"Desk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked round the room as she took her seat. There were a couple of forms, notched and cut and inked all over; a small deal desk perched on four legs, at which no doubt the master sat; a few dog's-eared books upon a high shelf; and beside them a motley collection of peg-tops, balls, kites, fishing-lines, marbles, half-eaten apples, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... chid me for my unceasing devotion to my work; and would sometimes playfully come behind, as I sat writing, snatch the manuscript from my desk, and substitute in its place some new and popular book, or some time-honored French classic, to which he would command me to give my whole attention for the next two hours, on pain of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... meaning of this, Evelyn?" he demanded, bringing his hand down on the desk beside her; and one glance at the half sheet lying beneath it was enough. That particular bill had grown painfully familiar during the last few months. It was from Lahore, and its total was no less than three hundred rupees. Her ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... a ponderous calculation, the professor leaned over his desk. One hand held his massive brow; the other guided ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... birthplace in Henley Street, where Shakespeare was born, probably on April 23, 1564. This is now a museum with all kinds of Shakespeare relics in it, profoundly interesting to Hester if not to the others. The desk at which he sat in the Grammar School is there; and his big chair from the Falcon Inn at Bidford; and many portraits; and on one of the windows, scratched with a diamond, is the name of Sir Walter Scott. The boys wanted to write their names, too, but it is no longer allowed; although I fancy ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... magnificent apricots! Mr. Sarkis, do you know what! Sell me your house. No, I will say something better to you. Come to my store—you know where it is—yonder in the new two-storied house. Yes, yes, come over there and we will sit down pleasantly by the desk and gossip about ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... ticket-scalper's office, secured the owner's business card, and wrote a note on its back to Dodge, offering him cheap transportation to any point that he might desire. Armed with this he returned to the hotel, walked to the desk, glanced casually over a number of telegrams exposed in a rack and, when the clerk turned his back, placed the note, addressed to Charles F. Dodge, unobserved, upon the counter. The office was a busy one, guests were constantly depositing ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... soon a foreign servant appeared, and bowing, invited Mr. Wilton to ascend the staircase and follow him. Mr. Wilton was ushered through an ante-chamber into a room of some importance, lofty and decorated, and obviously adapted for distinguished guests. On a principal table a desk was open and many papers strewn about. Apparently some person had only recently been writing there. There were in the room several musical instruments; the piano was open, there was a harp and a guitar. The room was rather dimly lighted, but cheerful ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... out, but I never noticed them; and when the breakfast bell rang, I shoved the book into my desk and ran downstairs to breakfast. I observed that Ethel's place was empty; none of the girls looked at me, but munched their bread and sipped their tepid tea while Mademoiselle made a few frigid general remarks and, after saying a French grace, left ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... as they might occur, are duly met and answered; and one notes throughout the practical schoolmaster, knowing what he is talking about, and having before his fancy all the while the spectacle of a hundred or two of lads ranged on benches, and to be managed gloriously from the desk, as a skilled metallurgist manages a mass of molten iron. He is a decided advocate for large classes, each of "some hundreds," under one head-master, because of the fervour which such classes generate in themselves and in the master; and he shows how they may be managed. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... such As daubs the fancy, and you dread the touch. Far unlike him was one in former times, Famed for the spoil he gather'd by his crimes; Who, while his brethren nibbling held their prey, He like an eagle seized and bore the whole away. Swallow, a poor Attorney, brought his boy Up at his desk, and gave him his employ; He would have bound him to an honest trade, Could preparations have been duly made. The clerkship ended, both the sire and son Together did what business could be done; Sometimes they'd luck to stir ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... so that I was forced to lean my face close to hers to catch the sound. In the sitting-room still remained the old clavichord, on which the brother and sister had frequently played duets together; and on its desk were some pieces of his composition, which were the last things his sister had played over ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... I suppose you must have a desk, though you have nothing to put in it. If there is a spare desk, you shall have it: if not, we will find ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... from the bed, still looking as if he had seen a ghost, and, going to a desk, opened it, and took therefrom a capacious drinking flask; raising it to his lips he drained half its contents, and the stimulant acting upon overstrained nerves, seemed to ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... closed knife blade, and it required a moment in which to straighten it out so that the writing was discernable. Even then the marks were so faint, and minute, he could not really decipher them until he made use of a magnifying glass lying on the desk. A woman's hand, using a pencil, had hastily inscribed the words on a scrap of common paper, apparently torn from some book—the inspiration of an instant, perhaps, a sudden hope born of desperation. He fairly had to dig ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... ornamented. A sort of frame held the tops of the posts together, from which still hung threads of costly curtains intertwined with cobwebs, and stained with dust and damp atmosphere. There were no chairs, no tables, but in another corner of the apartment stood an antique writing-desk, with metal handles to the drawers, and brass feet fashioned after the claws of the lion, older than the bedstead which occupied the other corner. Its polish and usefulness had passed away with the grandeur of this silent habitation. Between two of the windows was a ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... something else, or thought they did, saw McGregor a new force for Chicago to reckon with. After the trial one young newspaper man returned to his office and running from desk to desk yelled in the faces of his brother reporters: "Hell's out for noon. We've got a big red-haired Scotch lawyer up here on Van Buren Street that is a kind of a new scourge of the world. Watch the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... looking-glasses for his drawing-rooms (the front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but elegant apartment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two new dresses for Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon, for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald-green and gold morocco top, and drawers ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attention before the desk of the lieutenant colonel of Marshal Cogswell's staff who was acting as receptionist before the sanctum sanctorum of the field genius. He saluted and snapped, "Joseph Mauser, sir. Category Military, Rank Major. On ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and I retired. The next day my family deserted me and went to the mountains, and all my fears as to the inordinate sense of loneliness which was to be my lot were realized. Even Boswell neglected me apparently for a week. I went to my desk daily and returned at night hoping that my type-writer would bring forth something of an interesting nature, but naught other than disappointment awaited me. For a whole blessed week I was thrown back upon the society of my neighbors for diversion. ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... answer to the Cadets. Stooped over the desk of the tribune like the mortally sick man he was, and speaking in a voice so hoarse it could hardly be heard, he shook his finger toward ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... into the hall. All along the right side is a glass partition, showing a conservatory which is entered by glass doors, one up stage, the other down. On the left side is a large fireplace. At the back, in the centre, is a handsome writing-desk with a shut down flap lid. Above the fireplace, facing the audience is a large sofa. To the right of sofa, and below it in the left centre of the room is a small table, and near to it an easy chair. Right centre down ...
— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones
... for "daughter Patience;" birds, books, flowers, and pictures were plentiful here though visible nowhere else. Two easy-chairs beside the bed showed where the old folks oftenest sat; Abel's home corner was there by the antique desk covered with farmers' literature and samples of seeds; Phebe's work-basket stood in the window; Nat's lathe in the sunniest corner; and from the speckless carpet to the canary's clear water-glass all was exquisitely neat, for love and labor were the handmaids ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... drew a little writing-stand to her side, opened the desk, took out materials and penned the ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... the green shade, with his head bent over white paper, Mr. Sibley transferred figures to folios, and upon each desk you observe, like provender, a bunch of papers, the day's nutriment, slowly consumed by the industrious pen. Innumerable overcoats of the quality prescribed hung empty all day in the corridors, but as the clock struck six each was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... white room with its miniature overmantel, pink walls, and brass fire-irons like toys, resembled more than ever an elaborate doll's house. The frail white chairs seemed too slender to be sat on. Could one ever write at that diminutive white writing-desk? The flat might have been made, and furnished by Waring, for midgets. Everything was still in fair and dainty repair, except that the ceiling, which was painted in imitation of a blue sky, was beginning to look cloudy. ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... pondering, in her own beautiful room, there was a modest knock at the door, and Rosa came in with a box. She smiled, and put it on Harriet's desk. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... pocket. But, as there was always something sinister at the bottom of any delight expressed by Colbert, Louis preferred of the smiles of the two men that of Fouquet. He beckoned to the surintendant to come up, and then, turning toward Lyonne and Colbert, he said: "Finish this matter, place it on my desk, and I will read it at my leisure." And he left the room. At the sign the king had made to him, Fouquet had hastened up the staircase, while Aramis, who was with the surintendant, quietly retired among the group of courtiers, and disappeared ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the nub of a pencil, and using his knee as a writing-desk, duly, and in the manner set forth in the laws of the United States, discovered and located Edgard Gentry, age thirty-five, died of consumption, extending fifteen hundred feet in a northerly and southerly direction and three hundred feet on either side, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... Ben was not used to city hotels, and he was a little afraid that he should not go to work properly, but he experienced no difficulty. He stepped up to the desk, ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... walked over to the Red House and soon found himself waiting for John Grimbal in a cheerless but handsome dining-room. The apartment suggested little occupation. A desk stood in the window, and upon it were half a dozen documents under a paper-weight made from a horse's hoof. A fire burned in the broad grate; a row of chairs, upholstered in dark red leather, stood stiffly round; a dozen indifferent oil-paintings of dogs and horses filled large gold ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Arabin was to read himself in at his new church. It was agreed at the rectory that the archdeacon should go over with him and assist at the reading desk, and that Mr. Harding should take the archdeacon's duty at Plumstead Church. Mrs. Grantly had her school and her buns to attend to, and professed that she could not be spared, but Mrs. Bold was to accompany them. It was further agreed ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... always sat. She looked round upon all these familiar things with a dreary sense of strangeness and desolation, and the curves of her sweet mouth trembled a little and drooped piteously. But her resolve was taken, and she did not hesitate or weep. She sat down to her desk and wrote a few brief lines to her father—this letter she addressed and stamped ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Drummond clearly saw. But Bill Totts could not see it. When he saw a scab taking his job away, he saw red at the same time, and little else did he see. It was Freddie Drummond, irreproachably clothed and comported, seated at his study desk or facing his class in Sociology 17, who saw Bill Totts, and all around Bill Totts, and all around the whole scab and union-labour problem and its relation to the economic welfare of the United States in the struggle for the world market. Bill Totts really wasn't able ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... matted curtains the two attendants who were holding them up cast a rather horrified glance at our dusty shoes and unconventional costume. The Vali was sitting in a large arm-chair in front of a very small desk, placed at the far end of a vacant-looking room. After the usual salaams, he motioned to a seat on the divan, and proceeded at once to examine our credentials while we sipped at our coffee, and whiffed the small cigarettes which were immediately served. This furnished the Vali an opportunity ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... from her seat at the desk that she did not take those papers. "What papers do you take then?" asked one of the officers, a captain. The waiter, a little fellow in a blue cloth jacket, with an apron of coarse linen tied ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... Sabbath now is here. The church-bells call both far and near, The organ sounds so loud to me I think I'm in the sacristy. There's not a soul in all the house; I hear a fly, and then a mouse. The sunlight now the window reaches And through the cactus stems it stretches, Fain o'er the walnut desk to glide, Some ancient cabinet-maker's pride. There it beholds with searching looks Concordances and children's books, On wafer-box and seal it dances And lights the inkwell with its glances; Across ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret for what had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile, took the money to the judge that had tried the case, told the judge a few wholesome truths, and laid the pile of money on the desk. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... something worse 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 other ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... desk a specimen of the straw hats which the young ladies of his establishment were kept so busy plaiting. At exactly three o'clock he thrust it to one side, and at exactly the same moment the bell of his street door clanged, and Wilmot Allen came in ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... this courtesy (reading petitions and names), requires unanimous consent, and one man, Hon. J. J. Davis of North Carolina, who had no petition from the women of his State, objected. Sixty-five representatives presented the petitions at the clerk's desk, under the rule, January 14, 15, 16. In answer to these appeals to both Houses, on Monday, January 19, Hon. T. W. Ferry, of Michigan, introduced in the Senate a joint resolution for a sixteenth amendment, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... we were at the bank somewhat earlier than usual, waiting impatiently for Dennison and the time to open the doors: they always arrived together. When Dennison stepped into the room, bowing in his engaging manner to each clerk as he passed to his own desk, I confronted him, shaking him warmly by the hand. At that moment all the others fell to writing and figuring with unusual avidity, as if thinking of anything under the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... on the top layer. It was not a thing of beauty, being the work of his own clumsy little hands, but he felt sure it would be appreciated, for he had heard grandfather wish so often that "somebody" wouldn't take away the blotters from his desk. ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... his desk, he must stagger back with dismay at the piles on piles of letters heaped thereon. To read them all is out of the question; so he sits down and draws one forth, just as you would draw a card from the hand of someone who pretended ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... heavy oak desk which occupied a conspicuous place in the centre of one of the walls. He unlocked it and drew forth a ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... as he spoke. The line he meant was in a sealed envelope on Judge Parker's desk, and he was sure that it would draw the prize which would be envied by ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is about the length and thickness of an ordinary round desk ruler, a little flattened before and rounded behind. It is brownish, with a pale stripe along either side. The skin is furrowed into 350 circular folds, in which are imbedded minute scales. The head is tolerably distinct, with a double row of fine curved teeth for ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... austere-looking room. Magda glanced about her curiously—at the plain, straight-backed chairs, at the meticulously tidy desk and bare, polished floor. Everything was scrupulously clean, but the total absence of anything remotely resembling luxury struck poignantly on eyes accustomed to all the ease and beauty of surroundings ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... made me a low curtsey, and laid a small photographic portrait on the desk at which ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... last summer, by trickling down water on my face from a passing shower? and did I not have to get up at that unearthly hour to move the bed, and step splash into a puddle, and come very near being floated away? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon my writing-desk, and soak the leather and swell the wood, and stain the ribbon and spoil the paper inside, and all because you were treacherous at the roof and let it? Have you not made a perfect rattery of yourself, yawning at every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... at my old desk with a firm resolution to let other men do the traveling; I would stick ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... an easy-chair when he had lighted a cigar, and watched Weston, who glanced with evident interest around the room. Its furniture consisted of very little besides a roll-top desk and a couple of chairs, but the walls were hung with drawings of machines and large-scale maps, which had projected railroad routes traced across them. An Englishman, as a rule, endeavors, with a success which varies in accordance with his temperament, to leave ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug Usher at his desk, in the intervals of instruction levelling his pen. Of Death as it consists of dust and worms and mourners and uncertainty he had never thought, but the word death he had often seen separate & conjunct with other words, till he had learned to skill of all its ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... words of thanks Christian left the room. Vaguely and mechanically he wandered upstairs to his own particular den. It was a disappointing little chamber. The chaos one expects to find on the desk of a literary man was lacking here. No papers lay on the table in artistic disorder. The presiding genius of the room was method—clear-headed, practical method. The walls were hidden by shelves of books, from the last half-hysterical production of some vain ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... narrative Mrs. Ward rang for a candle, and desired the servant to bring her writing desk. "I shall find there," she said, "the original MS. given me by my dear husband on his return from this journey. He wrote it amid much difficulty, for very frequently the ink would freeze in spite of ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... letter and deed to a desk by the window, examined them carefully, then took out a large magnifying glass from his pocket, and again ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... me the first rectorship that should become vacant. This office was much to my taste, for it seemed to have a likeness to my former state, a school-master being a miniature of royalty. The rod may be likened to the sceptre; the desk to the throne. After waiting for a vacancy in vain, I determined, from necessity, to accept the first office I could get. At this time the sacristan of the church died; his place was offered to me by the bishop and accepted. An amusing promotion to ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... to Visp. I had seen a diligence at the door with three places in the coupe, and one perched behind; no banquette. The office is brightly lighted; people are waiting to secure places; there is the usual crowd of loafers, men and women, and the Frenchman sits at his desk. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin. "Who's there?" cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs —"who's there?" Oh! how that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. "I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?" Thus far the busy captain had not ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Governor Cox say that he is daring because of his strong sense of justice. The question is frequently asked by him as to whether a proposition is fair to all sides. Readiness to trust in him as an arbitrator has brought many issues to his desk that are not part of a Governor's official duties. Disputes between interests and differences among organizations, no less than capital and labor disagreements have been left to his decision. It is an evidence of the trust in the sense of ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... no agreeable mood, went on and entered at the office door of the mill. A tall, sharp-faced man, seated on a stool at a high desk, looked up at his entrance. One might see at a glance that here was a man who looked upon the world with a calculating eye. No fat and genial miller was James Ellison. No grist that came from his mill was likely to be ground finer than a business ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... was sitting late. Candles had been brought to light the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk, mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with capital crimes. His work ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... them, one by one, sometimes hesitating and troubled, as if she were taking some important step, changing her mind every instant, weighing the merits of two easy chairs or of some old writing-desk and an ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and court were empty. The library door was open, too, and after listening in vain for any sound of voices within, she quickly crossed the threshold, and found her husband alone, vaguely fingering the papers on his desk. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... woodsmen of the mountain-side! Ho, dwellers in the vales! Ho, ye who by the chafing tide Have roughened in the gales! Leave barn and byre, leave kin and cot, Lay by the bloodless spade: Let desk and case and counter rot, And burn your books ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a sort of invisible chuckle. The unseen in that volume was revealed to us through that laugh of the old bookworm, and quite unseen we partook of his amusement. Another alcove was vacant; a crabbed manuscript, just laid down by the writer, was on the desk. He was invisible; but the watchful guardian at the head of the room saw us peering in, and warned us with a loud voice not to enter. Safely might we have been permitted to do so, for we could hardly have deciphered at a glance all the wisdom that lurked in the open page; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... twelve or fourteen ladies of all ages—from seventy to fifteen—sat at work: some at tapestry, some spinning, some making coarse garments for the poor. A great throne-like chair, with a canopy over it, a footstool, a desk and a small table before it, was vacant, and the work—a poor child's knitted cap—laid down; but an elderly minister, seated at a carved desk, had not discontinued reading from a great black book, and did not even cease while the strangers crossed the room, merely ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of action. Unlike Kitchener, he prefers execution to organisation, and he probably chafed horribly over the interminable disentangling of knots which is efficient organisation. His one consolation was the solution every night before he left his desk of ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... which have naval contracts, either as prime contractors or subcontractors.' Your request to be furnished reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is one of the many made by congressional committees. I have on my desk at this time two other such requests for access to Federal Bureau of Investigation files. The number of these requests would alone make compliance impracticable, particularly where the requests are of so comprehensive ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... wives from the suburbs, who made up for the distinguished looks which they did not possess, by ill-timed dignity; of gentlemen who were tired of the office, with yellow-faces, who stooped rather, and with one shoulder higher than the other, in consequence of their long hours of work bending over the desk. Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of domestic troubles, of constant want of money, of former hopes, that had been finally disappointed; for they all belonged to that army of poor, threadbare devils who vegetate economically in mean, plastered ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... there is nothing in front but the woodwork of the desk, so that no one is annoyed by the presence of his neighbor. The seats and the tables are covered with leather, and are very clean; there are two pens to each desk, the one being steel, the other a quill pen; there is also a small stand at the side, upon ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... correspondence. It was part of his duty to see to the preservation and filing of all letters arriving from Europe, and, strange to say, he delighted in the task. It was part of my duty to see he did his; so I sat down and began to turn over the pile of letters and messages which he had put on my desk; they dated back two years; this surprised me, ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... the hut that was allotted to Retief in the little outlying guard-kraal, which had been given to us for a camp. Here I found the commandant seated on a Kaffir stool engaged in painfully writing a letter, using a bit of board placed on his knees as a desk. ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... had arranged the forms and taken his seat behind his desk, a small white-headed boy with a sunburnt face appeared at the door, and, stopping there to make a rustic bow, came in and took his seat upon one of the forms. He then put an open book, astonishingly dog's-eared, upon his knees, and, thrusting ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... see there: Observe the small buttons, the little boots, the laces, the slashes about his clothes, and above all the posture he is drawn in, (which to be sure was his own chusing:) You see he sits with one hand on a desk writing and looking as it were another way, like an easy writer, or a sonneteer: He was one of those that had too much wit to know how to live in the world; he was a man of no justice, but great good manners; he ruined every body that had anything to do ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... burglars. He had schooled himself not to yield to the impulses of his rabbit heart, but the unexpected clatter of hoofs still set his pulses a-flutter. Why had fate snatched so gentle a youth from his law desk and flung him into such turbid waters to sink or swim? All he had asked was peace—friends, books, a quiet life. By some ironic quirk be found himself in scenes of battle and turmoil. As the son of John Beaudry he was expected to show an unflawed nerve, whereas his eager desire was to run ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... of conversation. We have any number of witnesses of the whole affair, but as far as any of them knows no shot was fired, no smoke was seen, no noise was heard, nor was any weapon found. Yet here on my desk is a thirty-two-calibre bullet. The coroner's physician probed it out of Parker's neck this afternoon and turned it over ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... into his desk chair, looked out the open port beside him. Some four hundred meters below, the scurrying beetlelike activity of the I-A's main field sent up discordant roaring and clattering. Two rows of other scout cruisers ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... a vestry for the priest!" thought Donal; "but it must have been used later than the chapel, for this desk is not older than the one at The Mains, which mistress Jean said was ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... with a new idea, ran to his desk to rummage in a pigeon-hole. But he found no need to do so, for lying on the desk was what he sought—the check book from which Estrella was to draw on Goodrich for the money she might need. He fairly snatched it open. Two of the checks ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... over to his substantial roll-top desk, and unlocking a drawer took from thence an envelope which he handled gingerly as though it were unpleasing ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... tragedian stood enframed upon her desk. Any one may possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or comment. (This was a sinister reflection which she cherished.) In the presence of others she expressed admiration for his exalted gifts, as she handed the photograph around and dwelt upon the fidelity of the likeness. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... great trees, the pious pilgrimages we daily made to the Father Superior's Calvary, our charming readings, the darting forth of our two souls toward the eternal source of all greatness and all goodness. I can still see the little chapel which you fitted up one day in your desk, the pretty wax tapers we made for it, which we lighted one ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... when she would be able to give up teaching and devote herself entirely to a literary career. I wondered, and said I was never sure whether absolute freedom in such a matter was desirable. Perhaps Charles Lamb was all the better for being a slave at the desk for ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... real author, not a tyro fumbling for self-expression, but a man with thirty serials to his credit. Shall I name the periodical? It was the Golden Hours, I think. Ginger-beer and jangling bells were but a fringe upon his darker purpose. His desk was somewhere in the back of the house, and there he would rise to all the fury of a South-Sea wreck—for his genius lay in the broader effects. Even while we simpletons jested feebly and practiced drinking with the open throat—which we esteemed would be of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... grown very philosophic, and, putting my foot on an ant-hill, I exclaim, like the immortal Bonaparte: 'That, or men, what is it all in presence of Saturn or Venus, or the Pole Star?' And methinks that the ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to engulf, is better than a writing-desk, a ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... staying at home from school disappeared. The picture rose before her thought of Miss Joslyn as she always appeared at the long recess: her chair swung about until her profile only was visible, the white napkin on her desk, the book in her hand as she read and ate at one and the same time. Little did Alma suspect what it meant to the kind teacher to give up that precious half-hour of solitude; but Miss Joslyn saw the child's eyes grow bright at the dazzling prospect, and noted the color that covered ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... many venerable friends with whom you can converse. Your own spirit scarcely less free from personal anxieties than the great minds, that in those books are still living for you! Even your writing-desk, with its blank paper and all its other implements, will appear as a chain of flowers, capable of linking your feelings, as well as thoughts to events, and characters, past or to come: not a chain of iron which binds you down to think of the future and ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... was impossible to look upon her without compassion; while, in spite of her wo-begone looks, there was a noble character about her that elevated the feeling into deep interest, blended with respect. She was kneeling beside a small desk, with an open Bible laid upon it, which she was intently studying when the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... way to standing room at last—standing room at a high desk in a dark office, at work which he had still to learn, and which, though he loathed it, he might have learned to do in time if it had not ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... she sate 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 never called ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... the industry of the most hard-working of his 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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... courage, all this made me shed tears. But I 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 at a distance some, gendarmes who were wandering round ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... can tell you. I attracted a great deal of attention." At last he had done that! "I think I rather scared them. They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about, at a distance, wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... hid during the day by the tall pines, but its light shone clear and bright through the foliage. This lamp was lit invariably at the same hour every evening and was rarely extinguished before dawn. There, I thought, one of God's poor creatures works and suffers. Sometimes I rose from my desk to look at this little star twinkling between heaven and earth, and with my brow pressed against the pane ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... mopped the streams of perspiration from his bronzed face and lean-flanked, wiry body, nude save for clinging shorts and fiber sandals. "By the whirling rings of Saturn," he growled as he gazed disconsolately at his paper-strewn desk. "I'd like to have those directors of ITA here on Mercury for just one Earth-month. I'll bet they wouldn't be so particular about their quarterly reports after they'd sweated a half-ton or so of fat off their greasy bellies. 'Fuel consumption per man-hour.': Now what in blazes does that ...
— The Great Dome on Mercury • Arthur Leo Zagat
... ascended the reading-desk, the cheerful, well-kept little church was full, the men in black blouses, the women wearing neat stuff or print gowns, with silk handkerchiefs tied under the chin, widows and the aged, the sombre black-hooded garment, enveloping head and figure, of Huguenot matrons of old—supposed to have ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Sartoris gave signs of irritation and anger. He turned it off a moment later by an allusion to neuralgia, but Beatrice was not quite satisfied. Why did this man want the key of a certain desk, and why did he require a bundle of papers in a blue envelope therefrom? Beatrice resolved ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... o'clock he desired Mr. Lear to call Mrs. Washington to his bedside; when he requested her to bring from his desk two wills, and on receiving them, he gave her one, which he observed was useless as being superseded by the other, and desired her to burn it, which she did, and put ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... friend, and we do. Out of school she seems as young as we do, for she is full of fun and likes us to have a good time. She tries to make school pleasant to us, and a while ago she put a box on her desk, and said, when we had any questions to ask, or complaints to make, we might write them on a slip of paper and put it in that box, which was locked and had a hole in the top. Sometimes she answers the questions ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... to-day; they cost me fifty per cent more than I ever paid before, just because you cattle can't be satisfied; and now you want me to give you a place. If I had my way, I'd give you, and such as you, work on the rock pile." And he wheeled his chair toward his desk again. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... 