"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... respectful attention. Rasselas, one of the philosophical tales popular in the last century, gives the essence of much of the Rambler in a different form, and to these may be added the essay upon Soame Jenyns, which deals with the same absorbing question of human happiness. The political pamphlets, and the Journey to the Hebrides, have a certain historical interest; but are otherwise readable only in particular passages. Much of his criticism is pretty nearly obsolete; but ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... her arm through his, and as they moved away together I heard her say, with what seemed unnecessary distinctness, "We were talking Art, you know, and that's so dreadfully absorbing." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... it is possible that he succeeded in retaining the original feeling—the poem is certainly artistic. But the feeling conveyed by Grey is commonplace enough, anyway; whilst that transmitted by Poe is wholly unique, and intensely absorbing—indeed, a startling revelation. I have always felt that Byron, Milton, Shakespeare, found within their souls their poetry, and that the linguistic expression of it came to them as ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... when she gazed at him. He, too, looked different in the carelessness of the seclusion; his hair tangled, revealing the preoccupation, the fixed, absorbing idea, which made him neglect the neatness ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Not that I fear the admirers, but the thieves that are bound to get into that crowd one way or another. They have a way of unclasping necklaces even of the most circumspect wives in the company of not too absorbing men." ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... memories and mental questions faded, as the life of the village became absorbing again. Frightened herds of elk and moose, evidently chased by the great carnivora or in search of food, came into the valley and the Indians killed as many as they needed. They might have killed ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... looking with good-natured complacency upon the little group beside her. Amelie, sitting on a stool, reclined her head against the bosom of her aunt, whose arm embraced her closely and lovingly as she listened with absorbing interest to an animated conversation between her aunt ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Saxon form of speech, the husband was the "bread-winner." Duke James was emphatically the "bread-giver." To furnish employment, to diffuse comfort and happiness amongst the employed, was the all-absorbing object of his life. Anything that would have ministered to his own luxury and glorification was but little heeded. There might be pleasure-grounds more ornamental than his, walks more trim, conservatories more gaudily replenished with exotics, chambers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... as a fertilizer. It is practically indestructible in the soil. In fact, they are digging up now charcoal in the graves of ancient Egyptians, who departed this life five thousand years ago. Charcoal has corrective influence in absorbing some substances which might make the soil sour or otherwise inhospitable to plants. It has been found desirable sometimes to mix a certain amount of charcoal with soil used in potting plants for the purpose of preventing ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... seated on cushions, and engaged in needlework, would not remark how the hours flew by, conversing with the guest, and listening to his talk. Sometimes Ammalat would sit long, long, reclining at the feet of his Seltanetta, without uttering a word, and gazing at her dark, absorbing eyes; or enjoying the mountain prospect from her window, which opened towards the north, on the rugged banks and windings of the roaring Ouzen, over which hung the castle of the Khan. By the side of this being, innocent as a child, Ammalat forgot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... rise again, fling it, light a pipe, and go through many evolutions with either hand or both, without spilling a drop. The pipe, by the way, gives an odd look to a well-dressed young girl on Sunday, but one often sees that spectacle. The passion for tobacco among our men continues quite absorbing, and I have piteous appeals for some arrangement by which they can buy it on credit, as we have yet no sutler. Their imploring, "Cunnel, we can't lib widout it, Sah," goes to my heart; and as they cannot read, I cannot even have the melancholy satisfaction of supplying them with the excellent ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the floor of the Vestry, and beckoned with his cocked hat to both members. Every breath was suspended. To say that a pin might have been heard to fall, would be feebly to express the all-absorbing interest and silence. Suddenly, enthusiastic cheering broke out from every side of the Vestry. Captain Banger had risen - being, in fact, pulled up by a friend on either side, and poked up by ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... he has gone well in a strange country, and was just at the turn to the yard when I came upon an extraordinary group. All the women of the household were there, gathered in a tight circle round some absorbing central fact; all were shrieking at the tops of their voices, and the turkey cock in the yard gobbled in response ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... given a greater voice in the executive committee of the board of directors without danger of injecting politics into its management, but I think the federation system of banks is a good one, provided proper precautions are taken to prevent banks of large capital from absorbing power through ownership of stock in other banks. The objections to a central bank it seems to me are obviated if the ownership of the reserve association is distributed among all the banks of a country in which banking is free. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Lieutenant-Governor to be deliberate. There was no need of an immediate appointment, he said. And so for a time things went on about the State-house much as usual, save that the absorbing topic was the senatorial situation, and that every one was watching the new chief executive. The retired Governor now spent part of his time in the South, and part at home. The cotton plantation was not demanding all his ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... the Hundred Days had passed and the royal house seemed to be firmly seated, she received a government subvention of one hundred and sixty thousand francs and the privilege of the Opera. Catalani's passion for absorbing everything within the radius of her own vanity and her jealousy of rivals operated against her success in Paris, as they had injured her in London; and she was obliged to yield up her privilege in the course of three years, with the additional ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... idea was a shock, simply from its strangeness. Of course, being a woman, she might be in love; but the two ideas, Marion and love, refused to coalesce. And again, was it likely that such as she, her mind occupied with so many other absorbing interests, would fall in love unprovoked, unsolicited? That, indeed, was not likely. Then if, solicited, she but returned love for love, why was she sad? The new experience might, it is true, cause such commotion ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... imagine himself saying this to his mother, and the effect it would have, ever since he had left Suzette's absorbing presence; all through his talk with Putney, and all the way home, and now throughout what he and his mother had been saying of Maxwell and Louise. But it always seemed impossible, and more and more impossible, so that when he ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... grateful Lila would often deliberately leave the society of the rich and well-endowed in order to accompany Lee on his journeys in pursuit of exceptionally-precious winged insects. Regarding his unusual ability as the undoubted cause of her existence at that moment, she took an all-absorbing pride in such displays, and would utter loud and frequent exclamations of triumph when Lee leaped out from behind some rock, where he had lain concealed, and with unfailing regularity secured the object of his adroit movement. In this manner a state of ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... of an absorbing affection Fa Fei could not disguise from herself that her feelings would have been more pleasantly arranged if her lover had been inspired to accept his position unquestioningly. "There is a detail, hitherto unrevealed, ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... right now's the best chance we'll ever have of doing something for ourselves." Costigan turned away from the absorbing scenes pictured upon the visiplate and faced his ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... open skylight, and prepared to ascend. Sylvia—her romance crushed by too dreadful reality—clung to her mother with one hand, and with the other pressed close to her little bosom the "English History". In her all-absorbing fear she had forgotten ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... little more merciful. The other day, when your father, over the eggs and bacon, was reading out the news from Greece, with the defeat of VENIZELOS, you said lightly that exile didn't matter very much because VENIZELOS was a very old man. You then returned to the absorbing occupation of identifying Society people, reading from left to right. Now VENIZELOS is fifty-five years of age, and I cannot allow the term "very old" to be applied to him without protest; I am too nearly his contemporary. "Getting on," if you like, "mature," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... Baron, "I'd engage to take this city as it is, and the office of Pope, and run the whole Roman Catholic Church, till it knocked out all opposition by the simple and natural process of absorbing all opponents. We want a republic here in Rome. We want freedom, Sir. Where is the Church making its greatest triumphs to-day? In the States, Sir. If the Catholic Church made itself free and liberal and go-ahead; if it kept up with the times; ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... occasionally, and as quickly retiring, without uttering a word or making a sign. When not engaged in prayer, his thoughts were with Leonor; and even when thus engaged, they often turned to her, and she became their chief and absorbing subject, that she might have strength, that she might have courage ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... more strongly to the wide-awake young chaps blossoming into manhood than 'Captain Jack Lorimer.' No reader of the story, from ten to sixteen years of age, will follow his course through these pages without absorbing some of the buoyancy and good nature which Jack displays. He is a clean, wholesome young fellow, an honest, energetic boy who loves sport of all kinds, and who is square ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... leaves are furnished with muscles about their foot-stalks, to turn their surfaces to the air or light, as mimosa or Hedysarum gyrans. From all these analogies I think there can be no doubt but that leaves of trees are their lungs, giving out a phlogistic material to the atmosphere, and absorbing oxygen, or vital air. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... parochial system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; (2) in introducing the orders of the Church of Rome, and founding great monasteries as counter influences to the Celtic Church; (3) in absorbing the Culdees or Columban clergy into the Roman system, by first converting them from secular into regular canons, and afterwards by merging them in the latter order.[1] King David especially founded bishoprics and established cathedrals, equipped with the ordinary cathedral ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... The absorbing work in Kovno, the excitement and the patriotic fervor were all beneficial to Nelka's state of mind in that it took it off her constant thinking about the death of ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... shack, the builders became something more than partners. Later, no one could remember who first suggested the founding of a secret order, or society, as a measure of exclusiveness and to keep the shack sacred to members only; but it was an idea that presently began to be more absorbing and satisfactory than even the shack itself. The outward manifestations of it might have been observed in the increased solemnity and preoccupation of the Caucasian members and in a few ceremonial observances exposed to ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... in the midst of grave difficulties, writing it piecemeal in hotels and railway trains in the course of a concert tour through the country. It is offered by the publishers to the public with confidence that it will be found one of the most absorbing and informing narratives of the war that has ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... been so busy absorbing new knowledge that she had temporarily forgotten about her fight with her captain. "I'm just about done here. I'll be ready tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up some planetological and planetographical—notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit words?—data ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... the more to be artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend till after the removal of the last barrier to their intimacy—then only had he let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea, taking a hint from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis of the renewal of such a relation? Was ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... the discussion of topics of such importance as those now under consideration in the presence of women, and of men trained to war. After these gentle hints respecting the qualifications of the queen and his noble auditors to act as judges, he approached the all-absorbing question of the real presence—a feeble part of his speech in which we may be excused from following him. The remainder of the day was spent in warm debate, which continued until the approach of night. Just as all were rising and about to leave, however, the queen ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... possibly destroy its existence or change its character." His own inconsistency was lightly glossed over. "For my own part, when I instructed Governor Walker in general terms, in favor of submitting the constitution to the people, I had no object in view except the all-absorbing question of slavery.... I then believed, and still believe, that under the organic act, the Kansas Convention were bound to submit this all-important question of slavery to the people. It was never, however, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... above all, her previous notoriety, conspired to produce intense excitement in the minds of the sensitive Parisians. I can call to mind no similar occurrence producing so general and so intense an effect. For several weeks, in the discussion of this one absorbing theme, even the momentous political topics of the day were forgotten. The Prefect made unusual exertions; and the powers of the whole Parisian police were, of course, tasked ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... derision. The delay has probably upon the whole benefited both the colonies and the human race. Had gold been discovered before the era of free immigration it must have led to frightful disorders. California has added another to those warnings presented in the history of gold mining, that the absorbing pursuit, for a time, suspends the voice of reason and morality. The multitudes who have precipitated themselves on the gold fields of Victoria indicate the uniform direction of similar passions; yet how superior are our present ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... and four inches thick, made from the clay subsoil taken from the fields and worked into a plastic mass, mixed with chaff and short straw, dried in the sun and then laid in a mortar of the same material. These massive kangs are thus capable of absorbing large amounts of the waste heat from the kitchen during the day and of imparting congenial warmth to the couches by day and to the beds and sleeping apartments during the night. In some Manchurian inns large compound kangs are so arranged that the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... revealed in itself through its personal faculties. The slightest change in the subject is reported by a correspondent change in objects. Heighten the internal activities of the soul to a certain pitch, and the convictions they engender will be so intense, and the experience so absorbing, as irresistibly to sweep away all opposing doubts and fill every craving with the triumphant flood of life. What overwhelming revelations of the providence of God and eternal life, crowding the cosmos at every point with the workings of poetic justice, may thus ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... spring of 1833 at the College Henri IV., at Paris; thus she had now both son and daughter near her, and watched indefatigably over them, their childish illnesses and childish amusements, their moral and intellectual training absorbing a large share of her time and attention. Heine, a friendly ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... another not less powerful obstacle to his return. His affairs, under his own inspection, were so prosperous, and his gains so considerable, that, in the words of the old ballad, "He set his heart to gather gold"; and to this absorbing passion he sacrificed his domestic happiness. The death of his wife, about four years after his departure, undoubtedly contributed to give him a sort of dread of returning, which it required a strong effort to overcome. The welfare of his ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the coach-house knew nothing of all this. Apart from anything else, he was still perfectly blind; also, he had as much of the best kind of nourishment as he was capable of absorbing, and was watched over, and cared for, and ministered to by the loyal little sheep-dog quite as scrupulously as a human baby is tended. There never was a truer saying than that "Blood will tell." But, not only is a mongrel ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... would take a middle course, and spend most of the evening on the stairs and in the hall, and study (with an absorbing interest much too well feigned to look natural) the photographs of famous cathedrals and public buildings till supper came; when, by assiduously attending on the ladies, I would cause my miserable existence ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... poor, thin, watery blood, not suitable for nourishment although sent in large amount to the brain, does not properly nourish that organ. There will still be brain exhaustion, as the nervous structures have lost their power of absorbing the nutrient materials from the blood which, being poor in quality, does not vitalize and strengthen the nerve centres as it should. In such cases thought is an effort and sustained mental exertion is impossible; the memory is uncertain, and the patient drowsy. Occasionally, after rest, there ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... as he had been during the last five years, he did not understand. But starting at the first page, and eating his way through the first chapter, not missing one of the paragraphs skipped during the morning, studying each illustration thoroughly, and absorbing both pictures and print like a sponge, he got a very real glimmering of what it meant to a boy to be a scout; and not only so far as the body, its strength and its growth, was concerned, but also in relation to character. And just that first ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... It may happen, notwithstanding the serenity of the sky and the transparency of the atmosphere, that the ocean is feebly illuminated at thirty or forty leagues' distance; or that the strata of air nearest the earth may extinguish a great deal of the light, by absorbing the rays ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... method of determining the composition of a body by means of the spectrum of light which it gives forth or passes through it, founded on the principle that a substance powerfully absorbs exactly the rays it radiates, and every substance has its own absorbing powers; or it may be defined the method of distinguishing different kinds of matter by their properties in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sleeve, and Frank, also a willing listener, but to a greatly differing line of talk, was rapidly absorbing all the mental and moral poison that ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... expression in Greek tragedy; of the triviality with which we often reproach the remarks of the chorus, where it takes part in the dialogue: that the action itself, the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon,[11] was to stand the central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, principal; that no accessories were for a moment to distract the spectator's attention from this, that the tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that no man should surrender his freedom of heart without obtaining in return the utmost, unlimited, and unselfish devotion? Yet, here I was giving up my whole soul to a blind passion, rendered more and more absorbing, doubtless, by the opposition I experienced, and for response I found myself willing to be content with even the cinders of a former and only half-dead affection; trusting, as so many men have vainly trusted, that by earnest care and assiduity, I might, at last, re-illume the fading spark, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... deeply investigating this subject, shows his master hand in every page. It was a subject which, from his first conviction of sin, while playing a gat at cat on a Sunday, ahd excited his feelings to an intense degree, absorbing all the powers of his soul. It was eminently to him the one thing needful—the sum and substance of human habbiness. He felt that it included the preservation and re-structure of the body—raised from filth and vileness—from sickness, pain, and disease—from ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cylinders and wheels, which I could not but touch and set turning as I brushed past them. They are placed there that they may be so turned, saving to the passers-by the time they might otherwise lose in saying their prayers—as if their affairs were so absorbing, and their time so precious, that they could not find leisure to pray. Many pious Buddhists use for this purpose an apparatus arranged to be turned by the current of a stream. I have seen a long row of cylinders, provided with ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... rule I only practice enough to keep my fingers in trim; the nervous strain is such that doing more is out of the question. And for a concert-violinist when on tour, playing every day, the technical question is not absorbing. Far more important is it for him to keep himself mentally and physically fresh and in the right mood for his work. For myself I have to enjoy whatever I play or I cannot play it. And it has often ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... further about them. Of old people of either sex he took no further notice than to order them out of the way when they impeded the polkers, or dance bodily over them when they disobeyed. Still it must be said, in justice to him, that dancing was not his sole and all-absorbing pursuit. Having an active turn of mind and body, he found leisure for many other profitable amusements. He was fond of that noble animal, the horse, gambled habitually, ate and drank luxuriously,—in short, burned his ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... apart from its utilitarian value, is coming to be a widely used means of repression or wish sublimation. I have been struck by the enormously increasing number of women drivers. Women in the present state of society have not the same access to absorbing kinds of works that men have (which will shortly come to be realized as a crime far worse than that of the Inquisition). Hence their chances of normal sublimation are limited. For this reason women seek an outlet by rushing to the war as nurses, in becoming social workers, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... little. She was seated on a footstool by my mother's sofa, and looked softer and gentler than I had ever seen her look. She had been nursing my mother with a single-hearted, self-forgetful devotion that had often touched me, and had knit us to one another by the common bond of an absorbing interest. Certainly I had never leaned upon or loved Julia as I ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... that analogy fails to guide us towards any determination on several other points: for instance, whether cells, derived from the same parent-cell, may, in the regular course of growth, become developed into different structures, from absorbing peculiar kinds of nutriment, independently of their union with distinct gemmules. We shall appreciate this difficulty if we call to mind, what complex yet symmetrical growths the cells of plants yield ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... over, and with it had disappeared all disposition to quarrel. Henceforward, to the end of the journey, the four young people chatted amicably together, discussing various subjects of interest, but invariably returning to the one absorbing question of the hour—what could have happened to account for the hasty and mysterious summons to the solitary home in the country at a time when all their interests and pleasures were centred ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... history has this question occupied so large a place in thought as it does to-day. In familiar discussion, in the press, in the library, on the platform, the "woman question" is an all-absorbing topic. Even the most cursory review of the literature of the subject leads to a realization of its importance. It leads also into the ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... earth. Mrs. Lyth aimed at purity. She had passed the region of shadows, and entered the unclouded light of the Divine presence; but that very light, by its intensity, only revealed more distinctly the sinfulness of her nature; and created an absorbing desire after perfect holiness: she was thus prepared by God for the service ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... lighter heart than the villain. So does the free woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing occupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a return allowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that brings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaust through which Eve ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... An absorbing detective story woven around the mysterious death of the "Man in Lower Ten." The strongest elements of Mrs. Rinehart's success ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... his tail was kept moist, he never cared to drink, but, if it was kept dry, it became hot, and the animal appeared distressed, and would drink a great deal. It is not impossible that the tail may have the power of absorbing water, like the skin of frogs, though it must be owned that the scaly integument which invests that member has not much of the character which generally ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... himself to reassure her. He assumed his dryest tone, his most negligent manner. When she came downstairs from Lancelot, and after watching the card-players, fingering a book or magazine, drifted to the open window and stood or leaned there, absorbing the glory of the night—Urquhart left her, and pulled at his pipe. When she spoke to the room at large—"Oh, you stuffy people, will you never understand that all the world is just out here?" he was the first to laugh at her, though he would have walked her off into that ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... finicking joy of the gourmet, but the joy of an honest appetite in ecstasy, the elemental joy of absorbing quantities of fresh simple food,—mere roast lamb, new potatoes, and ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... new milk and butter and cheese, became tedious; the jokes and laughter of the farm-hands and dairymaids she heard with irritation; nor could the prattle and play of her romping boys divert her mind from the one absorbing theme—the descent of the Mississippi, the conquest of Mexico, the creation of a New World. In close daily communion with Theodosia, she dwelt not in a white frame house on a woody island of the Ohio River, not in the present; but in the future, and in a marble palace in the splendid domain ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... in a neighboring cedar were three or four russet-back'd thrushes, each singing his best, and roulading in ways I never heard surpass'd. Two hours I abandon myself to hearing them, and indolently absorbing the scene. Almost every bird I notice has a special time in the year—sometimes limited to a few days—when it sings its best; and now is the period of these russet-backs. Meanwhile, up and down the lane, the darting, droning, musical bumble-bees. A great swarm again for ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the painful, touching scene oft-told, and felt sooner or later in every home. Like snow disappearing under the sunshine, the life of Madeleine was fast melting away. At length, as if she knew when the absorbing heat would melt the last crystal of the vital principle, she summoned her family around her to wish them that last thrilling farewell which is never erased from the tablet of memory. In the farewell of the emigrant, torn by cruel fate from country and friends, hope ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... toward her daily life was the natural outcome of a romantic nature and an imaginative mind. She saw herself as the heroine of an absorbing story, the living of which story she enjoyed to the utmost, while every incident and every person contributed to its interest. Quite unconsciously, with unintentional egotism, the Schoolmarm had a way of standing off and viewing herself, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... although he has never given a great deal of thought to any of those matters, he thinks about them since he has felt himself dominated by this singular personage, and Adrian Baker has become, in fact, his fixed idea, his absorbing thought, his unceasing preoccupation, his constant monomania. Berta's father and the housekeeper may very well attribute to him marvellous powers, suggested by their own excited imaginations; but we must not share in those hallucinations, nor are we to conclude from them that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... talking about the coming plays, and soon the conversation became of an absorbing character, and Hester's voice was heard oftener than the others, and she laughed more ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... violet, which are soluble in water, answers the purpose very well. Enough of the dye must be dissolved in the water to give it a tolerably deep color. So soon as the plate is plunged into this liquid the albumen not acted on by light is dissolved, while the insoluble parts are colored by absorbing the dye, so that the metal is exposed in the lines against a red or violet ground, according to the color of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the hard, dull labour of levelling, setting the frames and laying the concrete foundation. The finishing was the absorbing part. The idea was not for a fine-grained sand walk, but a mixture of all sizes from a penny large down to the finest sand. The cement makes the most lasting bond in a mixture of this kind; moreover, the pebbly finish was effective ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... unquestionably the most powerful and important, if not the most charming work that has yet flowed from her elegant pen; and though evidently founded upon the all-absorbing subjects of slavery and abolitionism, the genius and skill of the fair author have developed new views of golden argument, and flung around the whole such a halo of pathos, interest, and beauty, as to render it every way worthy the author of 'Linda,' 'Marcus Warland,' 'Rena,' and the ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... these elements are the middle elements Water and Air; with them the attribute, moist, comes to expression in their tendency both to interpenetrate mutually and to absorb their neighbours - the liquid element absorbing solid matter and the aeriform element taking up heat. What distinguishes them is that water has a 'cold' nature, from which it gains its density; while air has a 'warm' nature, to which it ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... hastened to demand, therefore, as a set-off for the loss of Kiaochau, a lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan, and a railway concession to unite these ports with the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Chinese Government was too weak to think of refusing the demands, and the process of gradually absorbing Manchuria began, in accordance with a plan already roughly sketched out ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... chap left off mumbling, all was still in the house. The other two were amusing themselves very quietly, and no doubt very heartily. What more absorbing and less noisy amusement could they have found than to plan their future? Side by side on the verandah they must have been looking at the brig, the third party in that fascinating game. Without her there would have been no future. She was the fortune and the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of the United States now had four rival tickets presented to them by as many contending parties, whose respective position and principles on the great and absorbing question at issue may be briefly recapitulated ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... lever for it, though the printers and the reporters hunted in his trunk and in every place they could think of. But the lonesomest things in the world for him were the machines. The big press grew sulky and kept breaking the web, and his linotype took to absorbing castor-oil as if it were a kind of hasheesh. The new operator could run the new machine, but David's seemed to resent familiarity. It was six months before we got things going straight after ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... he cared for the girl, to come nearer to her. He had told himself all the way back from New York that he did care—too much. She was not like the rest. He laughed at himself. A few years hence she would be like the rest and, what is more, he should not find her so absorbing now, if she were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... with Billy; he seemed to view almost every subject as inevitably connected with the one absorbing idea of supply and demand. By this time these good chums of his knew his weakness so well that they generally ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered considerable diminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old age as to threaten demise altogether. The fact is, both girls had their own real affairs to think of: Rebecca her advance with her employers—Amelia her own absorbing topic. When the two girls met, and flew into each other's arms with that impetuosity which distinguishes the behaviour of young ladies towards each other, Rebecca performed her part of the embrace with the most perfect briskness and energy. Poor little Amelia blushed as ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... England army, actually besieging Boston, became an early and absorbing consideration. It was without munitions of war, without arms, clothing, or pay; in fact, without legislative countenance or encouragement. Unless sanctioned and assisted by Congress, there was danger of its dissolution. If dissolved, how could another be collected? If dissolved, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... This absorbing life had gone on for two months. It was the beginning of February, and already nature was assuming a new appearance under the influence of spring. One evening, three people—two gentlemen and a lady—stepped out of a carriage at the villa gates, and found themselves face to face with ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... alimentary tract changes from a many-layered epithelium to a mucous epithelium, consisting of a single layer of endodermal cells, frequently thrown into pits or projecting as processes; from being chiefly protective, it has become secretory and absorbing, and maintains this character to the distal extremity where it passes into the epiblast of the proctodaeum. In most cases the course of the alimentary canal from the distal end of the oesophagus to the cloaca or anus is longer than ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... each of the members is confined to the amount of his stake in the concern. The first step would be to draw up a prospectus. In this I would advise that no mention should be made of the fact that the Erewhonians are the lost tribes. The discovery is one of absorbing interest to myself, but it is of a sentimental rather than commercial value, and business is business. The capital to be raised should not be less than fifty thousand pounds, and might be either in five or ten pound shares as hereafter determined. This should be amply sufficient for ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... ran a block or two to recover it. I was young then, and in an exalted sense of editorial responsibility which I have since survived, I think I turned pale at the thought that the reputation of some unknown genius might have thus been swept out and swallowed by the all-absorbing sea. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... same principle, but less efficiently than the casks. Sand, charcoal, sponge, and wood, are the substances most commonly used in properly constructed filters: peat charcoal is excellent. Charcoal acts not only as a mechanical filter for solid impurities, but it has the further advantage of absorbing putrid gases. (See below, "Putrid Water.") Snow is also used as a filter in the Arctic regions. Dr. Rae used to lay it on the water, until it was considerably higher than its level, and then to suck the ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... with his companion. The poet had described the absorbing pursuit of his fellow-lodger. Chairs, table, and floor in that little room were subject to such rasping purifications, that if there had ever been paint on any of them, it was a thing of the far past, while an ashy whiteness and a general ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... found this very absorbing and she and Chrystie had questions to ask. Fong's entrance for the tray prevented Lorry from joining in. As the Chinaman leaned down to take it, she whispered to him to open a window, the room was hot. Her eye, touching ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the daughter of the wealthy Samuel; he knew her to be the most charming woman in Lima; he knew her to be betrothed to the opulent mestizo Andre Certa; he knew that by her birth, her position and her wealth she was beyond the reach of his heart; but he forgot all these impossibilities in his all-absorbing passion. It seemed to him that this beautiful young girl belonged to him, as the llama to the Peruvian forests, as the eagle to the depths ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichaean ideal that underlies so much of Eastern Monasticism and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason that not being an outsider he does not find ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... implication, you always give us a sort of lavender-water description of the very excellent persons you met there, and what they were kind enough to say of America, and how they complimented you, and made you the centre and all-absorbing object of attraction-in a word, a truly wonderful person. And you will not fail, now that it is become fashionable, to extol with fulsome breath the greatness of every European despot it hath been your ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... a pedagogue. In the autumn of 1878 he went to Louisville, Kentucky, and taught English for a year at the Boys' High School. But he presently found an occupation in this progressive city which proved far more absorbing. A few months before his arrival certain energetic spirits had founded a weekly paper, the Age, a journal which, they hoped, would fill the place in the Southern States which the very successful New York Nation, under the editorship of Godkin, was then ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... that their intimacy was legal. At it was, he must console himself with the thought that, married or not, they were indissolubly bound: he knew now better than before, that no other woman would ever exist for him; and surely, in the case of an all-absorbing passion such as this, the overstepping of conventional boundaries would not be counted too heavily against them: laws and conventions existed only for the weak and vacillating loves of the rest of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... afresh was the result of a fortuitous occurrence. After one of his most serious illnesses, and in the hope of drawing off his attention from himself, and from the gloomy forebodings which in an invalid's mind usually gather about his own too absorbing personality, a friend prevailed upon him, with infinite solicitation, to try his hand afresh at a sonnet. The outcome was an effort so feeble as to be all but unrecognisable as the work of the author ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... don't show it, the men who fear and try not to show it, the men who don't care a hang what happens—cannot but grip the observer who has eyes to see. Almost does he forget his own allotted part in the drama; the psychology of the thing is too absorbing. And it can only be realised ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... and replaced the pot gently on the ground; then, retiring slowly to the solitary house, she returned after a while at the same slow pace, and, throwing some crumbs to the fish, began to saunter slowly about the garden-paths, inattentive to every thing but her own absorbing thoughts. At length she reached a spot where a gigantic catalpa-tree overarched the garden and bent its branches almost to the earth. A table and a couple of chairs stood beneath the fresh and fragrant shade, and ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... the country. These are, the settlement of the remaining questions between ourselves and England; the great questions relating to the reciprocity principle; those relating to colonial trade; the most absorbing questions of the currency, and those relating to the great subject of the restoration of the national character and the public faith; these are all objects to which I am willing to devote myself, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... make, able to open and close its eyes, etc., would in their esteem be even competent to raise the dead! [Footnote: Writing of Spanish American Romanism, Everybody's Magazine says: "To the student of human nature, which means the study of evil as well as good, this religious body is of absorbing interest. One would look to find these enthusiasts righteous and virtuous in their daily life; but, apart from the annual week of penance, their religion influences them not at all, and on the whole the members of the Brotherhood constitute a desperate ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... it has always applied to itself, from the time when it inhabited the little district of Angeln on the Baltic coast of Sleswick down to the time when it had begun to spread itself over three great continents. It is a race which has shown a rare capacity for absorbing slightly foreign elements and moulding them into conformity with a political type that was first wrought out through centuries of effort on British soil; and this capacity it has shown perhaps in a ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... footing of the most favored nation." But the relation of American interests to English interests was evidently already associated in his mind with the relations of France and England, so soon to be the absorbing question ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... breathing, she would rest her face and head, and press her lips, in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the cold stone floor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and in her one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection, to be a consolation to him, to win him over to the endurance of some tenderness from her, his solitary child, she would have knelt down at his feet, if she had dared, in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in the pursuit with the hopes of raising himself from his present obscurity, and resuming the rank and dignity to which his birth entitled him; but, as usual, it ended in absorbing every thought, and becoming the business of his existence. He was at length aroused from this mental abstraction, by the calamities of his household. A malignant fever swept off his wife and all ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... may be urged that art is not worthy of a scientific treatment. Art is no doubt an ornament of our life and a charm to the fancy; but has it a more serious side? When compared with the absorbing necessities of human existence, it might seem a luxury, a superfluity, calculated to enfeeble the heart by the assiduous worship of beauty, and thus to be actually prejudicial to the true interest of practical life. This view seems to be largely countenanced by a dominant party in modern ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by day. The great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic of conversation throughout the Union. Individuals denounced it, journals denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic over it. Meantime the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... and the Gospel was explained to them in very simple words. With great effort I managed to keep my mind on the message, and understood most of it. I congratulated myself internally. At last I had successfully wrested my mind from the absorbing but uncomfortable subject of all the things that I had wanted ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... and delicacy is tremendous; and yet those who have found themselves opposed to him have never been long in realising that there was a most redoubtable mailed fist under the velvet glove. Altogether a remarkable man, whose memoirs would make absorbing reading, could he be persuaded to write them—which is quite beyond the bounds of possibility. I had never met him either professionally or personally, and it was with some eagerness that I told the office-boy to show ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... later divisions of the tetralogy, but, on the other hand, Wagner has reproduced the 'large utterance of the early gods' with exquisite art. Musically it can hardly rank with its successors, partly no doubt because the plot has not their absorbing interest, partly also because 'Das Rheingold' is the first work in which Wagner consciously worked in accordance with his theory of guiding themes, and consequently he had not as yet gained that complete mastery of his elaborate material which he afterwards attained. Yet some of ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... distressing fever which rages high just now; what we may call the Benevolent-Platform Fever. Howard is to be regarded as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous frothy ocean-tide of benevolent sentimentality, "abolition of punishment," all-absorbing "prison-discipline," and general morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for scoundrels; which is threatening to drown human society as in deluges, and leave, instead of an "edifice of society" fit for the habitation of men, a continent of ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... habits have often mistaken the art of the great poets in describing such "manly exercises or bodily powers," for the proof of their "rejoicing and excelling in them?" Poets and artists, from their habits, are not usually muscular and robust.[A] Continuity of thought, absorbing reverie, and sedentary habits, will not combine with corporeal skill and activity. There is also a constitutional delicacy which is too often the accompaniment of a fine intellect. The inconveniences attached to the inferior sedentary labourers are participated ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and nature were the communings of Wade Ruggles, who until this eventful evening, had cherished a hope, so wild, so ecstatic, so strange and so soul-absorbing that he hardly dared to admit it to himself. At times, he shrank back, terrified at his presumption, as does the man who has striven to seize and hold that which is unattainable and which it would be sacrilege for him to lay ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... happened to be seconds, as for example, Frederick the Second, Joseph the Second, etc., stood above their namesakes. In general, Zriny has made it clear to me that Koerner, had he lived, would, without any doubt, have become a second Schiller, namely, by completely absorbing the first. The plagiarisms which the noble young man has indulged in, in this tragedy, as regards the disposition of the scenes as well as in whole individual speeches and sentences, surpass all belief. I shall perhaps point out some of these in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... of the year 61, not long after the time when the murder of Agrippina, and Seneca's justifications of it, had been absorbing the attention of the Roman world, there disembarked at Puteoli a troop of prisoners, whom the Procurator of Judaea had sent to Rome under the charge of a centurion. Walking among them, chained and weary, but affectionately tended by two younger companions,[38] and treated with profound respect ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... thousand priests, and more, daily saying Mass, and hundreds of thousands of innocent children praying in her churches, must emerge triumphant from this terrible crisis. Ask me nothing of Pretenders or of the Republic. The work of a Catholic Bishop in France is too absorbing to be overwhelmed by difficulties of political detail. We must be patriots, worthy citizens, and faithful Catholics, and leave the rest to God. The great bulk of the French people is not deceived. A cloud is passing over the nation; but the bright sun will soon pierce through that cloud, and a ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... this is not all. An inferior man might have made himself the mouthpiece of the hopes and aspirations of his generation after a larger science. But to Bacon these aspirations embodied themselves in the form of a great and absorbing idea; an idea which took possession of the whole man, kindling in him a faith which nothing could quench, and a passion which nothing could dull; an idea which, for forty years, was his daily companion, his daily delight, his daily business; an idea ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... which Princeton honored me was accompanied with the hint that a discussion of some phase of current public affairs would not be unwelcome. That phase which has for the past year or two most absorbed public attention is now more absorbing than ever. Elsewhere I have already spoken upon it, more, perhaps, than enough. But I cannot better obey the summons of this honored and historic University, or better deserve the attention of this company of scholars, gentlemen, and patriots, than by saying with absolute candor ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... gesticulation of Rodin during the reading of this note, which seemed to ruin all his most cherished hopes. Everything was failing at once, at the moment when only superhuman trust in the success of his plans could give him sufficient energy to strive against mortal sickness. A single, absorbing thought had agitated him even to delirium: What progress, during his illness, had been made in this immense affair? He had first heard a good piece of news, the death of Jacques Rennepont; but now the advantages of this decease, which reduced the number of the heirs ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in triangles, has become a mastering purpose? Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... him? Why, he was captured long ago, and has since died of old age. I am surprised at your interrupting me with such questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really absorbing ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... more awakenings that night—once at Batavia, where a merry wedding party with horns and cow bells will follow the lucky bride and groom into your car, and once at Schenectady, where the Pullman car shock-absorbing tests are held. The next morning, tired but unhappy, you will ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... I felt instinctively, were the "new" woman and the "new" man, if there are such things. I wondered just how they would hit it off together. For the moment, at least, Clare Kendall was an absorbing study, as she greeted us with a frank, jerky ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... might more properly say, are represented in transactions in this metropolis. But still this often happens in such a manner as would be imperceptible even to people of vast experience and observation. The countless impulses which travel up from various directions to this absorbing centre sometimes neutralize each other, and leave a comparative calm; or they create so complex an agitation, that it may be next to impossible for us to discern and estimate the component forces. Hence the metropolis may not at times be sufficiently susceptible ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... concert for a worthy local charity, and how they received a sudden and unexpected call for help out of the air. A girl who was wanted as a witness in a celebrated law case had disappeared, and how the radio girls went to the rescue is told in an absorbing manner. ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... lived, therefore, in the enjoyment of the greatest consideration, for, at certain elevated positions in life, human fortunes are absorbing in their nature, and, as if they were composed of nothing else but of adhesive particles, oblige all other fortunes to attend on and follow them like satellites; and on that account, therefore, the recent and marvelous successes of his brother Anne reflected on him all the brilliancy ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... would expel it, if I could, once and for all from these pages—I like recreation as much as most men, and have grown to find it in the dull but deeply absorbing business of sitting on Education Committees. Some fifteen years ago, in the first story in my first book of short stories, I confessed to being haunted by a dreadful sound: 'the footfall of a multitude more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... begin. Her wonderful news was so all-important. Having made up her mind that the time had come when she might at last share it with Ronnie, it seemed almost impossible to wait one moment before telling him. On the other hand, it would be so absorbing to them both, that probably Ronnie's subject would be allowed to lapse, completely forgotten and unmentioned. Nothing which was of even the most transitory interest to Ronnie, ever met this fate at his wife's hands. Therefore the very ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they listen. Listen! did I say listen? They drink it down like a child absorbing its first ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... by his years to leisure, he had latterly almost abandoned politics for a culture of the arts and the sciences, in some branches of which he was a master. His leisure he gave almost entirely to his daughter. To contrive for her an alliance worthy of his own fortune and of her beauty had become the absorbing passion of his life. He studied the Peerage as other men study a balance-sheet. All sorts and conditions of possible husbands appeared at "Five Gables;" were dined, discussed, and dismissed. The older families despised him and ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... human—this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that absorbing subject," she bantered, "tell me, will our cotton now sell for enough to pay Mr. ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... crowded, and preoccupied as he was, it struck Vanno oddly, as it always did strike him anew in the Casino, to hear every one who passed talking of the all-absorbing game. They were obsessed by it, and threw questions to each other, which elsewhere would have meant nothing, or some very different thing; but here no explanations were needed. "Doing any good?" asked a pallid young man with a twitching face, like that of a galvanized corpse, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... entered upon the journey actuated by the best of motives, the duty of looking after the cattle absorbing so much of his attention that he had very little opportunity for increasing his acquaintance with his travelling companion. The fact was, however, that he did not feel himself much drawn toward Seppi, from whom he had received anything but a very friendly welcome when they first met; the drover ...
— Harper's Young People, December 9, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sooner she would have caught that mysterious person, Doctor Q, who had entered the house some time before, and, on overhearing heated words coming from the library, had remained with his ear glued to the keyhole, absorbing every word that was said until Balcom left. But he had shuffled away ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... I was whether his visionary habits and absorbing experiments would permit him to remember my arrival at all, and I was accordingly relieved to hear from the solitary porter that the "professor" had sent a "veeckle" to meet me, and that I was thus free to send my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... in all the odds and ends of wine left from the dinners of the week. To the untrained tongue, it is a fearful pleasure to partake thereof. Prather makes up his iniquitous debauches after the same recipe: absorbing the yellow journals and the orange output of his fellow novelists, going down to New York for a week end, and then coming home to embody in a novel ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... entirely, by the action of the sun. The amount of this heat will depend upon the temperature of the moon's surface and its radiating power; and the temperature will depend upon a number of things (chiefly heat-absorbing power of the surface, and the nature and density of the lunar atmosphere, as well as the supply of heat received from the sun), being determined by a balance between give and take. So long as more heat is received in a second than is thrown off in the same time, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various |
