Dormitory

“ For the first time in its existence possibly, our venerable "barracks," as we called the dormitory, saw its occupants returning home from an evening's bout just as the night watchman intoned his eleven o'clock verse.
"Just eleven," exclaimed Solling. "It's too early to go to bed, and too late to go anywhere else. ”

“ Now, when all the dormitory is asleep; when the lighted windowpanes have ceased to cast their gleams upon the snow; when the streets are deserted, the pool-rooms closed, and the last good-fellow has gone to bed, and only oneself is awake, then we have the full enjoyment of our quiet study lamp-light. We may yawn once or twice, a creak on the stair may startle us,—but we do not go to bed. We reach out our hand for some favorite volume, Stevenson's Garden of Verses, Underwoods, or Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: and read far on into the night towards cock-crow. ”

“ DORMITORY (Lat. dormitorium, a sleeping place) , the name given in monasteries to the monks’ sleeping apartment. Sometimes it formed one long room, but was more generally subdivided into as many cells or partitions as there were monks. ”

“ Billy and I slept in the same dormitory and our beds were side by side. Both of us were bad sleepers, and many a deep affinity did our souls discover in the silent watches of the night. As a place to observe the workings of telepathy I know of no spot on earth to compare with the dormitory of a boarding-school. The atmosphere of our dormitory was, if I may say so, in a state of chronic telepathic saturation, and the area where the currents ran strongest was in the space between Billy's bed and mine. ”

“ It is not a place for showy things, or costly. As fire is the presiding genius in other rooms, so let water, symbol of purity, be in the ascendant here; water, fresh and unturbid as the thoughts that here make their home—water, to wash away the dust and sweat of a weary world. Let no fracas disturb the quiet of the dormitory. We go there for repose. Our tasks and our cares are left outside, only to be put on again with our hat and shoes in the morning. ”

“ It is often impossible to thread one's way into the dormitory without treading on half the people who are sleeping among the bundles of clothing that cover the floor; but aggressions of that sort, being of common occurrence, are borne with stoical indifference. I slept as usual in the tarantass, and was lulled to sleep by the harmony of a howling wind, and the loud murmur of the waves of the lake that washed the sandy beach within a few yards of me. ”

“ The men had rolled over, heads lower than heels. It was a scene full of good-fellowship; a dormitory in the open air; honest family folk taking their ease; for where there is care, there is no pleasure. ”

“ Opening into the school-room is a smaller room, a class-room separated from it by three folding-doors. Ascending the staircase, we visit the dormitories. The east dormitory for the senior boys is fitted with English iron bedsteads, the junior dormitory has wooden bedsteads painted blue, and wide enough for two little fellows to sleep in each; the front dormitory, which is the largest of them all, is hung with hammocks,—there is sleeping accommodation altogether for about sixty- five boys. ”

“ A sense of security pervades the dormitory. A healthy man in bed is free from everything but dreams, and once in a life-time, or after adjudging the Cheese Premium at an Agricultural Show—the nightmare. ”

“ After supper, accompanied by this lay friar, who had the title of prefect, we all proceeded to the dormitory. There, everyone had to go to his own bed, and to undress quietly after having said his prayers in a low voice. When all the pupils were in bed, the prefect would go to his own. A large lantern lighted up the dormitory, which had the shape of a parallelogram eighty yards by ten. The beds were placed at equal distances, and to each bed there were a fold-stool, a chair, and room for the trunk of the Seminarist. ”

“ When it is remembered that on an average a third of a human being’s existence may be said to be passed in bed, the importance of his dormitory being kept scrupulously clean will be self evident. Every bedroom should therefore be well swept out each day, and the floor diligently scrubbed once a week. ”

“ The boys have the dormitory nearest Lexington avenue, and the girls the other. Opening out of each is a nice large washroom, with dear little bath tubs, wash basins, &c., just as comfortable as it can possibly be. On the same floor are the matron's and teacher's rooms, and some very large closets, where all the children's clothes are kept. ”

“ The dormitory is only 40 by 15 feet and it accommodates 70 men and women nightly. Inside there are no benches—nothing but the bare ground and a thin grass mat for each sleeper. In it we found an old woman lying sick and shivering alone. ”

“ In the upper story is a dormitory for boys, one hundred and thirty feet in length, and fifty in breadth, from whose windows, on each of the four sides, are splendid prospects of a rich and beautifully varied country. ”

“ Downstairs in the school building are the school and work rooms—upstairs the dormitory. The dormitory consists of one large room covering the entire top of the house and filled with cots for every boarder. ”

“ This was the Ragged School Dormitory; and when I found the school in Farringdon-street, I found the dormitory in a court hard by, which in the time of the cholera had acquired a dismal fame. The dormitory was, in all respects, save as a small beginning, a very discouraging institution. The air was bad; the dark and ruinous building, with its small close rooms, was quite unsuited to the purpose; and a general supervision of the scattered sleepers was impossible. ”

“ Yes, even in their deepest need, poor, wandering, homeless women may come here and find help, for in that large, lofty, yet warm and well-lighted room, the women's dormitory—one side of which is composed of a series of niches where the comfortable beds are placed—there are to be seen a row of doors, which seem to belong to a series of cabins, as, indeed, they do. ”

“ Here is the girls' dormitory, with a capacity of about seventy-five, and the boarding department. All the work of the household, with trifling exceptions, is done by the young women and girls of the school. Each one does an hour's work a day, having it changed every month, and many do more to help themselves along. ”

“ No one dormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, on being peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondency from being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. ”

“ A passage inside the dormitory gave access to the cubicles, which were in fact separate little bedrooms, except that the partition walls, for purposes of ventilation, did not reach the ceiling. At present the fourth cubicle in Dormitory 2 was unoccupied, but its furniture was rather curiously arranged. One of the beds had been pulled close against the partition, and a chest [Pg 82] of drawers, with the drawers removed, had been placed upon it.
"I fixed it up last night, and it was a job," whispered the Cuckoo. "Good thing I'm strong. ”

“ And he led the boy into the dormitory, where there were about twenty beds, most of them already occupied by boys, and the rest waiting for occupants, who were rapidly undressing in different parts of the room.
“Look sharp and tumble in,” said Joe, pointing out the bed Charlie was to have. “There’s only five minutes more.” ”

“ As the sleeping-chambers in France have only dull and dead colors, so in the great canonical dormitory is at least so much provision made for sleeping, that those parts of the church at least on which the eye chiefly rests: altar, preacher, chorister, and pulpit, are painted black. It will be seen that I omit no good point, and if I censure it is in no censorious spirit.
But still much is wanting to make a temple a true dormitory. I have in Italy and even in Paris, stood (I might say lain) in many theater boxes, which were rationally arranged and furnished ”

“ The hostel was a separate house, built at the opposite side of the school playground. It could accommodate thirty girls, and twenty-six were already entered on its register. After a brief peep into the attractive dining-hall, and an equally pleasant-looking boarders' sitting-room, the three girls went upstairs to a dormitory marked 2. They found Ingred already at work on her task of unpacking, putting clothes away in drawers, and spreading the shelf that served as a dressing-table with an assortment of photos, books, and toilet requisites. ”

“ The nuns' sleeping-room, or dormitory, which I have already described. Here is an access to the projection mentioned in speaking of the first story. The stairs by which we came up to bed are at the farther end of the room; and near them a crucifix and font of holy water. A door at the end of the room opens into a passage, with two small rooms, and closets between them, containing bedclothes. Next you enter—
2d. A small community-room, beyond which is a passage with a narrow staircase, seldom used, which leads into the fourth community-room, in the first story. ”

“ Clothing, again, is often ragged and insufficient; in an unwarmed dormitory, a single blanket, or only a coverlet, is all the covering afforded by night; loose straw in a trough bedstead usually constitutes the bed for wet and dirty patients to nestle in ”

“ Just after the games there had been thrown open to the use of the students a new dormitory, and study-building, with rooms arranged en suite, and the four chums had taken a large central apartment, with bedrooms opening from it. ”

“ Farther to the rear of the main structure were two buildings that contained dormitories and rooms for the three hundred or more students. There were two dormitory buildings, the east and the west, and, for obvious reasons, one, the eastern, was inhabited by the freshmen and seniors, while the juniors and sophomores lived, moved and had their being in the other. ”

“ During my time I had to live thus with three different convicts. I slept on a wooden bench; I had to work extraordinarily hard to earn a little mattress called a serpentin. Each dormitory contains eight hundred men. Each bed, called a tolard, holds twenty-four men, chained in couples. Every night the chain of each couple is passed round another great chain which is called the filet de ramas. This chain holds all the couples by the feet, and runs along the bottom of the tolard. ”

“ We are going to try to give that large class of boys and young men that come to prison for the first time one more opportunity of going through life without being immured in a prison cell. In the construction of our buildings, our domicile accommodation will be largely of the dormitory type;—small dormitories, accommodating 14 beds, with a large, semi-circular bay window on one side which will serve as a sitting room ”

“ The dormitory itself was a remarkable sleeping place. It contained a separate room for each boy, but the rooms were not arranged like those of a hotel or a dwelling. There was one immense room, with plenty of windows for daylight and plenty of burners for gaslight. All around the sides of this room ran a broad, empty space, or passage-way, and inside of this, up and down the middle, [43] had been constructed two tiers, one above another, of little bedrooms. Each tier was composed of two rows of rooms, set back to back with their faces toward the outer windows. ”

“ II. A new dormitory is being built. A. Its material is: (a) red brick. (b) grey stone. B. Its capacity will be: (a) one dean, five instructors. (b) two hundred girls. (c) one housekeeper, three cooks, twenty waitresses, twenty chambermaids. ”

“ We go through endless school and class-rooms, filled with girls who look with some astonishment at me as I walk behind my elders, and so upstairs to the dormitories, which are long and wide, with windows on both sides, and partitioned off into narrow bedrooms just large enough to contain a bed and a small square box, while a curtained shelf runs across from one side to the other exactly above the bed, and a thick curtain closes in the room at the entrance. ”

“ That old spare room has always seemed like a shrine to me. When I was a child I thought it the most wonderful apartment in the world. You remember what a consuming desire I had to sleep in a spare room bed—but not the Green Gables spare room. Oh, no, never there! It would have been too terrible—I couldn’t have slept a wink from awe. I never walked through that room when Marilla sent me in on an errand—no, indeed, I tiptoed through it and held my breath, as if I were in church, and felt relieved when I got out of it. ”

“ IN A LUMBER-ROOM
I went into the lumber-room glowing with an emotion of apostolic fervour. I would clear out this rubbish of the past. It was a shame that it should cumber the ground when space was so exiguous and rents so expensive. Why, this room, said I to myself (looking sternly meanwhile at the chaos within) , would take a bed. At a squeeze it would take two beds. Let in the light and the air, and it would be a bedroom fit for the most delicate sleeper, remote alike from the noise without and the disturbing sounds within. ”

“ I would go to bed.
My rooms at the Manor are the best in the house. Leta will have it so. I must explain their position for a reason to be understood later. My bedroom is in the southeast angle of the house; it opens on one side into a sitting-room in the east corridor, the rest of which is taken up by the suite of rooms occupied by Tom and Leta; and on the other side into my bathroom, the first room in the south corridor where the principal guest chambers are, to one of which it was originally the dressing-room. ”