"Basement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... servants and retainers, who were many, was in the basement of the castle and John, his appetite sharp from the day's work, ate bountifully. The obvious fact that he had already won the regard of Walther, a man of importance, inspired respect for him, and once the brunette Ilse, flitting through the kitchen, gave ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cheque-forging men—if the Brungers are invited to do no dogging after these, there are pickings for them in less flashy crimes. Hiding in cupboard work while the sweated little shop- assistant slips a marked shilling from the till, hiding in basement work while a trembling little figure creeps down and pilfers the stock—these are the pranks that come ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... up the repaired apparatus with these antennae, and made sure all was well. Then he dropped the wires over the side of the building to connect with one of the dynamos in the sub-basement. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... munificence of Mr. Brennan, for the splendor and profusion of the supper and refreshments, which appeared as if "earth and sky and sea" had been plundered of their sweets. The company must have numbered from four to five hundred persons who were distributed in the various rooms of the basement story where dancing parties were kept up till two o'clock. Like the Brussells Ball, we too ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... 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
... round. The restaurant was in an underground basement; it was damp and dark, and reeked with the stifling fumes of vodka, tobacco-smoke, tar, and some acrid odor. Facing Gavrilo at another table sat a drunken man in the dress of a sailor, with a red beard, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... my Swahili, so I missed what was going on, except for an occasional word. But Sol was getting it all. He reported: "He knows Walt; that's what's bothering him. He says Walt and some of the Leopards are in a basement down the street, and there's something wrong with them. I can't exactly figure out ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... the ancient 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 it would be if in these days as ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... tower, a huge solid mass of brick-work, built (like all Babylonian temple-towers) in stages, square being emplaced on square, and a sort of rude pyramid being thus formed, at the top of which was the main shrine of the god. The basement platform of the Belus tower was, Herodotus tells us, a stade, or rather more than 200 yards, each way. The number of stages was eight. The ascent to the highest stage, which contained the shrine of the god, was on the outside, and consisted either ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... fountain shaded with palm-trees. The principal apartment is generally paved with marble; in the centre a decorated lantern is suspended over a fountain, while round the sides are richly inlaid cabinets and windows of stained glass; and in a recess is the divan, a low, narrow, cushioned seat. The basement storey is generally built of the soft calcareous stone of the neighbouring hills, and the upper storey, which contains the harem, of painted brick. The shops of the merchants are small and open to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Godfrey proceeded cautiously and yet rapidly the whole length of it, flashing his torch into every room. They were all luxuriously furnished, but were empty of human occupants. From the kitchen, which closed the hall at the rear, a flight of stone steps led down into the basement, and Godfrey descended these with a steadiness I could not but admire. We found ourselves in a square, stone-flagged room, evidently used as a laundry. Two doors opened out of it, but both were ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... exterior had pleased her, she went from room to room inside with growing amazement. Fyfe had finished it from basement to attic without a word to her that he had any such undertaking in hand. Yet there was scarcely a room in which she could not find the visible result of some expressed wish or desire. Often during the winter they had talked over the matter of furnishings, and she recalled how unconsciously ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... asking: "What do you require?" but with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain R—'s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a place of dusk and mystery and many doors. He had been afraid of being stopped by some rule of no-admittance. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... wooden water-colour box. It was marked five and sixpence. It seemed to comprise everything needed for the production of the most entrancing and majestic architectural views, and as Edwin took out its upper case and discovered still further marvellous devices and apparatus in its basement beneath, he dimly but passionately saw, in his heart, bright masterpieces that ought to be the fruit of that box. There was a key to it. He must have it. He would have given all that he possessed for it, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... passed from occasional to habitual forgery, consoling himself with the thought that he never signed the pictures and, before the law at least, was blameless. But signed they all were somewhere between their furtive entrance at Beilstein's basement and their appearance on his walls or in the auction rooms. Of course it wasn't the blackguard Beilstein who forged the five magic letters; he would never take the risk, 'Blast his dirty soul!' cried Campbell Corot aloud, as he seethed with the memory of his shame. He rose as if for ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... shoe-shining parlour in the basement. At the Cosmopolis shoes left outside bedroom doors are ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... quite absorbed in thought, While all beside seemed half forgot, I wandered on till I had strayed Beneath an oak tree's ample shade, Whose lofty top towered up so high, It seemed aspiring for the sky. Just at the basement of the hill, A modest little purling rill Shone like a mirror in the sun,— Flashing and sparkling as it run. The lofty oak scarce deigned to look Upon the little murm'ring brook, But tossed his head in proud disdain, And thus began his boasting strain:— "I've lived almost since ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... first about Cambridge was that it must be the only city of its size and amenity in the United States without an imposing hotel. It is difficult to imagine any city in the United States minus at least two imposing hotels, with a barber's shop in the basement and a world's fair in the hall. But one soon perceives that Cambridge is a city apart. In visual characteristics it must have changed very little, and it will never change with facility. Boston is pre-eminently a town of traditions, but the traditions have to be looked for. Cambridge ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Miss Manning had her trunk to unpack, and Rose's clothes and her own to lay away in the bureau-drawers. She had about completed this work when the bell rang for lunch. Taking Rose by the hand, she led her downstairs to the basement, where, as is common in New York boarding-houses, ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... in the chamber behind, there were columns. A series of columns surrounded this building, and at either end was a portico, eight columns wide, and two deep. There were two pediments, or gables, of flat pitch, one at each end. The whole stood on a basement of steps; the building, exclusive of the steps, being 228 ft. long by 101 ft. wide, and 64 ft. high. The columns were each 34 ft. 3 in. high, and more than 6 ft. in diameter at the base; a portion of the shaft and of the capital of one is in the British Museum, and a magnificent reproduction, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... floor; stairs brass-bound; linoleum worn; oh, yes! little bedroom looking out over the roofs of Eastbourne—zigzagging roofs like the spines of caterpillars, this way, that way, striped red and yellow, with blue-black slating]. Now, Minnie, the door's shut; Hilda heavily descends to the basement; you unstrap the straps of your basket, lay on the bed a meagre nightgown, stand side by side furred felt slippers. The looking-glass—no, you avoid the looking-glass. Some methodical disposition of hat-pins. ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... mainly about the treasonable plot to blow up Parliament, by mining through to its lowest floor, or basement, from an adjacent house. This plot was hatched by a number of Catholic gentlemen, and was quite ingenious. These people came from a wide area of England, and numbered about thirty. One point of interest to your reviewer is that one of the places where they met, or retreated to when not personally ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple,—a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "Devices and Contrivances," with its entrancing triumph of the chain of mirrors arranged (during the providential absence of those in authority) from the night nursery, down two flights of stairs, to the store-room in the basement? I know a reviewer whom nothing, but moral cowardice restrained from testing the possibility of this delightful plan by personal experiment. Fireworks too—Mr. SMITH has remembered them with a proper regard that is, of course, wholly ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... FOR HOUSEKEEPING. Front parlor, including piano, with front and back bedrooms on second floor; front basement; gas, bath, hot and cold water, stationary tubs; rent reasonable. West ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... 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
... fancied he heard a suppressed groan, as of one suffering from intense agony—Not the groan, but the peculiar tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention, and excited a vague yet stirring interest in his breast. On approaching closer to the temple, he found that at its immediate basement the earth had been thrown up into a sort of mound, which so elevated the footing as to admit of his reaching the bars of the window with his hands. Active as we have elsewhere shown him to be, he was not long in obtaining a full view of the interior, when a scene ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... deposit their lap dogs in the bomb-proof shelter erected for that purpose in the basement of the War Office buildings at Whitehall, a charge of one penny per ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 23, 1916 • Various
... meeting than a stranger would have known of. In the splendid dining room where we sat, which was forty feet in length and floored with tiles of Italian marble, as was the entire large basement, it was impossible not to notice the unpainted casing of one side of a window, and also the two immense patches of common gray plaster on the beautifully frescoed walls, which covered holes made by a piece of shell that had crashed ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... we wanted Goya, and more and more Goya, who is as Spanish and as unlike Velasquez as can very well be. There was not enough Goya abovestairs to satisfy us, but in the Goya room in the basement there was a series of scenes from Spanish life, mostly frolic campestral things, which he did as patterns for tapestries and which came near being enough in their way: the way of that reality which is so far from the reality of Velasquez. There, striving with their strangeness, we found ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Movement different from that of fluting the column, and both again from the construction of the Temple as a whole: but this last is complete as lacking nothing to the result proposed; whereas that of the basement, or of the triglyph, is incomplete, because each is a ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... for it now; it is quite gone. The round, white-plastered brick pillars which held the house fifteen feet up from the reeking ground and rose on loftily to sustain the great overspreading roof, or clustered in the cool, paved basement; the lofty halls, with their multitudinous glitter of gilded brass and twinkle of sweet-smelling wax-candles; the immense encircling veranda, where twenty Creole girls might walk abreast; the great front stairs, descending from ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... to find some poor waif lying in wait for him. Man, woman or child who had wandered in, maybe, before the big door downstairs was closed, or who, if still blessed with some outer semblance of gentility, had managed cunningly to get past the Cerberus who lived in the basement, and whose duty it was to open the front door, after eight at ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... women looked at each other oddly. "Try the basement door," said Anne to the man. They stood at the top of the steps while the footman tried the iron gate that barred the way to the tradesmen's door. ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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. ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... telephonic studies, and then he tried an arrangement somewhat different from the first. He used a tin tube, Figs. 3 and 4, and covered it with wire, the ends of which were soldered to the tongue of copper. With this instrument, he states, he frequently conversed with his wife from the basement of his house to the third floor, where she was confined ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... against that, and with her nerves newly strung, she stood listening for a few moments to the buzz of voices outside, and then, feeling that it was impossible for danger to assail them without warning from the front door, she went to the head of the stairs which led down into the basement. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... isolation of my unspeakable terror. On we went, turning to the left instead of to the right, past my suite of sitting-rooms where the gilding was red with blood, into that unknown wing of the castle that fronted the main road lying parallel far below. She guided me along the basement passages to which we had now descended, until we came to a little open door, through which the air blew chill and cold, bringing for the first time a sensation of life to me. The door led into a kind of cellar, through which we groped ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... habitable part of the house, which has been repaired and redecorated inside on Laura's account. My two rooms, and all the good bedrooms besides, are on the first floor, and the basement contains a drawing-room, a dining-room, a morning-room, a library, and a pretty little boudoir for Laura, all very nicely ornamented in the bright modern way, and all very elegantly furnished with the delightful modern ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we incurred a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen's books, as if we might have kept the basement storey paved with butter, such was the extensive scale of our consumption of that article. I don't know whether the Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market, I should say several ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... for teachers in 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 up my mind to part with my child who had lived with us since ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Barclay made an effort to get up, but it was useless, for the first two seized him between them, all bound as he was, and dragged him out of the room, along the passage, and down the stone steps to the basement, where they thrust him into the wine-cellar, and half-dragged him across there into the inner cellar, the houses on that side being exactly the same ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... do not form the base of the foundation, but are raised upon other courses, fifteen feet from the ground. It is considered by some antiquarians that they are of a date greatly anterior to that of the temples, and were intended as the basement of a ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... caught H. in the act of masturbating as he stood in the bath-tub. A. told me a number of sexual stories—how he enjoyed coitus in the bushes with a girl on the way home from entertainments; how half a dozen boys and girls stripped in the basement of a church and performed coitus on the velvet chairs which stood behind the pulpit; and how he and a younger boy, who camped out together, played with each other's genitals. F., a boy of 11, was highly nervous, subject to timidity and tears on the slightest provocation, often ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... from sickness at Nashville, I spent hours of investigation in the base of the capitol, used as an armory, where an immense amount of this work had been done. I have been told that the basement of our National capitol has been used to prepare bread for loyal soldiers; that basement was used to prepare them bullets. At Bowling Green I saw many thousands of rifles and shot-guns which had been collected for alteration, and the machine shop of the Louisville ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... buildings, and the runner had passed between it and him. And he had not heard his footsteps. Then he understood, and his pulse quickened as he felt that he was on the track. Beneath the block was a large sort of cellar-basement. It was used as a store-room for chairs, and was never opened except when prize-day or some similar event occurred, when the chairs were needed. It was supposed to be locked at other times, but never ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... deep basement, in a large, dusky room that we shared with three other families, each family occupying one of the corners and as much space as it was able to wrest. Violent quarrels were a commonplace occurrence, and the question of floor space a staple bone of contention. The huge brick oven in which ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the day. But Phil's hope was that some money might be 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, ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... more lucid fragments. It bears all the earmarks of a disordered mind, and various experiences are repeated over and over, while much is so vague and incoherent as to defy comprehension. Nevertheless, from reading it myself, I venture to predict that if an excavation is made in the main basement, somewhere in the vicinity of the foundation of the great chimney, a collection of bones will be found which should very closely resemble those which James Crayden ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... basement of his father's house (where he took the precaution to label all his bottles 'poison'), he began the publication of a new and better journal, entitled the PAUL PRY. It boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. One ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... Carl said. "He bribed his way in. See, New York was bombed flat. Where the old UN buildings were, it's still hot. So The Guide donated a big tract of land outside St. Louis, built these buildings—we're in the basement of one of them, right now, if you want a good laugh—and before long, he had the whole organization eating out of his hand. They just voted him into power, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... ago, the author was passing Tremont Temple in Boston, when he observed an illuminated sign over the door of one of its basement rooms, "Boston Young Men's Total Abstinence Society," and in connection with it was a most cordial "WALK IN." We accepted the silent invitation, and entered. There we found a few young men engaged in a debate, and some five or six spectators, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... 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, ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stream of blue invective, he ran to the rear of the house and went down the basement stairs. Sure enough. Somebody had ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the attack and thereby secured a short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of the Tigris. On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... 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 Scots who were ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... entering this lower division, would not have supposed, from what he could observe, that the upper part would have afforded so great a contrast by the richness and luxury displayed there. On a more minute examination, however, of the basement floor, it would have been discovered that a stage had been raised from the earth, on which were placed a number of large jars of wine, casks of olives, cases of figs, and sacks of corn and other grain, indeed, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... said the gentleman, 'is coming down- stairs fast, and will be below the basement ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... notice such as in 1914 nobody had ever expected to see in that quadrangle of guarded sacred castles: "Turn the handle and walk in." The mansion, though much later in date, was built precisely on the lines of a typical Bloomsbury boarding-house. It had the same basement, the same general disposition of rooms, the same abundance of stairs and paucity of baths, the same chilly draughts and primeval devices for heating, and the same superb disregard for the convenience of servants. The patrons of domestic architecture ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... was just a toy, but it had all the parts. He had gotten a pattern from a mechanical magazine, with explicit instructions; he scoured around and got the dozen or more materials necessary, then worked for days and some nights in the basement. Finally, the thing was completed. It had a twist-rubber propeller, and would actually fly a little—not much. But it was a thing of beauty, and its varnished butterfly planes spread majestically and glistened in the sunlight. There were the stays and the rudder, the pilot's ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... Latiaris in Rome, two men of the middle classes met each other. They both remained standing in order to contemplate the new temple, which was different from all others, and looked as if it had felt the effects of an earthquake. The basement had the shape of a roof; the columns stood reversed with their capitals below, and the roof was constructed like a basement ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the great empty drawing-room the noise of the wind and rain, the almost continuous spatter on the glass, and the long hooting of the gusts, had been far more noticeable than in the basement beneath. Below stairs the company had been natural and normal, talking of this and that, in a brightly lighted room, dwelling only on matters that fell beneath the range of their senses, lulled by warmth and food and cigar-smoke into a kind of rapt self-contemplation. But up here, in the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... quiver So far in the river, With many a light From window and casement, From garret to basement, She stood with amazement Houseless by night. The bleak winds of March Made her tremble and shiver But not the dark arch, Of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... pictured, but at least there Was the satisfaction of knowing that any stranger in town, be he "gringo" or president-elect, famous or infamous, rich or honest, could stop nowhere else. Among its luxuries was a "bath," which turned out to be a massive stone vessel in the basement with a drizzle of cold water from a faucet above that was sure to run dry about the time the victim was well soaped; its frontiersman rooms were furnished with little more than weak-kneed canvas cots, and the ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... are to those of other people around me who call themselves old,—the sexagenarians, for instance,—something like what a cellar is to the ground-floor of a house. The young people in the upper stories (American spelling, story) go down to the basement in their inquiries, and think they have got to the bottom; but I go down another flight of steps, and find myself below the surface of the earth, as are the bodies of most of my contemporaries. As to health, I am doing tolerably well. I have just come in from ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... 