"Basement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ruggles made his way to another part of the city, not far from the river, and met a man in a dingy basement room at the rear of a ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... seventy or eighty years. Outside, it was as bare of all ornament as a factory, and as gloomily heavy in effect as a prison. Inside, the deadly dreariness, the close, oppressive solitude of a deserted dwelling wearied the eye and weighed on the mind, from the roof to the basement. The house had been shut up since the time of the Trial. A lonely old couple, man and wife, had the keys and the charge of it. The man shook his head in silent and sorrowful disapproval of our intrusion when Mr. ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... old man's eyes a curious sight. In a long basement room were perhaps thirty students, each armed with a foil, and wearing a wire mask. A half dozen lay figures on springs stood in the center in a low row, and before these perspiring youths thrust and ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... god of the heathen was sealed, but in the wide precincts of the Serapeum no one thought of surrender or of prompt defeat. The basement of the building, on which stood the grandest temple ever erected by the Hellenes, presented a smooth and slightly scarped rampart of impregnable strength to the foe. A sloping way extended up over a handsomely-decorated incline, and from the middle ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sprinkler was flashing on the lawn, dripping over the concrete pavement and filling the air with a damp coolness. No one was visible and, leaving his hat and coat on a chair in an airy hall furnished in black wicker and flowery chintz hangings on buff walls, he descended to the basement dressing rooms. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... came crashing through the roof of a house at the end of the alley and burst in the basement, showering the street with slate and plaster. A second struck a chimney and plunged into the garden, followed by an avalanche of bricks, and another exploded with a deafening report ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the passage; then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in finding three packets of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that the cessation of gas-lighting had compelled everyone to provide themselves in this way, for there were a great many wherever I looked. With these I re-ascended, went into a little alcove ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... "the affair is new to you, but it is not new to me. I would rather sleep alone in the haunted house, than in a mansion filled from basement to garret, with the unsolved mystery of this place ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... whatever neighborhood was a potential location for almost anything. The way this one was laid out, there could possibly have been a laboratory in the back. A narrow walk led in that direction and, instead of climbing the front steps, King followed it around the corner and found a basement door at the foot of ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... of a feigned sickness and consequent admission to the hospital; that he (Glazier) should procure a piece of rope, eight or ten feet long, and then, "some dark, rainy night," the pair should "steal down into the basement"—the outer doors of which were "not locked until ten o'clock"—and await their opportunity. That, when they once reached the exterior of the building, and the sentry's back was turned, they should rush past him on either side, and, with the rope, trip him ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... fashion, and marched off to the hall, where Roy heard him speak in a cheering, authoritative voice to the new-comers, and then came out to march across to the stables, which were in the basement of the east side of the castle, with their entrance between the building and the court; but the gate-way that had opened into the court-yard had been partly closed up when that was turned into a flower-garden, and the archway ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... ca'aed down de cellar full er oishters. De tar'pins was in dis box—seben ob 'em. Spec' dat rapscallion crawled ober de fence?" And Chad picked up the basket with the remaining half dozen, and descended the basement steps on his way through the kitchen to the front door above. Before he reached the bottom step I ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... In most buildings the basement story is heaviest, and each succeeding story increases in lightness; in the Ducal palace this is reversed, making it unique amongst buildings. The outer walls rest upon the pillars of open colonnades, which have a more stumpy ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... thinks that if she, or her sister or daughter, were heroic enough to share the labors and sacrifices of a home missionary, she ought to have some better place to live in than an old grocery, a room over a saloon or the basement of a church. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 8, August, 1889 • Various
... rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost Dantesque. Facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus—small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!—rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. Raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer world; on ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... Dublin, so that she was quite competent on our return to take the management of the girls' school. We had eight girls in the house, and a few day-scholars from the town. Lessons used to go on in a room on the basement, where of course I was superintendent, and they learnt sewing in the afternoon. Julia was a very gentle mistress, and I was feeling very happy about my girls, when I found to my sorrow that Julia had an admirer, and I must make ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... true, however, that the little weaknesses which he had incurred, most probably during his military career, seemed to increase as his comforts diminished. He was actually a sort of journeyman Giovanni of the basement story. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Hawley. "Yet high as were rentals and taxes, no one had had the courage to try a press constructed on another plan. It meant, of course, a new set of difficulties to solve. I happen to know, for instance, that when the floor for the sub-basement of the Post was constructed, the beams were set close enough together to support a weight of four hundred pounds to each square foot of space. This was not entirely necessary but it was done as a precaution ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... basement first, broken in the middle by a broad arched passage, called the Porta Pompae, over which, on an elevated tribunal magnificently decorated with insignia and legionary standards, the consul sat in the place of honor. On both sides of the passage the basement ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... first to leave the table, going directly to the basement, where Alex Unpronounceable and the man who had got his alias from the works of P. G. Wodehouse were listening in on the telephone calls going in and out through the Team-center switch-board, and making recordings. For two hours, MacLeod remained with them. He heard Suzanne Maillard and some woman ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... important art treasures of the Palacepaintings, statues, tapestries, rare porcelains and armorie,had been transferred to Moscow during the month of September; and they were still in good order in the basement of the Imperial Palace there ten days after the capture of the Kremlin by Bolshevik troops. I can ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... to get to the church you had to pass over a gully with water at the bottom; a sort of trestle sidewalk on stilts was afterward constructed until the gully was filled in. At this date the Methodists had the most pretentious church in the city. The basement was used for Sunday School, prayer meetings and lectures. I must not forget the tea meetings which were given in those days. They were presided over by prominent ladies of the congregation—Mrs. Trounce, Mrs. Donald, Mrs. Bullen, ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... livery of its owner. In addition to all this grandeur, the balconies of the great houses lining the route of the processions display priceless heirlooms of embroideries, hanging before each window from basement to roof. If these ancient decorations could speak, what a strange story they might tell of the processions they have seen pass! In honour of the victories over the Moors; of the heroes of the New World; of the miserable murders of the Autos-da-fe; of the entry of the Rey ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... stone pillars surmounted by two balls; below these stand other pillars united by iron chains made of large links in the shape of crosses, stars, and polygons. In the space between the street and the house are pots of flowers. On the window-seats of the basement, hidden in the hollow, are more flowers and curtains. In the less frequented streets there are bird-cages on either side of the windows, boxes full of growing plants, clothes and linen hung out to dry. Indeed, innumerable articles of varied colors dangle and swing about, so that ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... elderly man said. "Johnson, you may go down into the basement and finish your work," he added to the porter who hurried away, probably feeling as though he ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... unkempt condition evidently rendering me a stranger in their eyes. Then one of them screamed: "Golly! Mass' Douw's ghost!" and the nimble cowards were on their feet and scampering like scared rabbits to the orchard, or into the basement of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... been opened by the Duke of Atholl in 1869. We paid twopence each for admission, and in addition to climbing the hill to reach the entrance to the monument we had to ascend a further 220 feet by means of a flight of 246 steps before we could reach the top. There were several rooms in the basement, in one of which we found an enthusiastic party of young ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... grow wiser and wiser) Midas had got to be so exceedingly unreasonable that he could scarcely bear to see or touch any object that was not gold. He made it his custom, therefore, to pass a large portion of every day in a dark and dreary apartment, underground, at the basement of the palace. It was here that he kept his wealth. To this dismal hole "for it was little better than a dungeon" Midas betook himself whenever he wanted to be particularly happy. Here, after carefully locking the door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... she cried gaily and blundered towards the basement stairs. Mademoiselle was standing averted at the head of them; Miriam glanced at her. Her face was ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... dear people, they did. In the basement. In the kitchen ware. All day long I was learning to sell clothespins and eggbeaters and wringers and cookie cutters and I wish you could see my hands! I wonder if they'd consider me up stage if I wore gloves? I'd better not ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the hinges. The first intimation which the survivors had of the attack was the crash of the door, and the screams of two of the negligent watchmen who had been seized and scalped in the hall. The whole basement floor was in the hands of the Indians, and De Catinat and his enemy the friar were cut off from the foot of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... might dive to the bottom and hope to escape notice, being mostly sheet herself. But it was Saturday, and all the linen had gone down. A long, slippery, inclined chute connected the room with the laundry in the basement two floors below. Steps were already audible in the passage. She heard Miss ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... I looked about me, and perceived that the cloister was a gallery, with wooden beams supporting the roof, running round three sides of the building, the basement being built in stone, at one part of which a hollowed tree shoved in an aperture formed a spout for a stream of clear cool water. The Igoumen, or superior, received us at the foot of the wooden staircase which ascended to the gallery. He was a sleek middle-aged man, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... round the building, having seven square pillars on each of its two sides, while at each end stood two columns having lotus-shaped capitals; a flight of ten or twelve steps between two walls of the same height as the basement, projected in front, and afforded access to the cella. The two columns of the facade were further apart than those at the opposite end of the building, and showed a glimpse of a richly decorated door, while a second door opened under the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... masters and servants Thackeray was never more severe than in this book; he is irritated by the marching in of the household brigade to family prayers, and he declares that we 'know no more of that race which inhabits the basement floor, than of the men and brethren of Timbuctoo, to whom some among us send missionaries'—a monstrous imputation. He constantly resumes the moralising attitude; and his pungent persiflage is poured out, as if from an apocalyptic vial, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... at Washington and Kearny, Big John, at Merchant street between Montgomery and Sansome, Marshall's Chop House, in the old Center Market, and Johnson's Oyster House, in a basement at Clay and Leidesdorff streets, were all noted places and much patronized, the latter laying the foundation of one of San Francisco's "First Families." Martin's was much patronized by the Old Comstock ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... "The same to you!" arose in response from basement and galleries, and the congregation passed out into a morning so soft, and light, and mild, that it seemed as if the seasons were out of joint, and that the New Year had been ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... conduct this burglar into his family's heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of that fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now, for prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith's shop was in the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so that always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no unhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing of her young-armed old husband's hammer; whose reverberations, muffled by passing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Henley's room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of notepaper, wrapped the key in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on which he wrote Henley's name. Then he put on his overcoat, descended the narrow stairs, and opened the front-door. The landlady heard him, and screamed from the basement to know if he ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... Colton said between subsiding ripples, "Father, please go down in the basement and look in the furnace and you'll find the baker with the cold roast left from dinner! Mr. Polk, you go along too, please, and you'll see some loose bricks between the joists right under this dining-room window, and right behind them is the bread-box which ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... type a blur before his eyes. He could almost see Isobel's old home in Montreal. It was on the steep, shaded road leading up to Mount Royal, where he had once watched a string of horses "tacking" with their two-wheeled carts of coal in their arduous journey to Sir George Allen's basement at the end of it. He remembered how that street had held a curious sort of fascination for him, with its massive stone walls, its old French homes, and that old atmosphere still clinging to it of the Montreal of a hundred years ago. ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... told us, "we found a French soldier in that house —or under it, rather. He had been there four weeks, hiding in the basement. He took some food with him or found some there; at any rate, he managed to live four weeks. He was blind, and nearly deaf, too, when we found out where he was and dug him ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... with weeping as she opened the kitchen door in the basement on hearing somebody give a gentle knock. Frau Laemke greeted her in a whisper; she had always sent the children so far, but they had come home the day before with such a confusing report, that her anxiety impelled her to come herself. ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... little woman, he passed over her harmless small-mindedness; knowing well that in the wide-built mansion of human nature there must be always a certain order of beings honourable, useful, and excellent in themselves, to form the basement-story. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... bag are here. Between eight and nine you may come to the trunk room in the basement and show me which of your possessions you wish carried to your room. ...
— A Little Miss Nobody - Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall • Amy Bell Marlowe
... Bill. "Mr. Key, meet Mr. Nelson, from Banfield. Now, Nelsy, beat it to the basement till we get through calling. You'll need a cigarette to fix you ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Madge, Mrs. Hampton, and Phyllis had all been bundled away to Ostend, in a sunken identity. The house in which the cause of disturbance had so long been unreasonably happy was closed. The servants had been dismissed, and a commissionaire and his wife lived in the basement. Paul had taken lodgings at a Fleet Street hostelry, and thither in the dead of night came Wilder and other night-birds, to the much disturbance of the porter at the grille. It chanced one night that Wilder came ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... very pretty Creole, about twenty years of age. We were regaled with wine and chocolate, and parted late in the evening, on very friendly terms. The governor's house is a miserable abode: it has but one story, and the basement is a barrack for the soldiers. The upper part, inhabited by the governor, was very scantily furnished: a few old chairs, a couple of tables, and the walls whitewashed and decorated with prints of the Virgin Mary and his excellency's patron saint. The ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... was. I suppose you will say I am inventing it when I tell you that it used to sit round a table, in the basement of an Italian restaurant, devising schemes for getting rid of people (especially people like Charles) en bloc; that it didn't provide the Italian restaurant- keeper with as much money as he thought he could do with; that the Italian restaurant-keeper came round to see us after dark; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... So far in the river, With many a light From window and casement, From garret to basement, She stood ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Minotaur but English, you might fancy that the creature still lived in this labyrinth, to nip you between his toothless gums—for the beast grows old—at some darker corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was his absence discovered until the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely "Bunner Sisters" in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would have been difficult for the uninitiated to guess the precise ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... market is a substantial brick edifice, newly built,—the county courthouse. It is used as a hospital, and we were told that the dead Guardsmen were lying in the basement. Colonel Eaton and myself dismounted, and entered a long, narrow room in which lay sixteen ghastly figures in open coffins of unpainted pine, ranged along the walls. All were shot to death except one. They seemed to have died easily, and many wore smiles upon their faces. Death had come ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... by open fires in the fireplace, as in old days. Heating the house makes the chimney necessary. This must be carefully arranged for in planning your house. Heating by stoves is the most common arrangement. In the large city or town, the furnace is used. This is merely a big stove in the cellar or basement, so planned that its heat is distributed through the house. By this means one big stove does the work of many little ones, and warms the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... curbstone and met the shock of the collision so vigorously that those who would have sent him headlong into the street were sent backward themselves, and came very near going head first down the stairs that led into a basement restaurant. ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... sent as proofs. He dare not trust them to the mails, but a faithful friend, though a poor man like himself, would come with a note from him, and he would be a trusty bearer. The friend had come but the morning of Abbot's arrival. He humbly rang at the basement door; sent up a note; and, recognizing Hollins's writing, she had gone down and questioned him. He sadly told her that the quartermaster was in great trouble. "His enemies had conspired against him;" his money accounts were involved, and there lay the great difficulty. Mr. Hollins would ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... his temerity appeared to him in its proper colours. He had been a space writer and Dorothy the private secretary of a Personage, when they met, in the dreary basement dining-room of a New York boarding-house, and speedily fell in love. Shortly afterward, when Harlan received a letter which contained a key, and announced that Mr. Judson's house, fully furnished, had been bequeathed to his nephew, they had light-heartedly ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... of a High School, the first institution of the kind, connected with the public schools, in the State of Ohio. A school of this character was started in June, 1846, and maintained in spite of fierce opposition. But there was no building to receive it, and its earlier years were spent in the basement of a church on Prospect street, the room being fitted up by Mr. Bradburn and rented by the city for ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... a loud knocking at the house door was heard by both, accompanied by a hurried ringing of the bell that echoed from attic to basement. The door was quickly opened, and after a few hasty words of converse in the hall, heavy ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... heightened in the daughter, Louise. She had been born in Chicago, in the first years of the Hitchcock fight. She remembered the time when the billiard-room chairs were quite the most noted possessions in the basement and three-story brick house on West Adams Street. She had followed the chairs in the course of the Hitchcock evolution until her aunt had insisted on her being sent east to the Beaumanor Park School. Two years ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of excellent character, and a devoted friend of the anti-slavery cause. The announcement of her name was the signal for much tumult, and the withdrawal for the time being of not less than one hundred and fifty clergymen, who, led by an eminent citizen, left that meeting and went down into the basement of the church and formed a new anti-slavery society, solely because a woman was permitted to serve on a committee. Mr. Johnson said that he had always had a profound belief in the triumph of the anti-slavery cause. So also did ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wearin' a pair o' shoes that looked to me mighty like those worn by the man that ambushed me. They didn't have any cap pieces across the toes. I'd noticed that even while he was shootin' at me. It struck me that it would be a good idea to look over his quarters in the basement. Shibo has one human weakness. He's a devotee of the moving pictures. Nearly every night he takes in a show on Curtis Street. The Chief lent me a man, an' last night we went through his room at the Paradox. We found there a flashlight, a bandanna handkerchief with holes cut in it for the ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... guarding the entrance to the churchyard, rose an immense pile of buildings, cumbrous and uncouth. These were built something in the fashion of an inverted pyramid; to wit, the smaller area occupying the basement, and the larger spreading out into the topmost story. As she turned the corner of this vast hive of habitation—for many families were located therein—a gay cavalier, sumptuously attired, swept round at the same moment. Man and maid stood still for one instant. With unpropitious ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Mr. S.'s economies were of a pretty close and rigid kind. By and by, when we apprentices were promoted from the basement to the ground floor and allowed to sit at the family table, along with the one journeyman, Harry H., the economies continued. Mrs. S. was a bride. She had attained to that distinction very recently, after waiting a good part of a lifetime for it, and she was the right ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... concealed in a portion of meat, which proposition was agreed upon and immediately carried into execution. A short time after the administering of this dose the spaniel sickened, and retired from his post to the kitchen, which was in the basement, and where an Irish domestic was engaged in washing; the dog appeared uneasy for a time, and suddenly, being taken with the involuntary muscular convulsions that so frequently follow the administration of this powerful drug, ran around the kitchen yelping and howling at a most terrible ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... glass." A sudden diminution in the atmospheric pressure is likely to be attended with an escape of ground air from the soil, and therefore to cause injury to health, especially among the occupants of basement rooms, unless the whole interior of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... thunder-swell Far flew the shot, far flew the shell Red Havoc on the blast! Then as the flashing cannon sowed Their iron crop brave Nelson rode, His bridle bit all foam, Up to the gunners, and said he: "Batter yon mansion down for me"— "Basement, and walls, and dome!" And better to sharpen those gunners' wits, "Five guineas," he cried, "for each shot that hits!"— That mansion was ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... blizzard was blowing furiously; the windows were frosted; the house was cheerless. He built the fires in the grates and sat about with his shoulders hunched up till the merry crackle of the coals put warmth into his veins. The furnace! He thought of it in time, and hurried to the basement to replenish the fires. They were out. He had forgotten them the night before. Bridget found him there later on, trying to start the ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Lieutenant Paine, you shall take charge of the second floor. Lieutenant Crawford, you will command in the basement. I have orders to hold this position, ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... school in Boston was in the basement of Park Street Church. Hermann Clarke, son of our minister, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, was a fellow pupil. Afterward I went to the Mayhew Grammar School, connected in my mind with a mild chastisement ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... with titled beings, as thick as blackberries, and, better still, men and women who had earned noble names for themselves with pencil, pen, or chisel. They paid visits in palaces where the horses lived in the basement, rich foreigners on the first floor, artists next, and princes ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... house the year before the war, upon their brother's advice, and going halves with him, paying a sum of forty-seven thousand francs, every thing included. It was a capital bargain; for they rented out the basement and the first story to the first grocer in Sauveterre. The sisters did not think they were imprudent in paying down ten thousand francs in cash, and in binding themselves to pay the rest in three yearly ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... fellow, living in a cottage close to the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new comer, under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment well for surface drainage had made his basement damp. Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes had not yet been connected with the well, and when he carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging remarks ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... And, indeed, after stumbling and wandering long, and doubting of the way, we did, at last, see the church towers and walls of Pont l'Eveque stand out against the clear sky of morning, a light mist girdling the basement of the walls. Had we been a smaller and swifter company, we should have arrived an hour before the first greyness shows the shapes of things. But now, alas! we no sooner saw the town than we heard the bells and trumpets calling the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. It went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and farther and farther away—then back, and all about the house again, and I thought it would never, never stop. But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago been blotted out ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the asylum was the nearer and most vigorous. Nor could they be stopt from climbing up the contiguous buildings, which being raised high under the idea of undisturbed peace, reach the basement of the Capitol. Here a doubt exists whether the fire was thrown upon the roofs by the storming party or the besieged, the latter being more generally supposed to have done it, to repulse those who were climbing up, and had advanced some way. The fire extended itself thence to the porticoes adjoining ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... Howard. "See him putting it on the elevator." They looked down the shaft. "It has dropped to the sub-basement," said Howard, "two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending it into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses; metal will be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal form, the metal impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the press ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... the eastern gateway, the interior of the structure appears to the highest advantage: the large and beautifully simple communion window, reaching almost from the basement to the roof, is by no means the least attractive object of attention; while the handsome appearance of the altar, raised by a flight of several steps, covered entirely with crimson cloths, the unusually large extent of the communion rails; and the numerous beautiful ...
— The History and Antiquities of Horsham • Howard Dudley
... basement is another noteworthy feature, and worthy of wider imitation than it has yet received. Such a hall, if located upstairs in such a building, would have been open to three objections: it would have monopolized, for ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... cressets, grates, baskets of large size, or of faggots piled up. Everton Beacon certainly looked very old and dilapidated, and had stood the shock and buffet of some centuries. Its size was about six yards square; its height twenty-five feet. The basement floor was on a level with the ground, and was a square room in which there was, in one corner, a fireplace, much knocked about and broken. There was also a flight of narrow stone steps which led to the upper chamber. ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... her to build before evening a beautiful castle, and to furnish it all from garret to basement. Helena sat down on the rocks which had been pointed out to her as the site of the castle, feeling very depressed, but at the same time with the lurking hope that the kind Fairy would come once more to ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... great-grandmothers. Ten or a dozen years ago people said Sh! Sh! if you ventured to meddle with any question supposed to involve a doubt of the generally accepted Hebrew traditions. To-day such questions are recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation; not in the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone congregations, but among intelligent and educated persons. You may preach about them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them, you may talk about them with the first sensible-looking ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... went to the basement floor, about seventy feet below the level of the window which opened into the room occupied by ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... true adventure abides most where most the forces of humanity are. So I camped down in the heart of things, surely; for in the next room were a child, kitten, and canary; in the basement was a sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of Satan would have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... front door, for the house was separated from the road by a narrow garden, enclosed with pickets, and full of stunted shrubbery. The inmates of the house were soon astir, and the major's name was, one might have thought, called from every window. Then the basement door suddenly opened, and two little, mischievous looking Trotbridges, scampered out to meet him, and so clung about his short legs, and otherwise offered him proof of the affection they bore him, as almost to impede his progress. Mrs. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... harsh bell, and I went down dark stairs to the basement and to breakfast, wondering if I should be able to recognize Miss Jamison; for I had caught but a glimpse of my new landlady on my arrival the previous midnight. Wrapped in a faded French flannel kimono, her face smeared with cold cream, her hair done up in curling "kids," she had met ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... be unconstitutional to allow women to use it, although white and negro men had been permitted to do so for many and varied purposes. The Hon. Charles A. Collier, a county commissioner, granted the basement of the courthouse for this meeting, which was a marked success, though held underground. Speeches were made by Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, Mrs. Josephine K. Henry ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... replied the cobbler; "and we live in Todmorden's Lane, leading out of Beauchamp Street. It is Mr. Bennet's the bootmaker, and I works for him and lives in the basement, 'long of ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... point of view, not necessarily to the purpose. Then, after the goblin incident of the disused bell slowly oscillating until it and all the other bells in the house rang loudly for a while—afterwards becoming in turn just as suddenly hushed—we got to the clanking approach, from the sub-basement of the old building, of the noise that at length came on through the heavy door of Scrooge's apartment! "And"—as the Reader said with startling effect, while his voice rose to a hurried outcry as he uttered the closing exclamation—"upon ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... in this office based upon data received it is found that an extension or wing about 40 by 85 feet in dimensions, three stories high, with basement, giving 3,400 square feet, in addition to the 4,760 square feet of the first-floor area of the building, of fireproof construction, can be erected on the present site within the limit of cost proposed by ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... was not over-well-dressed even before the beginning of the conflict, was led by some boys whose father kept a so-called flower cellar—that is, a basement shop for plants, wreaths, etc.—at the head of Leipzigerstrasse. They often sought us out, but when they did not we enticed them from their cellar by a particular sort of call, and as soon as they appeared we all slipped ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that there was more than one visitor, for burglars do not talk to themselves, and Discretion suggested that I should seek assistance before descending. Jonah was out of Town, the men-servants slept in the basement, the telephone ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... I had a stitch in my side. When I was housekeeper at the Nursery, I also had to attend to the furnace, and, strange but true, the furnace was built across the large basement from where the coal was thrown in, so I had to tote the coal over, and my modus operandi was to fill a tub with coal and then drag it across to the hungry furnace. Well, one day I felt the catch and got no better fast. After Dr. F—— punched and prodded, she said, "Why, you have the grippe." ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... smoothed) descended to the basement dining room of his Madison Avenue boarding-house that evening, his table comrades gave him an effective entrance; they rose, waving napkins and cheering, and there were cries of "Author! Author!" "Speech!" and ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... old Saladin, the transport officer. He was found coming out of a basement in the dusk with two bottles of white wine in each arm, the sport, like a nurse with two pairs of twins. When he was spotted, they made him go back down to the wine-cellar, and serve out bottles for everybody. But Corporal Bertrand, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... a lamp and a great key and walked before, leading the way down-stairs to a cell in the interior of the basement, occupied ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... in his study and will let me stay there awhile." But the study door was also secure. "Well, the basement window ain't fastened, I know, 'cause 'twas only yesterday that Hec Abbott broke it with a snowball. I can crawl through that and ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... have abandoned the upper stories to future bombs. Mr. Moulton is located in the salon; Mademoiselle has taken the salon jaune, and I the boudoir. Louis has improvised a bedroom in the small dining-room, that he may be near us at night if we should need him. The other servants sleep in the basement. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the deep basement of the Bulletin, the big three-deck presses, two of which had been standing idle since the last presidential election, were pounding out copies by the thousand, while grimy pressmen, blackened with ink, perspired ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... no time, though. The shell reached, smashed down part of the house, and burst in the basement a couple of yards from me. I heard no more, but stone, plaster, and bricks fell all around me on the coal heap. I was gasping, but found myself untouched. I got up and saw the poultry struggling and the horses struck down. I ran to the cellar, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the senator's wife and her guest had driven thirty miles through the dust of the sage-brush hills was one of the many moves in Mrs. Weatherford's private campaign. For the opening-gun occasion the great house in Mesa Circle was lighted from basement to turret—to all of the numerous turrets; an awning fringed with electric bulbs sheltered the carpeted walk from the street to the grand entrance, an army of lackeys paraded in the vestibule, and the wives and daughters of the bravest and best in ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... and stood up. The floor of the house was just above her head. In front of her, near the center of the building, she saw the side walls of an inner inclosure some twenty feet square. These walls came down to the surface, making a room like a basement to the dwelling. A broad doorway, with a sliding door that ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... garage or patio. In the North, worms are kept in a container that may be located anywhere with good ventilation and temperatures that stay above freezing but do not get too hot. Good spots for a worm box are under the kitchen sink, in the utility room, or in the basement. The kitchen, being the source of the worm's food, is the most convenient, except for the danger of ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... two of the strongest, of answers more complete than they have yet received. True, there is no disputing the testimony borne by the paintings and sculptures of Egyptian tombs, and of Ninevite palaces, that the basement floors in Thebes and Memphis were infested by much the same sort of beetles as those which are such nuisances in London kitchens; that Sardanapalus, if ever he exchanged indoor for outdoor sports, may have ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... ingenious citizens who then governed Florence, his readiness to lift up without ruining it, the church of San Giovanni in Florence (the Battistero, opposite the Duomo) in order to place under it the missing basement with steps; he supported his assertions with reasons so persuasive, that while he spoke the undertaking seemed feasable, although every one of his hearers, when he had departed, could see by himself the impossibility of so vast ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the markets by way of the Rue Vauvilliers, he heard Claude Lantier calling to him. The artist was going down into the basement of the poultry pavilion. "Come with me!" he cried. "I'm looking for ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... ladies' room, rest room; [fixtures: see 653 (uncleanness)]. attic, loft, garret, cockloft, clerestory; cellar, vault, hold, cockpit; cubbyhole; cook house; entre-sol; mezzanine floor; ground floor, rez-de-chaussee; basement, kitchen, pantry, bawarchi-khana, scullery, offices; storeroom &c. (depository) 636; lumber room; dairy, laundry. coach house; garage; hangar; outhouse; penthouse; lean-to. portico, porch, stoop, stope, veranda, patio, lanai, terrace, deck; lobby, court, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... large house in Grosvenor Gardens was wondering discontentedly what she was going to do with herself until tea-time, when she heard the sound of a bell ringing far down in the basement. Despite the grand drawing-room, despite the rich rustle of her grey silk dress, this great lady peeped from behind the curtain, and saw a ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... be seen flying from the higher ridges against a pallid background of slaty cloud, while the gaunt ribs of the hills glisten below with fitful gleams of lurid light. At sunrise, one morning, stealthy and mysterious vapours clothe the mountains from their basement to the waist, while the peaks are glistening serenely in clear daylight. Another opens with silently falling snow. A third is rosy through the length and breadth of the dawn-smitten valley. It is, however, impossible ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... staircase, are objects of interest. Ascending these stairs, the visitor finds himself in the chapel, the ceiling of which is of fine oak, richly carved, with the fleur-de-lis and other devices. In the garden, which formed an enclosed court, upon an elegant basement approached by a circular flight of steps—the outer one being seven feet in diameter and the inner one about three—is a very curious planetarium, or horological instrument, serving the purpose of a sun dial, ...
— Handbook to the Severn Valley Railway - Illustrative and Descriptive of Places along the Line from - Worcester to Shrewsbury • J. Randall
... themselves very well made doors that fasten with singularly cunning locks. Then the lift returned with the boy in charge, and, so soon as his Sunday and rather distracted attention was drawn to the state of affairs, he suggested that Sister Ursula should go down to the basement and speak to the caretaker, who doubtless had a duplicate key. To the basement, therefore, Sister Ursula went with the medicine-bottle clasped to her breast, and there, among mops and brooms and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... to the old Copp homestead . . . a place of such exceeding external neatness that even Green Gables would have suffered by contrast. The house was a very old-fashioned one, situated on a slope, which fact had necessitated the building of a stone basement under one end. The house and out-buildings were all whitewashed to a condition of blinding perfection and not a weed was visible in the prim kitchen garden surrounded by its ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and I have just been a week in our new house, "The Laurels," Brickfield Terrace, Holloway—a nice six-roomed residence, not counting basement, with a front breakfast-parlour. We have a little front garden; and there is a flight of ten steps up to the front door, which, by-the-by, we keep locked with the chain up. Cummings, Gowing, and our other intimate friends always come to the ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... probably also that I might inquire into the cause, and, finding me too dull to understand her expressive motioning that I would follow her to the cinder heap, on which the dead kitten had been thrown, she took the great labour of bringing it to me herself, from the area on the basement floor, and up a whole flight of stairs, and laid it at my feet. I took up the kitten in my hand, the cat still following me, made inquiry into the cause of its death, which I found, upon summoning the servants, to have been an accident, in which no one was much to blame; and the ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... a flourishing capital in the power of its rightful rulers. Fast were the devouring elements leaping through the palaces and superb public buildings of the city; the petroleum flames were ascending from basement to roof; streets were in sheets of fire; the charred beams were breaking; the walls fell with thundering crash—the empress city was indeed on fire. Like the winds unchained by the storm-god, the passions of men marked ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ground is eighty feet by sixty, and the eastern gable runs up into a square tower, surmounted by a domed belfry, to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet. Two lofty stories above a low basement are covered by a shingled roof pierced with dormer windows. Large Gothic windows of the Henry VIII. shape are filled with seven-by-nine glass, and afford relief to the solid walls of stone and stucco that have so well survived the ravages of nearly half a century, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "Come." She led him down rough wooden cellar stairs to a basement, unfastened with pale and dexterous fingers a padlocked wooden door behind the big old-fashioned furnace with its up-curving stovepipe arms, under which he had to stoop ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... even the boy who runs before automobiles or trolley cars or under horses' noses, getting less physical education than those who play a round game in silence under the supervision of a teacher in the school basement, or who stretch their arms up and down to the tune of one, two, three, four, five, six? Who can doubt that the much-pitied child of the tenement playing with the contents of the ash can in the clothes yard or with baby brother on the fire escape is developing more originality, more lung power, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... slightest acquaintance with the basement of the Benton house. I knew it was dry and orderly, and with that my interest in it ceased. It was not cemented, but its hard clay floor was almost as solid as macadam. In one end was built a high potato-bin. In another corner two or three old pews from the church, ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... out to lunch together at the Astor House, and sitting with their knees against the counter on a row of stools before it for fifteen minutes of reflection and deglutition, with their hats on, and then returning to the basement from which they emerged. The West Virginia company's name was lettered in gilt on the wide low window, and its paint, in the form of ore, burnt, and mixed, formed a display on the window shelf Lapham examined it and praised it; from time to time they all recurred to it together; they sent out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of some pretension originally; that is to say, it had been built in the style of country gentlemen in New England forty years ago. A row of white-pine pillars surrounded the house from roof to basement, and formed a piazza-walk very convenient in a dull day. Six chimneys crowned the roof, and the whole arrangement was tasteful and imposing. There was a terrace of green turf all round the house, and the offices and out-buildings were at a short distance from the main building. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... a boarding-house,' she said, 'or to support families outside, and the old woman who came so often to the basement door with a big basket under her ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... In the basement lived Niels, manservant to the family, who, besides his domestic occupations, found time to develop a talent for business. In all secrecy he carried on a commerce, very considerable under the circumstances, in common watches and in mead, two kinds of wares ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... wedge-shaped objects of a gray material. The materialization bombs! They were placing them carefully at selected points on the rocks, and adjusting the firing mechanisms. This group near us, which Don and I watched with a fascinated horror, were down in the basement of the jewelry store, among its foundations. There for a moment; then moving out under Fifth Avenue, peering carefully at the spectral outlines of the cellars ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... they marched one stage of six parasangs to a great deserted fortress (which lay over against the city), and the name of that city was Mespila (3). The Medes once dwelt in it. The basement was 10 made of polished stone full of shells; fifty feet was the breadth of it, and fifty feet the height; and on this basement was reared a wall of brick, the breadth whereof was fifty feet and ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... to my senses and reminded me of my plain duty. I set off along the passage briskly, arrived at a small, square yard ... and was just in time to see the ape leap into a well-like opening before a basement window. I stepped to the brink, directing the ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... growth of the city storey above storey, and the coalescence of buildings, had led to a different arrangement. The prosperous people lived in a vast series of sumptuous hotels in the upper storeys and halls of the city fabric; the industrial population dwelt beneath in the tremendous ground-floor and basement, so to speak, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... which was interred 30 feet, was removed: it was composed of two parts, the ogee and basement being of the same mass, and the plinth of white marble. All the preparations were made for this last operation on the 10th of September, with the same solemnities; 140 horses and 800 men were employed. The pope selected this day for the solemn entrance of the duke of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... was not there. It was necessary, however, to find shelter; shivering with cold and panting with his exertions, he could not remain a moment longer in the street without exposing himself to an inflammation of the chest. Guided by a light, he made his way into the basement of a baker's shop, and, hiding himself behind a pile of bread-baskets, went ...
— The Story of a Cat • mile Gigault de La Bdollire
... inconvenience of removing the battery from his laboratory, Dr. de la Rue, despite the great expenditure, directed Mr. S. Tisley to prepare, expressly for the lecture, a second series of 14,400 cells, and fit it up in the basement of the Royal Institution. The construction of this new battery occupied Mr. Tisley a whole year, while the charging of it extended ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... thrown him from a window of some of the fine houses before which he played, but he seemed likely to be disappointed, for he played ten minutes without apparently attracting any attention. He was about to change his position, when the basement door of one of the houses opened, and a servant came out, bareheaded, and approached him. Phil regarded her with distrust, for he was often ordered away as a nuisance. He stopped playing, and, hugging his violin closely, regarded ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... sort of lobby in the basement that was used as a servants' parlor, his visitor rose, and stood with great shame-facedness before him. He did not extend his hand, but stood still, in his seedy clothes and his coat buttoned to his chin, to hide his lack of a shirt. The blue look of the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... it no longer. He knew where the water-bucket stood, and stepping from his bed, he groped his way down the long stairs to the basement. The spring moon was low in the western horizon, and shining through the curtained window, dimly lighted up the room. The pail was soon reached, and then in his eagerness to drink, he put his lips to the side. Lower, lower, lower it came, until he discovered, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... of house construction entail, and which the more sanely constructed house of the future will avoid. Consider, for instance, the wanton disregard of avoidable toil displayed in building houses with a service basement without lifts! Then most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were wiselier done. It is the lack of proper warming appliances which necessitates a vast amount of coal carrying and dirt distribution, and it is this ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... The basement is composed of bold mouldings with a plain wall equivalent in height to the internal wall arcade. Over this, a string-course runs uninterruptedly round the choir ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... Aunt Zeruah, it's nothing but a constant string of complaints about the girls in the kitchen. We keep changing our servants all the time, and they break and destroy so that now we are turned out of the use of all our things. We not only eat in the basement, but all our pretty table-things are put away, and we have all the cracked plates and cracked tumblers and cracked teacups and old buck-handled knives that can be raised out of chaos. I could use ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... members' entrance of the grand-looking club-house; and that the fat hall-porter in scarlet, who now stood without the swinging glass doors of the portal, had warned him thence, ordering him, so it struck my fancy, to go down below by way of the area steps, to the basement of the establishment, where his business would probably rather lie with the lower menials of the mansion than with such an august personage as he, one who acted solely as the janitor to the great ones of the earth possessing the password ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... it," said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. "But it IS so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't believe he got once a nail's breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been killed—he went down into a London basement with a candle to look for a leakage of gas—and described himself as a senior English master in a London private school when ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... at work, straight off. The ruins of the old bath were there yet in the basement of the monastery, not a stone missing. They had been left just so, all these lifetimes, and avoided with a pious fear, as things accursed. In two days we had it all done and the water in—a spacious pool of clear pure water that a body could swim in. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows of boarding—and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... idiot," Corrie snapped impatiently. "Why didn't you do as I told you? Open the basement door, won't you, Gerard, while I bring him? We'll be sure to find a fire there. Are you ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of escape from the torture. He reeled along the pavement like a tipsy man, taking no notice of those who passed, but bumping against them. On looking round he saw a dram shop near at hand; steps led down from the footpath to the basement, and Raskolnikoff saw two drunkards coming out at that moment, leaning heavily on each other and exchanging abusive language. The young man barely paused before he descended the steps. He had never before entered such a place, but he felt dizzy and was also suffering from intense thirst. ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the door with her. He waited a moment, perplexed, then his brow cleared and he said in a low voice: "You know the alley beyond Vent Miller's pool-room? Go down the alley till you come to the second gate. Go in, and you'll see a basement door opening into a little room under Miller's bar. The door won't be locked, and Happy's in there waiting ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... nose, and wipe my paws with an embroidered handkerchief. I was called 'Ami—dear Ami—sweet Ami.' But afterwards I grew too big for them, and they gave me away to the housekeeper. So I came to live in the basement storey. You can look into that from where you are standing, and you can see into the room where I was master; for I was master at the housekeeper's. It was certainly a smaller place than upstairs, but ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... illustrated billiard book—sent FREE to every boy—reveals the rousing sport thousands of boys are enjoying right at home. How their parents praise billiards and pay to play till the table is paid for. How any room, attic, basement or loft gives plenty of space for a real Brunswick Carom or Pocket Table—now made in sizes from 2-1/2x5 feet to ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... her tears, and the two played in their nursery, a room in the basement and half underground, to which they were regularly sent after the midday dinner while Aunty Rosa slept. She drank wine—that is to say, something from a bottle in the cellaret—for her stomach's sake, but if she did not fall asleep she would sometimes ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... just been talking defense. We need to take the offensive, ourselves." He glanced around. "Is there a freight elevator from this block to the basement?" ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... house, forgetting in the many thoughts that arose within me that I had a companion, I came at length into the tower, the basement of which was open, forming part of the body of the church. There hung many ropes through holes in a ceiling above, for bell-ringing was encouraged and indeed practised by my friend Shepherd. And as I regarded them, I thought within myself how delightful ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... woman brought face to face with the woman dying from overwork, would undoubtedly care. But the workers are out of sight, hidden away in attic and basement, or the upper rooms of great manufactories. The bargains are plain to see, every counter loaded, every window filled. And so society, which will have its bargains, is practically in a conspiracy against the worker. The woman who spends on her cheapest dress the utmost sum which her working sister ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... officers of the insurance company as to the value of the insured stock. In one instance, when the Brigade had succeeded in extinguishing the fire, he discovered a string stretched across one of the rooms in the basement of the house, on which ringlets of shavings dipped in turpentine were tied at regular intervals. On extending his investigations he ascertained that a vast pile of what he thought were pounds of moist sugar, consisted of parcels of brown paper, and that ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon. |
