"Flight of stairs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the first flight of stairs, and my heart gave a sudden bound as if it would burst. I stopped, speechless and helpless, at the sight of Alicia, standing alone on the landing. My first look at her face told me she had heard all ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... not see her dive through the doorless opening into a hall where no sun-ray had ever entered. It could not have found its way in there had it tried. But up the narrow, squeaking stairs the girl with the pitcher was climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot of children, half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs and bedsteads that encumbered the next—house-cleaning going on in that "flat"; that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being turned out with ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... evidently not the avenue by which Maximilian had escaped into the forest. For it opened externally on the wrong side of the river, whilst everybody knew that its domestic opening was in one of the chapels of the schloss; and another circumstance, equally decisive, was, that a long flight of stairs, by which it descended below the bed of the river, made it impassable ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... at once lessened to half its width by a staircase. She listened intently, and could hear the other woman ascending the second flight of stairs. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... wooden ones. Hugo opened one of the wooden doors and showed a small sitting-room, where a meal was laid, and a fire spread a pleasant glow over the scene. The other door opened upon another narrow flight of stairs, leading, as Kitty afterwards ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had cost a good deal of money to get her to take the child and go away without making an open scandal. During the year before he had been expelled from the University for throwing another young man down a flight of stairs, and it was whispered about among the girl students that he often got violently drunk. For a year he had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clara, had written her letters, sent flowers to her house, and when he met her on the street ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... boys were hurrying toward the hook-shaped cove in which the motorboats were tied up. Although Spindrift Island was connected to the mainland at low tide by a rocky tidal flat, there was no way for a car to cross. The cove was reached by a flight of stairs leading down from the north side of the island. Elsewhere, the island dropped away in cliffs of varying heights ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... end my days on a ground floor 'pon the flat. Companion-ladders is bad enough when you've a man to look after; but when you've put 'en away and can take your meals easy, to chase a bereaved woman up a hill like the side of a house, an' then up a flight of stairs, for five shillings ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... up at last before a large, white building, and he was told to descend. Up a flight of stairs he was escorted, his pulses quickening with apprehension, down a long corridor, and into a large room, where he saw Runnels, Colonel Jolson, Anson, Clifford, a dozen or more Panamanian officials, and—he stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell upon a huge, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... reading for a few minutes, greatly wearied her. Even the simple mental effort of casting up the weekly housekeeping expenses of a very small household upset her, and she had to give it up. The act of walking one of our blocks, or of going down a short flight of stairs, or of riding for an hour in a well-padded carriage, gave her such 'unspeakable agony'—to use her own words—that she would have an hysterical attack of screams and tears. So emotional had this constant nerve-strain made her that she could not sustain an ordinary ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... like a great corner of rock. You may indeed imagine grief in the very rock that sees its flower fading to the withered shred. On the last night of her life this old man of past ninety carried her in his arms up a flight of stairs to her bed. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Galleria Umberto faced him at the top of a noble flight of stairs. He climbed these without loss of time, and directed his steps towards the Cafe Umberto. All the tables outside were occupied by a lot of people who were drinking. But as he wanted something to eat, he went inside ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... candle, and lighted the Count down a private staircase leading into a long gallery. At the end of this, he opened a small door. They mounted a winding flight of stairs, which brought them out upon a narrow landing-place; and then, putting the candle in the Count's hand, he pointed to a tapestried door on the right, which opened readily at the first trial, and admitted the Count, leaving ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a flight of stairs at the back of the house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people saying words. Afire with eagerness she ran through a garden gate and, turning a corner by the banker's barn, went into a little ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... up before the door of the reconstructed stable- studio, Kennedy jumped out. The door was unlocked. Up the broad flight of stairs, Hazleton went two at a time. We ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... thicket, the tourists discovered a comely flight of stairs, cut out of the solid rock of which the hill is composed, extending to a considerable distance, and finally leading into the great pillared chamber forming a Hindu temple, though a level space planted with trees ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... but, brief though his passing had been, it had been long enough to bring consolation to Archie. A sudden bright light had been vouchsafed to Archie, and he now saw an admirably ripe and fruity scheme for ending his troubles. What could be simpler than to toddle down one flight of stairs and in an easy and debonair manner ask the chappie's permission to use his telephone? And what could be simpler, once he was at the 'phone, than to get in touch with somebody at the Cosmopolis who would send ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... and stepping across the body of Michael as it lay on the landing, raced up the second flight of stairs. For a moment he paused in the hall, in order to make doubly sure whence the ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... enable one to see its full length. After listening for about twenty minutes, my curiosity was aroused, so I got up and stood on the landing. The footsteps still continued, but I could see nothing, although the sounds actually reached the foot of the flight of stairs which led from the corridor to the landing on which I was standing. Suddenly the footfall ceased, pausing at my end of the corridor, and I then considered it was high time for me to retire, which I accordingly did, carefully closing the door ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... to himself; he was still too dazed to grasp the significance of his position, when a light suddenly appeared overhead, at the top of a flight of stairs, and a hoarse voice demanded to know who was there. In the same dreamy kind of way, Gurdon was just conscious of the fact that a strong pair of arms lifted him from the floor, and that he was being carried up the steps. In the same dreamy fashion, he was cognisant of light ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... world of their patrons, and special reputations are made in the art-world accordingly. It is a strange life: not probably conducive to a high development of intellectual and moral excellence, but very much so to the picturesque peopling of the most magnificent flight of stairs in Christendom. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... examine first how high the water stood in the lower rooms. He lighted a piece of wood, and found that only two steps of the lower flight of stairs remained dry. Ailwin protested so earnestly that the waters had not risen for two or three hours, that he thought they might all lie down to sleep. Ailwin and he were the only ones who could keep watch. He did not think Ailwin's watching would be ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... I have been alone until you came." She stopped for a moment. Mr. Welles wished that Vincent could get over his habit of staring at people so. She went on, "I have felt very queer indeed, all day. It's as though . . . you know, when you have been walking up and up a long flight of stairs, and you go automatically putting one foot up and then the other, and then suddenly . . . your upraised foot falls back with a jar. You've come to the top, and, for an instant, you have a gone feeling without your stairs ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... had only one flight of stairs to ascend in order to obtain this conference, Edouard le Blanc, the brother of Adeline, being a principal clerk in the establishment. Edouard le Blanc readily and sincerely condoled with his friend upon the sudden obscuration of his and Adeline's hopes, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... and suddenly saw a terrace upon which stood a sacrificial altar. From the terrace, a flight of stairs flanked with sphinxes descended to the river. Thence there sloped a valley, bounded on the east by the mountains of the Red Sea. At the altar there stood a priest in a white linen robe with a purple border. He had raised his arms towards heaven, and stood motionless. His hands ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... the staircase is twenty-two feet—space sufficient to allow of ten horsemen ascending each flight of steps abreast. Altogether this ascent, which is on a plan unknown elsewhere, is pronounced to be the noblest example of a flight of stairs to be found in any part of the world. It does not project beyond the line of the platform whereto it leads, but is, as it were, taken out ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... sudden and abrupt termination without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of poor Piranesi, you suppose at least that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, but this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... right glad when they rung for the old footman who had shown us in at first, and told him to take us to our rooms. So we went out of that great drawing-room and into another sitting-room, and out of that, and then up a great flight of stairs, and along a broad gallery—which was something like a library, having books all down one side, and windows and writing-tables all down the other—till we came to our rooms, which I was not sorry to hear were just over the kitchens; for ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... immediately, and fall off into a comfortable sleep. So I agreed to the proposal about the bed, and took the offered arm of the old soldier, carrying my money with my disengaged hand. Preceded by the croupier, we passed along some passages and up a flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand, proposed that we should breakfast together, and then, followed by the croupier, left me for ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... said Mrs. Frank, "you met this old lady on your stairs as she was going up to her own room; and that she was sighing, because of the long flight of stairs and her weak chest. Now malice says, that, with the utmost politeness, you offered her your arm, and conducted her up the stairs with the greatest possible care; nor left her, till she had reached her own door; and further, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... thought of the shabby surroundings they forgot all about it when they mounted the third flight of stairs and looked in the door. Not only was Peter's bedroom full of outer garments, and Miss Felicia's, too, for that matter—but the banisters looked like a clothes-shop undergoing a spring cleaning, so thickly were the coats slung over its ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... a fruitless day of such search that we were sitting in the reading-room of the Fairfield Hotel. Leland entered. His face was positively white. Without a word he took us by the arm and led us across Main Street and up a flight of stairs to his office. Then he locked ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... the reception that I had pictured that I would receive, and I found that I was to be treated as a human being and not as a brute. With a smile, the superintendent addressed me again, and told me to follow him; and it was with a lighter heart and spirits that I ascended the second flight of stairs than the first, I can assure you. I was brought to the steward, who also greeted me most kindly, conversed with me a short time, fixed up some medicine for me and then took me into the hospital. By the word 'hospital,' dear reader, you must not take the usual definition ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... hearing his voice, loud in anger. In the fear that something serious had happened, she left her room to make inquiries, and saw Helena on the landing of the flight of stairs beneath, leaving the study. After waiting till my sister was out of the way, Selina ventured to present herself at the study door, and to ask if she could be of any use. My father, walking excitedly up and down the room, declared that both his daughters had ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the last flight of stairs in this house was a narrow passage-way in which I was always obliged to stop and recover my breath, after finishing the one hundred and thirty-nine steps that led to my paradise, before I could get my key into its lock; and into this passage-way opened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... the Rue du Dauphin, which had not yet been widened, Crevel stopped before a door in a wall. It opened into a long corridor paved with black-and-white marble, and serving as an entrance-hall, at the end of which there was a flight of stairs and a doorkeeper's lodge, lighted from an inner courtyard, as is often the case in Paris. This courtyard, which was shared with another house, was oddly divided into two unequal portions. Crevel's little house, for he owned it, had additional rooms with a glass skylight, built ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... midst of the excitement of this, they heard their aunt's voice calling to them from the middle of the last flight of stairs. There was something in her face, composed as it was, which alarmed them directly, and there they stood quite ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... visitor come in, cunningly took the opportunity of sneaking away. He had got what he wanted—the opinion; but O'Connell had not got what he wanted—the fee. O'Connell at once followed the farmer, who had got the start by a flight of stairs. The rustic quickened his pace when he found that the counsellor was in chase. O'Connell saw that he could not catch the runaway client, who was now on the flight leading into the hall. He leant over ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... all at once I uttered a loud whine. You should have seen how the passengers stared at my master, who I know looked embarrassed, as he gave me a tremendous squeeze. We soon got out, and I was carried up a flight of stairs, and placed on a table in a room, the walls of which were covered with pictures of people's faces, all of which seemed to keep their eyes ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... of destination, we entered, by a shabby door, the habitation of Jean Jacques Rousseau: his apartments were on the fifth floor. I can scarcely describe to you, my friend, the emotions I experienced as I drew nearer and nearer to the author of "Heloise." At each flight of stairs I was compelled to pause to collect my ideas, and my poor heart beat as though I had been keeping an assignation. At length, however, we reached the fifth story; thereafter having rested a few minutes to recover myself, I was about to knock at a door which was opposite ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... flame showed him a flight of stairs, leading up to darkness. With a drumming heart he began to ascend, counting twenty-one steps ere his feet failed to find another. Then groping again, one hand encountered a baluster-rail; with this for guide he turned and followed it until it began to slant ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... again to entertain or patronize this architect and master of the house. The triumph of inspiration is an unsealing of my own and of every mind, a delivery of the pupil to private inspiration. When the work of a master is masterly done, he abdicates therein, retires, and becomes unregarded as a flight of stairs behind. The statue is a failure, unless it makes me forget the statue,—the book, unless it makes me forget the book. All the rhyming, painting, singing of sentimental boys and girls springs from an intuition hardly yet more than instinct: that Nature has special ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... cigarette, and fat, florid stock-broker husband—who, by the way, had the grace to keep his eyes glued to the patience cards, ranged upon the small table before him, until father and daughter were a good half-way up the flight of stairs. Later, when outwardly mistress of herself, the inclination to tears successfully conquered and her normal half-playful gravity regained, she went to her bedroom, Hordle had brought her this ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... about that. Though it's very likely, very likely," hurriedly. McCall had no relish for argument about it. He was more secure of his intellect in the matter of peaches than inner lights. Cowed and awed as he could have been by no body of men, he followed Bluhm up a dirty flight of stairs into the assemblage of Superior Women. The office was by nature a chamber with gaudy wall-paper of bouquets and wreaths. Viewed as an office, it was well enough, but in the aesthetic, light of a Holy Ground of Ideas it needed sweeping. The paper, too, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... we went up a flight of stairs that wrapped round and round a tower-like tunnel, and soon reached the departmental portal. Once there, we took the northern tunnel, which opened into a large hall that stretched on almost endlessly, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... an attic at the top of a dark flight of stairs in the suburban villa that was now the sisters' home. It contained a fireplace and a long dormer window—three square casements in a row, of which the outer pair opened like doors—facing the morning sun ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... (Steerage No. 2 and 3) was a favourite resort. Down one flight of stairs there was a comparatively large open space, the centre occupied by a hatchway, which made a convenient seat for about twenty persons, while barrels, coils of rope, and the carpenter's bench afforded perches for perhaps as many more. The canteen, or steerage bar, was on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friend, who was a wise man, wrote to the priest of the settlement of Chezzetcook, to explain the "what for," and the consequence was—these portraits! But these women had a terrible time at the head of the first flight of stairs. Not an inch would these shy creatures budge beyond. At last, the wife of the operator induced them to rise to the high flight that led to the Halifax skylight, and there they were painted by the sun, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... seek the elevator but mounted the first flight of stairs. He saw two doors, one on each side of the landing. He sought one, stooped and peered at the card over the bell. Conover. Gregor's was opposite. Having a key he did not knock but unlocked the door and stepped into the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... part of the celebration began with community singing, William Griswold Smith, director, and was followed by an illustration of Then and Now, Told in Pictures, under the management of Miss Young. Down a wide flight of stairs came one picturesque figure after another garbed to represent the passing years during the suffrage contest, beginning with the middle of the last century, many clothed in the actual garments worn at the period, and after crossing the stage they took their seats ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... may steal into their lives at night through a cellar window. Genius—well, genius lives on the top floor, up toward the clouds, and with so many gloomy steps to climb and no elevator, it's very uncomfortable for a pretty woman. Her ideal is one easy flight of stairs to comfortable living rooms on ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... by what promised an adventure, I followed my ancient guide into a house whose exterior was sufficiently humble; but, having ascended a steep flight of stairs, she threw open the door of a chamber in which they terminated, and I found myself not only in a richly-furnished apartment, but in the presence of a lady, young as immortal Hebe, and fair as day. I saw at a glance that her ills were those of the mind only, and ere she had opened her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... around the corner of the house as if he had been projected down a flight of stairs by a catapultian boot. He halted himself in front of the house by dint of a rather extraordinary evolution with his legs. "Oh, ma," he gasped, "can I ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... the history of the temples, and learned why they were four or five stories high with the stairs on the outside, and why he had to go entirely round the temple to find the next flight of stairs as he went up or down; and why each story was smaller than the next lower, and learned that some of these buildings were over one hundred feet square and as many feet high, and had towers forty or fifty feet high on their ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... said the child, pointing to a massive column, one side of which was built close to the wall and had the appearance of being placed there as a support, but was in reality to conceal a doorway which led to a flight of stairs between ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... again when the fire is lit for the next meal. A very few sticks will thus serve for cooking a large number of the simple native meals. Opening from the kitchen was the front door, leading to the ground by a flight of stairs or a ladder. Thanks to the United States Mariveles is supplied with abundant water, piped from some miles up in the mountains, and some of the better houses of the barrio have a private faucet on the back porch, which is luxury indeed. The main room of the ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... street, closed in at the further end by the Capitol. This is a handsome, but unpretending building of red brick, adorned by a portico, and, as usual, surmounted by a dome. On entering at the top of a flight of stairs, there is a circular area, covered in by the dome. Out of this, on one side, is a very neat Senate House, and on the opposite side is the House of Representatives. The State library, a very good one, is upstairs. The flight of stairs up to this, which is continued up to the ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... of bacteriology, however, is only one of several important features of the institute. One has but to ascend another flight of stairs to pass out of the sphere of the microbe and enter a department where attention is directed to quite another field. We have now come to what may be considered the laboratory of hygiene proper, since here the investigations ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... and I have stopped to take a cup of chocolate in it. But one day I hunted up number eighteen of the street of Ecole de Medicine. The house was one which Marat used to occupy in the time of the great revolution. We paused a moment upon the threshold, and then passed up a flight of stairs and entered the room where Marat used to write so many of his blood-thirsty articles. A little room at that time opened out of it, and in the apartment was a bath-room. He often wrote in his ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... of the flight of stairs leading from the ground floor, George, waiting till it was over, witnessed the departure of his family for the afternoon promenade. A prodigious affair! The parlourmaid (a delightful creature who was, unfortunately, soon to make an excellent match ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... corner a flight of stairs led to a gallery high up against the wall, over the rude railing of which looked the heads of a couple of legless statues. From this gallery the stairs continued to ascend until a door near the roof was reached, leading ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... as of an army the excited youngsters bore Dick Prescott up a flight of stairs. Half a dozen of the fellows sprang ahead of Badger and Thompson, throwing open one of the doors of the ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... childish Paul came out of the kitchen-door into that three-sided well of a brick-paved yard, and walked towards the printing-office at the far end of the narrow strip of garden, the first door beyond the pump-trough led him to a flight of stairs. The flight of stairs, dirty and littered, mounted to a lumber-room, where there were great piles of waste-paper, refuse from the shop and office. There were many torn and battered old books here, and most of them were deserving of the neglect into which they had fallen. The father had ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... slippery marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed Moabite on the water that came by the way of Edom: a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... headlights of the motor-cars cut wide arcs of blinding light in the gathering darkness. One by one the cars stopped before the entrance with throbbing engines and discharged their loads. The short flight of stairs became for a few minutes a swaying tableau of gray cloaks. There was a subdued ringing of spurs. The lamps from within the doorway touched the tips of the helmets so that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... like a ball of ivory, and pressing hard upon it, a door, of which the mirror itself was a section, sprang a little way open. She threw it back wide on its hinges, and holding her lamp in the opening, saw at her feet a flight of stairs leading down into the gloom below. A damp current of air came up from this subterranean cavity, and its clammy coldness sent a chill almost of horror through the frame of the agitated girl. One less resolute than herself would have shrunk at the idea of exploring so dismal a looking place; but not ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... the stranger's valise—Fred had only a small paper parcel in his hand, containing a clean shirt and a collar which he had bought in Jersey City before taking passage on the train. Up one flight of stairs the clerk preceded them and paused in front of No. 21, the back room referred to. He unlocked the door, and entering, lighted ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... corridor the way they had come, descended a flight of stairs and headed along another corridor—to pause suddenly and gasp with astonishment. For through the door whence they had entered the rocket ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... often up a flight of stairs, and consisted of a single large room with "tables set apart for divers topics." There is a reference to this in the prologue to a comedy of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... together, he beside himself with the delight of accompanying her, and proudly carrying her box and satchel. How her little feet slipped in and out of her pretty dress—how, as they stood on the top of the great flight of stairs leading down into the court of the Louvre, the wind from outside blew back the curls from her brow, and ruffled the violets in her hat, the black lace about her tiny throat. It was an enchantment to follow and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... hung with portraits of knights in armor, and ladies in silken gowns; and the armor rattled, and the silken gowns rustled! And then there was a flight of stairs which went a good way upwards, and a little way downwards, and then one came on a balcony which was in a very dilapidated state, sure enough, with large holes and long crevices, but grass grew there and leaves out of them altogether, for the whole balcony outside, the yard, and the walls, were ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... at the door, vaguely disclosed by a wan illumination penetrating a dusty and begrimed fan-light, a broad hall stretched indefinitely towards the rear of the building, losing itself in blackness beyond the foot of a flight of stairs. Save for a few articles of furniture,—a hall table, an umbrella-stand, a tall dumb clock flanked by high-backed chairs,—it was empty. Other than Kirkwood's own restrained respiration not a sound throughout the house advertised its inhabitation; not a board creaked ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... on the top of a high hill," said Mr. George, "where there is a flight of stairs made to imitate those that Jesus ascended at Jerusalem, when he went to Pilate's judgment hall. Nobody is allowed to go up or down these stairs ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... flight of stairs that rose from the hall and along a gallery that ran half round it, then plunging down a corridor he halted presently, and, opening a door, ushered me ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... your servants to leave brooms, brushes, slop-pails, water cans, &c. in outside doorways, or at the head of a flight of stairs ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... donkey's back, offered to sell him very cheap. The temptation was great, and our animal artist bought him at once for five scudi, alias dollars; but with the understanding that the countryman would deliver him at his studio at once. In twenty minutes' time, the donkey was climbing up a long flight of stairs to Caper's studio, as seriously as if he were crossing the pons asinorum. Once in his studio, Caper soon made arrangements to have the donkey kept in a stable near by, when he was not sketching him. This matter finished, Rocjean helped Caper pen him up in a corner of the studio, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at the head of the second flight of stairs when the flood burst upon the house. She screamed to the Murphys—father, mother and seven children—to save themselves. She ran up stairs and got into a higher room, in which the little children, ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... walk, Caradoc turned down another flight of stairs. Here Madden discovered the secret of the cool air. On this deck was a big refrigerating plant, with frost-covered pipes leading in all directions. The sight of this plant gave Madden some faint insight into the thorough preparation ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... produced upon the father—who had followed Mademoiselle as usual, and whom we found patiently seated upon the bottom step of the flight of stairs, awaiting our arrival—was ...
— Esmeralda • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for that apple had come to our mind. Hastening zealously up a long flight of stairs in a certain large building we went to a corner where sits a friend of ours, a night watchman. Under a drop light he sits through long and tedious hours, beguiling his vigil with a book. He is a great reader. He eats books alive. Lately he has become ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... the morning warned the two men that they must seek their cover, for despite Jim's natural boldness and daring, he was cautious and careful. Instead of descending to the room which had its entrance from the alley, they mounted another flight of stairs, and gaining the roof by means of the scuttle, walked the flat mansard until another hatch-door was reached, and through it they entered a quiet, unassuming appearing house, which stood on the side street from which the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... made my way down the short staircase, and was about to leave the house when the third door, as yet unopened, caught my eye. I drew with some difficulty the rusted bolt, and found myself at the head of a steep flight of stairs, seemingly longer than that which I had just descended. It led to the cellar, and though the afternoon was getting on, I thought I would finish my exploration, and therefore went down, though repelled by the close ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... One flight of stairs led straight up from the doorway, and Charley took it slowly. At the top was a great wooden door with a brass plate screwed to it, and on the brass plate a single name was incised: Dr. E. C. Schinsake. There was nothing else. ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris
... nourishment; there was indignation as well as heartache in the feeling with which she had learnt to regard the world of her familiarity. To enter the house at which she paused it was necessary to squeeze through a conglomerate of dirty little bodies. At the head of the first flight of stairs she came upon a girl sitting in a weary attitude on the top step and beating the wood listlessly with the last remnant of a hearth-brush; on her lap was one more specimen of the infinitely-multiplied baby, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... amongst the most distinguished of the Turf. Amongst these was Prince B——, whose fate was the saddest of all my reminiscences of the Turf. I almost witnessed his death, for it took place nearly at the moment of my taking leave of him at the Jockey Club. There was a flight of stairs from where I stood with him, leading down to the luncheon-room, and there he appears to have slipped ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... soon for him to be stirring yet, and determining at last to go and declare his innocency, and make an appeal to the frank-looking lad, she crept timidly down the grand old flight of stairs, trying to think ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... of life, whether spiritual or temporal, from the initiative of confession, or cleansing the habitation of Christ, to that of dressing the right side first, stepping first with the right foot as you ascend a flight of stairs, folding the hands with the right-hand thumb and fingers above those of the left, kneeling and rising again with the right leg first, and harnessing first the right-hand beast, but that has a rule for its ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... all flush was gone out of her skin under the stress of the hour, she retained the innocent clear pallor of an infant. Angele hurried to straighten her disordered dress before taking the candle, and then led Madame De Mattissart up the next flight of stairs. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... way moodily down the broad flight of stairs leading to the basement. There, in the big, dimly lighted, cement-floored playroom, where the children held forth on rainy days, he met a boy from another room, who was likewise in no hurry to return. They hailed each other ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... the footman into the hall admitted to a spacious foyer which set apart the entrance and—as the play of the electric torch disclosed—a deep and richly furnished dining-room. To one side a broad flight of stairs ascended: Lanyard went up with the activity of a cat, making ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the parlour was to your left, the house staircase in front of you, on your right the kitchen, at the further end thereof was a door, and, when that was opened, a flight of stairs led to a long slit of a loft which, Nash later declared, did not answer to Elizabeth's description, especially as there was hay, and, before Chitty, Elizabeth had mentioned none. There was a filthy kind of bed, on which now slept ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... to the top, up winding steps that never ceased and through little pavilions which looked out on the scene below. A final flight of stairs at last introduced you into a structure which crowned the whole. From here the view was magnificent. Right below you could see far into the Palace and inspect the marble bridges, the lotus-covered ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... inlet. This building would afford him a shelter, if nothing more, for the night, and he repaired to its friendly but inhospitable roof. Entering the fish-house, he groped about for a suitable place to lie down, and blundered against a rickety flight of stairs in one corner. Hoping to find better sleeping accommodation in the loft than on the ground floor,—as literally it was, being composed of earth and rocks,—he ascended the steps. The stairs creaked and groaned, and it required some nerve to go up in the dark; but the steward's ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... the brief flight of stairs. I knew that Clem had not refused to get up without reasons that seemed sufficient to him. In a narrow bed in one of the doll-house rooms he ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... building, situated on the bank, and surrounded by a formidable circle of guards. This building we very naturally took to be a prison, and soon learned that we were right. It was the famous LIBBY. We entered its precincts, and were conducted up a flight of stairs, and then, on reaching the upper room, which was a vast, open one, we saw, almost for the first time since our capture, the old familiar United States uniform. We were soon in the midst of over a hundred ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... lift to the sixth floor, traversed an entire corridor, and then, mounting a short and narrow flight of stairs, we arrived at a passage with three or four doors on either side, and no exit at the further end. We seemed to be entirely cut off from the main portion of the hotel, and I noticed that there were no numbers on the doors of the rooms. A very tall and powerful-looking ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... windows. A chimney at the far end accommodates a boiler or two, and a fireplace, if required. A sink stands adjoining the chimney. A flight of stairs, leading to a garret over head on one side, and to the kitchen chamber on the other, stands next the dairy, into which last a door also leads. In this wash-room may be located the cooking stove ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... there any possibility of escape by the flight of stairs which he had noticed, for a hurried examination revealed a door of sheet-iron which did not give to his most determined efforts. There was nothing for it but to wait until the blind men should rest ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... scheme to get rid of the corpse. He reflected that a Jewish doctor lived just by, and having formed his plan, his wife and he took the corpse, the one by the feet and the other by the head, and carried it to the physician's house. They knocked at the door, from which a steep flight of stairs led to his chamber. The servant maid came down without any light, and opening the door, asked what they wanted. "Have the goodness," said the tailor, "to go up again, and tell your master we have brought him ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... wife attended the inauguration ball, which was held in the north wing of the new Treasury Department, then just completed. There was a great crowd, and the single flight of stairs proved insufficient for those who wished to pass up or down, causing great dissatisfaction, especially on the part of Horace Greeley and others, who found that the best hats and coats had been taken from the improvised cloak-rooms ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... I'll not believe that doctor," she murmured, as she mounted the long flight of stairs which led to the fifth floor. "Aint I always 'ad good luck all the days o' a long life?" She reached her own landing at last, panting a little for breath as she did so. She opened her hall door with a latch-key ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... close to the houses, past the dives—the streets, even here, were almost deserted; then I saw him drop down a cellarway. I followed, through long passages, up a creaking pair of stairs, along a deserted corridor—only one gas-jet burning—up a second flight of stairs and into an empty room, the door of which he opened with a key which he held in his hand. He waited until I passed in, locked the door behind us, felt his way to a window, the glow of some lights in the tenements opposite giving the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... connection that she presently recalled a certain soft afternoon of the previous October, when, passing from the first rapturous flurry of exploration to a detailed inspection of the old house, she had pressed (like a novel heroine) a panel that opened at her touch, on a narrow flight of stairs leading to an unsuspected flat ledge of the roof—the roof which, from below, seemed to slope away on all sides too abruptly for any but practised feet ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... a particularly pleasant home at Auxonne. They lived in a bare room in the regimental barracks, "Number 16," up one flight of stairs. It was wretchedly furnished. It contained an uncurtained bed, a table, two chairs, and an old wooden box, which the boys used, both as bureau and bookcase. Louis slept on a little cot-bed near his brother; and ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... climbing a short flight of stairs, and a few moments later a flood of light streamed from a doorway above her head, amply lighting the little hallway ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... once more; and the two passed silently through the broken archway, and going up the other flight of stairs, gradually made the round of the house. Everywhere it was the same, except in the servants' attics, where, apparently, the mob had not thought it ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... door opened into a passage about two feet six inches wide and ten feet in length, covered with oilcloth. At the end of the passage was a flight of stairs leading to the upper part of the house. The first door on the left led into the front sitting-room, an apartment about nine feet square, with a bay window. This room was very rarely used and was always very tidy and clean. The mantelpiece was of wood painted black and ornamented with jagged ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Captain Goodwin, opening another door and revealing a flight of stairs. "Run up these stairs and back, as fast ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... make Mr. Verdant Green a member, occupied spacious rooms in a certain large house in a certain small street not a hundred miles from the High Street. The ascent to the Lodge-room, which was at the top of the house, was by a rather formidable flight of stairs, up which Mr. Verdant Green tremblingly climbed, attended by Mr. Bouncer as his fidus Achates. The little gentleman, in that figurative Oriental language to which he was so partial, considerately advised his friend to keep up his pecker and never say die; but his ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... till I got to the first floor—the floor where grandmamma's and Cousin Agnes's rooms were. Then, as ill luck would have it—just from taking extra care, I suppose—somehow or other I lost my footing and down I went, a regular good bumping roll from top to bottom of one flight of stairs, books, and slate, and glass ink-bottle all clattering after me! I'm quite sure that in all my life before or since I ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... in Vere Street weep. Liza went up into Sally's room for a few minutes on her way to the Westminster Bridge Road, where she was to meet Jim. Harry had taken the top back room, and Liza, climbing up the second flight of stairs, called out ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... the horror of the fancy was the fact that the picture changed in quick succession, from the face of the living to the face of the dead. He closed his eyes at last and in sheer desperation felt his way down the last flight of stairs. The fiercer the effort he made to shut out the picture, the more vivid it became until he found himself shivering over the last persistent outline which refused to vanish at any command of his will. It ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... at the police station. Climbing the flight of stairs they entered a room crowded with Negroes from the lower stratum. The great majority of the women, it could be seen, had made some effort at respectability in attire. Some of the occupants of the room were there as witnesses in cases, others because of interest in parties to be tried, while the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... It was not till after some delay, and the passing of some communications with those in the interior of the citadel, that I was admitted. At length, however, I was conducted through the court, and up a flight of stairs, and finally into the apartment where business was transacted. The room was divided by an excellent, substantial fence of iron bars, and behind this grille the banker had his station. The truth was, that from fear of the plague he had adopted the course ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of the first flight of stairs opened into what had evidently been the great banqueting hall in the old days when sumptuous repasts and numerous guests were not uncommon things in the chateau. A huge beam divided the lofty ceiling into two compartments, which were crossed at regular intervals ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... conception. Where Vallejo Street ran up Russian Hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a flight of stairs. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... knuckles with a ruler after I had been making snowballs bare handed. My benumbed faculties next swung around to the proposition of proceeding up an interminable gravel walk—(it is twenty-five feet long!) to a forbidding flight of stairs—(porch steps—five of them!) I put this idea into execution. I reached the steps. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... See, the walls are almost perpendicular, and the bottom comes down, from ledge to ledge, like a flight of stairs!" ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... gong boomed somewhere below us. A last word from the Count, "Be ready!" He left us. Reappearing almost immediately, he beckoned us to follow him. We noticed that he seemed even more grave than usual. Down a flight of stairs along a great corridor we made our way, no one speaking a word. At the end of the corridor we saw two sentries; then, a big solid oak door, guarded by an attendant in the livery of the Royal Household. At a sign from the Count we halted; he knocked. The door was opened by an officer of ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... up the short flight of stairs into the hall, Morely took careful notice of the building. The mosaic tile of the stairs and floor gleamed from a recent scrubbing. The plastic and metal handrails were spotless. He looked briefly at his subordinate, then motioned toward the ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... to meet his employer at the tavern in Hog's Lane. He supped that evening with the keeper. Afterwards, he lighted his pipe, drew a chair up to the open fireplace, and smoked in silence. Still later, he betook himself through a long, narrow entry, up a narrow flight of stairs, and into a small, square room. After he had closed the door behind him, he observed another door, which, he concluded, opened into the next apartment. It was locked. Tommy Taft was to pass the night in this self-same ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Alone, beside the entrance-door Of a sort of temple,—perhaps a college, —Like nothing I ever saw before At home in England, to my knowledge. The tall old quaint irregular town! It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany; And this flight of stairs where I sit down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort Or Goettingen, I have to thank for 't? It may be Goettingen,—most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... plates of Mr. Q. Karkeek, out of the straw-littered hubbub of the market-place, she climbed the long flight of stairs leading to the offices on the first floor. In one worsted-gloved hand she held a market-basket of multi-coloured wicker, which dangled a little below the frilled and flounced edge of her blue jacket. Secure ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... balcony and leaving by the corridor which opened upon it, and thus fall into the hands of some British soldiers quartered thereabout, who might conceive the idea of hiding him; but surely it was impossible for Neranya to ascend that long flight of stairs! Nevertheless, he made directly for them, his method of progression this: He lay upon his back, with the lower end of his body toward the stairs; then bowed his spine upward, thus drawing his head and shoulders a little ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... escorted to the home of the Sweeney Club. It was a good sized hall up a long flight of stairs. Through the heavy blue smoke which filled the room I saw the walls decorated with American flags and the framed crayon portraits of Sweeney and other local politicians. Large duck banners proclaimed in black ink the current catch lines of the campaign. At one end there was a raised platform, ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... a small sitting-room, more fully furnished than any other in Ascher's house. It looked as if it were meant to be inhabited by ordinary human beings. It was reserved, so I learned afterwards, for the use of Ascher's guests. We ascended a short flight of stairs and entered the music room. Unlike the dining-room it was only partially lit. A single lamp stood on a little table near the fireplace, and there were two candles on a grand piano in the middle of the room. These made small spots of light in a space of gloom. I felt rather than ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... He fought, he grappled with the threatening blackout like a man fighting an invisible opponent on an endless flight of stairs. ...
— Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? • Bryce Walton
... difficult matter to accomplish. On the left of the cottage, but to your right as you face it, stands the mill, to which you ascend by steps. It communicates inside with the upper floor of the cottage, which is used as a store-room for corn; and from this store-room a flight of stairs descends to the kitchen below. Another flight of stairs from this store-room communicated with the open passage leading from the back-door to the stable. This is all that need be said: and you may think it superfluous to have described it at all: but it ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the hotel door, and he himself came up the stairs, leaning on his gold-headed cane. He enjoyed the full use of only one foot, although his gouty condition was not very apparent except when he climbed a flight of stairs. Ordinarily he showed admirable skill in disguising his defect. He was still a fine-looking man, and only the whiteness of his hair betrayed his age. Clean-shaven and of florid complexion, he wore a constant smile on his finely chiselled ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... flight of stairs we go; two storeys, three, four, five. As we reach the landing, a tidy young woman appears. She is holding her face in her hands and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... might have been seen, stealing cautiously down a dark, narrow flight of stairs, that led to a little postern, which she opened with a key which she drew from her girdle, and, closing it behind her, stepped out on the stretch of short green turf, which ran along one side of the quaint chapel. It was ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson |