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 occasional use only, space which was required for ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... He was cheered when some friend of his world who had met Jack in the garb of his caste, as fitted by Burleigh, would say: "Fine, strapping son you have there, Wingfield!" He was abashed and dumfounded when Jack announced that he had taken Mamie Devore, who sold culinary utensils in the basement, out to luncheon with her "steady company," Joe Mathewson, driver of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... put this basket in the basement in a cool, damp place, where it will keep perfectly for a week. When you make your basket we can find the squaw and bring her down with us. Lowry could display the results side by side. He could call up whomever you consider the most artistic man and woman in the city and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... rocks found and the problems unsolved. The basement rocks, as to the north, appear to be reddish and grey granites and altered slate (possibly bearing fossils). The Cloudmaker appears to be diorite; Mt. Buckley sedimentary. The suggested formation is of several layers of coal with sandstone ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... very 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 ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Fellows on a payment of a small subscription, but was never very warmly supported. It is now partly converted to other uses. The London University occupies the main entrance, great hall, central block, and east wings (except the basement). There are located here the Senate and Council rooms, Vice-Chancellor's rooms, Board-rooms, convocation halls and offices, besides the rooms of the Principal, Registrars, and other University officers. At the Institute are also the physiological theatre and laboratories ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... resume my walk in the stifling shade I detect that, from the windows of the basement there is issuing a smell of, in equal parts, rotten leather, mouldy grain, and dampness. To my mind there recur Tatiana's words: "Amid a great sorrow even a small joy becomes a great felicity," and, "I should like to build a village on some land of my own, and create for myself a new ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... but with a heart into which some warmth of hope was returning, I accompanied my friend in a walk round the garden. Holmes took each face of the house in turn, and examined it with great interest. He then led the way inside, and went over the whole building from basement to attic. Most of the rooms were unfurnished, but none the less Holmes inspected them all minutely. Finally, on the top corridor, which ran outside three untenanted bedrooms, he again was seized with a spasm ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some of the clubs. At the Athenaeum the only smoking-room used to be a combined billiard-and smoking-room in the basement. It was but a few years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when the alterations were made in 1900. This new smoking-room is a very ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... In the basement was the grill. It was a night when one might order something heavy and hot. A planked steak—with deviled oysters at the start and a salad at ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... your hors d'oeuvres by allowing us to turn your bath into a sardine tank. Your basement too should make an excellent oyster bed. We would flood ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... to the barn, which was up an elevated driveway, there was a door opening into a sort of basement, and from that, by means of stairs, the main floor of the barn, where the horses were, could be reached. This door was locked, but Bert smashed the fastening with a big stone, since Mr. Stimson was too much excited to remember where ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... you should put it all down into a basement," suggests Bob, "and so get it all out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the trail of Mrs. Paine's boarding-house might be over it all. He had known boarding-houses as a boy, before his father made his money. There had been basement dining-rooms, catsup bottles, and people passing everything ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... Nunnery is situated on St. Paul Street, Montreal. It is four stories high, besides the basement. It occupies a large space of ground, I do not know how much, but it is a very extensive building. The roof is covered with tin, with a railing around it, finished at the top with sharp points that look like silver, about a foot in length, and ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... measured twelve by sixteen feet, with a basin four feet deep. It was supported by twelve oxen "carved out of fine plank glued together," says Smith, "and copied after the most beautiful five-year-old steer that could be found." From the basement two stairways led to the main floor, around the sides of which were small rooms designed for various uses. In the large room on this floor were three pulpits and a place for the choir. The upper floor contained a large hall, and around ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... rather suggestive of the spider and the fly. "Will you walk into my parlor?" "Oh yes," says the giddy fly, "it looks so nice, positively inviting?" But what of the other rooms in your house; your garret near the sky, where you do star-gazing, and your basement, where crawl the foul things of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... progressing over complaining floors through what may have been the servants' hall, a large room with a table in the middle and a number of promiscuous chairs (witness his tortured shins!), he finally blundered into the basement hallway. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... Dithyramb was danced was just a circular dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a splendid theatron, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above tier. If we want to realize the primitive ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... the first story runs an immense gallery where the crowd can promenade on days of public rejoicing; on the east side of the square rises the cathedral, with its steeples and light balustrades, proudly adorning its two towers; the basement story of the edifice being ten feet high, and containing warehouses full of the products ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... that Mr. Sampson had good cause to remember him. He was afraid the servant who had brought him his breakfast some months before in the basement might remember him; but there was no danger of that. She never dreamed of associating the young gentleman, her mistress's brother, with the ragged and dirty boy who had brought the valise ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... seafaring prints, the mustard pots of dark blue glass, the five-inch mutton chops, the Victorian contour of the waiter's waistcoat of green and yellow stripe. This time we fared toward the tavern in the basement, where even the outsider may penetrate, and were rejoiced by a snug table in the corner. Here we felt at once the true atmosphere of lunching, which is at its best when one can get in a corner, next to some old woodwork rubbed and shiny with age. Shandygaff, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of the window covering the same is an iron guard such as is used in New York on the lower back windows. The rods running up and down are about four inches apart. There is a projection outside the window such as would be formed by a storm door in the basement; running the full length of the window and about thirty inches wide, raised about a foot from the floor in front and about nine inches in the back, there is opening inward a door at left back, leading ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... would adopt with grace and facility the attitude of a prejudiced and hostile critic, show how cold facts and indisputable figures reversed my judgment, and end with a life-like picture of myself heading frantically in a No. 16 'bus for the bargain basement, haunted by the terror that I might be too late. With what dignity—even majesty—did I not invest an ordinary transaction in lingerie, when I spoke of 'the policy of this great House'! Yes, I believed I knew what there was to know of the supreme ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... the continuous sides of streets; and a court-yard was common to several dwellings. Others of a humbler kind consisted merely of rooms opening on a narrow passage, or directly on the street. These had only a basement story, or ground-floor; and few houses exceeded two stories above it. They mostly consisted of one upper floor; and though Diodorus speaks of the lofty houses in Thebes four and five stories high, the paintings show that few ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... monotony. The school liked the little British church at Fossato. It was so utterly different from anything to which they had been accustomed in England or America. To begin with it was not an ecclesiastical building at all, but simply a big room in the basement of the Hotel Anglais. The walls had been exquisitely decorated by a French artist with conventionalized designs of iris in purple and gold, and through the windows there was a gorgeous peep over the bay. The girls used to exercise much maneuvering to secure the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... that hot New York the girls I labored among are still packing chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing "family," beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming sheets and ticketing pillow cases. In the basement of the hotel some pantry girl, sweltering between the toaster and the egg boiler, is watching the clock to see if ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... everything about the establishment was English. The window-boxes, from basement to garret; the way the curtains hung in rigid complaisance; the significant name-plate on the middle panel of the door: "Joseph Grinaldi, Esq."; the minute plot of grass alongside the steps that led to the basement, with a treasured rose-bush in ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... built within the last 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. Playmore ordered him ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... said that the modest President shrank from receiving such a compliment as that. It was too much. He hid away the stone in a storeroom of the capital, in the basement of the White House. It now constitutes a part of his monument, being one of the most impressive relics in the Memorial Hall of that structure. It is twenty-four hundred years old, and it traveled across the world to the prairies ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... tidy his room, too; then she went downstairs to the clerks. In the middle of the room where the clerks used to dine, there was an unpainted wooden post to support the ceiling and to prevent its coming down. The ceilings in the basement were low, the walls covered with cheap paper, and there was a smell of charcoal fumes and cooking. As it was a holiday, all the clerks were at home, sitting on their bedsteads waiting for dinner. When Yulia went in they jumped ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... prettiest thing that ever was seen. The servant being unable to catch the coach, which flew like a bird, picked up the slipper, and carrying it to the King told him all that happened. Whereupon the King, taking it in his hand, said, "If the basement, indeed, is so beautiful, what must the building be. You who until now were the prison of a white foot are now the fetter ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... not independent enough to disagree?) but as age advances I have an increasing pleasure in recalling to mind the years, when you were Superintendent of old Adelaide street Church, and I was your supplementary helper,—in joint intercession with the humbled at night—in the damp basement, and during the day pursuing the penitents in dirty taverns, and the dens of dirtier March [now Lombard] street, the sainted Mrs. S. E. Taylor praying for us; and Christ won many souls. Since then what progress Scriptural Christianity—Methodism—has made in Canada! I ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... refined will be useful and happy. There is no gate that a gentleman's hand cannot open. During his last sickness there will be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... "The basement's swimmin' with it, m' lord." The fellow touched his hat. "Two casks stove by the edge o' the table. I felt around the staves, an' counted six others, hale an' tight. Thinks I, 'tis what their Worships will have been keepin' for private use, between ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her own reforms, becomes, in the men of '89, an "organized brigandage." "There is an economy of truth," said Burke. "Semiramis," like Romeo, "hung up philosophy," and the bust of her "preceptor," Voltaire, accompanied Fox to the basement! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... flight of steps led up to the doorway of the main hall, the outer wall of which is washed by the waters of the Avon. As designed at first, no dwelling had been allotted to the lord of the castle and his family but the dark and dismal basement story of the keep. A more civilized or more effeminate generation, however, had refused to be pent up in such a cellar, and the hall with its neighboring chambers had been added for their accommodation. Up the broad steps Alleyne went, still following ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inquiries, and the trouble was generally in regard to the rent. With agents we had a little better fortune. Euphemia sometimes went with me on my expeditions to real estate offices, and she remarked that these offices were always in the basement, or else you had to go up to them in an elevator. There was nothing between these extremes. And it was a good deal the same way, she said, with their houses. They were all very low indeed in price and ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 door was cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were closely drawn. In the lower story, the heavy lace that hung in carefully careless folds on each side of the window, seemed never to have been disturbed since it left the upholsterer's hands. Whatever life and motion there might have been in the basement, were sheltered from observation by conical firs or square-clipped box borders, set out on strictly geometrical principles in each of the four front yards. The doors were ponderous and tight fitting, as if they were never meant ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to these the chrysolite, The seventh gem in that basement; The eighth, a beryl, clear and white; The topaz, ninth, its luster lent; Tenth, chrysophrase, both soft and bright; Eleventh, the jacinth, translucent; And twelfth, and noblest to recite, Amethyst, blue with purple blent. The wall above those basements ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... of type. Dr. Fell also introduced a skilled letter-founder from Holland. For a couple of years the foundry and printing office were carried on in private premises hired by Fell, but upon the completion of the Sheldonian Theatre the printing office was removed to the basement of that building, the first book bearing the Theatre imprint being An Ode in praise of the Theatre and its Founder, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... time, 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
... guides said yes, and suggested that we go to the "Club." We went to Sixth Avenue, walked two blocks, and turned to the west into another street. We stopped in front of a house with three stories and a basement. In the basement was a Chinese chop-suey restaurant. There was a red lantern at the iron gate to the area way, inside of which the Chinaman's name was printed. We went up the steps of the stoop, rang the bell, and were admitted without ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... her anything at all, the exact truth. Be very careful about this. Tell her particularly about your money affairs. Your happiness depends more on food and clothes than you are now able to understand. But if you put in solid blocks of truth for the basement, the finer developments of your life will join on with precision and effect. I know a young man who went in debt for a fine span of horses and wagon. His bride supposed they were his own, ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... Humble is kneeling at a small altar, or prie-Dieu, with his two wives behind him, the second wearing a conical hat, his sons and daughters being represented in bas-relief on the north and south sides of the basement. On the altar side there are also some verses, by an unknown author, in which human life is compared to "the damask rose and blossom on the tree," with other images of its vanity and shortness. There is a dash of Elizabethan vigour ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... mirrors with blotches or cracks in them. The insides of the houses were as gloomy as the outside. They were all exactly alike. In each a dark entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up to bedrooms, and to narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen. The back bedroom looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats quarreled, or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime they might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road, and through their windows came the roar and rattle of it. It was shabby ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down the dark, narrow stairway. The light was dim in the basement but she could see that there was no coal. She went back and forth several times from bin to window, making notes in a small memorandum book. She was quite determined that Aunt Francesca should be able to find ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... more talking until we are inside the building. We are approaching the warehouse now and we must not let the watchmen see us. The only way we can get in is through a window in the basement that has been left open by mistake. There is a broad plank running from the window down to the floor that the men use with their wheelbarrows to carry out the dirt. It makes it very handy to get out. We all could jump down, but few of our club members can jump up so high. None of us ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery |