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 does, but with an iron restraint of discipline ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... last went below. Jack did not turn in, but lay down on one of the lockers in the midshipmen's berth, with a writing-desk for a pillow, and a boat-cloak for a mattress. The instant he put his head on the desk he was fast asleep. It appeared to him but a moment afterwards that he heard the cry, "All hands on deck." Immediately afterwards several ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Anglican place of worship, you'd know that whenever you want anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre, Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod to a desk—Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're the great, the great, church and school-furnishing people. 'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call themselves. And they're IT. No really ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... be the tiniest room Judith had ever seen, more like a ship's cabin than a room, she thought, surveying her new abode with disfavour. A couch-bed, writing-desk and bookcase, a bureau, a wicker chair—how was there room for them all? And how dreadful to have only half a wall—well, three quarters of a wall between ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... George and Rollo came soon to another small room, where a man was sitting behind a desk, examining the passports of the passengers and stamping them. Mr. George waited a moment until it came his turn, and then handed his passport too. The officer looked at it, and then stamped an impression from a sort of seal ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... 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 seat ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... all this commotion to gain my desk unobserved; but precisely that day all was quiet as a Sunday morning. Through the open window I could see my schoolmates already in their places, and M. Hamel, who was walking up and down with the terrible ruler under his arm. I had to open the door and enter in ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... that took in every detail of my person and apparel, and pointed to a door at the head of the stairs. Not waiting for further directions, I hastened up, knocked at the door he had designated, and went in. The broad back of Mr. Gryce, stooping above a desk that might have come over in the ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... She understood; and soon the birds of spring began to flutter about our home. And, though she always ran away when I came, I was conscious of her presence in a hundred little loving touches in my room—at my desk— ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... for sending thee up to the monastery was to help thy learning; and I would fain begin, by hearing thee read aloud from the Scriptures. And with these words, and bidding him read on, He lays on ebon desk before his son The sacred text, in golden ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... Crown Prince deliberately broke off the point of his pencil, and went to the desk where Miss Braithwaite sat, monarch of the American pencil-sharpener which was the beloved ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... his slumbers that night, which the wiser and elder Peyton might have envied, and I wot not was in the long run as correct and sagacious as Peyton's sleepless cogitations. And in the early morning Mr. Clarence Brant, the young capitalist, sat down to his traveling-desk and wrote two clear-headed, logical, and practical business letters,—one to his banker, and the other to his former guardian, Don Juan Robinson, as his first step in a resolve that was, nevertheless, perhaps as wildly quixotic ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... examine a will, your best course is to go to "The Wills Office," at Somerset House, Strand, have on a slip of paper the name of the testator—this, on entering, give to a clerk whom you will see at a desk on the right. At the same time pay a shilling, and you will then be entitled to search all the heavy Index volumes for the testator's name. The name found, the clerk will hand over the will for perusal, and there is no difficulty whatever, provided you know about the year of the testator's ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... Swift's arrival at Laracor, he gave public notice that he would read prayers every Wednesday and Friday. On the first of those days after he had summoned his congregation, he ascended the desk, and after sitting some time with no other auditor than his clerk Roger, he rose up and with a composure and gravity that, upon this occasion, were irresistibly ridiculous, began—"Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... pardon!" said Mr. Gusher, rising from his desk at the announcement and advancing to the railing. "I shall do myself ze pleazure, and ze honor of receiving such commands as you shall confide to ze firm," he continued, smiling and ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... you did! Well, well, the truth will out now and then, you know. Could you inveigle Jane into giving us more butter?—By the way, here's a letter from Jessica. I found it in the stack on my desk to-night. Better read it before ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... on your victim for "things he has plenty of,— Those copies of verses no doubt at least twenty of; His desk is crammed full, for he always keeps writing 'em And reading to friends as his way of delighting 'em!" I tell you this writing of verses means business,— It makes the brain whirl in a vortex of dizziness You think they ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was in the same old room in the Lafayette Square building, which he had in 1853, when I was there a commissary, with the same pictures on the wall, and the letters "U. S." on every thing, including his desk, papers, etc. I asked him if he did not feel funny. "No, not at all. The thing was inevitable, secession was a complete success; there would be no war, but the two Governments would settle all matters of business in a friendly spirit, and each ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... it," Sir Henry replied. "Good night!" He hung up the receiver, crossed the room to his desk, unlocked one of the drawers, and produced a black memorandum book, secured with a brass lock. He drew a key from his watch chain, opened the book, and ran ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... clarionet, a double bass, a bassoon, and a flute: also a tenor voice which "set the tune". The carpenter, to whom the tenor voice belonged, had a tuning-fork which he struck on his desk and applied to his ear. He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up and responded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, including the orchestra, and those of the congregation who had bass or tenor voices sang the air. ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... his desk, he opened a long casket which contained numerous little parcels, all tied up with a slender cord, and on each was written a date in ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... office. It was a plain room, richly carpeted, soft leather chairs, a big table on 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 speaking into the telephone. There ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... child," said the General, tenderly; "you have made me happy, my darling. Now get your desk and write for him at once. You must not lose time, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was, ordinarily, so careful of his money, that it was a very remarkable inadvertence to leave it on the bureau. Nor was it long before he ascertained his loss. He was sitting at his desk when his wife looked in at the door, and called for a small sum ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... see his friends. He had a tiny little room of his own, very near the top of the tremendous building, his one window looking far above the roofs of the tallest houses in the district. There he sat at his desk, generally in his shirt sleeves, if the weather was at all warm, always busy with some matter already printed, or going to be, a quiet, yet ...
— Ancient and Modern Physics • Thomas E. Willson
... his cabinet, and unlocked it. From a number of packages he selected a small one, and brought it to the desk, placing ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... some family portraits, a man with a queue and a ruffled shirt-front, another with a big curly white wig coming down over his shoulders, and several ladies whose attire seemed very queer indeed. There was a black sofa studded with brass nails that shone as if they had been lately polished, a tall desk and bookcase going up to the ceiling, brass and silver candlesticks and snuffers' tray, as well as a bright steel "tinder box" on the high, narrow mantel. A big mahogany table stood in the centre of the room, polished until you could see your face in it. But there was ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... know so little of fact in the life of Shakspere that we delight to let fancy paint its charming pictures. We are led into the old Grammar School which Shakspere in all probability attended. Tradition points out the desk at which he used to sit. We can infer what he studied. The name of the Latin grammar then used we can deduce from his quoting a Latin sentence just as it was misquoted in Lilly's grammar. Artists ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... brown silk dress, with a lace collar and cuff set contributed the Christmas before by her Aunt Kate from Ontario, and at her waist, one of the doctor's roses. The others had been brought over by Mary, and were in a glass jar on the tidy desk, where they attracted much attention and speculation as to where they had come from. They seemed to redeem the bare school-room from utter dreariness, and Pearl found herself repeating the phrase in the doctor's letter, "Like a rose ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... a stronger and stronger hold upon you. This is the great saving principle of our workaday life. This is the factor that keeps the toiler free from the deadening effects of mechanical routine. It is the factor that keeps the farmer at his plow, the artisan at his bench, the lawyer at his desk, the artist at ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... was square and whitewashed; grass matting was upon the floor, and high screened doors opened on to the north verandah. Zu Pfeiffer sprawled in a swing chair before the office desk placed at an oblique angle to the wall, encumbered with books and papers. After tapping reflectively on a book cover with a polished nail zu Pfeiffer's hand sharply struck the bell. Instantly a corporal appeared at the farther door ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the most unsuitable avocation for any one coming out here. You did not expect to find a post at a desk, I suppose?" ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... originally given it to Aymer. A day or so later Christopher had missed it, and he told his host regretfully it was lost. Again Peter failed to explain he was the finder. Yet here was the knife on the desk where he had ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... school—Bal, Franck, Biot, Meunier, Flameng. He belonged to the International Society of Aquafortistes. He worked in aquatint and successfully revived the old process, vernis mou. A sober workman, he spent at least fourteen hours a day at his desk. Being musical, he designed some genre pieces, notably that of the truthfully observed Bassoonist. And though not originating he certainly carried to the pitch of the artistically ludicrous those progressive pictures of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the press, lifting and lowering it by means of a foot lever, and feeding it with broad strips of paper, stood a man in his shirt-sleeves. At an inclined desk, a type-case, stood another man setting type, close beside the press. He, also, was in his shirt-sleeves and was much older and stouter than the man ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... to tell the truth, waddled rather than stepped to the rostrum. She swung herself heavily about as she went sideways; but it was manifest to all eyes that she was not in the least ashamed of her waddling. She undid her manuscript on the desk, and flattened it down all over with her great fat hand, rolling her head about as she looked around, and then gave a grunt before she began. During this time the audience was applauding her loudly, and it was evident that she ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... And now, emerging from this tangle of personal claims and small interests, in the silence and freedom of the night hours, Meynell was free to give himself once more to the intellectual and spiritual passion of the Reform Movement. His table was piled with unopened letters; on his desk lay a half-written article, and two or three foreign books, the latest products of the Modernist Movement abroad. His crowded be-littered room smiled upon him, as he shut its door upon the outer world. ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... saloons were closed, and nowhere were the ladies insulted or in any way annoyed. Women vote intelligently and safely, and it does not appear that their place is solely at home any more than that the farmer should never leave his farm, the mechanic his shop, the teacher his desk, the clergyman his study, or the professional man his office, for the purpose of expressing his wishes and opinions at ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... written a letter or two here, Major," said I, opening my writing-desk. "In case anything happens, you will look to a few things I have mentioned here. Somehow, I could not write to poor Fred Power; but you must tell him from me that his noble conduct towards me was the last thing ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Durrance. Give him a camp-fire in the desert, and a couple of sheiks to sit round it with him, and he'll buck to them for a month and never feel bored at the end. While here there are letters, and there's an office, and there's a desk in the office and everything he loathes and can't do with. You'll see Durrance will turn up right enough, though he won't hurry ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... must go round before lunch. JANE, send Miss SEATON to me in the breakfast-room. (She goes back to her desk; presently Miss MARJORY SEATON enters the room; she is young and extremely pretty, with an air of dejected endurance.) Oh, Miss SEATON, just copy out these menus for me, in your neatest writing, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... telephonic circuits of the world in a year than are transmitted by telegraph operators. The telephone has become an important adjunct to the transaction of business of all sorts. Its wires penetrate everywhere. Without moving from his desk, the London citizen may hold easy converse with a Parisian, a New Yorker with a ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... dainty practitioners, who, as Dr. Courtnay says, affect to consider these cases "objectionable" and the sufferers "unworthy of the attention or sympathy of any one"—if these moralists could sit at our desk, and day after day, week after week, read the affecting stories of enforced celibacy, shattered health, broken family ties, the anguish of jealousy, despair, misanthropy, the consciousness of physical, mental and moral inferiority begotten by this sad condition—we ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... elapsed after I had taken my draught, when I felt a weakness steal over me; my eyelids grew heavy, my knees gave way, and an intolerable heat burned my veins. I was compelled to sit down upon my bed. At that moment, the General changed his tone, and imperiously demanded the key of my desk. 'I do not want your money,' he said, 'but I must have the papers relative to the opal-mine.' I can not express the effect these words produced upon me. 'To deal frankly with you,' continued the General, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Greece and Rome Had all the commonplace of home, And little seemed at best the odds 'Twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods; Where Pindus-born Arachthus took The guise of any grist-mill brook, And dread Olympus at his will Became a huckleberry hill. A careless boy that night he seemed; But at his desk he had the look And air of one who wisely schemed, And hostage from the future took In trained thought and lore of book. Another guest that winter night Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. Unmarked by time, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... with a brief note of explanation, still remained on my desk, and, as my glance fell upon this bundle, I became conscious of a nervousness, which, although to many would be perfectly natural at such a time, was entirely strange to me. I had not experienced the least nervousness ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... exertions. These facts are emphasized here, because if such qualities are to be secured, the training which produces them should begin in the cradle." If I could bring it about, a copy of the foregoing lines should be framed and placed on the desk of every teacher of blind children, and such teachers requested to read these words at ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... told you everything, but in this I must judge for myself.' Then Hetta, seeing that her mother would not relent, left the room without further speech, and immediately opened her desk that the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... 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 and peaked, like Sir ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... opened the letter. She read it over and over, and then, because Jack was at the office and her mother at a neighbour's, she turned to her long-neglected journal for a confidante. She had to hunt through all the drawers of her desk for it, it had been hidden away so long. She felt that the news in the letter was worthy a place in her good times book, for it recorded Lloyd's happiness, which was as dear to her as ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use and wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner of the low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... idea that a man can become an artist without taking pains. Anthony Trollope, who settled down industriously to his day's task of literature as to bookkeeping, did not grow into an artist in any large sense; and Zola, with the motto "Nulle dies sine linea" ever facing him on his desk, made himself a prodigious author, indeed, but never more than a second-rate writer. On the other hand, Trollope without industry would have been nobody at all, and Zola without pains might as well have been a waiter. Nor is it only the little or the clumsy artists who have found ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... that you are bashful in assuming your new privileges. Then you had better go back to your old habits, because you always used to come where I was. You must come and go now like my very second self." Then he came forward from the desk at which he was wont to stand and write, and essayed to put his arm round her waist. She drew back, but still he was not startled. "It was but a cold kiss I gave you down below. You must kiss me now, you, as ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... and a sheet of music lay on the desk. As the countess perceived it, she walked rapidly toward the instrument ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... well. We might use it better now. We turn from such thoughts and reckon up our gains. On the debit side we place ourselves as we were. We probably caught a train every morning—the same train, we went to a business where we sat at a desk. Neither the business nor the desk ever altered. We received the same strafing from the same employer; or, if we were the employer, we administered the same strafing. We only did these things that we might eat ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... after searching the safe and the desk, and Felix held the mine description while ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... different role.' At this point he drew from his pocket a court record, and extending it toward Fenton, he continued,—'the particulars of which I will not relate except at the special request of my colleague.' Fenton's head dropped upon his desk as if struck down with a club. The scene ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... is chained to my desk in order that it may not escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence when aliens penetrate my den. "It's no wonder you can write," was said to me once. "Here's all the English language right on your desk, and all you've got to ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... remained with him. For he had brought Anton to this same cell—Anton, the big Frenchman, with his black hair, his black beard, and his great, rolling laugh that even in the days when he was waiting for death had rattled the paper-weights on Kedsty's desk. ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... the celebrated Boulle was seated before a round table on which were placed the criminal exhibits which had been collected with remarkable intelligence. I, the insignificant secretary of the meeting, occupied a place at this desk, where it was my office to take down a ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... New Orleans to stop the rioting. The young operators therefore visited another shipping-office to make inquiries as to vessels for Brazil, and encountered an old Spaniard who sat in a chair near the steamer agent's desk, and to whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South America, and was very emphatic in his assertion, as he shook his yellow, bony finger at them, that the worst mistake they could possibly ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the merchants uneasy about their letters, and the orders they had given for insurance (it being war-time) for fall goods; but their anxiety availed nothing; his Lordship's letters were not ready; and yet, whoever waited on him found him always at his desk, pen in hand, and concluded ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... recovering himself, and with increasing suavity, "if some gentleman would mark down the date of the almanac I cherish the opinion" [cheers from the corner] "that in one month from to-day there will be five hundred dollars lookin' round for two hundred on that there desk mebbe, or p'raps you would incline to two fifty," he drawled, in his most winning tone to Robbie, who was growing ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor |
