"Desk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more like you, we'd bust the strike,' says he, kind of sizin' me up. 'I've got a notion to try it anyhow,' and he smites the desk. 'Collins what d'ye say if we tow the "Detroit" out? Her crew has stayed with us so far, and they'll stick now if we'll say the word. The unions are hungry and scrapping among themselves, and the men want to go back to work. It's just that devil of a Heegan that holds 'em. If ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... from the throats that, a moment earlier, had bellowed vociferous cheers. The great Michael Costa, who was conducting, dropped his baton in astonishment, and, refusing to pick it up again, left his desk. There is a theory that it was this untoward incident that led him to transfer himself from the Haymarket to Covent Garden. Quite ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... it, which he did with a beating heart, he found the despot of a hundred subjects sitting behind a desk, with his hat on, a brow superciliously severe, and his nose crimped into a most cutting and vinegar curl. The truth was, the master knew the character of the curate, and felt that because he had taken Jemmy under his ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... wait till I write a note to—Jabez Drummond,' and the fellow, taking a pen, seated himself at his desk. But his fears had so unnerved him that he made several attempts before he could get the pen into the ink bottle; and wasted several sheets of paper before his hand was steady enough to produce legible writing. When he had ended he ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... commenced his career as a clerk in a respectable counting-house in London, where his talents soon advanced him to the first seat at the desk. He was in this situation when first introduced to the notice of a member of the Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company, who were at that time engaged in the ruinous competition with the North-West Company already referred to. While the contest was at its ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... which accrued from the rapid rise of the funds upon the suppression of the rebellion, and the experience he had so lately had of the perils of commerce, encouraged him to realise, in this manner, a considerable part of his property. At any rate, it so chanced, that, instead of commanding me to the desk, as I fully expected, having intimated my willingness to comply with his wishes, however they might destine me, I received his directions to go down to Osbaldistone Hall, and take possession of it as the heir and representative of the family. I was directed to apply to Squire Inglewood for the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... disturbed him." More annoying was a habit into which the ghost fell of rattling latches, jingling warming pans and other metal utensils, and brushing rudely against people in the dark. "Thrice," asserted the Rev. Samuel, "I have been pushed by an invisible power, once against the corner of my desk in the study, a second time against the door of the matted chamber, a third time against the right side of the frame ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... the office to buy some postcards, the boys found, lounging about the desk, a stoutish man with a rather dissipated face, puffy under the eyes and heavy about the jaws. A bright red necktie and patent-leather boots with cloth tops accentuated the decidedly ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... labour, I found none greater than the making of this Preface thou art now reading. Many times did I take up my pen to write it, and many did I lay it down again, not knowing what to write. One of these times, as I was pondering with the paper before me, a pen in my ear, my elbow on the desk, and my cheek in my hand, thinking of what I should say, there came in unexpectedly a certain lively, clever friend of mine, who, seeing me so deep in thought, asked the reason; to which I, making no mystery of it, answered that I ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... it would in some way be my failure. I raised my hand, and, under cover of the excitement and the teacher's attempts to regain order, I hurriedly shot up into his ear twice, quite distinctly: "F-o-u-r-t-h, f-o-u-r-t-h." The teacher tapped on her desk and said: "Third and last chance." The hands came down, the silence became oppressive. "Red Head" began: "F—" Since that day I have waited anxiously for many a turn of the wheel of fortune, but never under greater tension than when ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... called Betty from the top of the pear tree as he passed down the garden path, and tossed him a pear which he caught, then another and another. "There! No, don't eat them now. Put them in your desk, and next month ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... predecessors in Punch's editorial chair. Moreover, he has been a lecturer with "realistic notions," as he proved on the occasion when he was giving a public reading dealing with a yachting cruise, and, as he stood behind his reading-desk, stooped and rose with a regular maritime motion, relieved by an occasional roll, until the more susceptible among his audience began seriously to ask themselves if they were good enough sailors to sit out the reading to its ground-swell, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... I've done wrong," said Mr. Easy to himself, as he stood, in a musing attitude, by his desk, about five minutes after Hiram had left. "If I had seen about the situation when he first called upon me, I might have secured it for him. But it's ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... which were only a few papers; a telephone stood on the right-hand side of the blotter. There were some maps on the walls, nothing more. On a mahogany stand against the wall in the centre of the room, near his desk, stood the ticker, like a sacred image on a pedestal. Strange little god, mysterious little oracle—I don't think I would have felt surprised if on entering he had knelt down before it and said a short prayer. Instead, he seated himself at his desk and commenced ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... all," said Lady Wolfer, with no abatement of her good humor. "There's no danger—fortunately, for you. No, my dear; I can see that yours is a very different metier. Your role is the 'angel of the house'—to be loved and loving." She turned to the desk as she spoke, and did not see the flush that rose for an instant to poor Nell's pale face. "You will always be the woman in chains—the slave of man. I hope the chain will be ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... equal to it, on which the structure of a pious mind, a solid hope, a comfortable state, or wise conduct, could be raised. We are told, that when Archbishop Crammer's edition of the Bible was printed in 1538, and fixed to a desk in all parochial churches, the ardour with which men flocked to read it was incredible. They who could, procured it; and they who could not, crowded to read it, or to hear it read in churches. It was common to see little assemblies of mechanics meeting together for ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... diplomatic corps, officers of the army and navy, and many prominent officials, while the galleries were filled with handsomely dressed ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Adams read his inaugural address from the Speaker's desk, after which the oath of office was administered to him by Chief Justice Marshall. Salutes were fired from the Navy Yard and the Arsenal, and the new President was escorted to his house, on F Street, where he that evening received his friends, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... hour," rejoined Byner. "My belief is that Pratt thinks himself safe—that he fancies he's provided for all contingencies. If things turn out as I think they will, I believe we shall find Pratt calmly seated at his desk tomorrow morning." ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... sprang from her perch on a desk-arm. "There are the girls now clamoring for admission. It must be the hour for the sale to begin. Isn't it fun! Fly, Berta Abbott, flee and bury your blushes. The play ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... moment when Barstow's aim would suddenly develop a deadly precision, but that moment did not come. If there was any betting upon this match, Hine would not be the loser. She went quietly back to a writing-desk and wrote her letters. She had no wish to rouse in her father's mind a suspicion that she had guessed his design and was setting herself to thwart it. She must work secretly, more secretly than he did himself. Meanwhile the firing continued ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... crept in, and the breath of sweet water-lilies, heaped in a great bowl upon the communion-table of common stained cherry-wood, floated up and filled the place. The minister, a quiet, gray-haired man, stayed his foot an instant at that simple altar, before he went up the few steps to the desk. He had a sermon in his pocket from the text, "The hairs of your heads are all numbered." He changed it at the moment in his mind, and, when presently he rose to preach, gave forth, in a tone touched, through the fresh presence of that reminding beauty, with the very spontaneousness ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... fortune; for when retail-dealers grow rich, it is generally not so much by trade as through some alliance between the shop and rural thrift. A large proportion of the farmers, corn-factors, dairy-keepers, and market-gardeners in the neighborhood of Paris, dream of the glories of the desk for their daughters, and look upon a shopkeeper, a jeweler, or a money-changer as a son-in-law after their own heart, in preference to a notary or an attorney, whose superior social position is a ground of suspicion; they are afraid of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... hold in itself the value of a week or a month as usually estimated. The entire trend of progress is toward that intensity of creative energy that fairly speaks things into being. A business man has now on his desk a long-distance telephone, connecting him with far-away cities; he answers his letters by speaking into the phonograph; his typewriting clerk copies them from this, and an hour of his morning represents as much accomplishment as by ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... drew a small table near to the stove, laid upon it a very large desk made by himself of pine-wood, and, placing a sheet of paper thereon, began ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... Some time afterwards (in or before 1761) Goldsmith, like Johnson, had tasted the bitterness of an usher's life, and escaped into the scarcely more tolerable regions of Grub Street. After some years of trial, he was becoming known to the booksellers as a serviceable hand, and had two works in his desk destined to lasting celebrity. His landlady (apparently 1764) one day arrested him for debt. Johnson, summoned to his assistance, sent him a guinea and speedily followed. The guinea had already been changed, and Goldsmith was consoling himself with a bottle of Madeira. Johnson ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... majestic form of Jove himself, clad in imperial splendor. But it was the unexpected that happened, for, as the door closed behind me, I found myself in a plain sort of workshop, such as an ordinary man would have in his own house, at one end of which stood a rolling-top desk, and, instead of the dazzling throne I had expected to see, there stood in front of it an ordinary office-chair that twirled on a pivot. Books and papers were strewn about the floor and upon the tables; the pictures on the walls were made up largely of colored ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... day, in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since to an ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... only by a lamp standing on the table. All the light was thrown on the desk by a large green shade, leaving the rest of the room ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... with the daughter of his father's enemy—just like a Park Theatre thriller. Wants you to tell him what to do; and you will pardon me for suggesting that if there's to be an elopement you write it up yourself for the 'Courier.' I was talking to a friend of mine who's on the ding-ding desk at the Whitcomb and she says the long-distance business in that tavern is painful to handle—hot words flying over the state about this Thatcher-Bassett rumpus. You may take it from me that the fight is warm, and ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... 1844). After the completion of the latter he began his first Italian journey, while his second tour fell in the interval between his two quite unsuccessful attempts (in Berlin 1820 and 1825) to propagate his philosophy from the professor's desk. From 1831 until his death he lived in learned retirement in Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here he composed the opuscule On Will in Nature, 1836, the prize treatises On the Freedom of the Human Will and On the Foundation of Ethics ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... said, 'Hello.' The bookkeeper gasped. 'Is that you, Central?' he asked huskily. 'Yes,' replied the unsophisticated maiden, pleasantly. 'What number, please?' The old man sat bolt upright and clutched the desk. 'Give me purple six double-nine,' he said, in quavering tones, and his weak form trembled as he spoke. Nimbly worked the fingers of the uninitiated telephone girl, as she struck a peg in the switchboard and quickly rang a bell. A voice at the other end responded promptly, and the bookkeeper ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... from sacred desk the word Of life and truth is no longer heard? That the gentle shepherd, who to pasture bore His flock, has gone, to return no more? Dost thou mourn for the hoary-headed sage Who has sunk to the grave 'neath the weight of age? For the vanquished pride of manhood's bloom? ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... "Upright" Potts. He was of a slender build and a bony frame, except in front. His long, single-breasted frock-coat hung loosely enough about his shoulders, yet buttoned tightly over a stomach that was so incongruous as to seem artificial. The sleeves of the coat were glossy from much desk rubbing, and its front advertised a rather inattentive behavior at table. The Colonel's dress was completed by drab overgaiters and poorly draped trousers of the same once-delicate hue. Upon his bald head, which was high ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... again and looked thoughtfully at the pile of legal documents in the case of Woodman against the American Chemical Company lying on his desk. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... carefully open upon the dressing-table, and, picking up the small leather case, left the room. He reached the lift, happily escaping the observation of the young lady seated at her desk, and descended into the hall. Once amongst the crowd of people who thronged the corridors, he found it perfectly simple to leave the hotel by one of the side entrances. He walked to the corner of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the other side of the shop, to Samuel's desk, at which he used to stand, staring absently out of the little window into King Street while murmurously casting figures. She lighted the gas-jet there, arranged the light exactly to suit her, and then lifted the large flap of the desk and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... battalion adjutant of the first battalion of the Thirty-fourth United States Infantry, looked up from his office desk as the door swung open and a smart, trim-looking ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... months before, Lord Dunmore had contemptuously denounced as "a certain Patrick Henry of Hanover County," should now become Lord Dunmore's immediate successor in that mansion of state, and should be able, if he chose, to write proclamations against Lord Dunmore upon the same desk on which Lord Dunmore had so recently written ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... rather late at school, but could not resist the temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist brown-paper parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk. During the next few minutes the rumor that Amy March had got twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way) and was going to treat circulated through her 'set', and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. Katy Brown invited her to her next party on the spot. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... made up his mind," he went on in a drooping tone. "He'd made it up as soon as he looked at me. 'Keep on with your walking; live in the open air,' he said. 'You're not fitted for the office-stool. Stooping all day over a desk would be about the worst thing you could do. Thank ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... reading-desk by a member of the Academy who seemed visibly annoyed at having to be heard after me. Perhaps his fears were exaggerated. At any rate he was listened to without too much impatience. I am under the impression that it was verse ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... 'officiating priest' strengthens his inner man with a glass or two before commencing his ministrations, and then the church-wardens sit down and finish the remainder comfortably by themselves, while the reverend gentleman is in the reading-desk or the pulpit. The cost of the wine, however, does not amount to half the sum in their hands, and the remainder goes to form a fund from which the church is painted, repaired, decorated, and kept in apple-pie order—the whole fabric undergoing a thorough revision and polish both outside and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... little white frame building with green shutters, and overhanging the water as though to topple into the tide. Here at any time of the day betwixt the hours of ten in the morning and of five in the afternoon the Collector was to be found at his desk smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a thin, phthisical clerk bent with unrelaxing assiduity over a multitude of account-books and ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... another example of which is found in St. John's Hospital at Rye. The Corsham Almshouses in Wiltshire, erected in 1663, are most picturesque without, and contain some splendid woodwork within, including a fine old reading-desk with carved seat in front. There is a large porch with an immense coat-of-arms over the door. In the region of the Cotswolds, where building-stone is plentiful, we find a noble set of almshouses at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, a gabled ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... desk, on which was spread out, wide open, the hotel register. Rather a dissipated-looking clerk stood behind ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... hope everything; for I learn that the pictures were found on the lawn at 'Solitude,' where Phoebe was once hired as cook; and she recognized the case as the same she had one day seen on a writing-desk in the parlor. The boy confessed that he picked it up from the grass, and, after taking out the contents, soaked the case in a bucket of salt-water. Phoebe says the pictures belong to Mrs. Gerome, the gray-headed woman who owns that place ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... breaking out into an anathema in flaming words about the holiday which the king had given to the new regiments, when the Duke de Liancourt, who that moment entered the hall, advanced to the speaker's desk and announced that the king was just on the point of coming to the Assembly. The greatest amazement, followed immediately by intense disquiet, was expressed on all sides at hearing this. Men sprang up from their places and ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... printer is waiting for an article which really should have been sent to him the day before, I sit at my desk and wonder if there is any possible subject in the whole world upon which I can possibly find anything to say. On one such occasion I left it to Fate, which decided, by means of a dictionary opened at random, that I should deliver myself of a ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... you need. I dare say he'll come to me," replied Glyn, and he strolled into the big class-room, unlocked his desk, got out a book of travels, opened it at one particular spot which he had reached a day or two before, and then began to read, growing so interested that a couple of hours glided away like ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... his strong right hand at first, as if it would have beaten down a lion. But, opening it immediately again, he spread it out before the eyes of Tackleton (for he was tender of her even then), and so, as they passed out, fell down upon a desk, and was as weak as ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... not seem like one of those. I opened it and took out some stiff, blackly written sheets. They were undated and, turning to the last, I saw that they were unsigned. With a not unpleasant tingling of interest I sat down by my desk to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... finished and the rich client had left the office, this young lawyer, who had bowed him out with a deft compliment which made the client feel that he was the point about which the universe was revolving, turned and said, as he went to his desk, 'There goes the shallowest fool and most stupid rascal ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... first floor, and Henry was conducted thither and shown into Witherspoon's private apartment—into the calico, bombazine, hardware and universal nick-nack holy of holies. The room was not fitted up for show, but for business. Its furniture consisted mainly of a roll-top desk, a stamp with its handle sticking up like the tail of an excited cat, a dingy carpet and several chairs of a shape so ungenial to the human form as to suggest that a hint at me desirability of a visitor's early withdrawal might have been ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... twenty thousand copies of this address, laid it on the desk of every member of the legislature, both in the Assembly and Senate, and, in her travels that winter, she circulated it throughout the State. I am happy to say I never felt so anxious about the fate ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had no special labors or bills to encounter on the morrow, as he had no affection at home to soothe him. He had always money in his desk sufficient for his wants; and being by nature and habit tolerably indifferent to the wants of other people, these latter were not likely to disturb him. But a gentleman may be out of temper though he does not owe a shilling: and though he may be ever ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in one corner of the post-office, which was also a souvenir room, with candy and cigar counters, and as he turned away from the telegraph desk he saw Princeman at the ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... his pen, he opened his desk: and counted his secret hoard. It amounted to five pounds seventeen, twelve shillings more than Flipp's outlay. There was no difficulty in that direction, and nobody would be any the wiser. His wife would imagine that he was in London, while his employers would believe him ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... small outer and a large inner one. In the outer room sat a tall middle-aged man, lanky and worn in appearance and with a red nose. Opposite to him, at the same desk, sat a small fat boy with a round red face, and no chin to speak of. The man was writing busily—the boy was drawing a caricature of the man, ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... might be well enough. But there have been one or two rather mysterious things that have happened within the last month or two which have never been cleared up. There was the breaking open of my desk, for instance, and the torn pages in ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... EAST, Feb. 10.—But for the "field gray" coat and the militant mustache, I should have taken him for a self-made American, a big business man or captain of industry, as he sat at his work desk, the telephone at his elbow, the electric push-buttons and reams of neat reports adding to the illusion. Quiet, unassuming, and democratic, he yet makes the same impression of virility and colossal energy that Colonel Roosevelt ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... quietly sat himself down at his desk and took out a small sheet of paper with a thirty-five centime stamp upon it, chatting as he did so with Doublon as to the standing of ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... last guest to leave, she did not go home, but drove herself to Thorbury, and tied her roan mare in front of the office of Mr. Herbert Bannister. When the young lawyer looked up and perceived his visitor, he heaved a sigh, for he had expected in a few moments to lock up his desk, and stop, on his way home, at the house of his lady love. But the presence of Miss Panney at his office meant business, and business with her meant a protracted session. Miss Panney did not notice the sigh, and if she had, it would not ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... for with regard to the cathedral and its furniture he only found it necessary to enjoin: that the windows should be repaired without delay in a decent manner, and the bells together with the frames put in good order; that there should be a new fair desk in the choir, and new church books provided without delay; that the communion table should be placed at the east end of the choir in a decent manner, and a fair rail put up to go across the choir as in other cathedral churches. That ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... hisses at her, and then roars to make himself heard by Uncle Theodore, who is sitting at his desk and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... than that, Mr. Nichols. He looked as though he had seen a ghost or heard a banshee. Then this comes," continued the broker, taking up a letter from the desk. "Asks for a forester, a good strong man. You're strong, Mr. Nichols? Er—and courageous? You're not addicted to 'nerves'? You see I'm telling you all these things so that you'll go down to Black Rock with your eyes open. He also asks me to engage ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... weep. She ached from the impossibility of weeping. She stumbled away from her desk, tripping in her long robes, and stretched herself out at full length on the floor, like a girl in the first embrace of sorrow. But hearing Ito's footsteps, she rose ashamed, and took an ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... evident that he was not a little discomfited at the chill reception he had accorded Peter, for he anxiously continued to reiterate excuses and apologies. Fortunately in the midst of his explanations an electric bell beside his desk ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... of spell a turbulent commonplace youth could be charmed into stillness for six hours of the day. Ripton was supposed to be devoted to the study of Blackstone. A tome of the classic legal commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the partially lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student's head—law being thus brought into direct contact with his brain-pan. The office-door opened, and he heard not; his name was called, and he remained equally moveless. His method ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and came uncertainly forward, apparently weak, able hardly to stand without leaning upon the desk in front of him; his face waxen and drawn, hollowed at the cheeks and temples, his long hands thin to transparency. Life was betrayed in him only by the eyes. These burned darkly, far back under his brows, and flashed ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... him. The study was office and library and living-room in one, a large, untidy room with books lining two sides of it, and a third devoted to shelf on shelf of bottles and jars and boxes. Near the bottle end of the apartment the Doctor had his desk and his few appliances. At the other end was a big oak table covered with a debris of books, magazines, newspapers, tobacco cans, pipes, and general litter. There was a mingled odor, not unpleasant, of drugs and disinfectants, tobacco and leather. Wade made ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... by a master hand. "To make a portrait of him," says Thackeray, "at first seemed a matter of small difficulty. There is his coat, his star, his wig, his countenance simpering under it: with a slate and a piece of chalk, I could at this very desk perform a recognisable likeness of him. And yet after reading of him in scores of volumes, hunting him through old magazines and newspapers, having him here at a ball, there at a public dinner, there at races, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... He sits at a flat-topped desk in a soft-carpeted room, working quietly, methodically. By the window stands a big steel safe containing hundreds of pounds in gold, at hand for any emergency. Ranged on shelves are reference books—"Who's Who," "The Law List," "Medical Directory," "A.B.C. Guide," "Continental ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... opened by an officer of the Erste Garde; I entered a large room, advanced to the center and faced the divided portieres of an adjoining chamber! There sat the man whose nod shook the earth!... Behind a heavy, old-fashioned desk, in a dim light, apparently absorbed in writing, sat a deeply tanned, lean-faced, blue-gray-eyed counterpart of Frederick the Great,—the very embodiment of Majesty!... Eyes that blazed in their defiant depths with ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... object about me seemed bent against my abstraction; the card-racks fascinating me like serpents, and compelling me to read, as if I would get them by heart, "Dr. Joblin," "Mr. Cumberback," "Mr. Milton Bull," &c. &c. I took up my pen, drew a sheet of paper from my writing-desk, and fixed my eyes upon that;—'t was all in vain; I saw nothing on it but the watermark, D. Ames. I laid down the pen, closed my eyes, and threw my head back in the chair. "Are you waiting to be shaved, Sir?" said a familiar voice. I started up, and overturned my servant. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... gate, saw one curious thing. A sentry stood by the railway official who was taking up tickets, and two or three times he stopped and questioned civilian passengers. Two of these, moreover, he ordered into the ticket office, where, as he went by, Harry saw an officer, seated at a desk, examining civilians. ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... Charley Chase! I could hardly look at the man behind the command desk. But look I did—and my heart did a ninety degree dive straight to the thick soles of my space boots. No wonder this ship was sour. What else could happen with Lieutenant Commander Charles Augustus Chase in command! He was three classes up on me, but even though he was a First Classman at ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... despite an ample patrimony, he had curiously enough entered the lists as a newspaper man. From the sporting page he was graduated to police news, then the city desk, at last closing his career as the genius who invented the weekly Sunday thriller, in many colors of illustration and vivacious Gallic style which interpreted into heart throbs and goose-flesh the real life romances and tragedies of the preceding six days! He had conquered the paper-and-ink ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... B. The admiral who "stuck close to his desk, and never went to sea." His reward was the appointment as "ruler of the Queen's navee."—W. S. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... three glasses of Mr. Brown's whiskey and soda. While William's back was turned he filled his pockets with the silver ornaments from the mantel-piece. He began to inspect the drawers in Mr. Brown's desk. Then: ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... and had not treated him as if he was scum; and after taking his seat and telling Ruby Ann, with quite an air when she asked why he was so late, that he had been detained by Mr. Harcourt, who wanted to talk with him, he took from his desk his slate and rubbed out the caricature he had drawn the day before of a young girl on crutches trying to get up the steps of the school-house. He was intending to show it to Tim Biggs and make him angry, and to the other scholars and make them laugh, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... shawl, and started on her dreaded task. When she left the house she had not even yet quite made up her mind what she would do. At first she put her lover's letter into her pocket, so that she might have it for reference; but, on second thoughts, she replaced it in her desk, dreading lest she might be persuaded into showing or reading some part of it. There had come a sharp frost after the rain, and the ground was hard and dry. In order that she might gain some further last moment for thinking, she walked round, up among the rocks, instead of going straight ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... the answer, pointing to a certain slackness and softness in himself—the primal shrinking from work, the primal instinct to sit and dream—that had every day to be met and conquered afresh, before the student actually found himself in his chair, or lecturing from his desk with all his brains alert. Anyway, the Reader, when there was no college or university engagement to pin him down, would stand often—"spilling the morning in recreation"; in other words, gossiping with his wife ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... went away to summon her father. She found him as she had last noticed him, sitting asleep on the big leather office chair. Ledlie, behind the desk, was still reading his soiled newspaper, which he continued to do until Athalie cried out something in a frightened voice. Then he laid aside his paper, blinked at her, got up leisurely and shuffled over to where his partner was sitting ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... to write Frank to-day! I haven't congratulated him yet. We've been so busy." She hurried to the desk. "I'll have time to tear off just ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... a-near him Within that type-strewn loft; She handed him the paste-pot, He passed the scissors oft; They dipped in the same inkstand That crowned their desk between, Yet—he never called her Katie, She ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... of the axe in the chink of the secretary's door and wrenched it free. It opened down to form a sort of desk, and disclosed an array of cubby-holes and two small doors, both locked. These latter Kitchell smashed in with the axe-head. Then he seated himself in the swivel chair and began to rifle their contents systematically, Wilbur leaning ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... bells jangled altogether as she reached the churchyard gate. Then the smallest tolled alone, hurrying stragglers. She was indeed late, the bulk of the congregation already seated, the Canon at the reading-desk and Mrs. Horniblow wheezing forth a voluntary upon the harmonium, when she walked ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and Novelty Orders: Mounting suspender webbing, mounting corset samples, pasting suspender tabs and sockets, case making. Desk sets, lampshades, and candleshades. ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... said he. "You'll like the cigars in the second box on my desk—the long one." And he began turning the combination lock. "You haven't dropped in on us for the past three or four months," he ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... night finishing some work on which he was employed, and to the completion of which he bent himself with all his might. The labour was done, and the night was worn away somehow, and the tardy November dawn came and looked in on the young man as he sate over his desk. In the next day's paper, or quarter's review, many of us very likely admired the work of his genius, the variety of his illustration, the fierce vigour of his satire, the depth of his reason. There was no hint in his writing of the other thoughts which occupied him, and always ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from his quaint desk, it was suddenly to be seen that the young man limped, on his left foot: that this limp was not accidental or temporary.... A lame doctor: so it was with him. And yet the fire with which he spoke was surely not born ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the court opened on the important first Tuesday. As one after another transacted his affairs and went away, others would come in. Three or four lawyers sat at tables talking with clients, or stood about the judge's desk. There was a sprinkling of women in new mourning. Printed papers, filled out with names and dates,—petitions and bonds and executors' accounts,—were being handed in to the judge and receiving ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... soon to please me," said I, gathering up the original manuscripts of the story and preparing to put them away in my desk. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... to the hotel together. Zette, who was sitting by the desk in the bureau, rose and, without a word or look, vanished down the passage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner-time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... to and locked it, as he thought, but he must have turned the key too quickly, for the bolt of the lock did not enter the jamb, as they afterward found. Meanwhile they felt perfectly secure. The jewels were brought out of Mrs. Quimby's bedroom and laid on the desk. The securities were soon laid beside them. They had been concealed behind a movable brick at the side of the fireplace. Then the discussion began, involving more or ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... endeavored once more to get the better of my feelings, in order to determine what was best to be done in a crisis where the step I was about to take might have so much influence on the fortunes of my family. As we drew near my habitation, I gave my writing desk, which contained some further notes upon my book, to my youngest son; he jumped over a wall to get into the house by the garden. An English lady*, my excellent friend, came out to meet me and inform me of all that had happened. I observed ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... Meg; surely not," quavered the old grandmother, who, for reasons of her own, wished to appear ignorant. Was it not to refresh her failing memory about what happened just about this time of year, a long while ago, that she had gone to her daughter's desk, and got out those old faded letters? Mrs. MacDougall would not have minded her reading them, but she would mind having them lost, for she was very methodical; and besides, many of these letters were important ones, written by hands long since ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Bust me if I don't thry him, if he'll fust promise me to say it any one axes him that he niver saw Pat M'Cabe in his loife," and the suddenly improvised reporter climbed the long stairways to where the night editor sat at his desk. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... green glass, which he hastily slipped into his pocket. When he had once more descended to his office, he again took it out and examined it carefully to see that it had in no way been tampered with; then, with a hard, cruel smile, he placed it upon his desk among his ledgers and account books. Diana de Laurebourg might pay him a visit as soon as she liked, for he was quite prepared for her, for he had slipped on his dressing-gown and placed his velvet skull cap upon his head, as if he had not ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... at the desk in the dusty Whitehall office leaned back in his chair and passed his hand over his face. He looked tired and pallid with ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... to his desk and dug into one of his everlasting formulas. Just the same, next day when I entered Holcomb's lecture-room I was in for a surprise. My husky room-mate was in ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... work of overhauling the vessel and discovering what I could about her. So I went to work and instituted a thoroughly systematic search, beginning in the skipper's cabin—having of course first obtained Miss Onslow's permission—and there, stowed carefully away in a lock-up desk—which, after some hesitation, I decided to break open—I found the ship's papers intact, enclosed in a small tin case. And from these I learned, first, that her late master was named Josiah Hobson, and second, that she was bound on a trading ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the clerk of the court. "I want to pay that fine," he said, at the same time placing five twenty-dollar gold pieces on the desk. "It—it was the only way out of it, lad," he ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... deputy bent low over his desk in the writing-room of the Congress, went on with his last letter, adding one more envelope to the heap of correspondence piled up at the end of the table, near his cane and his ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that has at last found a master. He paid no attention to Steve Hunter who, with the air of one bearing in his breast some gigantic secret, came in and went out at the door twenty times a day, but kept his eyes on the silent Hugh who sat at a desk and made drawings on sheets of paper. Allie tried valiantly to follow the instructions given him and to understand what his master was trying to do, and Hugh, finding himself unembarrassed by the presence of the half-wit, sometimes spent hours ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... show to both the religious and philosophical parties that their adversaries were capable of leading upright, useful, and magnanimous lives. Whether he would have painted the imaginary Wolmar so favourably if he could have foreseen what kind of book the real Holbach had in his desk, is perhaps doubtful. For Holbach's opinions looked more formidable and sombre in the cold deliberateness of print than they had sounded amid ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... third trial, but with no better results than before. Things went on in the usual way until a centipede was discovered in another boy's desk. Although in this case Tommy was innocent of any knowledge of the intruder, he was found guilty, whipped, and sent home with the message, "Go and tell your father to get you on board a man-of-war, as that is the best school ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... regard the events of the past few minutes as nothing short of a cataclysm, flutteringly leafed over her book, and just as Amidon began wondering what he could think of to put into a letter, she burst into tears. Amidon closed his desk with a bang, and giving Alderson orders covering his absence, walked out into the streets, full of the joy of gratified destructiveness. He met Alvord, and temerariously agreed to go with him to the lodge that evening. He finally found Blodgett, and informed him of what had been the result of his ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... auld George Mundy's graave set 'pon mine—not just writ, but cut in a slate or some such lasting thing. 'Tis a tidy tomb he've got, wi' a cherub angel, an' I'd like the same. You'll find a copy o' the words in the desk there. My maid took it down last Sunday. I minded the general meaning, but couldn't call home the rhymes. Read it out, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... where I've a priest ready to tie the knot; an' to-morrow, if you're willin', we'll start for America; but if you don't like that, we'll live together till you'll be willin' enough, I hope, to go any where I wish. So take heart, darlin', take heart. As for the money I made free wid out o' your desk, it'll help to keep us comfortable; it was your own, you know, an' who has a betther right to be ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... patriot blood, and who had had the independence to risk all for love of the beautiful mother of worshipped memory. It was with straightened shoulders and a high head that he took the seat assigned him at the clumsy desk, in the bare, ugly room of the school in which he was to be known for the first time as Edgar Poe. He felt that in coming into his own name he had come into ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... parlay with the owners of the restaurant. In time an acquaintance would grow up, he thought, and then in the day of distress he could no doubt obtain the necessary credit. So he took his place at a small square table close to the desk, intended probably for casual comers, for the two clean serviettes were unadorned with rings. Lucien's opposite neighbor was a thin, pallid youth, to all appearance as poor as himself; his handsome face was somewhat worn, already it told of hopes that had vanished, leaving ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... a shelf and took down a heavy quarto, bound in black leather, and inscribed, in red letters, MY FAULTS. This she threw irreverently on a desk, and tossed its pages over until she came to one only partly covered with ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... sit at his desk for fifteen hours a day, writing and studying. The sedentary habit grew upon him; the vital organs got clogged with adipose tissue. The doctor told him that "his diaphragm was too close to his lungs"—a cheerful proposition, well worthy of a small, mouse-colored ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the old book-keeper, Major Van Zandt, whose high desk was so placed that he could overlook the private office, had been watching them ever since the messenger had delivered the despatch. He could not read the telegram, he could not hear the comments, but he could see ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... following proposition: If, at the end of a month, you do not declare that you regard this suicide as a crime against yourself and all those dear to you, then I will give you a powder which will put an end to your life without leaving such ugly traces as that pistol on your desk." ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... against the pulpit desk and showed a few coins drawn from the pocket of Hingston's pantaloons which he was wearing. "These shall be enough, for out of these three rusty old coppers I can make millions of gold ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... shelves, Max says. Blue-beard's murdered wives, says Bob. Alec guesses a lot of broken-backed chairs and a desk with the hinges off. Uncle Timothy thinks it merely leads to the roof. But the steps from the ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... a pleasure, for they felt the need of knowledge. I feel bound to say, however, that imparting knowledge was not my only pleasure. In intervals of leisure, before or after school, or at recess, I found much that was worthy attention. Seated at my desk, wrapped in my dignity, I watched, with many a sidelong glance, the progress of rustic love-making. I only mean by this, that from their general movements I constructed such love-stories as seemed to me probable. I learned who went with whom, who wished they could go with whom, who could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... on a fine morning that Mr. Langdon made his appearance, as master for the English branches, in the great school-room of the Apollinean Institute. The principal, Mr. Silas Peckham, carried him to the desk of the young lady assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her. The young lady assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine of the classes, and Mr. Langdon had a great many questions to ask relating to his new duties. The ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... doctor, "among his effects they found a package addressed to me, which contained a letter and a silver coin. The coin you now hold in your hand, the letter I have here in my desk." ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... opened the writing desk and took from the lower drawer ten little packages of yellow letters, tied and arranged in order, side by side. She placed them all on the bed over her mother's heart from a sort of sentiment and began to read them. They were old letters that savored of a former century. The first began, "My ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Gallup produced check books and proceeded to draw checks at a standing desk used for that purpose by depositors. These checks were made payable to the Wellsburg First National Bank, and Merriwell indorsed both of them. Casin himself received the checks, and Frank observed a slight expression of surprise on his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... threw his subtle imagination and vital poetry into pounds, shillings, and pence with such force that he worked the base element into spiritual splendours. Oh! to think of our having missed seeing that man. It is painful. A little book is published of his 'thoughts and maxims,' the sweepings of his desk I suppose; broken notes, probably, which would have been wrought up into some noble works, if he had lived. Some of ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... see if they are; but when we touch the property, we'll show them who is their masters, which consoles me. Good-by, keep your sperrits up, and I will call and tell you more about it on Sunday. So farewell (I write this at Mr. Sharpeye's desk, who is coming down from dinner directly, the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot: what do I say?—why, almost without a desk to lean their ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... exact moment, up-stairs, in a private laboratory in the house, sat a young man at a desk—a handsome, strong-faced, clean-cut chap. All about him were the scientific instruments which he used to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... a little room just off the kitchen, where the squire had an old-fashioned desk. Here it was that he transacted his business, and in the desk he kept his papers. It was into this room that he ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... wrote on the blue folder: "Er ist frei gelassen." I would give lots for those folders; but, though safety was by no means certain, I found I yet had nerve enough to take a venture. When I was bidden to pick up my papers strewn across the desk, I tried my best to gather in some of the other documents. Besides the copies of the letter I wrote to the Ambassador the only thing I got on my case was this letter, written by Mr. Whitlock to Baron von de Lancken, the official German representative in charge of the ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... to wait only a minute or two, and then he was escorted through a chain of rooms, and came at last to the magnate's inner sanctum. This was plain, with an elaborate and studied plainness, and Jim Hegan sat in front of a flat mahogany desk which had not a scrap of paper anywhere ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... except the doctor in that little company whom John Weightman had known before—an old book-keeper who had spent his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts—a rusty, dull little man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... passed in addressing the envelopes at his father's library desk. Five of them were scrawled in a heavy backhand, with the aid of his mother's broad, stub pen, and five more in his normal handwriting. He finished the others in a variety of huge pothooks with blackly crossed "T's" and dotted "I's," and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was rigged up at the end of the lecture room, in front of the desk, under the personal supervision of a former assistant of Banvard's, and worked beautifully, saving an occasional squeak ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... see E. H———, having previously appointed a meeting for the purpose of inquiring about our name. He is an old bachelor, and truly forlorn. The pride of ancestry seems to be his great hobby. He had a good many old papers in his desk at the Custom-House, which he produced and dissertated upon, and afterwards went with me to his sister's, and showed me an old book, with a record of the children of the first emigrant (who came over two hundred years ago), ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
