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Stair   /stɛr/   Listen
Stair

noun
1.
Support consisting of a place to rest the foot while ascending or descending a stairway.  Synonym: step.



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"Stair" Quotes from Famous Books



... stall, stallage, stage, still, adjective, and still, adverb: stale, stout, sturdy, stead, stoat, stallion, stiff, stark-dead, to starve with hunger or cold; stone, steel, stern, stanch, to stanch blood, to stare, steep, steeple, stair, standard, a stated measure, stately. In all these, and perhaps some others, st ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... with blood. But presently the arrows in the quiver of Odysseus were all spent, and laying his bow against the wall, he raised a great shield on his shoulder and placed a helmet on his head, and took two spears in his hand. Then Agelaus called to Melanthius, "Go up to the stair-door and shout to the people, that they may break into the hall and save us." But Melanthius said, "It can not be, for it is near the gate of the hall, and one man may guard it against a hundred. But ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Stair, Samoa, p. 221; article "Bengal" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Brahmans often become ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... taken her place at the bedside, and was meditating on what further could be done for her patient, when an event happened on which she had in nowise reckoned. Somebody was ascending the stair with the shuffling gait of one feeling his way. It was her father. The first time within her memory that he had visited the upper part ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... He had as good a right to the staircase as anybody else in the house. More right, in fact. Let her bring out Mr. Clancy if she wanted a fight.... He then proceeded to the top of the first flight of stairs. He climbed with difficulty, missing a stair once in a while, and breathing hard. He was pursued by an outcry. A third voice was heard—that of Mr. Clancy. It was directed at first entirely to the woman, and begged her to come back into the kitchen. They could see her ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton

... then," he cried the next moment, seizing Drysdale by the arm, as a rush of men came through the passage into the quadrangle, shouting and tumbling along, and making in small groups for the different stair-cases. The Dean and two of the tutors followed, and the porter bearing a lantern. There was no time to be lost; so Tom, after one more struggle to pull Drysdale up and hurry him off, gave it up, and leaving him to his fate, ran across to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the landing-place to which the stair leads. God comes to such a man. He meets him indeed at all the stages, for there is a blessed communion with God, that springs immediately from remembering Him in His ways, and a still more blessed one that springs from rejoicing in His felt friendship and Fatherhood, and a yet more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... surprise it turned quite easily. The heavy door swung inward on its ancient hinges with many a creak and groan, and she found herself in a little dark room thickly carpeted with the dust of years. From this room a winding staircase led upward, and Briar-Rose was just about to climb the stair when a sudden noise made her ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans

... wooden stair, a century at a step, and presently walked and talked, we seven Americans, in that elder Rome that most people know so much better than the one with St. Peter's and the Corso, because of the clinging nature of those early impressions which we construe for ourselves with ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... passer-by, stated that "Rowden and Owlett, Solicitors," would be found on the first floor. Helmsley paused, considering a moment—then, making up his mind that "Rowden and Owlett" would suit his purpose as well as any other equally unknown firm, he slowly climbed the steep and unwashed stair. Opening the first door at the top of the flight, he saw a small boy leaning both arms across a large desk, and watching the gyrations of two white mice in a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... fallen tree, patting its trunk to signify a place for him at her side. Pointing at crevises in the canon wall, she began to tell him the names she and Imogene had given them—Bandit's Stair, Devil's Crack, Bear's Hole, and to enumerate those assigned the jutting points and knobs along the rim that by a stretch of the imagination bore a resemblance to animals or ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd

... moment the rest of the roof fell in, hiding the tower in spouts and veils of flame. Here they might not stay if they would live. Lifting her mistress in her strong arms, as she was wont to do when she was little, Emlyn found the head of the stair, so that when the wind blew the smoke aside for an instant, those below saw that both had vanished, as they thought ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... with half a dozen men walking behind it. In a trice, two of them had stretched a wire trellis across one wall of the drawing-room, and two more were trailing roses from floor to ceiling. Others tied the dark wood of the stair railing with tall Madonna lilies; then they hung garlands of flowers from corner to corner and, alas! could not refrain from framing the mirror in smilax, nor from hanging the chandeliers with that same ugly, funereal, and artificial-looking ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... said Draxy, as she stepped from the last stair, and standing close in front of him, lifted the new, sweet, softened eyes up to his. Draxy was as simple and sincere in this as in all other emotions and acts of her life. She had no coquetry in her nature. She had no distinct thought ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... Mariage, old Baron von Moudenfels passed through the antechamber, where he found the valet, with slow and weary steps. Panting and resting on every stair, he descended the staircase, coughing, and moved slowly past the houses to the nearest carriage, into which he climbed with difficulty and sank with a ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach

... at Benton's side when Murphy, Smith and Brennan, in rapid succession came quickly up into the alley from the basement stair. Sharply Brennan ordered John to follow Murphy and Smith into the automobile while he remained with Benton, who stood poised with his finger on the trigger ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... he hurried from the room; stole down the stair; slipped on his overcoat, and hastily let ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page

... distress; for she found herself shut in a little space by buildings of varying heights. Behind her lay the difficult route over which she had come, and on the east uprose a steep bank or bluff. Against this was placed a nearly perpendicular sort of ladder, and this steep stair was the only visible outlet ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... attempted a descent upon Scotland. The Jacobites had risen; they were crying aloud for their prince, who remained concealed in Lorraine, when at last he resolved to set out and traverse France secretly. Agents, posted by the English ambassador, Lord Stair, were within an ace of arresting him, perhaps of murdering him. Saved by the intelligence and devotion of the post-mistress of Nonancourt, he embarked on the 26th of December at Dunkerque, too late to bring even moral support to the men who were fighting and dying for him. Six ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... I mean to recommend a night on the couch of the nose of Scotland, merely to improve the imagination. Who knows what dreams might be produced by a night spent in a mansion of so many memories! For aught I know, the iron door of the postern stair might open at the dead hour of midnight, and, as at the time of the conspiracy, forth might sally the phantom assassins, with stealthy step and ghastly look, to renew the semblance of the deed. There comes the fierce fanatic Ruthven, party hatred enabling him to bear the armour which ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... can. I certainly can help young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit and said the step wasn't as high as the moon, after all. So I patted him and called ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... stair-way led to the floor above, and there was a chambre-a-coucher, with a deep recess for the bed, the same to which she called her son Henri, as she lay dying, admonishing him to give up the thought of murdering Guise. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... appointments of inlaid woods, and carpeted with what to his feet felt like down. The tiny light which his guide bore before her half revealed, as they passed in their ascent, tall lengths of tapestry, and the dull glint of armor and brazen discs in shadowed niches on the nearer wall. Over the stair-rail lay an open space of such stately dimensions, bounded by terminal lines of decoration so distant in the faint candle-flicker, that the young country minister could think of no word but ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... the family is found, but when the master's work is done, the slave must find wood for himself if he has a fire. I have repeatedly known slave children kept the whole winter's evening, sitting on the stair-case in a cold entry, just to be at hand to snuff candles or hand a tumbler of water from the side-board, or go on errands from one room to another. It may be asked why they were not permitted to stay in the parlor, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... contrary," he says, "if you will do me the honour to precede," and motioned to the stair leading to the lantern story, which was roofed, but open on all sides, and along the seaward wall was a ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... it must be said, had filled Lady Barbara's mind. As long as she continued under Martha's care she could rest in peace, free from the dread of the drunken step on the stair or the rude bursting in of her chamber door. Free, too, from other deadly terrors which had pursued her, and of which she could not even think without a shudder, for try as she could she never forgot Dalton's willingness to turn their home into a ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... zenith rose its lengthening stair, While each great granite mountain lent a share To form a stepping base; Height upon height repeated seemed to rise, For pyramid on pyramid the strained eyes Saw take their ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... and his wife being old, were graciously allowed the privilege of living in the basement. As soon as he was informed his gold, silver and jewelry were found, amounting to one hundred and seventy pounds sterling, he was so exasperated for the moment that he seized his gun and rushed to the stair steps with the determination to kill Cornwallis, but his wife quickly followed and intercepted him, thus preventing the most deplorable consequences—the loss of his own life, and perhaps that of his family. But the prudent advice of his wife, "Heaven's last, best gift to man," had its ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... there was an eager footstep on the stair; I opened the door, and my aunt Mary burst into the room. It was a joyful meeting and a cheery bombardment of questions and answers concerning family matters ensued. By and by my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was of apricot, with the bodice cut low and the skirt gathered in loops to show her white silk petticoat, which swelled from under a flowered stomacher so monstrously, that the tiny blue-heeled slipper upon the second stair seemed smaller than ever. Deep frills of lace fell from her short sleeves and a little lace cap was set on her thick ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... who come and go through the rank growths which cloak the earth in a Malay compound. 'Behold!' said Penghulu Mat Saleh once more. 'Come, let us ascend into the house.' And so saying he led the way up the stair-ladder of the dwelling where Haji Ali lived with his two sons Abas and Abdulrahman, and whence a month or two before Patimah had fled during the night-time with a deadly fear in her eyes, and the tale of a strange experience ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... each face, before afraid, The glowing light of joy displayed. Wife, maids and menfolks, girls and boys Surrounded with a seven-fold noise The giant rooster in the hall, Welcoming, looking, handling all. The man of God with jealous care Took me himself and climbed the stair To his own study, while the pack Came stumbling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... content thee, child of care! There's satin shoon upon thy feet and emeralds in thy hair, And one there is who hungers for thy step upon the stair." ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... stop the way. With powdered lacquey and with charming bay; She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair. Her arduous function solely "to be there." Like Sirius rising o'er the silent sea. She hides her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... overturns everything once in a generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the poor creature takes but one step on the earth, if he comes down so much as one stair, he is ruined. This is not teaching him to endure pain; it is training him ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... done thy will. I have pierced the seas Where no Greek man may live.—Ho, Pylades, Sole sharer of my quest: hast seen it all? What can we next? Thou seest this circuit wall Enormous? Must we climb the public stair, With all men watching? Shall we seek somewhere Some lock to pick, some secret bolt or bar— Of all which we know nothing? Where we are, If one man mark us, if they see us prize The gate, or think of entrance anywise, 'Tis death.—We still have time to fly for home: Back to the galley quick, ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... INSTANCES,' he will build height after height, the solid, but imperceptible stair-way to his summit of knowledges, so that men shall tread its utmost floors without knowing what heights they are—even as they tread great nature's own solidities, without ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... received from them a piece of money with a commission to come and desire me, in their name, to step down and look at the patient. While she was delivering her message, they conveyed the sick person to the stair-head, and disappeared. I went, without staying till my servant had lighted a candle, and in the dark happened to stumble upon the sick person, and kick him down stairs. At length I saw he was dead, and that it was the crooked ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... hung his lance, and shield, and scimitar against the wall, and then followed the duenna, with silent steps, up a winding stair-case, to the apartment of Xarisa. Vain would be the attempt to describe the raptures of that meeting. Time flew too swiftly, and the Abencerrage had nearly forgotten, until too late, his promise to return a prisoner to the Alcayde of Allora. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... meadow, with tall trees and bushes in it, and fowl perched in the trees and running through the grass, and sheep and kine and oxen and horses feeding down the meadow; and over the door at the top of the stair was wrought a great steer bigger than all the other neat, whose head was turned toward the sun-rising and uplifted with open mouth, as though he were lowing aloud. Exceeding fair seemed that house to Folk-might, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle

... began plotting ill against him in her mind, thinking that by doing evil to him she might find favor with his enemies. Nevertheless, she kept this well to herself and received Robin with seeming kindness. She led him up the winding stone stair to a room which was just beneath the eaves of a high, round tower; but she would not let Little John come ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... tall and mean-looking houses, which seem to be toppling to their fall; and the pavement is strewn with garbage which is seldom cleared away. Many of the windows of the houses are broken; many of the doors hang ajar, for the floors are let out in flats, and there is a common stair for at least five and twenty families. It is a dreary-looking place, and the dwellers therein look as dreary ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... lamps. Sometimes tall candlesticks stood on pillars on each side of the figures. A staircase of stone, constructed in the wall near the chancel-arch, led to the rood-loft, and the blocked-up archway of this rood-stair frequently remains. The priest stood in the rood-loft to read the gospel and epistle, and sometimes preached there; official notices were read, and from it the bishop used to give the Benediction. The rood-cloth, or veil, hid the rood during Lent, and in some churches we have seen the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... in her face the signs of ill-health for which he was prepared, and noticed with pain her tremulousness and shortness of breath after the stair-climbing. The friendship which had existed between them since his boyhood was true and deep as ever; Piers Otway could, as few men can, be the loyal friend of a woman. A reverent tenderness coloured his feeling towards Mrs. Hannaford; it was something ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... tower—the Keep. I believe you have not been in here before, Mr. Copplestone—just pay particular attention to this place. Here you see is the Keep, standing in the middle of what I suppose was the courtyard of the old castle. It's a square tower, with a stair-turret at one angle. The stair in that turret is in a very good state of preservation—in fact, it is quite easy to climb to the top, and from the top there's a fine view of land and sea: the Keep itself is nearly a hundred feet in height. Now the inside of the Keep is completely ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... door, which he had not noticed, he stumbled forward. His companions, supposing he had been pierced with a spear, pressed on after him, but each fell when they trod upon the door until a heap of men cumbered the stair. These were not unharmed, for with their long pikes the Scottish spearmen ran them through ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... the mother of the seven hardily. "You all are so kind to help me out all the time with everything. Course we are poor, but Jim makes enough to feed us, and every single child I've got is by fortune, just a hand-down size for somebody else's children. Five of 'em just stair-steps into clothes of Mis' Rucker's four, and Mis' Nickols saves me all of Bob's things to cut down, so I never have a mite of worry over any ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... walk into my parlor?" Said a spider to a fly; "'Tis the prettiest little parlor That ever you did spy. The way into my parlor Is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things To show you when you're there." "O no, no," said the little fly, "To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... was a narrow staircase, with a faded stair-carpet upon it. A door was partly open into a room on the right, but still there was nothing visible ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr

... faith beholds A golden stair, like that of old, whereon Fair spirits go and come; God's angels coming down on errands sweet, Our ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... leapt, but I restrained myself. The worthy apothecary went through the shop, climbed a stair, and, opening a door on the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... which issued occasional sounds of quarrelling voices and continual puffs of fetid air foul enough to sicken the strongest stomach. He went in, as one of the lost might go into Pandemonium, impelled by an imperious necessity. He mounted the ricketty and creaking stair, with the bannister half gone and the steps groaning beneath his tread as if they contained the spirits of the dead respectability that had left them half a century before. He had been told that the old woman lived on the third floor, and though he met no one ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... announced, and Mr Monckton taking Cecilia's hand, while Mr Morrice secured to himself the honour of Mrs Harrel's, Sir Robert and Mr Gosport made their bows and departed. But though they had now quitted the stage, and arrived at the head of a small stair case by which they were to descend out of the theatre, Mr Monckton, finding all his tormentors retired, except Mr Arnott, whom he hoped to elude, could not resist making one more attempt for a few moments' conversation with Cecilia; ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... first sight, the zig-zag path along what appears to be the perpendicular side of these steep, lofty rocks, appears perilous, not to say impracticable, but it is neither one nor the other. This mountain stair-case, called the Echelles de Baume, may be descended in all security by sure-footed people not given to giddiness; our driver, leaving his quiet horse for a time, shoulders one child, my companion shoulders another, I followed with the basket, and in ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... a twofold repentance; that by which we turn from nature to grace, and that by which we turn from the imperfections of a state of grace to glory. But this turning and turning still, displeases some much. They say it makes them giddy; but I say, Nothing like this to make a man steady. A straight stair is like the ladder that leads to the gallows. They are turning stairs that lead to the heavenly mansion. Stay not at their foot; but go up them, and up them, and up them, till you come to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... black drew herself up proudly. "Yes, one; better than killed. Wait." The women shrunk from her as she darted up the stair. They looked at each other wonderingly. The woman returned with something in her grasp. She flung it on the table. "It is an Indian's hand. His arm will shrivel to the bone. They will leave him some day to die in the sand." The women shuddered and drew back; the ...
— The Indian's Hand - 1892 • Lorimer Stoddard

... the breadth of the nave and aisles. The circular windows of the tower which look in the court, are perhaps to be referred to the eleventh century; and a smaller tower affixed against the south side, containing a stair-case and covered by a lofty pyramidical stone roof, composed of flags cut in the shape of shingles, may also be of the same aera. The others, of the more ancient windows, are in the early pointed style; and the portion from the gallery upwards is comparatively modern; having been added in ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... 1727 into "Patriots and Courtiers, which was in plain English, 'Whigs in place,' and 'Whigs out of place.'"[98] The assertion of disinterestedness met only with ridicule. In an interview with Queen Caroline, "when Lord Stair talked of his conscience with great solemnity, the queen (the whole conversation being in French) cried out: Ah, my Lord, ne me parlez point de conscience, vous me faites evanouir."[99] As personal advancement, and not the public service, was the ruling aim of statesmen, it ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... in the room as Alice Worthington glided out into the great hall. Standing on the lowest stair, she turned, a desolate and pathetic figure, with the golden hair rippling over the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled 'Ether,' And stole from stair ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... her own house to shed her apron and wash her hands, and then sallied over to view Mr. Clegg. The two friends mounted the stair together, and entered ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... steering post. She shot a quick glance downward, and to her alarm discovered not one, but three contraptions, all apparently designed to receive the pressure of a foot—if one could reach them—and as similar as the steps of a stair. This involved a further hesitation, and in automobiling he who hesitates invites a series of rapid experiences. By this time all Irene's attention was required to bring the car to some unanimity of direction. It was quite evident that it was running away. It was ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... of it, there was one man who knew that she had marked him, though she had borne herself towards him always with her stateliest grace. This man was his Grace the Duke himself. From the hour that he had stood transfixed as he watched her come up the broad oak stair, from the moment that the red rose fell from her wreath at his feet, and he had stooped to lift it in his hand, he had seen her as no other man had seen her, and he had known that had he not come but just too late, she would have been his own. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... would they without full fain, Yet might they at the portal / but little vantage gain. Eke they within had gladly / gained the outer air; Nor up nor down did Dankwart / suffer one to pass the stair. ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler

... she pauses, Touches each well-known chair; Gazes from every window, Lingers on every stair. What have these months brought Bertha Now one more year is past? This Christmas Eve shall tell us, The third ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that led from the ground floor to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... What's a cavalryman for? Shall we?—I—can't believe it—some how," and Ray stopped, glanced inquiringly at the major, and then nodded toward the doorway of the third house on the row. The ground floor was occupied by Field as his quarters, the up-stair rooms ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... apartment, where my little Highland landlady, as dapper and as tight as ever, (for old women wear a hundred times better than the hard-wrought seniors of the masculine sex), stood at the door, TEEDLING to herself a Highland song as she shook a table napkin over the fore-stair, and then proceeded to fold it ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... lovely feet descend the cloudy stair, Great succour bringing to a world forlorn; On either side a man and woman share A common rapture, welcoming the dawn Of God's new day, the everlasting morn— Of such a day as shall from East to West Dispel the darkness, doing ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... Conquer." When the September day grows dim and some of the windows glow, you may look out, if you like, for Tony Lumpkin's red coat in the doorway or imagine Miss Hardcastle's quilted petticoat on the stair. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... Richardson, who commanded, taking about thirty men with him, marched bravely up to them; and making his way with great resolution through the crowd, they flying, but throwing stones and hallooing at him, and his men. He seized the foot of the stair case; and then boldly went up, cleared the stair, and took six of the rabble in the very act, and so delivered the gentleman ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... my Uncle's foot on the stair ... his knock hurried the last sentence—here he is by me!—Understand what this would have led to, how you would have been proved logically my own, best, extreme want, my life's end—YES; dearest! Bless ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... right. That he should have thrown himself with all his heart into the storm of the Westminster election is most natural. But it is awful inverideed to find him, long after he had reached man's estate, indulging in back-stair intrigues with Whigs and Tories. It is, of course, absurd to charge him with deserting his first friends, the Whigs. His love and fidelity were given, not to the Whigs, but to the men who led them. Even after the death of Fox, he ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... was in advance, saw the last stair before him and stuck his head above the rocky sides of the stairway. Then he halted, ducked down and began to back up, so that he nearly fell with the buggy onto ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... I mounted the stair at the pier of Boulac, I found myself in the red dusky haze of an Egyptian atmosphere. It was near noon, and the rays of the hot sun trembled over the boundless Valley of the Nile on to the minarets of Cairo, and further ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... have liked to linger on that point of vantage, which afforded a fine view of the surrounding country; but their work was done, and he followed the others down the stair again, only pausing for a moment to secure poor Rogerson's identification disc as he ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry

... bread in the large tin box that stood on the stair-landing, I had some difficulty with the clasp. "Never mind that," said Mr. Burroughs, as he scraped the potato skins into the fire; "a Vassar girl sat down on that box last summer, and it's ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... few years later, says:—'At this time Satan used to terrify me much, and threatened to punish me if I discovered his wiles. It being my duty, as servitor, in my turn to knock at the gentlemen's rooms by ten at night, to see who were in their rooms, I thought the devil would appear to me every stair I went up.' Tyerman's Whitefield, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... Save for the glimmer of the solitary candle all was in darkness; the bare floor, the paneled walls, echoed to his tread. On either hand squares of blackness proclaimed the open doors of large, empty rooms, and down the stair came a wind that bent the weak flame. The negro took the light from the hand of the man who had opened the door, and, pressing past his master, lit three candles in a sconce ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... and seemed not yet recovered from his late attack. Though most happy to see him at this alarming time, when I knew he could be most useful, as there is no one to whom the queen opens so confidentially upon her affairs, I had yet a fresh stair to see, by his anticipated arrival, though still lame, that he must have been sent for, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... Mademoiselle Bathilde if you wish to keep your heart, and give some sweetmeats to Mirza if you care for your legs;" and holding by the banister, he cleared the first flight of twelve steps at one bound, and reached the street door without having touched a stair. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... back down-stairs and into his own room. He lay down without disturbing his wife, but he did not fall asleep. After what seemed to him a long time he heard a stealthy footstep on the stair, and again smelled the aroma of a cigar ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... had not hurt himself because two days previously he had ferociously stopped the odd-man of the works from wasting his time in mending just that identical stair, and had asserted that the stair was in excellent condition. Horrocleave, though Napoleonic by disposition, had a provincial mind, even a Five Towns mind. He regarded as sheer loss any expenditure on repairs or renewals or the processes of cleansing. His theory was that everything ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... Martin Stoner rose heavily to his feet and followed his ministering angel along a passage, up a short creaking stair, along another passage, and into a large room lit with a cheerfully blazing fire. There was but little furniture, plain, old-fashioned, and good of its kind; a stuffed squirrel in a case and a wall-calendar of four years ago ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... that mischief is meant." Just opposite the post office was a large house, in the topmost story of which we beheld a paper displayed, importing that apartments were to let; whereupon we instantly ascended the common stair, and having agreed with the mistress of the etage for the use of the front room for the day, we bolted the door, and the reporter, producing his pocket-book and pencil, prepared to take notes of the coming events, which were already casting their ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... was really as fine or finer than some of the smaller ones which I visited along the Loire last spring, and it was the more impressive because it was "alive"—inhabited—and furnished with the most magnificent appointments. The stair-hall particularly recalled some of those splendid old French ones, being in the same sort of yellow ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... erected on the side or end of a dwelling-house, without the written permission of the proprietor; and no tenant shall be entitled to remove from out the dwelling-house or offices possessed by him at the expiry of his lease, any roof, window, door, loft, stair, or other plenishing of a like fixed nature, even though furnished and put in by himself, unless his tack specially confers upon him such power; but the incoming tenant shall be bound to pay the outgoing tenant ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... upstairs she stumbled upon her dress, and as if to prevent doing it again, held it up, so as to show nearly to her knees. When she got on the top stair she turned round, and as if she had only just seen me, dropped her dress quickly. Another time she stooped and jutted out her bum, so that I saw a good deal up the clothes, whilst she pretended to be doing something ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... feeling the air with my outstretched hands as I groped along. In a little while I met with an obstruction—it was hard and cold—a stone wall, surely? I felt it up and down and found a hollow in it—was this the first step of the stair? I wondered; it seemed very high. I touched it cautiously—suddenly I came in contact with something soft and clammy to the touch like moss or wet velvet. Fingering this with a kind of repulsion, I soon traced out the oblong shape of a coffin Curiously enough, I was not affected much by the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... author's corrected text of Don Quixote (Madrid, 1608), together with the first edition of the second part (Madrid, 1615), one hundred and ninety-two pounds; dedication copy to King Charles II. of the Institutions of the Law of Scotland, by Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, afterwards Viscount Stair, two volumes (Edinburgh, 1681), in a remarkably fine contemporary Scotch binding, with the royal arms in gold on the covers, two hundred and ninety-five pounds; a first edition ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... brown paws again, 45 We bid thee to thy vacant chair, We greet thee by the window-pane, We hear thy scuffle on the stair. ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words—"An operation to-day. ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... follow and led the way silently past the others toward the stair shaft. Climbing to the top level was a heart-pounding task, but Mason almost ran up those steps. At the surface he leaned against a ...
— The Long Voyage • Carl Richard Jacobi

... garden containing more than five hundred native plants. It was one story high. At its front was a beautiful terrace, and there were extensive porticoes on the sides. Access to the building was gained by a 32-foot stair on the front, and by lateral ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... expeditions, therefore there was nothing unusual in his proceedings on the present occasion, but Signy detected a new fire in his eyes, and a twitching of the mouth that suggested ideas! Moreover, she had been on the stair when he came out of the lumber-room with his arms full of weapons, and Signy's soul was troubled about ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... I was immediately conscious of a sort of soft movement around me, as of shadowy shapes that passed and repassed. Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was not lifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The sudden striking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization. I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostly hands that came toward me from between the spindles of ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and saw that all was ruinous. Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern; And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers: And high above a piece of turret stair, Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd A knot, beneath, of snakes, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... and saw that it was set centre-most a slab of alabaster, the size of the nether millstone. He strave at the stone till he pulled it from its place, when there appeared beneath it a souterrain with a stair. Presently he descended the flight of steps and came to a place like a Hammam, with four daises, the first full of gold, from floor to roof, the second full of emeralds and pearls and coral also from ground to ceiling; the third of jacinths ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... the first stanza of the "Lay" Scott repeats the line which occurs so often in "Christabel"—"Jesu Maria shield her well!" In the same poem, the passage where the Lady Margaret steals out of Branksome Tower at dawn to meet her lover in the wood, gliding down the secret stair and passing the bloodhound at the portal, will remind all readers of "Christabel." The dialogue between the river and mountain spirits will perhaps remind them of the ghostly antiphonies which the "Mariner" hears in his ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... down the shining stair Of clouds that fleck the summer sky, She kissed thee, saying, "Child, be fair, And madden men's hearts, even as I; Thou shalt love all things strange and sweet, That know me and are known of me; The lover thou shalt never meet, The land ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang

... be some curious stirs, Unless my fancy greatly errs, At restaurants and theatres When our distinctive turn-out Lines up with all the others there, And we look out with quite an air And order the commissionaire Kindly to put the little stair That hangs behind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... liberty in twelve years." "If they are going to keep men in prison all their days, and torture them besides, they'll commit suicide or murder in prison. Look at Townley, who threw himself over the stair-railings at Pentonville and ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... climbing hour by hour the silver-shining stair That leads to God's great treasure-house, grew covetous; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... the passage above, a subdued whistle, and her son Jim came clattering down the stair. He glanced at his mother, a slight pucker between his handsome brows. She returned the look with one of ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... hall must be Bohemia, and the stair-carpet the sea, because then the aunts won't hear ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the lists took up Sir Mador, and led him to his tent, and the other knight went straight to the stair-foot where sat King Arthur; and by that time was the queen come to the king, and either kissed other heartily. And when the king saw that knight, he stooped down to him, and thanked him, and in likewise did the queen; and the king prayed him ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... half-way down the stair-case, holding Ursula March across her knees. The poor creature was insensible, or nearly so. She—we learnt—had been composed under the terrible discovery made when she returned to his room; and when all restorative means failed, the ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... were first narrated to, and, in 1788, written for the amusement of Miss Mary and Miss Agnes Berry. To the former of these ladies the public is indebted for a curious commentary on the Reminiscences, contained in extracts from the letters of Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, to the Earl of Stair, now first published from the original manuscripts. Of the Reminiscences themselves it has been truly observed, that, both in manner and matter, they are the very perfection of anecdote writing, and make us better acquainted with the manners of George ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... to one of the gorgeous panels that decorated the wall, and touched a hidden spring. A door flew open, disclosing a stair heavily carpeted that led down to the huge vaulted ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and me together, As she left the attic, there, 30 By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether," And stole from stair to stair ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... Wealth enjoyed, and Charity bestowed. Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet Each splendid square, and still, untrodden street; Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time, The broken stair with perilous step shall climb, Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, [14] By scattered hamlets trace its antient bound, And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey Through reeds and sedge pursue ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld

... compact," he remarked. "There is a little sitting-room down that stair, and a bathroom beyond. If the flowers annoy you, throw them out of the window. And if you prefer to bathe in the river to-morrow morning, Brooks here will show you the diving pool. I am wearing a ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... cried Tita, still supporting the angry old man, as he limped up the curved oaken stair. "You must not forget that these good signori who have preserved ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... chanced one time Mamma had gone away. Amanda she had left at home All by herself that day. Then someone rattled at the latch;— Amanda heard him there;— She heard him shutting fast the door And creeping up the stair;— ...
— Careless Jane and Other Tales • Katharine Pyle

... that he chose the precise moment he did, for as his head emerged above the last stair, he saw that the great shutters at the end of the south corridor were open, and a man stood before the window, evidently on the top rung of a ladder, trying the sash. It was locked to be sure, but at the instant Dan saw him, he raised his fist and smashed it. He was about to leap through ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... scarcely anything from France, deeply in debt, and with credit exhausted, she found herself entirely at the end of her resources. How thoroughly did the banished woman then realise the woes of exile—how hard it is to climb and descend the stranger's stair, experience the hollowness of his promise, and the arrogance of his commiseration. And, finally, as though fated to drain her cup of bitterness to the last drop, to learn that she, her long-loved bosom friend and royal mistress, who owed her, at the very least, a silent fidelity, had openly ranged ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... streams Running far-off within its inmost halls, The home of darkness, but the cavern mouth, Half overtrailed with a wanton weed Gives birth to a brawling stream, that stepping lightly Adown a natural stair of tangled roots, Is presently received in a sweet grove Of eglantine, a place of burial Far lovelier than its cradle; for unseen But taken with the sweetness of the place, It giveth out a constant melody That drowns the nearer echoes. Lower down Spreads out a little ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... scurvy disease had lain hold of my carcase, And death to my chamber was mounting the stair-case. I call'd to remembrance the sins I'd committed, Repented, and thought I'd for Heaven been fitted; But alas! there is still an old proverb to cross us, I found there no room for the sons of Parnassus; ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... place during the last summer. It was a glorious sunset in July, when after climbing a long and mazy turret-stair, we stood at the summit of Dundry Tower. A magnificent landscape of vast extent, stretching around on every point of the compass, burst almost simultaneously on the sight, embracing views of the Bristol Channel, the mountains of South Wales and Monmouthshire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various

... made her way to Fifth Avenue and soon mounted a broad flight of steps to one of its most stately houses. The door yielded to her key, her thick walking boots clattered for a moment on the marble floor, but could not disguise the lightness of her step as she tripped up the winding stair and pushed open a rosewood door leading ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly in the deep shadows, he resembled ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... strong water-sky and heavy bank showed the sea to be close at hand to the south, as well as a strong breeze behind it. We rattled on for Wolstenholme Island, reached under its lee by the evening, and edged away to the north, quickly opening out Cape Stair, and finding it to be an island, as the Cape York Esquimaux, on board the "Assistance," had led us to believe. Passing some striking-looking land, which, although like that of the more southern parts of Greenland, ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn

... He had lent his flag, and, in the flurry, some one dropped it overboard. D'ri saw it fall, and before we could stop him he had leaped into the sea. I hastened to his help, tossing a rope's end as he came up, swimming with one arm, the flag in his teeth. I towed him to the landing-stair and helped him over. Leaning on my shoulder, he shook out the tattered flag, its white laced with his ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller

... step and stood on the stair beside me, looking up at me very sweetly, and resting her hand lightly on my shoulder—a caress so frank and unconcealed that it meant no more then its innocent significance implied. But at that moment, by chance, I encountered Lois's ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... down the passage towards a doorway, through which she burst, screaming. The child, borne forward by our combined weight, tottered and fell almost across the threshold of this room, where a flight of stairs, lit by a dingy lamp, led up into obscure darkness. On the third stair under the lamp I caught a momentary vision of a dirty, half-naked boy standing with a drawn dirk in his hand, and with that, my foot catching against Meliar-Ann's body, I pitched past, head foremost, into the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... it ye slick off. I want to cut away the companion-hatch and run up a regular stair to the deck; then it's advisable to cut away at least half o' the main deck to heighten the gamin' saloon. But I guess the main point is to knock out half-a-dozen windows in the hold, for gas-light is plaguey dear, when it's ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... ascended from the entrance hall, they traversed the great wilderness of a house, through some obscure passages, and came to a low, ancient doorway. It admitted them to a narrow turret stair which zigzagged upward, lighted in its progress by loopholes and iron-barred windows. Reaching the top of the first flight, the Count threw open a door of worm-eaten oak, and disclosed a chamber that occupied the whole area of the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... into the house all of you, if you can get in. The cows must go to the yard. Oh, Var-Vara!" she added, as she turned to her old nurse, who had just come out, attracted by the noise. "Have you heard? Oh, poor mamma! Do you think she will be safe?" and Elena rushed into the house, and up the stair of a wooden tower, from which she could see for miles round, a wide vista of field, ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... voice, sae smooth his tongue; His breath's like caller air; His very fit has music in't, As he comes up the stair. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... hasten back along the face of the precipice, stop where the rock offered foothold and begin slowly climbing almost vertically. At first, it was going up the tiers of a broken stone stair. Then, the weathered ledge gave place to slant shale. He saw Wayland dig his heels for grip, grasp a sharp edge overhead, and hoist himself to the overhanging branch of a recumbent pine; then, scramble ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... Jimmy, that I will," cried the little girl; "here, let us sit on this lowest stair; I don't think many people will be passing up now, and then I shall see mother when she ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer

... worth toiling up yon weary stair, to get sic a glimpse as that, of the brave auld town?" said honest P. Gregg. "I'm jest thinkin' I must enlarge the stair, or diminish mysel, before I can venture through that narrow pass again. An', my dear leddy, I can do neither the one ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... belaying-pin. Brook nimbly scrambled upon the upturned weather side of the companion. Evelin, exasperated by Mr Dale's ill-timed anxiety about his book, had stepped inside the companion-way and down a stair or two to summarily remove the obstructor, and the two were flung together to the bottom of the staircase. Blanche, left thus without a protector, clung convulsively for a moment to one of the open doors of the companion; but her strength failing her, she let go and fell backwards ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... we must have to-day, all but the running up and down. Build us houses up, and up, as high as they will stand; give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The achievement of twenty flights a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... once more In wanhope and sorrow sore For his love-friend bright of face. None can help his evil case, None a word of counsel say. To the palace went his way; Step by step he climbed the stair; Entered in a chamber there. Then he 'gan to weep alone, And most dismally to groan, ...
— Aucassin and Nicolette - translated from the Old French • Anonymous

... are really getting on my nerves," said Anne. "She finished two new ones last week, stuffed and embroidered within an inch of their lives. There being absolutely no other cushionless place to put them she stood them up against the wall on the stair landing. They topple over half the time and if we come up or down the stairs in the dark we fall over them. Last Sunday, when Dr. Davis prayed for all those exposed to the perils of the sea, I added in thought 'and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... opened the stair cupboard door to catch the opossum, you found a white china doll lying in it, no bigger than your finger. That was ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... would be long, he told himself, and in that other, beneficent inner twilight he worked on, packing the snow, and crawling gingerly up the perilous stair ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... her remonstrance by the shrill voice of a female, who stood on the same stair with the ensign, and whom, notwithstanding the great alteration in her dress, Fanny recognized to be Sally Bettesworth. Jilting Jessy ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... now broken up. Attwater leaned on a post, and kept Davis covered with a Winchester. One of the servants was hard by with a second at the port arms, leaning a little forward, round-eyed with eager expectancy. In the open space at the head of the stair, Huish was partly supported by the other native; his face wreathed in meaningless smiles, his mind seemingly sunk in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... would show themselves, looking out like the faces of firefiends. Then they would retire a moment, only to come again and burst out with a fury that nothing could resist, a fury that raged and rioted till beams, rafters, flooring, and stair-ways were a black, ashy heap, sputtering and hissing toward the sky—a snake ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand

... their reclining chairs in their reception rooms, in their homes, in their litters abroad, at the Amphitheatre or at the Circus games, from neck to instep they are muffled up. If one catches a glimpse of a beauty's ankle as she goes up a stair, one is thrilled, one watches eagerly, one cranes ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... I found, to my dismay, that the pile of vests which I had left on my bed on going out the day before had been removed; and just as I was telling myself that no one else except Mrs. Abramovitch had a key to my door I heard shuffling footsteps on the stair, and knew that her husband ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... saying, the kind-hearted black set the bottle-candlestick upon the floor; and, passing down the stair again, left me ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... feet doth bare, And jealous of the listening air They steal their way from stair to stair, Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, And now they pass the Baron's room, As still as death with stifled breath! And now have reached her chamber door; And now doth Geraldine press down The rushes of the ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... the screen door. Within, it was cleaner than anything Agatha had ever seen. The stair-rail glistened, the polished floors shone. A neat bouquet of sweet peas stood exactly in the center of a snow-white doily, which was exactly in the middle of a shiny, round table. The very door-mat was brand new; Agatha would never have thought of ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... know more about it ere I let it pass forth from mine hands, or any strange eye fall upon it— Ha, in good time! I hear his step on the stair." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... porter, moved to pity, has gone to give the message to his lady. Hynde Horn is watching the staircase at the rear of the stage, his heart in his eyes. The tapestries that hide it are drawn, and there stands the king's daughter, who tripped down the stair, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... a circular stair, twisted round a central pillar, of which mention has already been made, and though short, is very dark even in bright daylight. But at night the blackness is inky and impenetrable, and Westray fumbled for an appreciable ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... of that province was not as averse from slavery as his brother of Nova Scotia. One of the most interesting and celebrated cases came before the Supreme Court of New Brunswick in Hilary Term, February 1800. Captain Stair Agnew who had been an officer in the Queen's Rangers settled opposite Fredericton. He was a man much thought of as is shown by his being chosen for thirty years to represent York County in the Legislature. He owned a slave ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... found Ellen, as usual, at her needle, and Paul in the arm-chair close by Alfred, both busied in choosing and cutting out pictures from Matilda's 'Illustrated News,' with which Harold ornamented the wall of the stair-case and landing. Mr. Cope sat down, and made them laugh with something droll about the figures that ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... chair, held his breath, listened, went on, found the hall, found the stairs, started up; the seventh stair creaked at his step, the ninth, the fourteenth. He was counting them automatically. At the third creak he paused again for over a minute—and in that minute he felt more alone than he had ever felt before. Between the lines on patrol, even when ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... were saved from the death-stricken ship, should meet together to say farewell. Early in the evening, the villagers, in their best Sunday clothes, began to assemble, and, before very long, the room and the passage-way and the stair-way were crowded. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... who has been here before,' said Nicholas, 'for he is tumbling up every stair. Come in, come in. In the name ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... tread—so it was with no slight gratification that we beheld the cad of an omnibus beckoning us to take our place on the outside of his buss. The luggage had been swung down in a lump through a hole in the floor, and by the time we reached the same level, by the periphrasis of a stair, every thing had been stowed away on the roof, where in a few moments we joined it; and careered through the streets of Bristol, for the first time in our lives. "Do you go to any hotel near the quay where the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... looked in, as down the throat Of some stupendous giant, and beheld No floor, but wide, worn, flights of steps, that led Into a dimness. When the eyes could bear That change to gloom, she saw flight after flight, Flight after flight, the worn long stair go down, Smooth with the feet of nations dead and gone. So she did enter; also she went down Till it was dark, and yet again went down, Till, gazing upward at that yawning door, It seemed no larger, in its height remote, Than a pin's ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... not insert his reply to the Query of MATFELONESIS, because we do not regard a newspaper paragraph as an authority. The story of Lord Stair being the executioner of Charles I. is related, we believe, in Cecil's Sixty Curious Narratives, an interesting compilation made by the late W. Hone, who does not, however, give ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various

... month (June) the days are long. Densuke was a coward; and for company had the corpse of the murdered Jusuke. To the poor cook the time passed was torture. He was continually going to the stair and calling down—"Danna Sama, has the time come?... Ah! The sky is light. The streets at night will be full of people with lanterns. Plainly O'Tento[u] Sama (the Sun) has forgotten to decline in the West. Alas! ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... brilliant spots of conscientious effort only made the stretches of bare, unpainted floor more evident. And that was not all. Traces of former spasmodic and individual efforts desecrated the present ideals. The doctor's pew had a pink-and-blue Brussels on it; the lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the Blacks, and the Grays displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... to fire, taking my time, centering each figure exactly. At each shot, one Jivro fell. I had fired but a score of times, and the white-robed creatures began to leave the lights, to cluster about the archway over the roof stair. ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... childish laughter rings on the narrow stair, And, from a silent corner, the murmur of a prayer Steals out, and then a love song, and then a bugle call, And steps that do not falter along the ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster

... Allan. "I saw that she was unhappy and I tried to cheer her up. I'll look out for the boy in every way I can." He took the little bag of chintz from the bench where he had laid it when he went with Christianna, and turned to the rude stair that led to his room in the half story. He was not kin to the tollgate keepers, but he had lived long with them and was very fond of both. "I'll be down in a moment, Aunt Sairy," he said. "I wonder when I'll smell or taste your gingerbread again, and I don't see how I am going to tell you and Tom ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... times and scenes. I walked to his lodgings with him, and promised to call with my wife on Mrs. Cobb the following day at 1 o'clock. We were there at the hour, when the servant, in answer to my request to take up our cards, stated that General Cobb had just fallen dead. I sprang up the stair, and saw his body lying on the floor of a room, his wife, dazed by the shock, looking on. A few minutes before he had written a letter and started for the office of the inn to post it, remarking to his wife that he would ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... said the little Fly, "To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair Can ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... a quick step without on the stair; the old man gave a relieved sigh, but when the door opened it was only ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner



Words linked to "Stair" :   support, crow step, riser, corbiestep, tread, corbie-step, staircase, corbel step



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