Attic

“ Up attic that we'd ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That's what I sit up in the dark to say—
To no one any more since Toffile died.
Let them stay in the attic since they went there. ”

“ It is a glimpse, in brown and amber tints, of a wretched attic chamber with dilapidated ceiling, and scant, worn-out furniture, and bare, uneven floor. And the only light there comes from the face peeping in through a door which stands ajar—a boyish face, round and merry, with ruddy cheeks, and big, heartful eyes, and brown bits of curls clustering about the broad forehead—a frank, open, cheery, winsome face. ”

“ The windows of the attic are like shrines for saints. The gargoyles, the medallions, the statuettes, the festoons, are like the elaboration of some precious cabinet rather than the details of a building exposed to the weather and to the ages. In the interior there is a profusion of restoration, and it is all restoration in color. This has been, evidently, a work of great energy and cost, but it will easily strike you as overdone. The universal freshness is a discord, a false note; it seems to light up the dusky past with an unnatural glare. ”

“ It was an attic that was a studio by reason of its northern skylight and led into another attic that was her bedroom. The walls sloped so that it was like a magic cave full of treasure. Everything in it was rare and beautiful and unconscious of its beauty. An ikon of faded gold and rich dark colours, mellowed with age, hung where the light fell upon its austere and mystic piety. There were strange stuffs too, falling in gracious lines, into which antiquity had woven an inexpressible pathos. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX We found out we were in a big attic that covered the whole of the house. Part of it was floored over and part of it was just joists with the lath and plaster showing on the under side. It looked as if there was about an acre in it, and it was full of angles and brick chimneys and little, funny-shaped windows, and rubbish, and trunks and goodness knows what—except things to eat. ”

“ But as the big frame house had expanded, so had they—intolerance and understanding humanness—until now, as you talked with them, you felt that there was room and to spare of sun-filled mental chambers, and shelves well stored with experience, and pantries and bins and closets for all your worries and confidences.
But the attic! And the cellar! The attic was the kind of attic every woman longs for who hasn't one and every woman loathes who has. ”

“ Back the sage and catnip and the dired apple strings.
But ah! no other joys
Compared, when we were boys,
When we played upon the dear old attic floor.
To slowly turn the wheel--
And the spindle and the reel
Would sing the dear old song it sand of yore
Creak, creak, how it would creak,
When up to the attic we'd steal. ”

“ Then there is the garden of the adorable little house at 725 Spruce street, which is particularly interesting because, when seen from the street, it appears to have no front door. The attic window of that house is just our idea of what an attic window ought to be.
A kind of philosophy distills itself in the mind of the saunterer. Painfully tedious as people often are, they have the sublime quality of interesting one. Not merely by what they say, but often by what they don't say. ”

“ The inner drum rises in diminished thickness above the entablature of the outer one in the form of an attic with an order of pilasters and square openings between. From this attic rises a false dome of timber, surrounding and concealing the great cone which is the real support of the lantern. ”

“ Peter's, an attic is interposed, but to spring a vault from an attic wall is an architectural barbarism; though it is perhaps no greater one than to spring it from an entablature, as the architects of the Renaissance had done from Brunelleschi down. In the small order of the aisles the entablature is simplified, and has only an architrave and cornice; while a member, like a diminutive attic, in retreat of the cornice, is interposed at the impost. ”

“ It was a simple place, after the manner of attics, with a window in its sloping ceiling through which stars might be studied with great comfort as one lay in bed. A frugal mind, an earnest soul, would have liked the attic, would have found a healthy enjoyment in a place so plain and fresh, so swept in windy weather by the airs of heaven. ”

“ Shut up in your attic, you insensibly surround yourself with a thousand effeminate indulgences. You must have list for your door, a blind for your window, a carpet for your feet, an easy-chair stuffed with wool for your back, your fire lit at the first sign of cold, and a shade to your lamp; and thanks to all these precautions, the least draught makes you catch cold, common chairs give you no rest, and you must wear spectacles to support the light of day. You have thought you were acquiring comforts, and you have only contracted infirmities. ”

“ Pat’s room was immediately over Bart’s; and as the Academy was divided into separate compartments, each with its own entrance and stairways, it had no connection with this part. Midway in the unfinished attic rose the cupola, supported by a network of vast beams, a favorite place of resort for the boys, on account of the magnificence of the prospect which it commanded. On rainy days the attic formed a fine place for exercise, but at night its vast and gloomy extent served rather to repel visitors. ”

“ Antique hair trunks lined the sides, under the eaves, and quaint garments hung about on pegs. The attic was the only apartment in this strange house that received the light of day, for the two little windows like staring eyes were not boarded up. ”

“ The attic corridor was pitch-black and heavily cobwebbed, and inch-deep with dust except where a beaten trail led to a door on the left at the farther end. As I noticed the rotting remains of a thick carpet I thought of the other feet which had pressed it in bygone decades—of these, and of one thing which did not have feet. ”

“ I should regret even the fiery, hot-tempered, little woman who jumps up out of the attic window immediately below us, like a Jack-in-the-box, and shakes her fist at us every time Augustine shakes those unfortunate rugs which are perpetually getting us into trouble with our neighbours. ”

“ There is where your mother and aunt Sarah used to spend a good many rainy days," said grandma.
So, after breakfast, Fanny went into the attic. The attic was a very large room, containing old spinning-wheels, chests, boxes, and many other things—such as are always found in attics. ”

“ It is not enough to secure a lodging in the attic; you must not be fobbed off with a front attic that faces the street. First, your attic must be unequivocally a back attic; secondly, the house in which it is located must be slightly elevated above its neighbors; thirdly, the window must not lie slant on the roof, as is common with attics,—in which case you can only catch a peep of that leaden canopy which infatuated Londoners call the sky,—but must be a window perpendicular, and not half blocked up by the parapets of that fosse called the gutter ”

“ I have wished that each building around us
Was a cedar, a poplar, a pine;
That the men and the women were statues,
And the rain that was falling was wine;
That the lights were ethereal flowers;
That the cars were the nooks in the wood,– *** "O, enough!" she exclaimed as she kissed me,
"This attic and couch are as good." ”

“ The vast expanses of the fronts are unrelieved by any ornament except a leaf in the cornice, and a rudimentary capital in the piers and mullions of the colonnaded attic. The effect of the mass is due wholly to its magnitude, to the disposition of its openings, and to the emphatic exhibition of the masonic structure. The openings, except in the attic, and except for an ample pier reserved at each corner, are equally spaced throughout. The vertical division is limited to a sharp separation from the intermediate wall veil of the basement on one hand, and of the attic on the other. ”

“ You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice.
As for myself, however, I like an attic. Not to live in: as residences they are inconvenient. There is too much getting up and down stairs connected with them to please me. It puts one unpleasantly in mind of the tread-mill. ”

“ This was a vast pile of building, that would make five moderate-sized dwelling-houses, one in the roof, and the other four in the habitable portion of the edifice. A general air of ramshackledness pervaded the exterior, while the interior presented an effect of interminable ranges of white-washed walls, divided off into numberless apartments of various sizes, from a saloon on the piano nobile, or principal floor, measuring more than forty feet long, to small square attic rooms that were little more than cupboards. But this attic story was not all composed of chambers thus dimensioned. ”

“ The largest attic in existence is that which surmounts the entablature of St Peter’s at Rome, which measures 39 ft. in height. The term is also employed in modern terminology to designate an upper storey in a roof, and the feature is sometimes introduced to hide a roof behind. ”

“ Any one can manage trunks. And the second day, the boxes were emptied and sent flying out to the barn. Curtains I decided to keep for evening work, while Jonathan read. That left the closets and the attic, or rather the attics, for there was one over the main house and one over the “new part,”—still “new,” although now some seventy years old. They were known as the attic and the little attic. I thought I would do the closets first, and I began with the one in the parlor. This was built into the chimney, over the fireplace. ”

“ A man stood in the doorway of the attic.
e was big and brawny; but, though his arms and bare torso were streaked with blood, and his trousers torn into shreds, and his legs crisscrossed with cuts, there was broad grin on his face—a grin that widened as his rolling white eyes took in what lay on the attic floor. ”

“ Anyone could come in there at night and carry it off. The second floor was little better for the windows were all open and anyone could enter them by means of a ladder. The attic! Yes, that was the only place and Miss Katherine flew up the steep stairs to the attic.
There was a very little light admitted through a small window, and when her eyes became accustomed to the dim light, she saw a trap door in the ceiling. Of all places in the world this was the most desirable. As luck would have it she found an old ladder among the rubbish. ”

“ Otton, will go up to the attic, and take a peep into the next one, and see if my lodger is up or in bed, or what the deuce has become of him. It's a very odd thing, Mr. Todd, that a man should take one's attic, and then disappear without coming down stairs. ”

“ The floor of the attic is one foot lower than that of the main house; this gives valuable room for storage, etc.... The hight of the first story of the main house is 8 feet 6 inches; of the second story, 7 feet. The hight of the kitchen ceiling is 71⁄2 feet. The attic is arranged to have just standing room in the center.... A great saving of time and trouble is made, when openings are provided for regular sizes of sash, blinds, and doors, as they may be obtained of seasoned and well-made stock, at any time, from any [28] dealer in such materials. ”

“ This immense building has, in the exterior, only one Order and an Attic. All three have the round arch.
[69] Fergusson, "Modern Architecture," p. 390.
[70] An Attic is a small story above the cornice, or principal elevation of a building. [The same would read better by substituting "story" for "elevation".] An Attic order is an inferior order of architecture, used over the principal order of a building. ”

“ In San Salvatore the solids are greatly reduced in volume, and are faced with neo-classic pilasters, above which the pier is solid, and is faced with an entablature surmounted by an attic from which the vaulting springs. The use of an attic in an interior, and especially as a support for vaulting, is one of those architectural aberrations with which the Renaissance has made us familiar. ”

“ Should you have ascended to the attic, where at least some approach to fresh air might be expected to enter from open or broken window, you look out upon the roofs and ledges of lower tenements, and discover that the sickly air which finds its way into the room has to pass over the putrefying carcases of dead cats or birds, or viler abominations still. ”

“ This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the rear. ”

“ I went up by the back attic stairs. There was fun, I can assure you, in the main attic. I never heard such a Babel. I went to the little open window that was made to let light through from the store-room into the main attic, and saw that you had set the portrait on the old dresser on the other side, and so covered the window; but through that ugly hole that Phil made in the Little Grandmother's head I could see that Ned and Phil were making terrible havoc with the girls, while Jamie was trying to defend them. ”