"Ceiling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wall and the furniture, as would many birds in his position; in fact, he showed unusual self-possession and self-reliance. He was exceedingly curious about his surroundings: tapped the wall, tested the top of picture frames, drummed on the curtain cornice, and closely examined the ceiling. He was beautifully dressed in soft gray all mottled and spotted and barred with white, but he had not as yet put on the red cap of his fathers. While we watched him, he heard outside a sapsucker cry, to which he listened eagerly; then ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... to the other quizzically. Then by way of disposing of the subject he seized his daughter in his arms and dandling her toward the ceiling cried, "If it's artistic things we must have, this is the most artistic thing which I know of in the wide ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... one of the less possible dreams of my life to be a painted Pagan God and live upon a ceiling. I crown myself becomingly in stars or tendrils or with electric coruscations (as the mood takes me), and wear an easy costume free from complications and appropriate to the climate of those agreeable spaces. The company about me on the clouds varies ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Mohammed's coffin suspended by magnets is an idea unknown to Moslems, but we find the fancy in Al-Harawi related of St. Peter, "Simon Cephas (the rock) is in the City of Great Rome, in its largest church within a silver ark hanging by chains from the ceiling." (Lee, Ibn Batutah, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... at first, while smells of rank Tahiti tobacco, cheap cotton prints, a broken bottle of perfume and scented soaps struggled for supremacy. Gradually the eye discovered shelves and bins and goods heaped from floor to ceiling; pins and anchors, harpoons and pens, crackers and jewelry, cloth, shoes, medicine and tomahawks, socks and ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... another, opened up amid large walls separating the various basins. All were filled, and the water stretched in a single sheet throughout the length of the cisterns. Through the air-holes in the cupolas on the ceiling there fell a pale brightness which spread upon the waves discs, as it were, of light, while the darkness round about thickened towards the walls and threw them back to an indefinite distance. The slightest sound made a ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... of Tara. Then he broke down. First he bowed his head down, resting his forehead upon his hands, which were supported by his cane, and several deep-drawn sighs escaped him. Then he raised his head again, and looked up at the ceiling with an evident effort to assume a careless expression. Then he again hid his face. But the song went on, and the melancholy frail of the accompaniment continued, and at last the old gentleman ceased to struggle, and gave himself up to the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... familiar to him. Buchanan Read, I think he said, had occupied them, and the walls in many places bore traces of artist vagaries. There were several nice caricatures penciled among the cheap frescoes of the walls. All the walls are frescoed in Florence. Think of having your ceiling and walls painted in a manner ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk that, if he had been two inches taller, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement: "Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of mythological subjects, though not quite in the order of time, we may here mention his frescos illustrating the story of Cupid and Psyche, painted on the walls and ceiling of the same nobleman's palace, the Chigi palace. The drawings for these pictures were made by Raphael, but most of the painting was done by his pupils. As we study these pictures of the joys and sorrows of this beautiful pair, we are interested, ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... flashing color caught his eye and held it in marveling amazement. A thing of beauty and grace. It was a shining, silvery shape like a mushroom growth; it towered high in air, almost to the ceiling, a slender rod that swelled and opened to a curved and gleaming head. Graceful as a fairy parasol, huge enough to shelter a giant, it was like ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... things are altogether filthy and poor-the floor in the parlor is crooked, warped, and full of splinters, the windows are hung with pieces of red fustian; the bedrooms, just like stalls, are separated by thin partitions, which do not reach to the ceiling, and on the beds, on top of the shaken down hay-mattresses, are scattered torn, spotted bed-sheets and flannel blankets, dark from time, crumpled any old way, full of holes; the air is sour and full of fumes, with a mixture of alcohol ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... was spoken of as a marked man, and three nights ago a Snider bullet was fired through his front door into the hall of his newly-built house. I saw the hole made by the bullet through the door, and also the mark where it tore out a piece of the balusters before striking the ceiling. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... beyond which he expected to see, he found himself looking, as it were, through a window from the outside into a great, oak-panelled sleeping chamber, lighted by a huge silver lamp hanging from the middle of the painted and corniced ceiling. Against the middle of the left hand side wall, as he was looking into the room, stood one of the huge, heavily-draped, four-post bedsteads in which the great ones of the earth were wont to take their rest a couple of hundred years ago. The curtains ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the spinster, lifting a beatific glance and smile to the ceiling, "I am still engaged with my 'Philosophical, Psychological ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... perpetually raging round my empty soul! I feel I owe my forefathers a debt of gratitude, for I suppose the explanation is that they too did not care for hats. In the centre of my library there is a wooden pillar propping up the ceiling, and preventing it, so I am told, from tumbling about our ears; and round this pillar, from floor to ceiling, I have had shelves fixed, and on these shelves are all the books that I have read again and again, and hope to read many ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... went down into the interior of the castle to examine some pictures and inscriptions that I had noticed on the walls of a chamber in the second story, which had been used, apparently, as a guard-room or barrack. It was a large, rectangular, windowless apartment, with a wide door, a vaulted ceiling, and smooth stone walls which had been covered with plaster and whitewashed. Among the Spanish soldiers who had occupied this room there was evidently an amateur artist of no mean ability, who had amused himself in his hours of leisure by drawing pictures and caricatures on the whitewashed ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... once to the panelled door on the left of the fireplace, turned the handle, threw it open, and made his light play in the long, deep, narrow closet, one side of which was filled from floor to ceiling by a rack laden with books of ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... the red-faced Major talked babies. Letty, knowing nothing about babies and not deeply interested, lay back in her seat, watching Ailsa in the dim light of the ceiling lamps. She seemed never to have enough of Ailsa. It had been so ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... find the flame very hot, but having scarcely any brightness. I should like you to see the curious qualities of hydrogen, particularly how light it is, so as to carry things up in the air; and I wish I had a small balloon to fill with it, and make go up to the ceiling, or a bag-pipe full of it to blow soap-bubbles with, and show how much faster they rise than common ones, blown ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped —two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They, spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had—turned to gouts of blood as they fell—I needed no light to satisfy myself of that. Then I saw pallid ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blinked and looked at the ceiling. It took him a minute to re-orient himself. Then he grinned rather sheepishly, realizing that he had dozed off with his clothes on. Even worse, the pressure at his hip told him that he hadn't even bothered to take his sidearm off. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor, then glanced ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... architecture we drove thirty miles one morning to see a house like ours which had owned its windows from the beginning. We loved our old house, you see, and did not wish to do it an injury. I think it was about the same time that we pulled off the plaster from the living-room ceiling and left the exposed beams—old hewn timbers which we tinted down with a dull stain. William Deegan and I stained those beams together, and our friendship ripened during that employment. William had been with us about a year at ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the arcade, especially at the corners and centre, are occupied by booths of cheap wares. The sacred image, indispensable to a Russian shop, is painted on the vaulted ceiling; the shrine lamp flickers in the open air, thus serving many aproned, homespun and sheepskin clad dealers. The throng of promenaders here is always varied and interesting. The practiced eye distinguishes infinite shades of difference ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... sweep the mists Of darkness backward spreading through all time, Their records swept away in every clime. Those alabaster stairs let us ascend, And through this lofty portal we will wend. See! richest Sumir rugs amassed, subdue The tiled pavement with its varied hue, Upon the turquoise ceiling sprinkled stars Of gold and silver crescents in bright pairs! And gold-fringed scarlet curtains grace each door, And from the inlaid columns reach the floor: From golden rods extending round the halls, Bright silken hangings drape ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... three brilliant lights, like the twisting flame of a small candle—a curious, glowing, yet not radiant violet flame—developed, high up on the outside of the portieres which formed the cabinet, and drifted across and up toward the ceiling, where they silently vanished. I think there must have been three of these, which were followed by a broad, glowing mass of what looked like white-hot metal—a singular light, unlike anything I had ever seen. It made me think of the substance described by Sir William Crookes and other ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... surveyor's camp. I forget where it was on the route that we stopped over-night at a fort, where I found some old friends and made new ones. A young officer—Lieutenant Brown, I think—gave me a bed in his cabin. His ceiling was made of canvas. For weeks he had heard a great rattlesnake moving about on it. One day he had made a hole in the ceiling and put into it a great fierce tom-cat. The cat "went for" the snake and there was an awful row. After a time the cat came out looking like a devil with every hair ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... staccato tapping of somebody's knuckles rising flute-like above the hammering of Joel's cane. TO some temperaments the double summons would have proved confusing, but Persis Dale dropped her sewing and moved briskly to the door, addressing the ceiling as she went. "'Twon't hurt you ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Chicot that nothing was changed excepting the tint of the ceiling, which from gray had turned ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... took time to look about the office. It was as clean as blackened, splintered planks could be made; even the ceiling had been attacked and every trace of ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... night there," she said. "The ceiling came down in the next room. Besides," she added, "though possibly that may not deter you, there are ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... He began to state his objections; then we knew he was ready to yield. We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceiling. So presently we prevailed, and he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... for pouring, and both my brothers and the caster, with his men, were obliged to run out at opposite doors, for the stone flooring (which ought to have been taken up) flew about in all directions as high as the ceiling. Before the second casting was attempted, everything which could insure success had been attended to, and a very perfect metal was found ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... given it the first rub than a huge dark figure slowly rose from the floor like a wreath of smoke until it reached the ceiling, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... not to make Sarah nervous, I explained to her that my invention of a silver-elevator was merely a time-saving device. From the top of the dining-room sideboard I ran upright tracks through the ceiling to the back of the hall above, and in these I placed a glass case, which could be run up and down the tracks like a dumbwaiter. All our servant had to do when she had washed the silver was to put it in the glass case, and I had attached to the top of the case a stout steel cable which ran to the ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... their eyes over the walls and ceiling without being able to see where the wonder would happen, for the childish and cunning Huns used to amuse their guests with surprises ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of which Mrs. Merton had spoken. It was a large room, about fifty feet in length, and proportionably wide; somewhat dark, for the light came only from the one large window through which they entered; and though the window rose to the cornice of the ceiling, and took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes were set, and by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the upper part of the casement. The bookcases, too, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hole in the ceiling, by means of which this room was watched from above; the man was observed, followed, and nabbed. The property found on him was identified and the magistrate offered the prisoner a jury, which he declined; then ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know your tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomside of things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnasoles hanging to ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller
... accurate delineation of a teardrop, and which, when all is reckoned, has just nothing of emotion in it but a frigid inhumanity. He competed with Guido in the fresco of the Lodovisi Aurora, a substantial work certainly, yet one that lacks the saving qualities of the Rospigliosi ceiling—grace and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... coming down over his shoulders, and several ladies whose attire seemed very queer indeed. There was a black sofa studded with brass nails that shone as if they had been lately polished, a tall desk and bookcase going up to the ceiling, brass and silver candlesticks and snuffers' tray, as well as a bright steel "tinder box" on the high, narrow mantel. A big mahogany table stood in the centre of the room, polished until you could see your face in it. But there was an odd tall ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... up and followed her, up and down stairs and through halls and turnings, till she brought me into a pretty room lined with books from floor to ceiling. Nobody was there. Mademoiselle lit the gas with great energy, and then turned to me, her great black ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his side. It was then that, as I now most clearly remember, I was conscious of something else, was aware that there was a strange faint blue light in the dark clumsy station, a faint throbbing glow, that, like the reflection of blue water on a sunlit ceiling, hovered and hung above the ugly shabbiness of the engines and trucks, the rails with scattered pieces of paper here and there, the iron arms that supported the vast glass roof, the hideous funnel that hung with its gaping mouth ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... herself back and forth in the kitchen-chair, weeping. She had set the candle on the table, and a draught of wind from some unknown quarter struck it and the strangest lights and shadows flared and flickered over the room and ceiling. Presently, Charlotte, looking at them, became diverted again from her grief. She looked about fearfully. Then she made a tremendous effort, rose, and lighted a lamp. With that the room was not so frightful, yet it was ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of the Wilders was only one story high, but the rooms were big and comfortable. Around three sides ran the piazza, from which French windows, extending from the floor to the ceiling, opened, admitting any breeze that ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... is done yet more boldly in the large composition of the ceiling; the plague of fiery serpents; a part of the host, and another sky horizon are seen through an opening ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... said Iris, allowing him to hold her hand against his breast as he lay motionless, his eyes turned to the ceiling. "You must try again, that's all. At Hollingford, ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... and slippers covered with opals that gleamed every colour of the rainbow. It was some time before Curdie could take his eyes from the marvel of her loveliness. Fearing at last that he was rude, he turned them away; and, behold, he was in a room that was for beauty marvellous! The lofty ceiling was all a golden vine, Whose great clusters of carbuncles, rubies, and chrysoberyls hung down like the bosses of groined arches, and in its centre hung the most glorious lamp that human eyes ever saw—the Silver Moon itself, a globe of silver, as it seemed, with a heart of light so wondrous ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... Hoar. The Legal Tender decision, which had been the first stumbling-block to Adams at Washington, grew in interest till it threatened to become something more serious than a block; it fell on one's head like a plaster ceiling, and could not be escaped. The impending battle between Fish and Sumner was nothing like so serious as the outbreak between Hoar and Chief Justice Chase. Adams had come to Washington hoping to support the Executive in a policy of breaking ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... me. For three days I endured more agony than pen could describe, even were it guided by the mind of Dante. Who can feel the horrors of the horrible malady, aggravated as it is by the almost ever-abiding consciousness that it is self-sought. Hideous faces appeared on the wall and on the ceiling and on the floors; foul things crept along the bedclothes, and glaring eyes peered into mine. I was at one time surrounded by millions of monstrous spiders that crawled slowly over every limb, whilst the beaded drops of perspiration would start to my ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... should be glad of his assistance. He came with the greatest alacrity; assured me he knew all about it, seized the big bottle, shook it violently, and twitched out the cork: there was a report like a pistol-shot, and all my beautiful yeast flew up to the ceiling of the kitchen, descending in a shower on my head; and F—— turned the bottle upside down over the flour, emptying the dregs of the hops and potatoes into my unfortunate bread. However, I did not despair, but mixed it up according to the directions given, and ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... dwarf, seating himself upon a piano-stool, and screwing himself up until he was near the ceiling and on a level with the singer's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... his son, nor the cook, took the slightest care of all these treasures. They spat upon a hearth of exquisite delicacy, whose gilded mouldings were now green with verdigris. A handsome chandelier, partly of semi-transparent porcelain, was peppered, like the ceiling from which it hung, with black speckles, bearing witness to the immunity enjoyed by the flies. The Descoings had draped the windows with brocatelle curtains torn from the bed of some monastic prior. To the left of the entrance-door, stood a chest or coffer, worth many thousand francs, which ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Sarnax entered were all quiet; nobody seemed to be attempting to cut through the ceiling, fifteen feet above. They dragged furniture from a couple of rooms, blocking the openings of the lifter tubes, and continued around the well until they had ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... grated strongly with heavy wire on the outside, where the orchard hill rose steeply from the house; and over against the window, in the wall between chamber and dining-room, was a high closet, in which I had stored a strong net, such as fishermen use for their seines. Fastening stout wires to the ceiling from one end of the room to the other, to be used for slides, and rigging several small blocks above the window and near the floor, I stretched the necessary ropes from closet to blocks and back again, laid ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... was laid with tiles of dark blue veined with white; pilasters of twisted silver stood out against the blue walls; the clearstory of round-arched windows above them was hung with azure silk; the vaulted ceiling was a pavement of sapphires, like the body of heaven in its clearness, sown with silver stars. From the four corners of the roof hung four golden magic-wheels, called the tongues of the gods. At the ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... the sides of Glass, perpendicularly upwards, and to contain themselves in that posture as long as they please; nay, to walk and suspend themselves against the under surface of many bodies, as the ceiling of a room, or the like, and this with as great a seeming facility and firmness, as if they were a kind of Antipodes, and had a tendency upwards, as we are sure they have the contrary, which they also evidently discover, in that they cannot make ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... open windows letting in the cool breezes from meadow and stream; an old beamed ceiling, smoke-browned by countless pipes; walls covered with sketches of every nook and corner about us; a table for four, heaped with melons, grapes, cheese, and flanked by ten-pin bottles just out of the brook; good-fellowship, harmony of ideas, ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... with a guilty start and looked up at the clock on the ceiling; it was 0945. Kicking himself free of the covers, he slid his feet to the floor and sprinted for the bathroom. While he was fussing to get the shower adjusted to the right temperature, he bludgeoned his conscience by telling himself that a wide-awake ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... broad. It has a dais at one end, on which the throne must have been placed; and over this a picture of Paradise by Tintoretto, covering the entire end of the room—of course 74 feet long—being thus the largest picture ever painted on canvas. Around, under the ceiling, are the portraits of the series of doges. The Sala del Senato still exhibits the seats of the senators, each furnished with its candlestick for protracted discussions—a melancholy memorial of departed independence. We gazed, too, on the Hall of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... general that she was for him, and him alone. The summer afternoon droned at the windows, the house grew quiet, and Billy felt as if in this sleepy hour she were quite alone with her excitement in a world that would not hear of excitement or of events. So she too kept still, her eyes raised to the ceiling. It seemed as if she had lain there an endless time before the sound came at last, the sound for which she had waited. She sat up. The rumbling of a carriage which stopped in the courtyard below, voices, the banging of doors, and again the rumble of the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... dining-room at Harlowe House had been furnished after the fashion of a pretty little tea shop at which Grace had often lunched in New York. The walls were done in white with a faint blue and silver stripe. The ceiling was white with a decoration of deep blue corn flowers. The floor was covered with a thread and thrum rug in blue and white, and instead of two long tables there were several small ones which seated from four to six persons. In the middle of each table was a vase of flowers, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... of the air, which, thus illuminated and observed, is as palpable to sense as dust or powder placed on the palm of the hand. In the still air the dust gradually sinks to the floor or sticks to the walls and ceiling, until finally, by this self-cleansing process, the air is entirely freed from ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... his bed. He turned a knob in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere. He turned another knob, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ceiling ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... neither for Jehovah nor for His enemies; and her choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... it and keep it. I beg him at the time not to sell, knowing the value it must come to have one day. But he sell all the same. Ah, meu Deus!" The steward clasped his hands and raised rather prominent eyes to the ceiling, protesting to his Maker against his master's folly. "He say we have plenty, and now"—he spread fat hands in a gesture of despair—"and now we have none. Some sons of dogs of French who came with Marshal Soult happen this way on a forage they discover ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... flames, for the weather was bitterly cold; but the two knights seated themselves upon a bancal, with their squires standing behind them. Looking down the room, Alleyne marked that both floor and ceiling were of the richest oak, the latter spanned by twelve arching beams, which were adorned at either end by the lilies and the lions of the royal arms. On the further side was a small door, on each side of which stood men-at-arms. From time to time an elderly man in black with rounded ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cabinet, he had placed beside the Pleyel concert grand in the salon, not without the most painful embarras to him. The most insignificant trifle affected him; he was a noli me tangere. He had said once, or rather had thought aloud: "If I saw a crack more in the ceiling, I should not be able to bring out a note." Chopin poured the whole dreamy, vaporous instrumentation of the work into his incomparable accompaniment. He played without book. I have never heard anything that could be compared ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... one morning by the sensation of something running over me as I lay in my berth, I conceived a method of retaliation. It seemed to me possible that, in the event of another visit, I might, by seizing the proper moment, kick the rat up to the ceiling with such force as to produce concussion of the brain and instant death. Very soon I had an opportunity of putting my plan into execution. A significant shaking of the little curtain at the foot of the berth showed that it was being used as a scaling-ladder. I lay perfectly ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... ablutions, took a survey of the room, while standing with his back to the fire, sipping his cherry brandy with heartfelt satisfaction. He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions. The walls were decorated with several hunting-whips, two or three bridles, a saddle, and an old rusty blunderbuss, with an inscription below it, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... assented graciously. "Don't let us hurry you. The fact is, we all came in here before we noticed the room was occupied, to leave our wraps. Quaint old place, isn't it? I fancy Washington could have touched the ceiling with his hand. There's a fire in the larger ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... sheds of Army Ordnance are filled with everything that a soldier does not eat, all metal stores, whatever, and the men who work in them are housed in one of the longest sheds in tiers of bunks from floor to ceiling, and then there are the repairing sheds and workshops, established near by, and that is the most wonderful thing of the whole to my mind—never done before in connection with an army in the field. Trainsful of articles to be repaired come down from the ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with magnificent hand-carved, high-backed chairs without upholstery, lounging not being apparently encouraged here. They are Gothic structures backed up against the walls. There is no Brussels or Axminster carpet on the cold marble floor—not even Turkish rugs. Through this palace hall, up by the ceiling, runs a thick cable containing the all-important telephone wires. The offices open off the hall, the doors labeled with neatly printed signs telling who and what is within. If you should come walking down the street outside at 3 A.M. you would probably see the lights ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Mr. Fujinami's study—like all Japanese rooms, a square box with wooden framework, wooden ceiling, sliding paper shoji, pale golden tatami and double alcove. All Japanese rooms are just the same, from the Emperor's to the rickshaw-man's; only in the quality of the wood, in the workmanship of the fittings, in the newness and freshness of paper and matting, and by the ornaments ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... beyond the necessary, and they were suspended from behind fringed and pleated valances. The green sofa and its sateen cushions were stiff with applied embroidery. The chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling, modelled to represent cupids holding festoons, was a glittering confusion of gilt and lustres; the lustres tinkled when Sophia stood on a certain part of the floor. The cane-seated chairs were completely gilded. There was an effect ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... picture. These solid and massive effects give additional strength to the lighter tone of the arch, and throw the skies into a relief and distance singularly profound. I know no similar work of equal grandeur except the ceiling by Fumiana in the Church of St. Pantaleone at Venice, representing the life, martyrdom, and apotheosis of that saint. But the style of the decadence makes itself less felt in the work of the Calabrese than in that of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... master, is instructing a class by the black- board. The school-room is nicely fitted up with modern desks and other appliances; on the walls are large maps and pictures, which give it a cheerful look; the ceiling is panelled in woods of two shades. Opening into the school-room is a smaller room, a class-room separated from it by three folding-doors. Ascending the staircase, we visit the dormitories. The east dormitory for the senior boys is fitted with English iron bedsteads, ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... lift the great leathern curtain and push into the church. A faint perfume of incense salutes the nostrils. The golden sunset bursts in as the curtain sways forward, illuminates the mosaic floor, catches on the rich golden ceiling, and flashes here and there over the crowd on some brilliant costume or shaven head. All sorts of people are thronging there,—some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... in a room that seemed to occupy most of the small house. One half of it was covered with a wooden ceiling which served as the floor of a loft, while for the rest of the way there was nothing beneath the sloping rafters of the roof. A ladder reached from the floor to the loft, and at one end, that nearest the outer door, a fire of logs ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... where he was shut up "until he could learn to be good!" And the useless trapdoor in the ceiling. How often have we lain in the dim light at night and seen the lid lift just a peep for ogre eyes to peer out, and, when the terror was growing beyond endurance, close down, only to lift once and again, until from sheer weariness and exhaustion we fell into a troubled ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... wall was covered with pictures and sketches, several easels stood piled up in the corner, and a broad table beside them held paint boxes, colour tubes, brushes, all the paraphernalia of the painter, now carefully ordered and covered for a term of idleness. Great bookcases towered to the ceiling, and a huge flat top desk, a costly piece of furniture, was covered with books and papers. It was the room of a man of brains and breeding, a man of talent and ability, possessing, furthermore, the means to indulge his tastes freely. Even now, with its master absent, the handsome apartment ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly denned, but would become plainer in a little while when ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... at a badly curtained window; a clumsy wooden bed, with big twisted posts that reached to the ceiling; on one side of the bed, my mother's welcome face; on the other side, an elderly gentleman unremembered by me at that moment—such were the objects that presented themselves to my view, when I first consciously returned to the world that we ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... change the scene for a short time, and introduce to our readers a company assembled in the best inn which, at that time, was to be found in the town of Cherbourg. The room in which they were assembled was large in dimensions, but with a low ceiling—the windows were diminutive, and gave but a subdued light, on account of the vicinity of the houses opposite. The window-frames were small, and cut diamond-wise; and, in the centre of each of the panes, was a round of coarsely-painted glass. A narrow table ran nearly the length of ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... down! The hoarse wind blows coldly; 110 Lights shine in the town. She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door; She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar. 115 We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl, A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl. Singing: "Here came a mortal, 120 But faithless was she! And alone dwell for ever The ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... succeeded in bringing to perfection that extraordinary exotic, the air plant. It is suspended from the ceiling, and derives its nourishment entirely ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... room, when full of happy dreams, With no life heard beyond that merry sound Of moths that on my lighted ceiling kiss Their shadows as they dance ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... from their carriages. Of course I attend upon the fair Cachita, whose agreeable society I enjoy till our departure from the tienda. The tienda is a queer combination of tavern, coffee-house, chandler's shop, and marine-store dealer's. The walls and ceiling are completely concealed by miscellaneous wares. Spurs and sardine boxes; candles, calico, and crockery; knives and nutmeg-graters; toys, tubs, and timepieces; rows of sweet hams, sheathed machetes, ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... and gray no longer. Hilary felt as if she must be in some strange, delightful dream. The cool green of the wall paper, with the soft touch of pink in ceiling and border, the fresh white matting, the cozy corner opposite—with its delicate old-fashioned chintz drapery and big cushions, the new toilet covers—white over green, the fresh curtains at the windows, the cushioned window ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... a fine outlook across the fiord to the great glaciers and near enough to see the birth of the icebergs and the wonderful commotion they make, and hear their wild, roaring rejoicing. The sunset sky seemed to have been painted for this one mountain mansion, fitting it like a ceiling. After the fiord was in shadow the level sunbeams continued to pour through the miles of bergs with ravishing beauty, reflecting and refracting the purple light like cut crystal. Then all save the tips of the highest became dead white. These, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... exclaimed Mr. Stevens, and his pale eyes, much wider, now wandered up from the Persian rug beneath his boots to the elaborately carved ceiling above his ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... place— on his hands and knees, with Little Mystery astride his back. He paused in a mad race across the cabin floor and looked up with inquiring eyes. The little girl held up her arms, and MacVeigh tossed her half-way to the ceiling and then hugged her golden head close up to his chilled face. Pelliter jumped to his feet; his face grew serious as Billy looked at him ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... box and opened the door. A gentleman in a fur coat got out and walked up to Simon's hut. Up jumped Matryona and opened the door wide. The gentleman stooped to enter the hut, and when he drew himself up again his head nearly reached the ceiling, and he seemed quite to fill his end ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... with the character of the reception-room itself, which was a composite of gold-flowered wall-paper, blue and cream-colored Brussels carpet, heavily gold-framed engravings of reclining nudes, and a gilt-framed pier-glass, which rose from the floor to the ceiling. Needless to say, Butler was shocked to the soul of him by this suggestive atmosphere which was supposed to include his daughter ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... famous as one of the most beautiful works of color decoration extant. Its general tone is bluish green with mosaic walls and floor and a wooden ceiling decorated in tempera with cufic inscriptions. It is scantily lighted with small windows, giving a rather sombre effect. The best mosaics are in the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration - Vol 1, No. 9 1895 • Various
... demanded personal supervision. As the heart of a high priest turns to his temple, so turned Paul Burton's heart to this spot at this time. It was a temple, but decidedly a pagan temple. Porphyry columns went up from a mosaic floor to a richly encrusted ceiling, and in conception and detail it was lavishly beautiful and perfect. Hamilton had conceived and planned the structure with a very ferocity of tense interest: though to Hamilton a music-room was in itself about as absorbing as a ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... dark our situation would have been far more difficult. By its light we proceeded to examine the packages and cases which lined the walls. In some places there was only a single line of them, while in one corner they were piled nearly to the ceiling. It seemed that we were in the storehouse of the Castle, for there were a great number of cheeses, vegetables of various kinds, bins full of dried fruits, and a line of wine barrels. One of these had a spigot in it, and as I had eaten little during the day, I was glad of a cup of claret and some ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was in an agitated slumber, in the midst of the rich silk drapery around her; a watch-lamp of alabaster, suspended from the arabesques of the ceiling, shed its soft light upon her beautiful countenance; the half-open window admitted, through lowered blinds, the quiet coolness of the air, impregnated with the penetrating perfumes of the aloes and magnolia; creole luxury was displayed in the thousand objects of art which good taste and grace had ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... early autumn Eckbert was sitting with his friend and his wife, Bertha, around the hearth-fire. The flames threw a bright glow out into the room and played on the ceiling above. The night looked in darkly through the windows, and the trees outside were shivering in the damp cold. Walther was lamenting that he had so far to go to get back home, and Eckbert proposed that he remain there and spend half the night in familiar talk, and then sleep until morning in one ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... A fawn-colored ceiling has suspended from it Italian bronze lanterns - the bronze suggestive of the color of the blue eucalyptus. At night these ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... bandits or clowns, and at the close of the dance throw off their disguises, so, in this dissipated life, all unclean passions move in mask. Across the floor they trip merrily. The lights sparkle along the wall, or drop from the ceiling—a very cohort of fire! The music charms. The diamonds glitter. The feet bound. Gemmed hands, stretched out, clasp gemmed hands. Dancing feet respond to dancing feet. Gleaming brow bends low to gleaming brow. On with the dance! Flash, and rustle, and laughter, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... Egypt, on the left bank of the Nile, 28 m. N. of Thebes, on the site of ancient Tentyra, with the ruins of a temple in almost perfect preservation; on the ceiling of a portico of which there was found a zodiac, now in the museum of the Louvre in Paris, and dates from the period of Cleopatra and the early Roman emperors, and has sculptured portraits of that queen and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... brick, stone, tile or concrete. It is conceivable that an effective and thoroughly practical fireplace could be thus devised, having the flue and hood of wrought iron or copper, suspended and steadied by chains or bars from the ceiling and surrounding walls. In such a form the same principle of a fixed ratio between opening (here the entire perimeter of the hood multiplied by the distance above the hearth) and cross-section of flue would have to be observed, and here ...
— Making a Fireplace • Henry H. Saylor
... patiently they waited, sitting in all manner of queer places. Some of them perched on the backs of the seats, a few clung like great big flies to the pillars, others sat on the window-sills, and several of the tiniest hung from the rafters in the ceiling. As soon as the service was over, the clamor ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... no doubt, of Valerie—a low easy-chair and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed a la Pompadour. A lamp hanging from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax candles on the table ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... wolf, and drowsily he wondered how he could hear the cry through the thick log walls of his prison. The answer came to him the moment he opened his eyes, hours later. A bit of pale sunlight was falling into the room and he saw that it entered through a narrow aperture close up to the ceiling. After he had prepared his breakfast he dragged the table under this aperture and by standing on it was enabled to peer through. A hundred yards away was the black edge of the spruce and balsam forest. ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... not!" The room seemed surcharged for a moment with impending shock. And then his physical eyes took in again the slimness of her, seized upon the alluring smallness of her and the fact that he could have tossed her to the ceiling without great effort. And yet he saw her as one sees ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... can be gone three without anybody's thinking trouble. By the end of that third month you can bring her home," said Burns comfortably. He leaned back in his swivel-chair, and stared hard at the ceiling. ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... a glint of fire and a blue, sweet-scented puff of wood smoke; a great black oak beam roughly hewn crossed the ceiling. Through the leaded panes of the windows he saw a rich glow of sunlight, green lawns, and against the deepest and most radiant of all blue skies the wonderful far-lifted towers of a vast, Gothic cathedral—mystic, ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... blue and purple smoke rose from the live coals on the Incense Altar and wound its way upward to the ceiling of the Hekal. As Isaiah watched the rising smoke, it became thicker and thicker, and filled the whole Temple. His eyes gazed from the Altar to the glittering gold curtains behind it. The reflection from the coals, and the playing of the blue and purple smoke on the golden sheets, caused ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... than of old; the red fire bursts forth less frequently; the dread earthquake shakes more rarely; save in a few centres of intenser action, the great deep no longer boils like a pot; and though the heavens are still shut out by a gray ceiling of thick vapor, through which sun or moon never yet appeared, a less gloomy twilight struggles at noonday through the enveloping cloud, and falls more cheerfully than heretofore upon land and sea. At length there comes a morning in which great ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... reason to know what a rise of the Rhone might signify. The town, in its lower portions, is quite at the mercy of the swollen waters; and it was mentioned to me that in 1856 the Hotel de l'Europe, in its convenient hollow, was flooded up to within a few feet of the ceiling of the dining-room, where the long board which had served for so many a table d'hote floated dis- reputably, with its legs in the air. On the present occasion the mountains of the Ardeche, where it had been raining ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... separate staircase from the first landing of the principal one; for his lameness made it difficult for him to go up-stairs, and the entresol, a half-story between the ground floor and the first story, when, as was the case here, high enough in the ceiling, is one of the freest and pleasantest parts of a French house. His apartments comprised five rooms on a line,—an antechamber, a dining-room, two parlors, and a bed-room, with windows on the street,—and the same number of smaller rooms on a parallel ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... the tower was erected, there was another doorway, and passing through it they clambered up the steep stone stairs, which finally led them to a small room at the top, above which was an iron-girdered ceiling supporting a huge water-tank, to which supplies were pumped no doubt from the river. Having groped their way in the semi-darkness to this spot, they barred the door of the room by driving a wedge in above the latch, and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the wailing infant's cry, The babe beneath the sheeliug, Whose song to-night in every sky Will shake earth's starry ceiling,— ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... special types can even be propagated from fragments of the leaf; for example, there is a particularly vivacious begonia off which you may snap a corner of one blade, and hang it up by a string from a peg or the ceiling, when, hi, presto! little begonia plants begin to bud out incontinently on every side from its edges. A certain German professor went even further than that; he chopped up a liverwort very fine into ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... top glasses of that window was out, and with the shutter open they come a breeze through that fluttered some strips of dirty-coloured papers, fly-specked and dusty and spider-webbed, that hung on strings acrost the room, jest below the ceiling. I guess they had been left over from some ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the third floor Father was to have for his room, his study, where he could write. This room he panelled to the ceiling with native woods: maple, oak, beech, birch, tulip, and others, and I like to think of his happy anticipation, his dreams of the happy hours he would spend in this room, and of the writing he would do. But he ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... and carded and spun and wove and knit. A whole family sat for hours around the fire in the middle of the room. That fire gave the only light. Shadows flitted in the dark corners. Smoke curled along the high beams in the ceiling. The children sat on the dirt floor close by the fire. The grown people were on a long narrow bench that they had pulled up to the light and warmth. Everybody's hands were busy with wool. The work left their minds free to think and their lips to talk. What was there to talk ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall
... blazing fire, behind a Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold draughts from the window, and her heavy mood scarcely lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century furniture, under the old paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be gay. Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this entrance upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn silence of the old provincial house. She exchanged a few words with the aunt, a stranger, to whom ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... were built similarly; but no ancient author tells us that this was so. The fact that the walls which exist, though of considerable height, show no traces of windows, would seem to imply that the lighting, as in Assyria, was from the top of the apartment, either from the ceiling, or from apertures in the part of the walls adjoining the ceiling. Altogether, such evidence as exists favors the notion that the Babylonian palace, in its character and general arrangements, resembled the Assyrian, with only the two differences, that Babylonian was wholly ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... the neighbours, but the boards and rafters to complain. The Captain was up! and succeeding sounds proved that he had had another stretch, for there was a bump in the middle of it which showed that, forgetting his stature, the careless man had hit the ceiling with his head. That was evidently a matter ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Watteau-like pictures. The curtains are foamy lace, with the pink and silver brocade falling over them. The furniture looks as if it were made of ivory; there's a mirror in three parts, reaching from the floor half way to the ceiling, so that you see yourself in front, and two profiles, like astral bodies, things which I've always wanted to cultivate, as they would be so nice for trying on dresses, or making calls on dull people. On the dressing-table is another mirror, an oval ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... with walking along the ceiling is noticed the beautiful contrivance of the foot of the house-fly and gecko, and the head of the sucking-fish. To the next portion, Chemistry has supplied fewer wonders than we expected: they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... house was aglow with light. Tatiana Markovna could not do enough in honour of her guest and future connexion. She had a great bed put up in the guest-chamber, that nearly reached to the ceiling and resembled a catafalque. Marfinka and Vikentev gave full rein to their gay humour, as they played and sang. Only Raisky's windows were dark. He had gone out immediately after dinner and had ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Don't praise yourself. Don't overgesticulate. Don't pace the platform. Don't clear your throat. Don't "point with pride." Don't tell a long story. Don't rise on your toes. Don't distort your words. Don't stand like a statue. Don't address the ceiling. Don't speak in a high key. Don't emphasize everything. Don't drink while speaking. Don't fatigue your audience. Don't exceed your time limit. Don't talk for talking's sake. Don't wander from your subject. Don't fumble ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... gained to inspect carefully any of the rooms in the abode of the Three. It was octagonal, carpeted with the thick rugs that seemed almost as though woven of soft mineral wool, faintly shimmering, palest blue. I paced its diagonal; it was fifty yards; the ceiling was arched, and either of pale rose metal or metallic covering; it collected the light from the high, slitted windows, and shed it, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... ceiling. It does not. Is it dainty, it is if prices are sweet. Is it lamentable, it is not if there is no undertaker. Is it curious, it is not when there is youth. All this makes a line, it even makes makes no more. ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... folded his hands in his lap, smiled seraphically, and looked at the ceiling. "In fact, my friend, we are now so positive of our knowledge of the Nipe's mind that we are prepared to enter into the next phase of our program. Within a very short while, if we are correct, we shall, with your help, arrest the most feared arch-criminal that Earth ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... end of this superb room, stood two fluted and gilded pilasters, and two pillars of the Corinthian order, the capitals of which reached the ceiling: but they were not equidistant from each other, the space from the pilaster to the pillar on either side being much less than that between the two pillars. Between the two former there were placed statues of the purest marble; what fabled god or goddess they ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stand on his feet and actually walked a few steps; as his frock was opened, his arm, with a clot of blood, dropped to the floor. This boy made an excellent recovery. The space between the plastered ceiling and the drum in which the revolutions of the body had taken place was scarcely 7 1/2 inches wide. Horsbeck's case was of a negro of thirty-five who, while pounding resin on a 12-inch leather band, had his hand ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a comfortable chamber, with an oak wainscot; and whenever in summer months the air is sharp enough, as on the present occasion, a fire helped to light it up; which fire, being chiefly wood, made a pleasant broad flicker on panel and ceiling, and yet did not make the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... in Borneo, but before undertaking this it was necessary for several reasons to go to Java. In Soerabaia I had my first experience of an earthquake. Shortly before two o'clock, while at luncheon in the hotel, a rather strong rocking movement was felt, and I looked at the ceiling to see if there were cracks which would make it advisable to leave the room. But it lasted only a few seconds, although the chandeliers continued to swing for a long time. At other places clocks stopped, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... seat. "Used to kick some myself. Excuse ME." He stood for a moment looking up at the stovepipe, then without apparent effort he sprang into the air, shot up his long legs, and knocked the stovepipe with a bang against the ceiling. There was a shout ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... quite easily. To his surprise, instead of a closet