"Poring over" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Maggie poring over the Year Book of Ardmore College, rather an odd interest for a girl of her class. But Maggie was rather an odd girl anyway, and Ruth forgot the matter in ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... attempt along the most obvious lines,—along what seemed to be the line of least resistance, to change the metaphor. To develop anew an old art, which had flourished so greatly in the past,—how easy! and how certain! How certain were the enthusiasts of that time, that by earnestly poring over and closely analyzing and heartily loving the buildings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such buildings, and others like them, could be built in the nineteenth! How happy was the conviction of all these men that it was not more difficult than that! The secret ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... the Pilot's parlour, he found the old sailor poring over a pile of letters and documents which had just arrived by ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... order was little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that impression which those about him received from him. Poring over his crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying by a strange variation of the alchemist's dream to discover the secret, not of an elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather giving immortality ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... Latin and Greek classics. He worked prodigiously and this, coupled with a remarkably retentive memory, enabled him to make remarkably rapid progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... the beginning of Lydia's reading of the newspapers. To her father's secret amusement, she found the main details of Levine's battle as interesting as a novel. Every evening when he got home to supper he found her poring over the two local papers and primed with questions for him. Up to this moment she had lived in a quiet world bounded by her school, the home, the bit of lake shore and wood with which she was intimate, and peopled by her father and ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Cruden's Concordance. That and the Bible—Mrs. Bunting had soon discovered that there was a relation between the two books—seemed to be the lodger's only reading. He spent hours each day, generally after he had eaten the breakfast which also served for luncheon, poring over the Old Testament and over that strange kind of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... have finished their meal. Bless you, you have no idea what lazy rascals the Portuguese are; their laziness is absolutely phenomenal; they are positively too lazy to live long, and so most of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still below poring over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased to call his mind what spot to steer for in order to get ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... an open-air life, tending sheep and working the fields; so it was an excellent thing for them to rest from labor one day of the week, and to gather in temples to hear the reading of the best literature of their time. But nowadays the city slave spends his week-days shut up in an office, poring over a ledger, or in a sweat-shop, chained to a sewing-machine. Obviously, therefore, the thing to do on the seventh day is to lure him into the open air, and persuade him to run and play. But do we do that, we human sheep? We write ancient Hebrew laws upon our ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... in, and Lapham asked for something to make a nervous person sleep. Irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed would be about the best thing. She did not show any emotion; her face was like a stone, while ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... dusty chambers, poring over grimy books and legal manuscripts, our "briefless" friend receives a telegram which he has been expecting rather anxiously the last few days. As brief as he is "briefless," it brings a flush to his cheek which has ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... and Jack come over here," called Schoverling, who was sitting with von Hofe in one of the wagons, poring over a map. "We'll have to have meat for these Masai by sundown. I must go over our route with the doctor, so it's up ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney
... which dealt with the works and their composers, with herself and Madame Sennier, from a newspaper clipping bureau. And during these days of furious preparation she read no other literature. Whenever she was in the hotel, and not with people, she was poring over these articles, or tabulating and arranging them in books. The Heaths, Claude Heath, Charmian Heath, Claude Heath's opera, Armand Gillier and Claude Heath, Madame Sennier's quarrel with Claude Heath, Mrs. Heath's brilliant efforts for her talented husband, Joseph Crayford's ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was an extension of the west wing of the McClintock bungalow. From one window the beach was always visible; from another, the stores. Spurlock was invariably at the high desk in the early morning, poring over ledgers, and giving the beach and the stores an occasional glance. Whenever McClintock had guests, he loafed with them on the west ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... the great book of life, of which he was an indefatigable student. When other men were at school and at college, he was gathering up a vast experience of the hard world, and when his brother writers were poring over big volumes in their libraries, he was pacing up and down London and its suburbs with inexhaustible energy, drinking in oddities, idiosyncrasies, and wayside incidents at every pore. It is quite true: London is a microcosm, an endless and bottomless Babylon; ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... taken literally. She used to speak of the future author as always fond of reading, and said he was wont to retire to the top room of the House on the Brook, and spend what should have been his play-hours in poring over his books, or in acting to the furniture of the room the creatures that he ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... Darby, in consequence of his early attendance upon M'Clutchy, had been obliged to leave home that morning without his breakfast, it must be admitted that he was not just then in the best possible disposition to draw much edification from it. After poring over it with a very sombre face for some time, he at length looked shrewdly at M'Slime closing one eye a little, as was his custom; "I beg pardon, sir," said he, "but if I'm not mistaken this book I believe is intended more for the sowl ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... blear-eyed, spectacled, stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... for instance—are fading out of my mind. Salvator Rosa has two really wonderful landscapes, looking from the shore seaward; and Rubens too, likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them, it seems a pity to let all the thought excited by them ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... study, clad in his dark camblet robe of knowledge, with his black velvet cap, after the manner of Boorhaave, Van Helmont, and other medical sages: a pair of green spectacles set in black horn upon his clubbed nose, and poring over a German folio that seemed to reflect back the darkness of his physiognomy. The doctor listened to their statement of the symptoms of Wolfert's malady with profound attention; but when they came to mention his raving about buried money, the little ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... chairs for the members. The library cases were filled with books, which had been selected with great care by Mr. and Mrs. Sedley. On the table were placed various pamphlets and periodicals; and when the club assembled, Uncle Ben was there, seated in the coxswain's armchair, poring over the pages ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... Scientific works and books of travels were my especial delight; though my father, believing, with many of his time who ought to have known better, that the former were inimical to religion, would have preferred to have seen me poring over the "Cloud of Witnesses", or Boston's "Fourfold State". Our difference of opinion reached the point of open rebellion on my part, and his last application of the rod was on my refusal to peruse Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity". This dislike ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a bit loose in the top-story too. I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it. Then sometimes he'd look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you'd fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... contempt.) Now Denison's little vessel was lying quite near the German man-of-war, and was to sail next day for the Solomons if the captain was sober, and he (Denison) had a lot of work to do to get the ship ready, and whilst he was poring over accounts in the cabin about noon, a boat ran alongside and Bully Hayes came ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... had come upon an uncouth-looking boy with deep eyes and a shaggy crop of red hair. The boy was poring over an old volume, and was plainly not disposed to leave it. He rose, not too graciously, and replied to the elder man's greeting, and the friendly questions which followed. Yes, he was the youngest son of the house. He had nothing to do, and he liked the library. He often came there ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and was shuffling out when he heard a knock at the hall door of the living-room. He hastened to respond, and soon returned with a dainty envelope. Blake was again poring over his plans and figures. The older man tossed the ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... where I found the people busy in the shipyards and the factories that Perry had established. I discovered something, too, that he had not told me of—something that seemed infinitely more promising than the powder-factory or the arsenal. It was a young man poring over one of the books I had brought back from the outer world! He was sitting in the log cabin that Perry had had built to serve as his sleeping quarters and office. So absorbed was he that he did not notice our entrance. Perry saw the look of astonishment ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... you, sir." Dawson seized it, was about to tear it open, remembered suddenly his hostess, and bowed towards her. "Have I your permission, madam?" he asked. She smiled and nodded; I turned away to conceal a laugh. "Good," cried Dawson, poring over the message. "I think, Mr. Copplestone, that you had better telephone to your office and say that ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... ludicrous in the idea of a beauty, or a gallant, of that gay and licentious court poring over a work of five or six folio volumes by way of amusement; but such was the taste of the age, that Fynes Morison, in his precepts to travellers, can "think no book better for his pupils' discourse than Amadis of Gaule; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... her own sitting-room, when Kate had put away everything and gone. Quantities of flowers she ordered, too—American Beauty roses, which looked extraordinarily intelligent and companionable, she thought. Then, most of the afternoon she spent in poring over maps, planning what she called her "pilgrimage"; and a little before six she was ready to go down and buy her ticket West, at the travel bureau which, she heard, existed in the hotel. Afterward she meant to take a stroll, and ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... a book and read it on the terrace, sitting far back in a lounge chair so that her feet hardly touched the ground, or she would hide herself with her book in the lime-walk, or she would go through the gate into the field. She would read all day long, eagerly poring over the book, and only through her looking fatigued, dizzy, and pale sometimes, was it possible to guess how much her reading exhausted her. When she saw me come she would blush a little and leave her book, and, looking into my face with her big eyes, she would tell me of things that had ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Always poring over old maps. Why do we need study the old passes over the Rockies, Richard? There's not an earthly bit of use in it. All we need know is when the train starts, and you can look on the time card for all the rest. We don't need geography ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... not grip the floor with his feet and sat heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random and poring over it. Every word for him. It was true. God was almighty. God could call him now, call him as he sat at his desk, before he had time to be conscious of the summons. God had called him. Yes? What? Yes? His flesh shrank together as it felt the approach of the ravenous ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... prescription in his pocket, and goes down to Cairo for a specialist. He comes, this one, to disturb their peace of mind with his indecision. It is not infantile paralysis, and he can not yet say what it is. Khalid meanwhile is poring over medical books on all the diseases that children are ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... over the dish, slipping into it some fragments of ship biscuit, as hard as flint. All this time I was busy poring over the chart. Wagtail took up a piece and popt it ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the petulant satisfaction of rousing the championship bitter to her. Dartrey would not deliver an opinion on Miss Radnor's conduct. He declined, moreover, to assist in elucidating the telegram by 'looking here,' and poring over the lines beside a bloomy cheek. He was petulantly whipped on the arm with her glove, and pouted at. And it was then—and then only or chiefly through Nataly's recent allusion—that the man of honour had his quakings in view of the quagmire, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... recently on an old gentleman who had become generally disgusted with "dese yere churches roun year." I found him poring over a big, well-worn Bible, the perspiration pouring down his shiny face, and with a big pair of spectacles resting on the tip of his nose. With an air of superior wisdom he surveyed me over the top ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... and who felt power slipping from her grasp. With one side of her character her new partner could sympathise; for Theodahad, though sprung from the loins of Gothic warriors, was a man of some literary culture, who preferred poring over the 'Republic' of Plato to heading a charge of the Gothic cavalry. But his acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature had done nothing to ennoble his temper or expand his heart. A cold, hard, avaricious soul, he ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Clinton took off his tail-coat and put on a jacket, manufactured from the office paper a pair of false cuffs to keep his own clean, and having examined the nibs in both his penholders and sharpened his pencil, set to work. From then till one o'clock he remained at his desk, solemnly poring over figures, casting accounts, comparing balance-sheets, writing letters, occasionally going for some purpose or another into the clerks' office or into the room of one of the partners. At one he went to luncheon, taking with him the portion of ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... more fortunate. These very religious men had read their Bibles so badly that they might never have heard of Job, nor of the latter half of Isaiah. They had been poring over the letter all their lives, and had never seen, with their microscopes, the great figure of the Innocent Sufferer, so plain there. So they thought that the Cross demonstrated the hollowness of Jesus' trust in God, and the rejection of Him by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... with cakes for the little ones, so that their mothers might be more free from interruption. The exercises of that day gave a great impulse to the cause of education in Geog Tapa. As many as seventy adults were soon poring over their spelling books; and the next summer one half of the adult women were either readers or engaged in the same employment; though previous to the examination of the Seminary in 1850, not one in thirty could read, or ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Unconscious of this din, from being accustomed always to hear more or less of it, the boy amused himself with chasing the fireflies, whose light began to glance around as darkness descended. His sister was poring over her work, which she was just finishing, when a gleam of greenish light made both look up. It came from a large meteor which sailed past towards the mountains, whither were tending also the huge masses of cloud which gather ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... bay just this minute. An' as there was nothin' on it to tell where it might be, I don't know as there's anything for us to do. Like as not it's on some little island as isn't set down, so 'twould be scant use to look over the ship's charts. Still, I'll try it." A half-day of poring over the maps produced no result. There were bays large and small that resembled the one Jeremy had drawn, but none closely enough to warrant the belief that it was the same. "Well," remarked Job as he put away the charts, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... thought of going to college, but now I was enthusiastic on the matter, and all my time (at least most of it) was devoted to poring over catalogues, of which I had a great number, and many of which I knew by heart from having gone over them so often, and finally a college was selected which seemed to suit me, so I went there in the ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... "that going another day to see the girl, I found her poring over a pile of books—all new books—just given her by this same arrogant interloper." Perry was silent, but when I paused and looked at him, I saw in his face that I was arguing along the right line. "Then the question arises, what ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... colonel of the British forces in the Netherlands, was poring over the manuscript narrative of David Ingram, mariner. Ingram had in 1568-69 taken the widest range of travel that had ever been taken in the new continent, of which it was still held doubtful by many whether ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... at his books. All the day he had been poring over an old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers of the Church. With the patient perseverance ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Mr. Sparling and Phil were deeply engaged in poring over the books, the contracts and the innumerable details appertaining to the work of ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... solemn. An English Dictionary and the Bible were the only books that Martha would look at now. She did not use the former as a help to the understanding of the latter. No one knew why she was so partial to the dictionary; but as she not unfrequently had it on her knee upside down while poring over it, her grandchild, little Nora, took up the idea that she had resolved to devote the latter days of her life to learning to read backwards! Perhaps the fact that the dictionary had once belonged to her son James who was wrecked and drowned on the Norfolk coast, may have ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... they had made up their minds to retire from business and be manufacturers of honey no more. The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep; and was this a time to be poring over musty books in a dark room, slighted by the very ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... had never been to school," Mrs Verloc began again brusquely. "He's always taking away those newspapers from the window to read. He gets a red face poring over them. We don't get rid of a dozen numbers in a month. They only take up room in the front window. And Mr Ossipon brings every week a pile of these F. P. tracts to sell at a halfpenny each. I wouldn't give a halfpenny for the whole lot. It's silly reading—that's what it is. There's no ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over 'Don Juan,' she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the first Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, 'Nothing—but "your husband is coming."' As I said this in Italian, with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, 'Oh, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... premeditated. But why, why, had he let her escape so easily? If only he had been a little quicker about following her, and had not wasted time looking for Higgs! She had had time to get clear away; and he, bungler that he was, had thought it of little consequence, and had afterwards stood poring over a catalogue in the hall, having decided that her morals were no business of his. Ass that ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... we got to the fonda, I had as good a dinner as was procurable, and a bottle of that old Canary wine, and turned into bed after a final pipe. Coppinger dined also, but I have reason to believe he did not sleep much. At any rate I found him still poring over the find next morning, and looking very heavy-eyed, but ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... "I am neither the one nor the other; and I am sorry for it—since you have had reason to esteem them. There is really nothing about me worthy of your interest. I have spent all my life poring over books, and I have never traveled: you might have known that from my bewilderment, which excited your compassion. I am a member of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... for their maintenance, and directed their military operations. A German officer said: "This colossal energy is the most remarkable event of modern history, and will carry down Gambetta's name to remote posterity." This youth who was poring over his books in an attic while other youths were promenading the Champs Elysees, although but thirty-two years old, was now virtually dictator of France, and the greatest orator in the Republic. What a striking example of the great reserve ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... people grouped in little knots, fighting the battles of the day o'er again, playing backgammon and chess, or poring over maps ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the "Contrack." "Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow," were ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... picture, then, of the mediaeval clerk in his little house nigh the church surrounded by his wife and children, or as a bachelor intent upon preferment poring over his Missal, if he did not sometimes emulate the frivolous feats of ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... and there I read it.” It was impossible not to commiserate the fate of Ignazio Mugio, the Lombard refugee. A very different character was old Pietro, the steam-boat agent. Groping our way with some difficulty up a gloomy staircase, in the dusk of the evening, we found him, spectacles on nose, poring over a gazette by a feeble oil lamp. The old man was so eager for news that it was difficult to fix him to the object of our inquiries; and then he expatiated on the attractions of the neighbourhood, and the “chasse magnifique ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... I have been poring over Wordsworth lately: which has had much effect in bettering my Blue Devils: for his philosophy does not abjure melancholy, but puts a pleasant countenance upon it, and connects it with humanity. It is very well, if ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Eva Nelson and Alice King were sitting in their little study parlor at the Hill House Seminary poring over their lesson chapter for the next day. It was the tenth chapter of St. Luke, with the story of the good Samaritan. At last Eva flung herself back and exclaimed, "We can't be good as they were in those Bible days, no matter what anybody ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... conscious of the uproar which arose in the court-room, for I was away in a by-gone time, a vision before me, clear as a picture, of a sunny room, myself at a writing-desk overlooking accounts, and a small curly haired child poring over a book on the rug at ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... passed but there was a pot of coffee simmering away at the back of the kitchen stove. Indeed, hot coffee was Kitty's standby. Many a night when she was up late poring over her delivery book, getting ready for the next day's work, a carriage or cab would drive into the livery-stable next door, and she would send her husband out to bring in ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... arms. The survival of the Negroes in the race for existence depends upon their retaining possession of the few bread-winning occupations now open to them. But instead of better qualifying themselves for these occupations they have been poring over dead languages and working problems in mathematics. In the meantime the Chinaman and the steam-laundry have abolished the Negro's wash-tub, trained white "tonsorial artists" have taken away his barber's chair, and skilled ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... effort, partly in order that he may combine some other advantage with the advantage of walking, but principally in order to be sure that the effort shall be an adequate effort. The same with reading. Your paramount aim in poring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you have also a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy. Your subsidiary aim may be sthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite; you may devote ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... pretentious mansion, and adorned it with works of art which were more costly than artistic. Of medium height, he was still quite stout, but his once full, heavy face and his deep set eyes began to sag from the encroachments of extreme advanced age. He could be seen every weekday poring over business reports at his office on Prince street—a one-story, fireproof brick building, the windows of which were guarded by heavy iron bars. The closing weeks of his life were passed at his country seat at Eighty-eighth ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... to the eyes of conventional sight-seers. The name of Valaam suggested that of Barlaam, in Thessaly, likewise a Greek monastery; and though I had never heard of Sergius and Herrmann, the fact of their choosing such a spot was the beginning of a curious interest in their history. The very act of poring over a map excites the imagination: I fell into conjectures about the scenery, vegetation, and inhabitants, and thus, by the time P. arrived, was conscious of a violent desire to make the cruise with him. To our care was confided an American youth, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... he plunge into the reading of these books that he many times spent whole days and nights poring over them; and in the end, through little sleep and much reading, his brain became tired, and he fairly lost his wits. His fancy was filled with those things that he read, of enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, wooings, loves, tempests, and other ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... every day in the open air; let him exert himself as much as he please, his feelings will tell him when to rest and when to begin again; let him be what Nature intended Mm to be—a happy, laughing, joyous child. Do not let him be always poring over books:— ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... exist,—so solemn and wise,—dozing away the day, much like the rest of the people, only that they looked wiser than any others. Their hooked beaks looked like hooked noses. A dull scene this. A stranger, here and there, poring over a newspaper. Many of the stage-folk sitting in chairs on the pavement, in front ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to envy those horsemen, and longed for the time when I could afford horses or camels of my own, to go away back into the bush and just see what was there. Many a day I spent poring over the map of the Colony, longing and longing to push out into the vast blank spaces of the unknown. Even at that time I planned out the expedition which at last I was enabled to undertake, though all was very ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... their thanks, and as Philibert looked up, he saw pretty Zoe Bedard poring over a sheet of paper bearing a red seal, and spelling out the crabbed law text of Master Pothier. Zoe, like other girls of her class, had received a tincture of learning in the day schools of the nuns; but, although the paper was her marriage ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... herself irritably. She was supposed to have finished her education, and though she was dimly aware that she was shamefully ignorant, there seemed no especial object in her getting out her lesson-books and poring over ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... to be moving out on you from the walls as you first walk up to them in the dim light; think of prying into great cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not knowing what horrors may appear when you tear them open; of poring over their contents till twilight stole on you and darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying to leave it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... died several years before; my father's affection, pride, and hope rested utterly upon me. I knew not then how sad it was to disappoint him. Often, when he returned to his office, hoping to find me studying the "Materia Medica," I was discovered poring over some old volumes on the "Human Humors, or the Planetary Sympathies of the Viscera." A sincere grief filled his eyes at such times, but I could not help feeling that it was mingled with respect. The heaviest cross I had to bear was that the curious old ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... this lively and exciting topic, he devotes several hours to the study of "Idleness as a Fine Art." Before writing a particularly funny or spirited article upon Politics, the Fine Arts, or the Drama, H.G., it is said, may be seen for several hours at the Astor Library, poring over BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy. While in the throes of literary labor upon The Great Conflict, he had numerous dogmatic discussions with Mr. KIT BURNS, participated in several flights of the "fancy" to the bird-battling haunts of New Jersey, and even pursued the ministers of muscle to the scene ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... plan, and it was followed. Professor Snodgrass was billeted temporarily in a farmhouse on the edge of a little French village near which the boys were on duty. Thither they went, and found their friend poring over books and papers. ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... curled up in her easy chair by the window, poring over a mass of type-written sheets. "Studying my part for a little play we're giving next Saturday night," she announced gaily, as Betty came in. "So remember, you're not to ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... bibliophile goes book in hand, like the statue of Bellerophon with the letter, but he only cares for the choice vellum and bosses of gold. 'I cannot conceive,' said Lucian, 'what you expect to get out of your books; yet you are always poring over them, and binding and tying them, and rubbing them with saffron and oil of cedar, as if they could make you eloquent, when by nature you are as dumb as a fish.' He compares the industrious dunce to ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... now been touched . . . Weeks succeeded weeks, months followed months, and the wondrous volume was my only study and principal source of amusement. For hours together I would sit poring over a page till I had become acquainted with the import of every line. My progress, slow enough at first, became by degrees more rapid, till at last, under a 'shoulder of mutton sail,' I found myself cantering ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... closed sanctum Livingstone still sat with intent gaze, poring over the page of figures before him. The expression on his face was one of profound satisfaction. He had at last reached the acme of his ambition—that is, of his later ambition. (He had once had other aims.) He had arrived at the ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... transact his business by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to get on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and always inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the High Street whose ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... all entered the parlor, and Mrs. Worthington suggested that Hosmer go up and make a visit to her husband, whom he would find up there "poring over those everlasting books." ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... and Taylor, after showing me the books and giving me a few hints as to what my duties would be, turned me over to him for further instruction. I found I needed but little. The pages, with their rows of figures, seemed like old friends. I almost enjoyed poring over them. Was it possible that I was going to like this new venture ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the house at that moment, and Montevarchi knew it. Arnoldo Meschini, the shrivelled little secretary and librarian, who had a profound knowledge of the law and spent his days as well as most of his nights in poring over crabbed manuscripts, was the very person for such a piece of work. He understood the smallest variations in handwriting which belonged to different periods, and the minutest details of old-fashioned penmanship were ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... library of Mapleton, Jasper Lamotte sits at his desk, poring over a pile of papers. The curtains are closely drawn, the door securely locked. Now and then he rises, and paces nervously up and down the room, gesticulating fiercely, and wearing such a look as has never been seen upon the countenance of the Jasper ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... to see and learn filled Count Benedetto with a simple joy. He brought forth all his treasures for the boy's instruction and the two spent many an afternoon poring over Piranesi's Roman etchings, Maffei's Verona Illustrata, and Count Benedetto's own elegant pencil-drawings of classical remains. Like all students of his day he had also his cabinet of antique gems and coins, from which Odo obtained more intimate glimpses of that buried life so marvellously ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... foreseen, carefully considered and dismissed it from his mind before it came to pass. Day after day he rode in every direction over the land within easy reach of the many camps; familiarizing himself with every detail of the work, observing soil, studying conditions, poring over maps and figures with the Seer, verifying estimates, listening to and taking part in the many councils of the leaders. But not once did anyone catch a hint of what was going on behind those expressionless blue eyes that seemed to see everything ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... pursuit of King or people, and hurl his defiance from its walls to all the intruders which threaten the balance of the mind. No one has yet discovered this castle, for it exists only on paper. When Mr. Gordon Selfridge requires mental relaxation, he may be found poring over the plans which are to be the basis of this fairy edifice. Moat and parapet, tower, dungeon, and drawbridge, are all there, only awaiting the Mason of the future to translate them into actuality. But the success of Mr. Selfridge ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... supper and both went on deck to smoke their pipes. Skipper Sam had no more to say about the proposed undertaking until late in the evening, when he called the mate to his cabin, where he had retired after his smoke, and there the mate found him poring over a chart. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... the grounds, would see the little lady seated in one of the large Quaker chairs, her feet dangling over its edge, busy with her doll's dresses, and furtively watching her pupil, who, seated before her on one of the long piazza benches, would be poring over his ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we seated ourselves in a small cafe, and were intently poring over a map when a shuffling noise made us look up. A detachment of soldiers was entering the cafe. Much to our astonishment, they came to attention in front of us. They constituted the spy-hunting squad. All day they walked the city on the trail of suspects. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... it was scarcely to be wondered that Neville hesitated to introduce the subject of Valerie West as he sat in the parlour at Spindrift House with his father and mother, reading the Tribune or the Evening Post or poring over some ancient tome of travels, or looking out across the cliffs at an icy sea splintering and glittering against ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... week, every night, I saw my master poring over a big account-book in his parlour, comparing the entries in it with those of his pawn- tickets, and marking off on one list what articles had been pawned and redeemed, and on another what had been pawned and still remained unredeemed. So lengthy and complicated a process was this that it consumed ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... appalling cry of "Miss Anthony." There was no escape, and I staggered up and stammered out a few words and sat down—dead, killed—thoroughly enraged that I had not spent the forenoon in making myself ready at least to read something, instead of poring over Adam Bede. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... (a part of Davidson's superb work on the Brachiopoda) even now lay open within sight—his hand trembled with a desire to touch them! And those maps of the Geological Surveys, British and foreign, how he would have enjoyed a day's poring over them! ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... tribes who had abolished this source of tears in the civilized manner, by having no teeth left. We complain of our weak eyes as a result of civilized habits, and Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall," wishes his children bred in some savage land, "not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books." But savage life seems more injurious to the organs of vision than even the type of a cheap edition; for the most vigorous barbarians—on the prairies, in Southern archipelagos, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold was cached. We were, as I thought, alone in Fox-Foot's log house. That is, alone in speaking English, for his people don't understand a single word that is not Chippewa. We were poring over the map I had made, when something made me look behind me. Against the small hole in the logs that served as a window was a man's head and shoulders—a white man—and he wore a grey mackinaw. Foxy and I were on our feet at once, but the man crashed through the woods and was gone. ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... was a most remarkable thing for an eight-year-old boy to do, but the boy was himself remarkable. He spent much of his time poring over books. They were few in number but of good quality, and he read them over and over again until they became a part of himself. It gave him keen pleasure to memorize fine poems and also noble selections from the Bible, for he learned easily and remembered well what ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... heroes were walking up and down the scene of their wild histories and gibbering over their feats and fates. Spent an hour or two in writing letters to friends in England and America, to tell them of my arrival at this extreme goal of my walk, and a full hour in poring over the visitors' book, in which there were names from all countries in Christendom, and also impressions and observations in prose, poetry, English, French, Latin, German and other languages. Many of the comments thus recorded intimated ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... are sincere in their unbounded desire to improve, particularly to acquire a knowledge of English and other languages. In shops or corners you will see unkempt boys poring over an English primer or reader. They are all provident as a people, and since the close of the war the nation has bent ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the gallery, the great building was empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of the orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground floor far below, was still encased in white wrappings—her and there an attendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had to strain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of the German, and his own sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon give up the attempt, and attend wholly to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... folk in my own neighbourhood can read as well as I can; but they prefer to talk among themselves when they are at leisure, or, at the most, to seize in a few moments the main items of news about the war; they prefer this, I say, as a habit of mind, to the poring over square yards of printed matter which (especially in the Sunday papers) are now food for their fellows in the town. That is because in the country a man has true neighbours, whereas the towns are a dust of isolated beings, mentally (and often ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... have been for him to understand and focus things, and afterwards how great his grief at finding himself unable to come to any agreement with those men without country, without fatherland, those "internationals," who were ever poring over the maps of both hemispheres, ever absorbed in schemes which were to bring them empire. Days and days were necessary, one needed to live in Rome, and he, Pierre himself, had only seen things clearly after a month's sojourn, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the sublime and companionable thoughts that its fragrance engenders, one is led oftentimes to reflect on its rare virtues and the benign effects it produces wherever known. Thus it lightens the toil of the weary laborer plodding along the highway of life. The student poring over musty tomes sees with a clearer perception as its fragrance accompanies him along the pathway of science and of history. The poet "as those wreathes up go" sees Helicon's fresh founts flowing clearer and purer. The musician ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... at Captain Yerger's house and found him with General Gist and another officer lying flat on their stomachs poring over a map. Captain Yerger then introduced me to the ladies of his family, who were extremely pretty, very amiable, and ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... to go her ways; if she appeared at meal-time, no questions were asked, Miss Herbert, indeed, shook her head at such liberty. A girl of Rosalind's age should be learning something useful, instead of running about the village or poring over story books. She could not know that with a certain old play for a textbook the children she thought so harum-scarum were ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... but man succeeds. I don't know what it all means, or any part of it; but I have had moods in which it seemed as if the whole, secret of the mystery were about to flash upon me. Walking along in the full sun, in the midst of men, or sometimes in the solitude of midnight, poring over a book, and thinking of quite other things, I have felt that I ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... and remains of furnaces, was a testimony to the civilization of the period, and the amount of comfort that the legions brought with them into their foreign exile. A large shed had been fitted up as a museum, and held a number of objects that had been dug up during the excavations. The girls, poring over the glass cases, looked with interest at a Roman lady's silver hand-mirror, toilet pots, and tiny shears that must have been the early substitute for scissors. More fascinating still were the toys from a little ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... before 10, 11, or even 12, except on Sabbath eve (Friday night), when it was closed. On those evenings when Max stayed out very late I usually found her alone in the little dining-room, sewing, mending, or—more often—poring over Lucy's ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... discoveries of Galileo.—Like the great originals of other nations, his popularity has not always maintained the same level. The last age seemed inclined to undervalue him as a model and a study: and Bettinelli one day rebuked his pupil Monti, for poring over the harsh and obsolete extravagances of the Commedia. The present generation having recovered from the Gallic idolatries of Cesarotti, has returned to the ancient worship, and the Danteggiare of the northern ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... so much time unloading the chest and poring over the papers, trying, by means of my ill-remembered Latin, to make out the sense of the kindred Spanish, that before I was ready to go for my boat the tide was up and pounding on the rocks below the cave. I find that only at certain stages of the tide is the cave approachable by sea. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... in heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." The painful effect upon our feelings, and upon our nervous system, of separations from departed friends, is involuntary and natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in melancholy moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to excite and indulge morbid feelings, ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... One Dream. He has had no other." The Duchess was poring over the map also. They were as people pondering over a strange and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... various as their conditions. This well-dressed, self-respectful mechanic wishes to consult the patent-office reports of various countries, in which the library is rich. His long-haired Saxon neighbor is poring over a Chinese manuscript, German scholars being the only ones so far who have attacked the fine collection of Chinese and Japanese works in the library. Next him is a dilettante reader languidly poring over "Lothair:" were the trustees to fill their shelves with trashy fiction, readers of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... present time, for Charles has been reading over the Tale I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it one of the very best: it is All's Well that Ends Well. You must not mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you; for, indeed, I cannot help it, my mind is so dry always after poring over my work all day. But it ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... vague dread leaped suddenly into concrete fear. An incident that had occurred a few days after the big game hunters had left them had further disquieted her. On going to him for advice on some domestic difficulty she had found him poring over a large map. He had rolled it up at her approach and his manner had made it impossible for her to express an interest that would otherwise have seemed natural. With the reticence to which she had schooled herself she had made ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... went into the bathroom and made as much of her toilet as was possible. When she came out, Joy was still poring over her book. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... Clam hunted the house and brought the fruits of her search; and much more wondering, she saw her mistress spend one hour in closely poring over the columns of page after page; she who never took five minutes a day to read the papers. At last a little bit was carefully cut from one of those Clam had brought up, and Elizabeth again prepared herself to ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... about him, two days after, as he sat in his friend Judge Brown's law office, poring over a volume of law. He saw that Bacon's treatment had been heroic; he couldn't get the pitiful confusion of the preacher's face out of his mind. But, after all, Bacon's seizing of just that instant was ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... wondered mildly why Enid seemed so anxious to ascertain whether she preferred red or blue, and whether she did not think a bright colour was always nicer than black; and she could not understand why her friend should one day be poring over a catalogue from the Stores, nor why she shut it up in such a hurry, remarking rather pointedly that Miss Lincoln had lent ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... were his friend, and most men who knew him were, he would have slipped his arm through your own, and after a brief moment you would have found yourself poring over a detailed plan, his arm still in yours, while he showed you the outline of some pin, or lever, needed to perfect the most marvellous of all discoveries of modern ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... for poring over your propagandist sheets instead of reading our wholesome literature," Farraday retorted. "Had you done your duty by the Household magazines you would have ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... one's self the simplest out-door fact, but every such piece of knowledge is intellectually worth the time. Even the driest and barest book of Natural History is good and nutritious, so far as it goes, if it represents genuine acquaintance; one can find summer in January by poring over the Latin catalogues of Massachusetts plants and animals in Hitchcock's Report. The most commonplace out-door society has the same attraction. Every one of those old outlaws who haunt our New England ponds and marshes, water-soaked and soakers of something else,—intimate with the pure fluid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... determination, and would not lead a useless life. He set his heart upon being a historian, and turned all his energies in that direction. By the aid of others' eyes, he spent ten years studying before he even decided upon a particular theme for his first book. Then he spent ten years more, poring over old archives and manuscripts, before he published his "Ferdinand and Isabella." What a lesson in his life for young men! What a rebuke to those who have thrown away their opportunities and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... time. This was something much more to his liking than poring over the dry books of the law, and he went to work with enthusiasm. He went into the fields and studied the growing cotton. Then he watched the seed-pickers at their work. Taking specimens of the ripe ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... His fancy conjured up visions of opposition to the appointment in the House of Lords; of hostility in the office where he had to study the Journals; of the terrors of an examination to be undergone before the frowning peers. After hopelessly poring over the Journals for some months he became quite mad, and his madness took a suicidal form. He has told with unsparing exactness the story of his attempts to kill himself. In his youth his father had unwisely given him a treatise in favour of suicide to read, ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... be precise. Viewed through the mist of months, I behold a corpulent and almost grotesque figure of thirty-five or thereabouts; blue-eyed, fair-haired but nearly bald, clean-shaven, bespectacled. So purblind has he grown with poring over contracts and precedents that his movements are pathologically awkward—embryonic, one might say; his unwieldy gestures and contortions remind one of a seal on shore. The eyes being of small use, he must touch with his hands. Those hands are the most ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... wondered as he sat there, was such a life as his? To-morrow the tide would be at its work again, the ships go on, the sun shine warm and bright over all,—and he? For him to-morrow would be but the repetition of to-day; the same dragging hours, the same apathetic poring over books, the same half-hours at the organ with the music-books, playing sad melodies which accorded well with his own sombre feelings. He looked up at the portrait and sighed; remembered the dear one's dying words, and thought, "I might have found Him once; but it's too late now. All ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... longer hear the horse's hoof-falls nor the rumble of the wheels. Then they started forward, keeping off the road and taking a course that afforded the protection of the trees and undergrowth. Presently, they caught sight of the two men—out in the open, their heads together, poring over a paper, ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... he has impressed the stamp of his mighty spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but still, the labor of poring over Shakespeare's lines will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hours, Ivan sat at the desk in his room, poring over his beautifully written manuscript, gloating over it, glorying in the mere texture of the paper sheets; knowing well that they represented the best and the highest that lay within him; and that the expression was almost worthy of the conception. Next ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... silence of night lay over the great prison. Here and there in the grim corridors a guard dozed in the glare of an electric light; and in the office, too, a desk light glimmered where the warden sat at his desk, poring over a report. Once he glanced up at the clock—it was five minutes of eleven—and then he went on with ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... of speech and manner in her company, against which my very soul revolted. And after all, nothing came up. The labour of digging and watering, the anxious zeal with which I pounced on weeds, the poring over gardening books, the plans made as I sat on the little seat in the middle gazing admiringly and with the eye of faith on the trim surface so soon to be gemmed with a thousand flowers, the reckless expenditure of pfennings, the humiliation of my position in regard ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... made way for her, like a courtier for a princess, and seated her in the north parlor in the best rocking-chair, as if it were a throne. Then he sat down opposite her, with his Shakespeare book still on his knees. That morning he had been poring over "Romeo and Juliet." His imagination was afire with the sweet ardor of that other lover, and he would gladly have identified Dorothy, as she sat there, with Juliet; and so ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was poring over charts, illumined by a dim glow-light beside him. "Can we get power all the way, Georg?... Elza child, hadn't you better lie down? A long trip—you'll be ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... longed to take her troubles to Kenneth, to rid herself of them in the comfort of his approbation, to be reassured by his brotherly counsel. She knew he was sitting beside the table in the cosy sitting-room, poring over one of his incomprehensible law books. How jolly, how consoling to her own agitated mind, if she could only be there in the same room with him, quiet as a mouse so as not to disturb his profound studies, and reposing in that comfortable ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... the far-reaching line of our analysis, with a certainty hardly inferior to ocular demonstration.' I consider it was superior to ocular demonstration, as the action of the mind is above that of the senses. Adams, in his study at Cambridge, England, and Leverrier in his closet at Paris, poring over their logarithms, knew better the locus of that outside planet than all the practical astronomers of ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the country, merely by turning the handle of the lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands, to meet the intruder. He let her come close to him; then mentioned a name—pronouncing it twice, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Dauriat can be civil, and he is generous, but he has a great opinion of himself; as for his wit, it consists in a faculty for picking up all that he hears, and his shop is a capital place to frequent. You meet all the best men at Dauriat's. A young fellow learns more there in an hour than by poring over books for half-a-score of years. People talk about articles and concoct subjects; you make the acquaintance of great or influential people who may be useful to you. You must know people if you mean to get on nowadays.—It is all ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his study, where he sat poring over some papers ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... body, will preserve in them health of mind. Everything which ministers to the CORPUS SANUM, will minister also to the MENTEM SANAM; and a walk on Durham Downs, a game of cricket, a steamer excursion to Chepstow, shall send them home again happier and wiser men than poring over many wise volumes or hearing many wise lectures. How often is a worthy fellow spending his leisure honourably in hard reading, when he had much better have been scrambling over hedge and ditch, without a thought in his head ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... survey data room where a half dozen technicians were running bank scans of the gauges throughout the Region. At the desk on a raised dais in the center of the room, the junior duty engineer was poring over a fresh ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... looking in at them all through the "keeping-room" window,—her father prosing over the state of the flour-market, her mother on the lounge, the children waiting for her to put them to bed; Methuselah poring over his arithmetic in his little-old-mannish way; Moppet tying the baby and the kitten together,—stand looking till the hot, shamed blood shot to her forehead, for thought of how she was wearied ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps |
