"Sills" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not shut at this house, although each of the blinds was drawn exactly a quarter of the way down. Jimmy saw a large tortoise-shell cat lying on one of the window sills, whilst a black cat watched ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... the scoured deal table, chairs and cupboard, and the firelight from the grate winked so on pewter mugs, copper kettle, willow-patterned plates and diamond panes, that Bobby blinked too. Flowers bloomed in pots on the casement sills, and a little brown skylark sang, fluttering as if it would soar, in a gilded cage. After the morning meal Mr. Brown lighted his pipe and put on his bonnet to go out again, when he bethought him that Bobby might be needing something ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... house we saw building were also sided with the long, large kaoliang stems. An ordinary frame with posts and girts about three feet apart had been erected, on sills and with plates carrying the roof. Standing vertically against the girts and tied to them, forming a close layer, were the kaoliang stems. These were plastered outside and in with a layer of thin earth mortar. A similar layer of stems, set ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... fashion evidently requiring no corresponding drapery on the other. The Court was a cul de sac, and at the far end stood a receptacle for ashes, the odour from which was intolerable. Strangely enough, almost all the window-sills displayed flower-pots, and, despite the wretched weather, several little bird-cages hung out from the upper storeys. In one of them ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... that Gypsy and I both liked best of anything. One is called the Marble Room, and the other the Fresco Room. The Marble Room is all made of marble,—walls, floor, window-sills, everything but the furniture. The marble is of different colors and patterns, and just as beautiful! The furniture is covered with ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... was in the following hours, I cannot well describe. After I had returned to my own apartments I sat in my study without desire for sleep, staring with burning eyes at the silk curtains fluttering in the June night wind, until they seemed to be ghosts dancing on my window sills, and my straining ears listened to the hourly booming of the clock on the Fidelity Tower, until it sounded like the cruel voice of Time itself. Long after the rosy dawn I got up, drank some water, lit a strong cigar, and prepared to dress myself for the day's work. I can ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... a hallway between it and the kitchen. The hay loft is usually on a level with the kitchen floor, a hole in many houses is cut through this floor and used as a toilet. Or it quite often is nothing more than a two-inch board nailed over the sills. In the very best southern villagers' homes there may be a closed toilet in the hallway between the barn and kitchen. These are the billets used by the Allied troops on the river front in North Russia. The native seldom drinks raw water, ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... long since disappeared—and up the straight, sandy lane to the open space where a dwelling-house had once stood. But the house had fallen a victim to the fortunes of war, and nothing remained of it except the brick pillars upon which the sills had rested. We alighted, and walked about the place for a while; but on Annie's complaining of weariness I led the way back to the yard, where a pine log, lying under a spreading elm, formed a shady though somewhat hard seat. One end of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the mullions are carried up through the head. The easternmost of these windows is of two lights, and has a transom in the tracery, and the westernmost is shortened to allow of a doorway of four-centred form beneath. Below the sills runs a string-course, which rises to pass over the door. The parapet is battlemented, not for military purposes but for ornament, and at intervals are the beginnings of panelled pinnacles, set diagonally and partially embedded in the battlements. The clearstorey has no pilasters or buttresses, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... narrow and rather low room, with four windows looking out on a terrace. Jasmine and roses clustered round them, and flowers lifted their heads to the broad sills. Within, the lighted candles showed furniture that was perhaps a little faded and dim, though it had a slender, old-fashioned grace which more than made amends for any beauty it had lost. There was much old china, and on the walls were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... SILLS. The upper and lower parts of the framing of the ports. The bottom pieces of any ports, docks, scuttles, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... intense and there was much moisture in this valley. During the downpour I looked out at the dreary little houses, showing through the driving rain, while the sheets of muddy water slid past their door- sills; and I felt a sincere respect for the lieutenant and his soldiers who were holding this desolate outpost of civilization. It is an unhealthy spot; there has been much malarial fever and beriberi—an obscure ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... flat, the rain-water being carried off from it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a row of flower-pots was ranged, with wide intervals between each pot—the whole being protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron railing along the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... also do no harm to insert posts between lintels and sills where there are piers or antae; for where the lintels and beams have received the load of the walls, they may sag in the middle, and gradually undermine and destroy the walls. But when there are posts set up underneath and wedged in there, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Belgian uniforms, stripped from the dead, and had themselves photographed before the chateau. We noticed their laughing and pointing to the attic windows of the house, and we finally discovered that they had festooned strings of sausages, of their own recent make, from the window sills, to ripen. ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... patiently they waited, sitting in all manner of queer places. Some of them perched on the backs of the seats, a few clung like great big flies to the pillars, others sat on the window-sills, and several of the tiniest hung from the rafters in the ceiling. As soon as the service was over, ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... of ancient trees that shut out the glare of the sea and effectually screened the mansion from observation. The damp walls were heavily draped with the sombre verdure of ivy, whose ambitious tendrils clambered to the cleft chimney-tops, and peered impertinently over the broad stone window-sills, whence the indignant housemaid remorselessly sheared them away as often ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had been a heavy fall of snow which, though in the main cleared from the sidewalks, lay in the streets comparatively unsullied and unpacked. Fitful gusts of the passing gale caught it up and whirled it in every direction. From roof, ledges, and window-sills, miniature avalanches suddenly descended on the startled pedestrians, and the air was here and there loaded with falling flakes from wild hurrying masses of clouds, the rear-guard of the storm that the biting northwest ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... as ground he tills— Decay and death lie 'neath his sills. The storm that beats, And solar heats, Have helped to ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... gargoyle over the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into the deep blue pools. There is but scant furniture in the house, but a great oleander overhangs it, presently to burst into pink splendor; and on all the window-sills, even that of the kitchen (such a background of shining brass saucepans Waldemar's wife has made of it!) are pipkins and tubs full of trailing carnations, and tufts of sweet basil and thyme and mignonette. She pleases me most, your Gertrude, although you foretold I should prefer the husband; ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously been painted yellow many times; the woodwork of the plate-glass windows was a very dark green approaching black. The upper windows were stumpy, almost square, some dirty and some clean and curtained, with prominent sills and architraves. The line of the projecting spouting at the base of the roof was slightly curved through subsidence; at either end of the roof-ridge rose twin chimneys each with three salmon-coloured chimney-pots. The gigantic word 'Steam-printing' could ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... village, is introduced for the purpose of comparing the methods adopted by the natives and by the whites in the treatment of the same class of material. Perhaps the most noteworthy contrast is seen in the sills ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... new government for the benefit of the troops; but like the five loaves of the gospel story, "What were they among so many?" I saw the men, like swarms of bees, clustering around the doors and clambering on to the window-sills of these establishments, enjoying apparently the smell of the baking bread, and cherishing the vain hope of being able to purchase a loaf when at ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... crack had been stopped against the searing wind; and the atmosphere was a brew of all the sour odours, the offensive breaths, given off by the two-score odd people crushed within its walls. In spite of precautions the dust had got in: it lay thick on sills, desks and papers, gritted between the teeth, made the ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... stable first, smashed the padlock with a shovel, and rushed into the Gray's stall. Carl seized a horse-bucket, and began sousing the window-sills of the harness-room, where ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the road where there were some black-soil springs, was a long, low, oblong weatherboard-and-shingle building, with blind, broken windows in the gable-ends, and a wide steep verandah roof slanting down almost to the level of the window-sills—there was something sinister about it, I thought—like the hat of a jail-bird slouched over his eyes. The place looked both deserted and haunted. I saw no light, but that was because of the moonlight outside. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the city, one is impressed by the manifest love of flowers exhibited in the front yards of the dwelling-houses, and in the pleasant gardens attached to suburban villas, as well as by the blooming plants displayed on the window-sills of the homes of all classes. The admirably chosen spot for a cemetery, on the rising ground behind the city, is also finely ornamented with choice trees and flowering shrubs, among which are pines, cypresses, Australian gum trees (evergreen), mimosas, and many other blooming plants, well ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... I made use of it at once. The window was unlatched, but there was a heavy wire-screen nailed to the sills outside. There was no getting out that way. The gods were evidently ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... When it became dark they descended still farther, and kept down until they came upon a road. This they followed until about midnight they came upon a small village. They found, as they had hoped, bread and other provisions upon several of the window-sills, and thankfully stowing these away again struck off to ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Sometimes a slatternly servant-girl would appear in the distance, her dress bedraggled with slops, a tub of water on the pavement close by, and a long-handled mop in her hand, with which she seemed to be vigorously engaged in scrubbing the green slime and tufts of moss off the window-sills; but catching a sight of the strangers, down would go the mop, and then the usual hasty attempt would be made at fixing her hair and otherwise increasing her personal charms. As I drew near, this useful member of society would naturally take a sidelong glance at the strange gentleman, and perceiving ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... to be on the look-out, you know, Master Austin. Magpies don't perch on folks' window-sills for nothing. You'll believe me a little quicker next ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... Ornamentation. Plain Structures. Colonial Type. The Roof the Keynote. Bungalow Types. General House Building. Building Plans. The Plain Square-Floor Plan. The Rectangular Plan. Room Measurements. Front and Side Lines. The Roof. Roof Pitch. The Foundation. The Sills. The Flooring Joist. The Studding. Setting Up. The Plate. Intermediate Studding. Wall Headers. Ceiling Joist. Braces. The Rafters. The Gutter. Setting Door and Window Frames. Plastering and ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... absolute honesty of mind. "We select granite," he says, "for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granite truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.... In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the postoffice. You may depend upon it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... pretty walk. There were no birds twittering in the trees, or cuckoos. You could not hear the gentle roar of the ocean, and what flowers there were, were in pots on the window-sills. ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... sea-mosses, shells, and coral; but the tiles below it represented Scripture scenes. Blinds and curtains shaded the windows; and the broad, low sills were cushioned, making pleasant places to ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... any money left, I should suggest new sills to the back doors and those in the shed. I noticed that the present ones are very rotten, and I dare say by this time you have processions of red and black ants coming into your house. It seemed to me that I never saw so much insect life as in Beulah. Moths, caterpillars, brown-tails, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the sister was still looking out. There was a glimpse of lofty houses, open windows, grapevines rich in purple clusters on the walls, and boxes of mignonette and gayer flowers upon the window-sills. Miss Foster asked Bessie if she would like to see what of the asylum was shown; and though Bessie's taste did not incline to painful studies, before she had the decision to refuse she found herself inside the gates and the sister was reciting her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... was vast and imposing in size and appearance, had a floor of pure white marble. The mantels and window-sills were of white onyx, with delicate vinings of pink and green. The floor was strewn with richly colored mats and rugs. Luxurious sofas and chairs comprised the only furniture. Each corner contained a piece of fine statuary. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... three rectangular buildings bordering on a main state court. Large pilasters of white and pink marble were arranged as the frame work for high windows, topped with decorative arches. An outside flight of stairs and porphyrolite sills of imitation marble gave that impression of luxury and good taste which is characteristic of all productions ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... when everything in nature seems drowsily awaiting the night. They thought there was an unusual hush in the manner of those they met. Men talked on the corners or in groups in the roadway with unaccustomed earnestness. Women leaned across window sills and chatted across intervening spaces with an air of anxiety; the very dogs in the street appeared to be subdued. At the trader's there was not the usual small gathering of loungers, squatted sociably around on cracker boxes ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... minutes; and when he came back he brought her gifts and kissed her. Gifts upon gifts he kept bringing, till the Little Sweetheart's hands were so full she had to lay the things down on tables or window-sills, wherever she could find place for them,—which was not easy, for all the rooms were so full of beautiful things that it was difficult to move ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the frontier. The sides and ends were composed of the trunks of large pines, cut about nine feet long, and placed upright, instead of being laid horizontally, as was the practice of the country. These logs were squared on three sides, and had large tenons on each end. Massive sills were secured on the heads of the piles, with suitable grooves dug out of their upper surfaces, which had been squared for the purpose, and the lower tenons of the upright pieces were placed in these grooves, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... herringbone pattern led up to the front door, with its shining brass knocker. A row of white foxgloves stood sentinel before the front of the house, on each side the entrance, their pointed spires coming well above the window-sills; before them the dark foliage of perennial lupins, tossing up a white spray of flowers, and then it seemed as if every old-fashioned flower of white, or with a white variety, ran riot down to a border of sweet alyssum. Above ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... was one of such homesteads as the genius sang of: a low, old-fashioned, brown-walled, gray-shingled house; with chimneys generous, with green window-shutters less than green and white window-sills less than white; with feudal vines giving to its walls their summery allegiance; not young, not old, but standing in the middle years of its strength and its honors; not needy, not wealthy, but answering Agar's prayer for neither ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... had reached almost to the ground, so that the automobile with its great momentum had easily surmounted the sills and reached nearly the middle of the store. One wheel had been torn off, the windshield was shattered into fragments, and the front of the machine had been ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... were drinking coffee by candle-light. A hastily laid breakfast was on the table, but it had not been touched. The gray morning light was turning the flame of the candles to a rusty yellow, and outside, upon the wide stone sills, the snow lay high against ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... side were run out of the port-holes (those window-like openings which you see in the side of the vessel) as far as they would go, and the guns on the starboard side were drawn up and secured in the middle of the deck; this brought the sills of the port-holes on the lowest side nearly even with ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... speechless. It made me think of the inside of a peasant's cottage as sometimes prettily portrayed upon the stage. It was very simple, almost bare, and yet there was a charm. At the windows hung yellowish, unbleached cotton. On the sills were red geraniums in bloom. A big clump of southern pine filled an old copper basin on a low tavern table. A queer sort of earthen lamp cast a soft light over all. In the dining-room I caught a glimpse of three sturdy little high chairs painted bright red, picked up in some antique ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... with repeated affirmation, tacit and explicit, and said it would be very easy to tell Mrs. Westley she was not going, if she ever did come for her. She could not keep Charmian from referring the case to every one on the steps and window-sills in the Synthesis, and at the sketch-class, where Charmian published it the first time Cornelia came, and wove a romance from it which involved herself as the close friend and witness of ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... laddie, this I did"; Or, "Katie, in the Fall I'll see to build "Such fences or such sheds about the place; "And next year, please the Lord, another barn." Katie's gay garden foam'd about the walls, 'Leagur'd the prim-cut modern sills, and rush'd Up the stone walls—and broke on the peak'd roof. And Katie's lawn was like a Poet's sward, Velvet and sheer and di'monded with dew; For such as win their wealth most aptly take Smooth, urban ways and blend them with their own; And ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... evidently from the drift, probably dioritic, at all events a dark-green hornblende rock. In the present instance one was not long enough to fill the gap left between the walls, and two were superposed. I saw no traces of wooden lintels or sills. These doorways appeared to be generally about 0.50 m.—20 in.—above the floor, but if we deduct 0.20 m.—8 in.—for the clay (measure having been taken from the timbers), 0.30 m.—12 in.—will remain as their ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... (generally) than a couple of ditches twenty or thirty feet apart, the material taken therefrom being thrown into the intermediate space, thus forming the surface which supports the crossties, the sills or sleepers, and the rails. Indeed, the double operation of ditching and embanking is in some cases performed by a single machine, (a nondescript affair, in appearance half-way between a threshing-machine and a hundred-and-twenty-pound ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... is fond of flowers—if he begin with but a dozen little pots of geraniums and double daisies upon his window sills, or with a honeysuckle over his humble porch—gradually acquires a habit, not only of decorating the outside of his dwelling and of cultivating with care his small plot of ground, but of setting his house in order within, and making every thing around him agreeable to the eye. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... incredulous at first, then driven to believe, Angela guessed how the seeming miracle had been performed. The man had crept along the cornice which belted the wall, on a level a few feet lower than the line of the window-sills. She remembered noticing this as one suddenly recalls some forgotten detail in a photograph. A clever thief might make the perilous passage, helping himself along by one window-sill after another until he ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... day to discover and which had never yet been called upon to fulfil its original purpose, Steve came to a halt. The melting snow lay heavy upon the sloping thatch of the roof, which was battened secure by heavy logs. It was banked against the door. It was laden upon the sills of the one long window. Steve kicked it clear of the door and took down the fastenings which secured it. He passed within, with ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... smooth and wide, and cut places in them for the bridge timbers. It was a piece of excellent judgment, since the great stones could not be broken from the abutment, and they were mighty enough to bear the weight of a mountain. The bridge rests on three sills, each a log that, unhewn, must have taken a dozen oxen to drag it. I have often wondered at the magnitude of this labour; how these logs were thrown across the boiling water by any engines known to the early man. It was a work for Pharaoh. On these three giant sleepers the big floor was laid, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... of four which few may see; Symbol of Nature's magic zone, One out of three, and three in one; Emblem of comfort in the speech Which poor men's babies early reach; Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by sills, Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills, Sweet in its white, sweet in its red, Oh, half its sweet cannot be said; Sweet in its every living breath, Sweetest, perhaps, at last, in death! Oh, who knows what the Clover thinks? No one! ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... stood firing guns; in the middle a group of girls were stretching a rope across the road; a number of small flags, torn by the wind and wet with the rain, were rattling on flagstaffs hung out from some of the window sills; a few women, with shawls over their heads, were sheltering on the weather side of their porches to see ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of steam fill the air, and through the fog you perceive a fine melee of figures, some half dressed, some statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware tubs, which are of the shape and superb dimensions of Egyptian sarcophagi. Sometimes a patient with a wounded arm, unable to help himself, is being soaped and sponged by an orderly; or you may see a ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... settle, for long curtains at the windows, and for cushions to the rocking-chairs. She knotted white fringes for the table-covers and curtains, painted the inside of the fireplace red, put some pots of scarlet geraniums on the window-sills, filled a wall-pocket with ferns and tacked it over an ugly spot in the plastering, edged her work-basket with a tufted trimming of scarlet wool, and made an elaborate photograph case of white crash and red cotton that stretched the entire length of the old-fashioned mantelshelf, and held ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the sea-board, where the pale lights of Bordighera still flickered. She looked up again from the dark blue sea to the paling stars. It was all wonderful—theatrical, perhaps, but wonderful—and how she hated it! She stood up before the window and with her clenched fists she beat against the sills. Those long days and feverish nights through which she had passed slowly unfolded themselves. In those few moments she seemed to taste again the dull pain of constant disappointment, the hectic thrills of occasional ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... committed in the environs, the damage, at the end of three days, amounting to seven or eight hundred thousand livres. A number of poor creatures, workmen, merchants, old and infirm men, are massacred in their houses; some, "who have been bedridden for many years, are dragged to the sills of their doors to be shot." Others are hung on the esplanade and at the Cours Neuf, while others have their noses, ears, feet, and hands cut off; and are hacked to pieces with sabers and scythes. Horrible stories, as is commonly the case, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... intact; but there is no doubt that they are of the regular pueblo types. Most of the openings in the De Chelly ruins are rectangular, of medium size, neither very large nor very small, with unfinished jambs and sills, and with a lintel such as that shown in plate LVIII, composed of one or two series of light sticks, sometimes surmounted by a flat stone slab. This example occurs at the point marked 3 on the map, in what was formerly an extensive village. The wall on the left, now covered by loosely ...
— The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff
... confinement between the high houses of the passage along which we have to make our way. Over-head, an inextricable confusion of rugged shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues, pushed out on brackets to save room, and arched windows with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, leading the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as may be, occupying, ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... reached a little shop at the other end of the place, which stood nearly opposite to the churchyard, Bathsheba heard singing inside the church, and she knew that the singers were practising. She crossed the road, opened the gate, and entered the graveyard, the high sills of the church windows effectually screening her from the eyes of those gathered within. Her stealthy walk was to the nook wherein Troy had worked at planting flowers upon Fanny Robin's grave, and she ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... danger. You can lock your door. And see, come here,' I said, and, advancing to one of the window sills, I lifted it up and disclosed, neatly coiled within it, a ladder of cords, with stout bamboo rounds. 'As a last resort,' I continued, 'you can drop this out of the window and fly. All the rooms in this older part of the palace are furnished with similar fire-escapes. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... he said frigidly, "or at least the one Bender knows you by—the one you went by in Chicago, is Marta Sills." ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... in mind, the reason that the Catholic Church is such a refuge for criminals is because no police or detective is ever allowed to cross over the door-sills into these places of Catholic refuge, where the worst chapters of crime never will be told, and where these criminals flee to avoid ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... Bulletin board, on the dreadful day when we first read the news of the retreat at Bull Run: "It's hard—but we must buckle up and go at it again." It is very strange that the South never understood that among the mud-sills and toiling slaves and factory serfs of the North the spirit which had made men enrich barren New England and colonise the Western wilderness would make them buckle up and go at it again boldly to the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... chair-rungs and legs, and to wipe off the base-board,—and do it more conscientiously than hireling Abigail. She may pick bits of thread, string and paper from the carpet, and clean door-handles and window-sills. One mother, when making pies, places her four-year old daughter in a chair at the far end of the kitchen table, and gives her a morsel of dough and a tiny pan. The little one watches the mother and attempts to handle her portion of pastry as mamma does. After it is kneaded, it is tenderly deposited, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... been up since five o'clock in the morning. For two weeks he had started off every morning at that hour with his landlord for the timberlands above the town, where they spent the day hewing out the sills and beams for a new boat-house. Unskilled at such labor, his duties were not those of the practised workman, but rather those of the "handy man" upon whom falls the most arduous tasks as a rule. Thorpe's sinews ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Marta Sills might land you in most unpleasant places. But, Marta, that man you told me about, whose name ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... for few nights reigned, but the wind has again risen in strength. By the lantern I weep, as if I sat with some one who must go. The small courtyard, full of bleak mist, is now become quite desolate. With quick drip drops the rain on the distant bamboos and vacant sills. What time, I wonder, will the wind and rain their howl and patter cease? The tears already I have shed have soakd through ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... often a shed for the cow, that is off on her daily climb over the neighboring hills. Through the black pall of shale, a few vegetables struggle feebly to the light; in the corners of the palings, are hollyhocks and four-o'clocks; and, on window-sills, rows of battered tin cans, resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly bloom. Now and then, a back door in the dreary block is distinguished by an arbored trellis bearing a grape-vine, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... crept in about the window-sills and over the imprisoning panes, as if to taunt the victims who ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... about a week before Christmas Edison's train jumped the track near Utica, a station on the line. Four old Michigan Central cars with rotten sills collapsed in the ditch and went all to pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track and the vicinity. Hating to see so much waste, Edison tried to save all he could by eating it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had the time ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in new green leaves, and the irises and ranunculuses in the parks were out, and the policemen had shed their heavy uniforms, and instead of hyacinths behind the glass there were pots of tulips in bloom upon the window-sills of the two rooms over the garage. And the Doctor, who had been seeing patients ever since nine, was sitting at the writing-table, said W. Keyse, with his 'ead upon ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... rotting rail fence, partly concealed by jimson-weeds and briers, to the open space where a dwelling-house had once stood, evidently a spacious mansion, if we might judge from the ruined chimneys that were still standing, and the brick pillars on which the sills rested. The house itself, we had been informed, had fallen a victim to ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... D'Orsay, for the most approved Essay on Cultivating a Flower Pot, and the Expediency of growing Mignionette in preference to Sweet Pea on the Window-sills— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... weedy, the carriage-drive was, in places, green with moss, like the sills of the windows and the high-pitched, tiled roof itself. In the centre of the lawn, before the house, stood four great ancient yews, while all round were high box hedges, now, alas! neglected, untrimmed ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... with shafts and caps similar to those of the chancel arch. It is lighted by three plain window openings, the central one being enlarged. In the exterior a string-course runs round the building immediately below the windows, of which it forms the sills, and is enriched with a carved floral pattern. The chief feature is the main entrance door in a porch, projecting to the south, the archway of which is supported on two plain pillars with Norman capitals. There are over this door the remains of a line, concentric with the arch, of ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... the door as you enter, is the shop of a publican, equipped with a bar and a sheltering partition for modest drinkers. To the right, if you turn that way, is a counter at which you can buy anything, from galvanised iron rowlocks to biscuits and jam. On the low window sills of both windows sit rows of men who for the most part earn an honest living by watching the tide go in and out and by making comments on the boats which approach or leave the quay. It is difficult to ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a "Dienstmann," does a good business ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... older than the seas, Older than the plains and hills, And older than the light that spills From the sun's hot wheel on these. He wakes the gale that tears your trees, He sings to you from window sills. ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... truth pressed in on her—the children had rights upon her time, her thoughts, her understandings, her sweetnesses! What if for this week the window sills upstairs did remain unwashed, the rugs downstairs stay unshaken? She stole a glance out of the window at the one tree in the yard, green and gently swaying in the soft breeze, and she spoke with the impulse of youth. "Well," she ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... indoor game. Except for a rug or two the floor was bare, and the furniture consisted of an old claw-footed sofa on which at least six people could sit comfortably at one time, a wardrobe, some book-shelves, and a hammock swung across one corner. There may have been a chair or two, but the wide window-sills made pleasanter resting-places. Here in the summer time you looked out into the soft greenness of the maple trees, getting glimpses of the quiet street, but when the branches were bare a fine outlook was to be had all over the neighborhood, and ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... came a great wave of sorrow That drowned our hearthstones, splashed with blood our sills; To-day, that spared, made terrible To-morrow With thick presentiment of coming ills. Only we knew the Right—but oh, how strong, How pitiless, how insatiable ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... close together. But bad as our own plight was, theirs was very much worse; for we now saw that the frigate which we had raked so unmercifully was in a sinking condition, having settled so low in the water indeed that the sills of her main-deck ports were awash and dipping with every sluggish heave of her upon the low and almost imperceptible swell, while her own boats and those of her consort were busily engaged in taking off her crew. With the aid of my telescope I could distinctly see all ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... were hidden in all sorts of places. Stuffed down in the cushions of chairs and sofas, on mantels and brackets, under rugs and footstools, on window sills, on the floor, on the chandeliers, they seemed to be everywhere. All over the house the children scampered, filling their baskets ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... window also on the west in this same stage at the same level. The window immediately below the upper division of the tower is of the same date and character exactly as the one on the west in the like place; and it should be noticed that the sills of the upper windows run on as string-courses, which are continued round the circular angle-shafts ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... enormous beams, and pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was thronged with men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in hand; but when she had finished her work—when the carpet was down, and the neat, white shades were up at the windows; when the books which used to be on the floor and table, and chairs, and mantel, and window sills, and anywhere, were neatly arranged in the very respectable shelves which Andy made and James had painted; when the little sewing chair designed for Ethelyn was put before one window, and Richard's arm-chair before the other, and the drab lounge was drawn a little ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... to observe the effects of the climate on buildings in this country. A good stone house, not ten years old, carefully built, and pointed between the joints of the masonry with the best cement, requires a total repair after that period, and often before. The window-sills and lintels of limestone break and crack, and the chimneys soon become disjointed and unsafe. Although it may seem paradoxical, yet it is true that the woodwork of a house lasts good much longer than the stone, or rather the cement, which joins the stone; but wood decays also very rapidly. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Soon, in a more and more transparent light, appears, under a leafy vault, a cheerful little peasant's cottage, covered with creepers. The door and windows are open. There are bee-hives under a shed, flower-pots on the window-sills, a cage with a sleeping blackbird. Beside the door is a bench, on which an old peasant and his wife, TYLTYL'S grandfather and grandmother, are seated, ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... unfortunate planter's once happy home, where the midnight brigand came and found peace and comfort, and all the elegancies of life, and left—blood and ashes; with the wild flowers growing on the window sills, and the prickly pear on the tops of the walls, while marble steps, and old shutters, and window hinges, and pieces of china, are strewn all about; the only tenant now being most likely an old miserable ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... her open window, sewing, embroidering, or pricking the needle through the canvas of her worsted-work, with a look that was often dreamy. Her head was vividly defined among the flowers which poetized the brown and crumbling sills of her casement windows with their leaded panes. Sometimes the reflection of the red damask window-curtains added to the effect of that head, already so highly colored; like a crimson flower she glowed in the aerial garden so carefully trained upon ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... shop on tiptoe. The last-maker gently opened the door and glanced out into the street. Some inhabitants had obeyed the order to light up their windows, and four or five lighted candles here and there flickered in the wind upon the sills of the windows. The street was ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... scarcely force his way against it to the spring for water. And when he filled his bucket the wind sloshed half of it out before he could reach the puny shelter of his station. If he had ever wondered why that station was banked solid to the window-sills with rocks, he wondered no more when he felt that gale pushing and tugging at it and shrieking as if it were enraged because it could not pick the station up bodily and fling it down into the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... packed as it never was before. Every seat was crowded. The aisles were full of men who stood patiently for more than three hours; the window-sills had their occupants, every foot of standing room was taken, and in the rear of the galleries men seemed to hang in swarms like bees. Such was the view from the stage. The stage itself and the boxes were filled with ladies, giving the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... into a large, low-ceiled, home-like room, whose broad window sills were abloom with fresh-cut flowers. Lucile thought that only the sun was needed to make it the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... stay the torrent of invectives in which such words as "renegades," "traitors," "mud-sills," were heard, but the Colonel, completely unmanned by the rage he was in, and seemingly unconscious of the presence of the ladies, waved him aside with his hand, and faced the ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... side of the street, opposite the Maitland house, was a huddle of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... then the telephone rang, and some incoherent person mumbled an address out in the furthest suburb. It was North Baxter Court. You never saw that—a row of yellow houses with the door-sills level to the mud and ashes of the alley, and swarms of children who stare and whisper, "Here's the 'Father.'" Number 7 1/2 was marked with a membraneous croup sign—the usual lie to avoid strict quarantine and still get anti-toxin at the ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... crowded than those of "Little Canada," but is, altogether, of scarcely better aspect. Slatternly women gossip in groups about the doorways. Tawdrily dressed girls saunter along the sidewalks, or loll from the window-sills. Knots of shirt-sleeved men congregate about the frequent liquor-saloons, talking loudly and volubly. No signs of poverty are apparent, but everything wears an aspect of prosperous ignorance, satisfied to eat, drink, and idle away the hours not given to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... lamp burning on a deal table discovered for all other furnishing broken chairs, coils of tarred rope, a rack of ponderous oars and boat-hooks, a display of shapeless oilskins and sou'westers on pegs. The windows were boarded up from sills to lintels, the air was close and dank with the stale flavour of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... was quite comfortable, "better than they were accustomed to at home," Mrs. Livingstone said, and this she decided to give them. Accordingly the negroes were set at work scrubbing the floor, washing the windows, and scouring the sills, until the room at least possessed the virtue of being clean. A faded carpet, discarded as good for nothing, and over which the rats had long held their nightly revels, was brought to light, shaken, mended, and nailed down—then came a bedstead, which Mrs. Livingstone had designed as a Christmas ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... of wood, vertically sided, and battened, (with 1-1/2 inch tongued and grooved pine plank,) with horizontal strips in line of the window sills and floors, to hide the buts, and small triangular pieces in the corners, which gives the pretty effect of paneling. The whole is stained by a mixture of oil, &c., that heightens the grain of the wood, and gives a brightness of color, and that cheerfulness of effect, ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... day. This was the first time he had come to it by night. In daylight it was a small and picturesque ruin washed by the laughing sea, lonely but scarcely sad. Leaping from its dark and crumbling walls the fisher-boys often plunged into the depths below; or they lay upon the broad sills of the gaping window-spaces to dry themselves in the sun. Men came with rods and lines to fish from its deserted apartments, through which, when rough weather was at hand, the screaming sea-birds flew. The waves played frivolously enough in its recesses. And their ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... means, and occupied a good house with large garden on the north side of West Street (then called Far Street), belonging to the late Mrs. Conington, within some 120 yards of the railway station, now occupied by Mr. Sills, and named "The Chestnuts." Mr. Goldie being curate at the time when Holy Trinity Church was built presented the carved oak chairs within the communion rails. After leaving Horncastle he was appointed to the vicarage of St. Ives, in the diocese of Ely. The Goldies were an ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... to sit down and be quiet," said Midge. "If they'd let me walk around, or sit on the tables or window-sills, I wouldn't mind school so much. It's being cramped into those old desks that ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,— That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"— Last of its timber,—they couldn't sell ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... there had been some sharp street fighting, as attested by shelled buildings and sandbag barricades yet resting on housetops and in window sills, we encountered in the first stage of our journey no considerable evidences of havoc until late in the afternoon, when we reached Dinant. I do not understand why the contemporary chronicles of events did not give more space to Dinant at the time ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... Germans downstairs, and at the street entrance propelled them forth with a few hearty kicks. This pleasurable duty had hardly been performed when they were rejoined by Tom, who had smashed the German rifles over the window sills, putting them ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... though they were partially trampled out by naked feet, as if they had been passed over dozens of times since, the savage wretches must have dragged their victims to the stern windows and thrust them out; any doubt thereon being cleared away by the state of the lockers and the sills of ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... day. The housemaid should now take up in a dustpan any pieces that may be on the carpet; she should dust the room, shut the door, and proceed to another room. When all the bedrooms are finished, she should dust the stairs, and polish the handrail of the banisters, and see that all ledges, window-sills, &c., are quite free from dust. It will be necessary for the housemaid to divide her work, so that she may not have too much to do on certain days, and not sufficient to fill up her time on other days. In the country, bedrooms should be swept and thoroughly ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... those who had just perpetrated such an outrage upon the rights of a free people. There was only one other passenger in the car besides myself when this young man entered. He evidently expected to find nothing but sympathy when he got away from the "mud sills" engaged in compelling a "free people" to pull down a flag they adored. He turned to me saying: "Things have come to a —— pretty pass when a free people can't choose their own flag. Where I came from if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union we hang him to a limb ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... traceable for considerable distances. They are foliated in places, the planes of schistosity being more or less parallel with the planes of bedding in the schists. The older acid rocks are represented by the sills of granite and augen-gneiss occurring west of Portsoy, south of Fordyce and near Keith, while the older basic rocks are illustrated by the belt of gabbro, epidiorite and hornblende-schist which stretches southwards from the coast at Portsoy, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... Black Larch, American Larch, Hacmatac). Heartwood light brown in color, sapwood nearly white, coarse conspicuous grain, compact structure, annual rings pronounced. Wood heavy, hard, very strong, durable in contact with the soil. Used for railway ties, fence posts, sills, ship timbers, telegraph poles, flagstaffs. Medium-sized tree, often covering swamps, in which case it is smaller and of poor quality. Maine to Minnesota, and southward ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... ordered them out, and put a guard upon the building. The guard played cards upon the door sills. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... nearly deserted. There was no smoke curling from the chimneys, no friendly door opened wide, no sweet young face peering from the iron lattice of the Den, no Arthur, no Nina there. Nothing but piles of snow upon the roof, snow upon the window-sills, snow upon the doorsteps, snow upon the untrodden walk, snow on the leafless elms, standing there so bleak and brown. Snow everywhere, as cold, as desolate as Edith's heart, and she bade Victor take her back again to the warm grate ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... the town. He wondered much at this, for it was a good deal earlier than the smiths were wont to be up. Then the king recognised the man, and, lo! there was Thorkell Eyjolfson taking the measure of all the largest timber, crossbeams, sills, and pillars. The king turned at once thither, and said: "What now, Thorkell, do you mean after these measurements to shape the church timber which you are taking to Iceland?" "Yes, in truth, sire," ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... North is a close imitation of the style which those proud and arrogant Asiatics affected toward all the nations of Europe. What the "Christian dogs" were to the followers of Mahomet, the "accursed Yankees," the "Northern mud-sills" are to the followers of the Southern Moloch. The accomplishments which we find in their choicer circles were prefigured in the court of the chivalric Saladin, and the long train of Painim knights who rode forth to conquest under the Crescent. In all branches of culture, their heathen predecessors ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gradually placed in position, and formed an immense square enclosing the entire block, and allowing no new approach to the Rooms. Ominous preparations were also making in the building by projecting from two of the second story windows in front, platforms with, hinges just beyond the window sills, supported by ropes running to ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... the woodsman. "Well, you jest set them 'ere traps in three o' them holes, well under the sills an' out o' the way. Don't go fer to bait'em, mind, or Mr. Weasel'll git to suspicionin' somethin', right off. Jest sprinkle bits of straw, an' hayseed, an' sech rubbish over 'em, so it all looks no ways out o' the ordinary. You do this right, Mrs. Gammit; an' first thing ye know ye'll ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... eight sickening minutes, we did. He was master, and Jarvis put down the helm and obeyed. Twice we were heaved, tilted and slid sideways down, like folks perched on the window-sills of a falling house. Then she came fair about and rode to it, every crest flinging more or less of spray over us, hour after hour. . ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, lean house in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidious bedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed even high-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, with aerial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked and sweated and even slept ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... again, and again the same hoard of books. There were so many books that even the window-sills were piled up with them, and a dim and dusty gleam of light barely penetrated. An ominous silence tormented her. Behind the counter at her side stood a student and two boys, strangely erect; they were pale, and seemed to wait for something. All at once the door opened noiselessly. Many ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... trees. Back from the road John saw an old house that charmed him. It was of whitewashed adobe, two stories in height. Entirely around the second story was a balcony of wood, ascended by an open stairway. Wooden shutters were opened at the windows, the sills of which were two feet ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... signs of the London world. The girls looked. So far they were certainly within their rights. But they did not look modestly, they did not look discreetly. They looked out of wide-open windows, they even sat perilously and protrudingly on the window sills conversing across the facade from window to window, attracting attention, and once to Mrs. Pembrose's certain knowledge a man in the street joined in. It was on a Sunday morning, too, a Bloomsbury ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... house was built, this facade had been carefully cleaned twice a year. If a little mortar fell from between the bricks, the crack was instantly filled up. The sashes, the sills, the copings, were dusted oftener than the most precious sculptures in the Louvre. The front of the house bore no signs of decay; notwithstanding the deepened color which age had given to the bricks, it was as well preserved as a choice old picture, ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... though I understood that by the use of fertilizing injections the number of flowers in a shrub and even in an herb can be here greatly multiplied. The windows of the houses were open and their sills crowded with blossoms. The use of the red blossoming vine was strangely extravagant. In many cases it had thrown its branches over an entire house, clambering over the roof and encircling the phosphoric cage, so that the white house was dissected by its twigs and tendrils, while the ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the country, the winter which held the village in such close siege was an occupation under which Nature seemed to cower helpless, and men made a desperate and ineffectual struggle. The houses, banked up with snow almost to the sills of the windows that looked out, blind with frost, upon the lifeless world, were dwarfed in the drifts, and seemed to founder in a white sea blotched with strange bluish shadows under the slanting sun. Where they fronted close upon the road, it was evident ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... to put out a fire. But my uncles did not take up the idea, working steadily on, and shifting the line till the whole of the glazed windows had been sluiced, and a lot of the grit and rubbish washed away from the sills and places, after which the buckets were again slung in a row and the men had their beer, said "Good-night!" quite cheerily, and ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn |
