with the clamor of their looms, died off in the distance, while we proceeded down the back staircase to the ground-floor. We at first fancied that this apparently surreptitious proceeding was perhaps traceable to the awe entertained by the bachelor brothers for their unruly tenants; but we were relieved from the sense of acting in a style bordering on poltroonery, by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... hides, broadswords, quivers, long bows, arrows, and spears—all supposed to be taken by Mr Terry Robsart(398) in the holy wars. But as none of' this regards the enclosed drawing, I will pass to that. The room on the ground-floor nearest to you is a bedchamber, hung with yellow paper and prints, framed in a new manner, invented by Lord Cardigan; that is, with black and white borders printed. Over this is Mr. Chute's bedchamber, hung with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the doors and said triumphantly, "Now I am alone here, in my own house." She now commenced an examination, admiring each thing individually. The ground-floor contained a bath-room, dining-room, three drawing-rooms, and two morning-rooms. The furniture of these rooms was handsome, though not new. It pleased Jeanne better than if it had been furnished expressly for her. All the rich antiques disdained by fashionable ladies, the marvelous pieces of ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... physiognomies of houses, as well as those of men. At Melun, D'Artagnan immediately found the presbytery—a charming house, plastered over red brick, with vines climbing along the gutters, and a cross, in carved stone, surmounting the ridge of the roof. From the ground-floor of this house came a noise, or rather a confusion of voices, like the chirping of young birds when the brood is just hatched under the down. One of these voices was spelling the alphabet distinctly. A voice, thick, yet pleasant, at ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hard work, I had only six or seven non-church-goers, who had been led to attend regularly there, besides about the same number who met on a week evening in the ground-floor of a house kindly granted for the purpose by a poor and industrious but ill-used Irishwoman. She supported her family by keeping a little shop, and selling coals. Her husband was a powerful man—a good worker, but a hard drinker; and, like too many others addicted to intemperance, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... hotel, where Phebe must be awaiting his return anxiously. In carrying out his project it would be well for him to have as little as possible to do with the inmates of the hotel, and he approached it cautiously. All the ground-floor was dark, except for a glimmer of light in a little room at the end of a long passage; but the windows of the salon on the floor above were lit up, and Jean Merle stepped quietly up the staircase unheard ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... the bill and the correspondence with the Supervising Architect that it is proposed to erect a two-story building, with fireproof vaults, heating and ventilating apparatus, and elevators, 40 by 80 feet in dimensions. The ground-floor area of 3,200 feet, to be devoted to the post-office, would give 400 square feet to each of the present employees. The second story and the basement, each having the same area, will be absolutely tenantless, unless ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... after that on which Commissary Passauf had made his noisy entrance into the burgomaster's parlour, Gedeon Ygene and Doctor Ox were talking in the laboratory which both occupied in common, on the ground-floor of the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the band being very full, and the performance on the ground-floor, as is the eating-room. I heard it perhaps better, because softer, than if I had been in the music-room. I was very glad of this circumstance. Nothing was played but Handel; but I was pleased to hear any music, so much had I persuaded myself I ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... his legs. He was beginning to feel at ease. He like this comely old man; he detected an abiding quality in his outlook and person. And he felt at home in these surroundings. There was an air of simplicity and refinement in that calm ground-floor chamber, with its subdued light filtering through windows that opened upon the courtyard, groined vaulting of noble proportions, stucco frieze stained with age to an ivory hue, and those other decorations which the Count, loyal to the traditions ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... pretty comfort which solitude requires for its solace. The furniture was old and heavy, and the hangings were dark in color. Lady Clavering when alone there—and she generally was alone—never entered the rooms on the ground-floor. Nor did she ever pass through the wilderness of a hall by which the front door was to be reached. Throughout more than half her days she never came down stairs at all; but when she did so, preparatory to being ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... stories to a windmill, besides the ground-floor. The first floor is pretty empty; the next is nearly full of millstones and machinery, and the one above is where the corn runs down from on ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... from the diet of Sapps Court to that of Cavendish Square; and later, of the Towers. So much so, that she would often walk about the room, for change; and had even gone cautiously on the garden-terrace, keeping near the house; which was possible, as Francis Quarles had lodged on a ground-floor when he gave his name to the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a game of cricket Walter by accident had received a blow on the knee from the cricket-ball bowled by Franklin, who was a tremendously hard and swift bowler. The hurt which this had caused was so severe that he was ordered by Dr Keith to sleep on the ground-floor in the cottage for a fortnight, in order to save him the exertion of running up and down so many stairs. The opportunity of this prolonged absence was maliciously seized by the tyrants of Number 10; ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... cemeteries. He could distinguish his friend's place from afar on account of the colossal plaster statue of the 'Vintaging Girl,' the once successful exhibit of the Salon, for which there had not been sufficient space in the narrow ground-floor studio. Thus it was rotting out in the open like so much rubbish shot from a cart, a lamentable spectacle, weather-bitten, riddled by the rain's big, grimy tears. The key was in the door, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... wrathful exclamation, the inspector turned towards the stairs, down which the sergeant was already clattering in hot haste, and made his way back to the ground-floor, followed, as before, by Thorndyke and me. On the doorstep we found the sergeant breathlessly interrogating a smartly-dressed youth, whom I had seen alight from a hansom as we entered the house, and who now stood with a notebook ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... listened. Shrill, hasty voices were disputing inside the house. The sound came through one of the windows of the ground-floor, which was level with the garden and covered throughout its length with red creepers and ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... not usually considered an attribute of log-cabins; but I can testify to the beauty of many that stood upon the banks of Blue,—among them the house of Bays. The main building consisted of two ground-floor rooms, each with a front door and a half-story room above. A clapboard-covered porch extended across the entire front of the house, which faced westward toward Blue. Back of the main building was ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... a lock of his precious powdered head, to some other than Ellen. Henry is preparing the sauce for his master's wild-ducks while the engines are squirting over his own little nest and brood. Lift these figures up but a story from the basement to the ground-floor, and the fun is gone. We may be en pleine tragedie. Ellen may breathe her last sigh in blank verse, calling down blessings upon James the profligate who deserts her. Henry is a hero, and epaulettes are on his shoulders. Atqui sciebat, &c., whatever tortures are in store for him, he will be at ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kindle. That was for her Grace's supper to be served. At five minutes to six another trumpet sounded, and M. Landet, the Queen's butler, hurried out with his white rod to take his place for the entrance of the dishes. Finally, through the ground-floor window at the foot of the Queen's stair, the man caught a glimpse of moving figures passing towards the hall. That would be her Grace going in state to her supper with her women; but, for the first time, without either priest to say grace or ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... proportion to its size. It has no wall nor any thing resembling fortification. The houses are square, built of sticks, clay, and grass, with flat roofs of the same materials. The rooms are all on the ground-floor, and are without any of furniture, except earthen jars, wooden bowls, and mats made grass, upon which the people sleep. He did not observe a houses, or any other buildings, constructed of stone. The palace of the king he ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off,—very indistinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground-floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wilmot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles II.'s time. It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... way to the steps and up them, into a tiny ground-floor bedroom, and through that into a passage. As he unbolted a side door, Henry said to him, "You know ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... room (used as a granary) is a cellar three steps below the ground-floor level, with a Norman shaft, introduced from some other part of the buildings, to strengthen ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... felt to be latent in the name of Gilberte, looked at me as though he knew that I was one of those whose natural unworthiness would for ever prevent them from penetrating into the mysteries of the life inside, which it was his duty to guard, and over which the ground-floor windows appeared conscious of being protectingly closed, with far less resemblance, between the nobly sweeping arches of their muslin curtains, to any other windows in the world than to Gilberte's glancing eyes. On other days we would go along ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... month of May, in the year 1884, three young men occupied the sets of rooms which opened on to the separate landings of the old stair. Each set consisted simply of a sitting-room and of a bedroom, while the two corresponding rooms upon the ground-floor were used, the one as a coal-cellar, and the other as the living-room of the servant, or gyp, Thomas Styles, whose duty it was to wait upon the three men above him. To right and to left was a line of lecture-rooms and of offices, so that the dwellers in the ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from the excited lover's mind as he saw the portly form of Madam Raffoni lingering in the darkened hallway of the ground-floor entrance. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... one rationally enough bore the number 9 and the other was numbered 37; but the fact that this last belonged to Porthill Street, a street well known in the neighbourhood, was proclaimed by an inscription placed above the ground-floor windows by whatever highly efficient authority is charged with the duty of keeping track of London's strayed houses. Why powers are not asked of Parliament (a short act would do) for compelling those edifices to return where they belong is one of the mysteries ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... a severe attack of fever, which kept him out of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to America:—"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... in Bloomsbury, in a house in Torrington Square. Rose was sitting alone in the ground-floor room that looked straight on to the pavement. Sitting with her hands before her waiting for Tanqueray to come to lunch. Tanqueray was up-stairs, two flights away, in his study, writing. She was afraid to go and tell him lunch was ready. She had gone up once that morning to ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... on the foot of this shoe, Meade had his head-quarters. I tied my horse at the gate, and entered the little square box of a house which enjoys that historical celebrity. It is scarcely more than a hut, having but two little rooms on the ground-floor, and I know not what narrow, low-roofed chambers above. Two small girls, with brown, German faces, were paring wormy apples under the porch; and a round-shouldered, bareheaded, and barefooted woman, also with a German face ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... he understood and realized that some one quite close at hand was stealthily cutting out the glass from one of the panes of a ground-floor window. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... out of the fly and told the man to carry in her box and dressing-case and then to wait. She opened the little gate, and as she did so, glancing up, she saw Franz Lippheim standing looking out at her from a ground-floor window. His gaze was stark in its astonishment. She returned it with a solemn smile. In another moment she had put the landlady aside with benign authority and was in the little sitting-room. "My Franz!" she exclaimed in German. "Thank God!" She threw her arms around his neck ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... at first to study the arrangements of houses and streets in Venice. Here I found that what had once been the palace of a noble, presented, first, a ground-floor about three feet above the medium level of the Adriatic, composed of a broad vestibule crossing through from front to rear, with the inferior apartments on each side; second, a floor of good apartments, with an open hall in the centre right over the vestibule—this hall adorned ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... the rooms in the house were on the ground-floor, but there were two attic bedrooms opening off a very large room in the roof which the former occupant had used as a granary. One of these Sophia occupied with a child; the other had been given to Eliza. That ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... appearances in these matters. He was so assiduous that it became customary in that winter of 1666 for those seeking the King at Whitehall to inquire whether he were above or below—"below" meaning Miss Stewart's apartments on the ground-floor of the palace, in which apartments his Majesty was a constant visitor. And since where the King goes the Court follows, and where the King smiles there the Court fawns, it resulted that this child now found herself queering it over a court that ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... demand for more room became pressing, the three stories of the main building were successively utilized, as well as a large storage-room in the yard. The ground-floor contained the surgeons' and steward's offices, store-rooms, etc., while the second and third formed two immense sick-wards. The first floor of the long wing before mentioned was occupied by the kitchen and ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... months of luxury. It was not a dirty home, but it was cluttered and hap-hazard. The old wooden chairs were worn with scouring, but littered with children's rags of clothing. The smell of boiling cabbage was in the air, for dinner-time was nigh. There were three rooms on the ground-floor and one of these was living-room and dining-room, the other the kitchen, and a small bedroom showed through an open door. For all its disorder it gave out a familiar odor of homeliness which ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... when his older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed to me that this petition ought to be presented, now—it would be widely and feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. So I sent it to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House, and he said he would present it. But he did not do it. I think he explained that when he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy, too sentimental—the House ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the rooms within are filled with light. When this is the case, the windows have friezes and cornices. But, when the building fronts the south, the interval is often very great, as in the case of the Villa Porro. The ground-floor windows are frequently set in tall arches, supported on deeply engaged pilasters as in the Villa Somma-Riva. The door is not large, and never entered by high steps, as it generally opens on a terrace of considerable height, or on a wide landing-place at the head of a flight of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... We descended to the ground-floor. In the main hall Alresca's housekeeper, evidently an old acquaintance, greeted Rosa with a curtsy, and she stopped to speak to the woman. I went on ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... splendid, conspicuous. Its door and half its front were painted a beautiful, a remarkable pea-green, while its door knob and door-knocker were of polished brass. Mrs. Downey's boarding-house knew nothing of concealment or disguise. Every evening, at the hour of seven, through its ground-floor window it offered to the world a scene of stupefying brilliance. The blinds were up, the curtains half-drawn, revealing the allurements of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... in the European fashion, but are small and insignificant; most of them have only a ground-floor or single story,—two stories are rarely met with. Neither are there any terraces and verandahs adorned with elegant trellis-work and flowers, as there are in other warm countries. Ugly little balconies hang from the walls, while clumsy wooden shutters ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... working their eight hours a day upon the repaving of Main Street. That same day—the 29th—five were dismissed from within its walls. Colonel Singelsby, as superintendent, had a little office on the ground-floor of the main building, opening out upon the street. At one o'clock, and just after the Refuge dinner had been served, he stood beside his table with five sealed envelopes spread out side by side upon it. Presently the five outgoing guests ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... along with me, and dressed myself as well as I could. And now, when I thus made my appearance, they did not, as they had the evening before, show me into the kitchen, but into the parlour, a room that seemed to be allotted for strangers, on the ground-floor. I was also now addressed by the most respectful term, "sir;" whereas the evening before I had been called only "master": by this latter appellation, I believe, it is usual to address only ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... surrotmded by a double stone wall, the two walls being about 30 ft. or 40 ft. apart. Between these, each in its own garden, stand the cells; low-built two-storied cottages, of two or three rooms on the ground-floor, lighted by a larger and a smaller window to the side, and provided with a doorway to the court, and one at the back, opposite to one in the outer wall, through which the monk may have conveyed the sweepings of his cell and the refuse of his garden to the "eremus'' beyond. By the side ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... had been spent in journeying to and from the nearest village, and obtaining the necessary services of doctor and cure. My master was smoking his porcelain pipe, as usual, but strangely silent. A faint circle of light came from the open ground-floor window of the cafe. The white road gleamed dimly, and beyond the hushed valley the hills loomed vague against a black, starlit sky. In the lighted room a few peasants from neighbouring farms drank their sour white wine and discussed the death ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... that no scratches had befallen it in the process of unpacking, gave orders to Mrs. Dixon to light yet another fire in the room, which struck exceedingly chill, and then left them for a final tour round the ground-floor, heaping on coals everywhere with a generous hand. On this point alone—the point of warmth—had Mr. Melrose's letters shown a disposition to part with money, in ordinary domestic way. "The odiousness of your English climate is only matched by the absurdity of your English grates," ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Court, Trinity College, Cambridge, by the river door. It is a small door, leading directly on to a narrow, winding stone staircase. For some reason, known possibly to the architect responsible for New Court (may his bones know no rest!), the ground-floor rooms have a door of their ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... circular hall, the ground-floor of the Tower, and went up the stairs to the room where Mrs. Margaret used to sit and darn in solitary state; there was the oriel window, which hanging over the moat, commanded a glorious view on three sides. Dymock walked ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... was up; he threatened, he implored, but she would shriek on; she slept alone on the ground-floor, and knew she must roar loudly to be heard above the drawing-rooms; she would not be quieted—she would shriek—and she did. What must he do? she'll raise the house!—Stop her mouth, stop her mouth, I say, can't you?—No, she's a powerful, stout, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper |
