Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the
basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door.
I am glad that our first boarding-place was in the dismal, ill-lighted, and damp
basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have "lost our heads" and become "stuck up." It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one's self.
The house had a
basement, about two feet below the street line, and a single story, about six feet above it, reached by a flight of steps.
After that altruistic exploit Stevie was put to help wash the dishes in the
basement kitchen, and to black the boots of the gentlemen patronising the Belgravian mansion.
As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs with heavily blanketed horses.
The young man, skirting the side of the building, went down the slope toward the basement door.
The one in the
basement of Brown's had written on Bill's slip of paper the words: '1 p.m.
The man, however, ran out after him asking: "What do you require?" but with a grateful glance up at the first floor in remembrance of Captain R-'s examination room (how easy and delightful all that had been) he bolted down a flight leading to the basement and found himself in a place of dusk and mystery and many doors.
The confounded basement was as still as a grave and I became aware of my heart beats.
"Not from a cellar, but a basement. Oh, you know...down below...from a house of ill-fame.
"You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year later--to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to a basement in the Haymarket.
Both of us were able to look in by standing on the
basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw - ah!
Athos said a word to one of the vergers, who bowed and proceeded toward the
basement.
Basements are the hidden gems of most residential buildings.
Exterminators can help homeowners figure out which insects are in their
basements and how to make the space less hospitable to these unwelcome guests so that the room will become comfortable for human occupants.
