Salt cellar

“ The excavations under the ancient houses of Dudley Street possess no windows at all, and the only way in which light and ventilation can be conveyed to the wretched inhabitants is through a hole in the pavement - a narrow opening, no larger than might be made by removing an ordinary paving-stone.
Leading down into the cellar is a ladder or a flight of wooden steps protected by a handrail. The roof of the cellar is level with the common roadway, and its floor must be several feet below the sewage and gas pipes. ”

“ She did not know that I had a key.
The next day I pleaded indisposition and spent most of the hours idling and drowsing in my chamber. Not till nearly midnight did I venture down. The servants were certainly asleep that time. A dose of chloral in their wine had attended to the certainty of their slumbers. Fully dressed, with an automatic in my pocket, I reached the cellar and opened the door. It swung noiselessly on its well-greased hinges. The darkness on the other side was the blackness of hell. ”

“ All under the house runs a great cellar. I knew this from the first, because one broiling hot day, soon after I came, Sally took me down to get cool after I had dressed for somebody's At Home, and looked like a freshly boiled lobster. It's a series of rooms, perfectly ventilated, with rough walls, and cemented floors. One of the rooms is of enormous size, and there are stone pillars dotted about here and there for supports. There is one other that is rather large, but the rest are small. One is used as if it were an ice house ”

“ The cellars are entered down a steep incline under a low stone arch, the masonry above which is overgrown with ivy in large clusters and straggling creeping plants. We soon come upon a deep recess to the right, wherein stands a unique cumbersome screw-press, needing ten or a dozen men to work the unwieldy capstan which sets the juice flowing from the crushed grapes into the adjacent shallow trough. On our left hand are a couple of ancient reservoirs, formed out of huge blocks of stone, with the entrance to a long vaulted cellar filled with wine in cask. ”

“ There were twenty-six of us—twenty-six living machines, locked up in a damp cellar, where we patted dough from morning till night, making biscuits and cakes. The windows of our cellar looked out into a ditch, which was covered with bricks grown green from dampness, the window frames were obstructed from the outside by a dense iron netting, and the light of the sun could not peep in through the panes, which were covered with flour dust. ”

“ But these are inverted garrets, rather than cellars. They are refrigerators for pure air; and they keep a mellow light of their own. When you go into one of them it seems as if the house were standing on its head to express its joy and comfort.
But the Susan House cellar was one of dread, aside from the noise proceeding out of it. Bobaday knew this before they opened a door upon a narrow-throated descent.
One of Zene's stories became vivid. It was a story of a house where nobody could stay, though the landlord offered it rent-free. ”

“ The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into its dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes. Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples. I know not what comical sprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. The feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of this underground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and the boy begins to descend into the thick darkness, it is always with a heart-beat as of one started upon some adventure. ”

“ After working on the night of the 25th, two men were left down in the cellar to cover up all traces of the work during the day, and as soon as it was dark to complete the work—to go into the large sewer, explore it, and have every thing ready by eight or nine o'clock, at which time the bricks would be removed from the hole leading into the cellar, which had to be placed carefully in their original position every night, from the beginning to the completion of the work. ”

“ There, to-day as yesterday, are to be seen in Dudley Street, Seven Dials, the deep black cellars, reached through a gap in the pavement, and by means of a steep ladder, and in each, at a greater depth in the earth than the sewers and the nests of the sewer rats, families of human beings - fathers, mothers, and little children-live and eat and drink, and make themselves at home. ”

“ You creep part way down the cellar stairs with only the light of a single tallow candle, and behold by its dim glimmer an expanse of dark water, boundless as the sea. On its surface, in dire confusion, float barrels and boxes, butter firkins and washtubs, boards, planks, hoops, and staves without number, interspersed with apples, turnips, and cabbages, while half-drowned rats and mice, scrambling up the stairway for dear life, drive you affrighted back to the kitchen....Now consider the case of one of these old farmhouse cellars that has been in use fifty years or more. ”

“ So she had closets made between the two bed rooms, and likewise between the parlour and kitchen. And she gave them a chance of helping themselves still further by having a good deep, dry cellar, where they could keep their half barrel of fish, and their little joints of meat, and small pots of butter from the heats of summer, and their vegetables from the frosts of winter, and why coal and wood should be kept out of doors in winter was more than she could tell. It was easy to build a cellar, she thought, and so the cellars were made. ”

“ It is the habit of man to curse his wine merchant for sending another wine than that he sampled: yet it is very often not his wine merchant but his cellarage that has played the knave, and has given him the worse end of a bargain. It is not less than marvellous that a good glass of wine is ever ours in town, for the urban cellar is not often ventilated, so that foul air and rank mists still penetrate through cracks and fissures in the brickwork. We can keep our neighbour out of our dining-room, but we cannot barricade our cellars against his atmosphere. ”

“ Mademoiselle Saget went so fast that La Sarriette had to run. In the butter pavilion a neighbour of Madame Lecœur’s told them that she was below in the cellar; and so, whilst La Sarriette went down to find her, the old maid installed herself amidst the cheeses.
The cellar under the butter market is a very gloomy spot. The rows of storerooms are protected by a very fine wire meshing, as a safeguard against fire; and the gas jets, which are very few and far between, glimmer like yellow splotches destitute of radiance in the heavy, malordorous atmosphere beneath the low vault. ”

“ Why would any one build a round cellar?”
“So the sand can’t wedge off the corners. You know,” Alf reminded me, “I told you they didn’t build cellars on the cape. Well, they don’t, not regular ones, but that’s the kind they do build. Round, like a well under the kitchen, to keep food cool.”
“Sure,” said the judge, seeing the doubt in my eyes. “All the good houses have them. I’ve got one myself.” ”

“ A cellar is a luxury in the simple cabin; but here we were provided with an apartment more complete, in its conveniencies, than those of older countries, the floor being well levelled, and the walls faced with stones of ample size. The settler had formed, in one corner, a large cavity about three feet deep. This was lined with mortar, and paved with smooth, round pebbles from the brook. A tunnel, with a wooden trunk and sliding flood-gate, about four inches square, led from the bottom of this basin, through the foundations of the wall, to the bed of a rivulet at some distance on the lawn. ”

“ The water cellar is not a cellar at all, but a stone-paved room off the patio, delightfully cool and sloppy of a fiery July day, with the water-carriers unloading, and filling the array of dripping red jars with the day’s supply from the public fountain.
Every Spanish peasant wears a knife in his sash. ”

“ I don't mean a cellar with a smooth floor, and coal-bins, and a big furnace, and shelves with jars of nice jam on them and glasses of jelly; I've been in that kind of a cellar too—I like quince jelly the best; it's first rate spread on bread and butter—but I'm talking of another kind of a cellar, one with the house all taken away, and only a big brick chimney left in the centre, with the top knocked off of that, and bricks and pieces of stone and chunks of mortar scattered all round; with berry bushes growing in one corner, and wild vines growing all around the edges. ”

“ When a door in the floor was lifted, the whiff of chill, subterranean air that pervaded the whole house was heavily freighted with spirituous odors, and gave token to the meanest intelligence, to the most unobservant inmate, that the still was operated in a cellar, peculiarly immune to suspicion, for a cellar is never an adjunct to the ordinary mountain cabin. Thus the infraction of the revenue law went on securely and continuously beneath the placid, simple, domestic life, with its reverent care for the very aged and its tender nurture of the very young. ”

“ Shelves should be built on the walls and hooks hung on the rafters to increase the facilities for storage. Articles hung upon the hooks should be tied in paper bags. It is well to have the cellar ceiled, to keep out the dust of the house and reduce the risk of fire. Here, of course, is the natural place for the coal-bin, and, when there are no out-buildings, the man's workshop. The laundry may also be placed in the cellar, and, in stormy weather, the clothes hung there to dry. In the country the cellar is a good place in which to build an ice-vault. ”

“ The smells of cellars are a rare treat to dogs, especially ancient Brooklyn cellars which have a cachet all their own. The cellar of the Haunted Bookshop was, to Bock, a fascinating place, illuminated by a warm glow from the furnace, and piled high with split packing-cases which Roger used as kindling. ”

“ Heaps of ashes were the stepping-stones, on which the passer-by, who cared in the least for cleanliness, took care not to put his foot. Our friends were not dainty, but even they picked their way till they got to some steps leading down into a small area, where a person standing would have his head about one foot below the level of the street, and might at the same time, without the least motion of his body, touch the window of the cellar and the damp muddy wall right opposite. You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. ”

“ It would have looked unfriendly not to accompany him, so they pushed their way together through the cellar door surmounted by the sociable red triangle.
It was a big cellar, but brown uniforms and ruddy faces crowded it from wall to wall. In one corner the men were sitting on packing-boxes at a long table made of boards laid across barrels, the smoky light of little oil lamps reddening their cheeks and deepening the furrows in their white foreheads as they laboured over their correspondence. ”

“ There was a large fireplace in the center of the cellar, around which fifty or sixty persons sat, of all ages and of both sexes. The floor was of damp clay, smooth and trodden by the feet of countless thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes. The corners of the cellar were buried in darkness, while the center of the cavern, near the fireplace, was bright with the flames of a fire of logs, which threw a flickering light on the wooden beams, the broken chairs and stools, the pewter pots in the hands of the lodgers, and on many faces stained with dirt and ploughed up with crime and misery. ”

“ In such a city as London, all one can hope for or expect is to secure a cellar of an equal temperature, solidly constructed of brick or stone. The variations of the external atmosphere should not be allowed to penetrate within it. As Barry wrote ninety years ago, “the structure of a wine cellar ought to be such as will most effectually defend the wine from the frequent variations of the external air, adjacent fires, and the agitation of carriages, and to preserve an equal degree of heat, though some variations must be unavoidable.” ”

“ The cellar must neither be too damp nor too dry. Any excess of dampness would rot the casks and give a musty taste to the wine; while, on the contrary, in too dry a cellar the staves of the casks would shrink and cause leakage. The cellar is usually kept somewhat dark. The openings for the admission of air and light should be provided with shutters, so that the atmosphere and temperature may be under control. The floor of the cellar should be paved or cemented, be well levelled, and cleanliness throughout should be strictly and strenuously maintained. ”

“ Our cellar isn't underground. It is a high basement and in it is a big brewery and laundry, a big servant's room, and a big wine cellar where there is never any wine; on the other side of the basement is the storeroom for food and the potato cellar. The walls are brown and dark just from age; and the floor rocks so that I often wonder that the big casks and barrels, and fat Christine and Maren the washerwomen, who are forever washing there, do [Pg 87] not fall through, perhaps into some deep abyss underground. ”

“ What man is he that would complain of having to bale out his cellar every week, if, on the other hand, that cellar gains thereby a fertility that keeps its floor sheeny, soft, and green—an interior tennis-court—from spring to spring, causing the gladsome click of the lawn-mower to be heard within its walls all through the still watches of [Pg 85] the winter day? I tell you, sir, it is the life to lead, that of our rural brother. I do not believe that in this whole vast city there is a cellar like that—an in-door garden-patch, as it were."
"No," returned the Doctor ”