he found a long narrow room. The moon, which was sinking in the west, shone in at an open window at the other end. This room had a low ceiling and spread the whole length of the house close under the roof. It was quite empty. The yellow light of the half moon ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... measuring 30 feet in length and 12 feet in width and height, a spider is at a point on the middle of one of the end walls, 1 foot from the ceiling, as at A; and a fly is on the opposite wall, 1 foot from the floor in the centre, as shown at B. What is the shortest distance that the spider must crawl in order to reach the fly, which remains stationary? Of course the spider never ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... letter again with characteristic deliberation, lay back awhile with pale blue eyes fixed unswervingly upon the ceiling, and finally rose and betook himself ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... hold of the vessel was crowded with moody and unhappy wretches who most often were made to crouch so that their knees touched their chins, but who also were frequently made to lie on their sides "spoon-fashion." Sometimes the space between floor and ceiling was still further diminished by the water-barrels; on the top of these barrels boards were placed, on the boards the slaves had to lie, and in the little space that remained they had to subsist as well as they ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... you'd be reasonable," said Winnie, setting the table as she talked. "But it can rain or blow great guns and you never as much rise up to put the window down; you might think it was nailed up. Last night the rain poured in and soaked through to the hall ceiling and what Mrs. Hammond is going to say when she ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... doctor in those days. She had an old shop buried away in a part of the town that we reached by crossing a canal. Many is the time my grandmother took me to that old shop with its rows of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling; with its old worn corners, and its barrel of white cocoanut oil standing near the door. Oh, I loved that place. I loved the smell of the herbs and I loved the little old woman who could brew teas from her herbs that would cure any ailment in the world, I thought. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... some more modern barbarian, of his eyes; while the face of his royal consort had been cut out of the threaded picture, to judge by the ragged end of the canvas, by a penknife. The very pillars were notched in places, as though some mad revelers had striven to climb to the pictured ceiling, from which gods and men looked down upon them with amaze; the thick-piled carpet of the stairs was cut and torn, doubtless by horses' hoofs; and here and there a gap in the gilt balusters showed where they had been torn away in brutal frolic. A groom ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... offer you the hospitality of my packing-case, as you call it," said Brent, "but the dining-room ceiling fell down Wednesday, and I'm having the others bolstered up as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... warning, by means of thick stone shutters on the inside. The fire-place was ample at the hearth, but the flue through which the smoke escaped was small, and ran in a serpentine direction up through the northern wall; while the ceiling was overlaid with smooth flat stones, fastened down with huge iron spikes, and supported by strong wooden joists. The furniture consisted of a few trunks, (which answered for seats,) two camp beds, four barrels of hard biscuit, a few dishes ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... mortal wound was not to be found in the room, nor were any footsteps or other traces of the murderer discoverable. At the suggestion of Sir Arthur himself, the coroner was instantly summoned to attend, and an inquest was held. Nothing, however, in any degree conclusive was elicited. The walls, ceiling, and floor of the room were carefully examined, in order to ascertain whether they contained a trap-door or other concealed mode of entrance, but no such thing appeared. Such was the minuteness of investigation employed, that, although the ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... below life size, when apparently intending that they should be full- sized, and worse than this, that some are smaller in proportion than others. Nevertheless, when we bear in mind that the Crucifixion chapel was the first work of its kind, that it consists of four large walls and a ceiling covered with magnificent frescoes, comprising about 150 figures; that it contains twenty-six life-sized statues, two of them on horseback, and much detail by way of accessory, all done with the utmost care, ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... to make me uncomfortable," he exclaimed pettishly. "But you shan't. No, my dear, you shan't." He let himself sink back again and joining the tips of his fingers contemplated the ceiling. But Margaret was in the mind to try. She shot out her words at him ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... said Vard. "I have no objection to changing. But I cannot understand how a cubicle with floor, ceiling and walls of steel, could ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... when she lay down it was to lie still enough, but sleepless. Late in the night she slept, but it was to dream again, much as she had dreamed during the Seven Days, great and tragic visions. Dawn waked her. She lay, staring at the white ceiling; then she arose. It was not cold. The earth lay still at this season, yet wrapped and warmed and softened with the memories of summer. Judith looked out of the window. There was a glow in the eastern sky, the trees were motionless, the brown ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... that his Majesty little guessed how much she aided him in securing the happiness of his subjects. The fact is, she has such a hold over him that she could have made him believe the floor was the ceiling, which was perhaps easier for him to think than anyone else seeing that at the Rue d'Hirundelle my lord king passed the greater portion of his time embracing her always as though he would see if such a lovely article would wear away: but ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... sitting reading his breviary austerely under the lamp. How could he escape? Ah—the horses—they had not been properly attended to! The next moment he was off, out of the kitchen and hastily rummaging in the large and dreary stables for a lantern. A whole row of these usually hung from the ceiling of a small outhouse close at hand, and Ringfield had already taken one, lighted it, and was a quarter of a mile along the road; Poussette, fearing this, made such insane haste, "raw haste, half-sister to Delay," that the blanketing of the horse and the other preliminaries ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... one who was de trop in the little party; but he fiddled beatifically, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, without the slightest suspicion of the fact, while Phoebe accompanied him, with little smiles at her friends, and shrugs of her shoulders. Reginald felt very strongly, though for the first time, that she was over doing the Scriptural ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... furnished and decorated in a style of antique splendor. The walls were draped with mellow hues of tapestry; clusters of candles burned in polished silver sconces, and were reflected and multiplied in tall mirrors placed in the four corners of the room. The heavy beams of the dark oaken ceiling crossed each other in squares, and were laboriously carved; the curtains and the drapery of the chairs were of heavy-figured damask. At one end of the room was a broad ottoman, and in front of it a table, on which was set forth, ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne |
