"Desk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down in a revolving chair before a rolltop desk. In front of him are steel pens, India rubber eraser, blotting paper, rubber bands, a telephone. He takes up a bundle of typewritten letters, dictates answers to a stenographer, sends a telegram to some one a thousand miles away, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... approached by a flight of stone steps which leads down under the archway of the gate. It is no bigger than an ordinary room,—perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen wide,—but still it is a perfect church. It contains an old carved pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with dark old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen seats for the poor; and also a vestry. The roof is high pitched, and of black old oak, and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... him, with both hands on his desk, as if to emphasize and drive home what he was about to ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... that was and is! What is cosmogony? Some people have accused me of misanthropy, And yet I know no more than the mahogany That forms this desk of what they mean; lycanthropy I comprehend; for, without transformation Men become ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... had tasted the bitterness of an usher's life, and escaped into the scarcely more tolerable regions of Grub Street. After some years of trial, he was becoming known to the booksellers as a serviceable hand, and had two works in his desk destined to lasting celebrity. His landlady (apparently 1764) one day arrested him for debt. Johnson, summoned to his assistance, sent him a guinea and speedily followed. The guinea had already been changed, and Goldsmith was consoling ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... his last remark. The presence of troops had long since been discussed between them. The visitor moved toward the door, and the Agent went to his desk. At the door Seth turned as ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... flat. The neat white room with its miniature overmantel, pink walls, and brass fire-irons like toys, resembled more than ever an elaborate doll's house. The frail white chairs seemed too slender to be sat on. Could one ever write at that diminutive white writing-desk? The flat might have been made, and furnished by Waring, for midgets. Everything was still in fair and dainty repair, except that the ceiling, which was painted in imitation of a blue sky, was beginning to look cloudy. Hyacinth ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... veranda as before. The open end was the one looking east but the sun was too near the zenith to enter many inches, and with equal thoroughness and tact Carmichael had placed the table, the water-bag, and the tumbler, at the open end. They were all that he could do in the way of pulpit, desk, and lectern. ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... battalion adjutant of the first battalion of the Thirty-fourth United States Infantry, looked up from his office desk as the door swung open and a smart, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... have some suspicions that an effort will be made to slip into your box some articles, which, lacking complete originality, and not being wholly unpublished, may not suit your plan. I can affirm that no later than last evening an author was seen bending over his desk, holding in one hand an open volume of the "Spectator," while with the other he was thawing his ink by the flame of the lamp. It is useless to recommend you to keep a lookout against such devices; we must not see reappearing in the "Winter Chronicle" what our ancestors ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... forward. Whether on that important occasion my small brain received a shock from which it will never recover, or whether it is pure physical laziness which influenced me, I know not; but this is certain, that no whipped schoolboy ever crept to his hated task more unwillingly than I to my writing-desk on this beautiful morning. Perhaps my indisposition to soil paper in your behalf is caused by the bewildering scent of that great, glorious bouquet of flowers which, gathered in the crisp mountain air, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... love, I gave him my youth, my happiness, my life, my fortune, I breathed in him, I worshipped him as if I were a heathen, and... and what then? This best of men shamelessly deceived me at every step! After his death I found in his desk a whole drawerful of love-letters, and when he was alive—it's an awful thing to remember!—he used to leave me alone for weeks at a time, and make love to other women and betray me before my very eyes; ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... and bowed his head upon his desk and waited in an agony of hope—waited while the darkness deepened and the splendid eternal song of the river proclaimed the futility and folly of man. A cricket sang with heart-piercing cheer, as ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... hero "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk, with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him." "Here," says Borrow, "I was in the habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young gentlemen of my own age . . . with extraordinary accounts of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... true. Every morning when he came back from chambers it was to find the babies with Isabel in the back drawing-room. They were having rides on the leopard skin thrown over the sofa back, or they were playing shops with Isabel's desk for a counter, or Pad was sitting on the hearthrug rowing away for dear life with a little brass fire shovel, while Johnny shot at pirates with the tongs. Every evening they each had a pick-a-back up the narrow stairs to their fat ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... mission in your doubly diabolical way, and grin at the fearful jokes in the dialogue I've been listening to for weeks, and make the audience feel that they are welcome when they're not. What's been done with my desk? ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... may feel, until he has words, the thought, the emotion, must remain his alone. To get a vocabulary, then, is a person's business. He who has it can command him who has it not. Not in literature alone, but in business,—in medicine, in law, behind the accountant's desk or the salesman's counter,—he is master who can say what he means so that the person to whom he speaks must know just what he means. Now it is a singular truth that when we read any great author, the words which we do not understand ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... pew. Madame de Bernstein, in her quality of Bishop's widow, never failed in attendance, and conducted her devotions with a gravity almost as exemplary as that of the ancestor yonder, in his square beard and red gown, for ever kneeling on his stone hassock before his great marble desk and book, under his emblazoned shield of arms. The clergyman, a tall, high-coloured, handsome young man, read the service in a lively, agreeable voice, giving almost a dramatic point to the chapters of Scripture which he read. The music was good—one of the young ladies of the family ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the lawyer, pulling a drawer in his desk open and glancing inside. "Late yesterday afternoon I received a letter from my client, Mrs. Dexter, who directed me to hand you each a new ten-dollar bill, with her best wishes for a ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... counted upon himself as able to add it to his novels, and his work with his Punch brethren, and to his contributions generally to the literature of the day. He might have done so, could he have risen at five, and have sat at his private desk for three hours before he began his official routine at the public one. A capability for grinding, an aptitude for continuous task work, a disposition to sit in one's chair as though fixed to it by cobbler's wax, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... reappeared in a bewitching, though improvised, costume. When the money had been counted by Louchard, the Baron wished to examine the bills; but Esther snatched them with a cat-like grab, and carried them away to her desk. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... found a very good luncheon prepared for him at Mivers's rooms, which he had all to himself, for his host never "spoilt his dinner and insulted his breakfast" by that intermediate meal. He remained at his desk writing brief notes of business, or of pleasure, while Sir Peter did justice to lamb cutlets and grilled chicken. But he looked up from his task, with raised eyebrows, when Sir Peter, after a somewhat ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Colbert, Louis preferred, of the smiles of the two men, that of Fouquet. He beckoned to the superintendent to come up, and turning towards Lyonne and Colbert, he said:—"Finish this matter, place it on my desk, and I will read it at my leisure." And he left the room. At the sign the king had made to him, Fouquet had hastened up the staircase, while Aramis, who was with the superintendent, quietly retired among the group of courtiers ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sole agent, did his best to make as big as possible. Only a very few of the elect knew the identity of the editor, and they were bound to strict secrecy. On the day before the publication of each number, a notice was placed in the desk of the captain of each form, notifying him of what the morrow would bring forth, and asking him to pass it round the form. That was all. The School did the rest. The Glow Worm always sold well, ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... learning too; and now Beth proposed that they should fit up a chapel in the acting-room, and resolve themselves occasionally into a clergyman and congregation. A chair with the bottom knocked out was the pulpit, and a long narrow box stood on end was the reading-desk. Beth was the parson, of course, in a white sheet filched from the soiled-clothes bag, and changed for a black shawl for the sermon. She read portions of Scripture standing, she read prayers on her knees, she led ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... not enjoy that month's idling. I like idling when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. That is my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... would be valuable in many parts of India. And such assemblies will in the future be far more necessary and valuable than such institutions would have been in the past, because, in former times, the rulers, not being nearly so much burdened with office and desk-work as they now are, had far more leisure time to mix with the people, and hear from them the expression of ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... weapon, and his only mark of rank was the stars on his collar. Though always abstemious in diet, he seemed able to bear any amount of fatigue, being capable of remaining in his saddle all day and at his desk half the night." ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... her. Trix had it in her power to bother the next to the oldest Corner House girl, sitting as she did at the nearest desk. The custom was, in verbal recitation, for the pupil to rise in her (or his) seat and recite. When it came Agnes' time to recite, Trix would whisper something entirely irrelevant to the ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... parlor to receive her morning calls. Colfax, the captain of the life-guard, enters to receive the orders of the day—perhaps a horse and guard for Washington to visit New Windsor, or a barge for Fishkill or West Point, is required; or it may be Washington remains at home and at his writing desk conducts his correspondence, or dictates orders for army movements. The old arm-chair, sitting in the corner yonder, is still ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... company, Mr. George and Rollo came soon to another small room, where a man was sitting behind a desk, examining the passports of the passengers and stamping them. Mr. George waited a moment until it came his turn, and then handed his passport too. The officer looked at it, and then stamped an impression from ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... outskirts of the city, while it is not improbable that a good many of them live in much the same fashion now. Alton had, however, missed the six o'clock supper, for reasons which the sheaf of papers on his desk made plain, and was then engaged in cooking something in a frying-pan. A portable cedar partition partly shrouded the little table set out with a few plates, and the stove, while his old worked-deerhide ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... could have seen the thief in the act of stealing me. What a sorry face he had on! I send you a rough sketch of him—for I have a little talent at drawing—taken from memory. I was lying on the desk, close by a manuscript which I had commenced. He snatched me as soon as the editor's back was turned, and ran out of the office. I wonder the people did not notice that he was a rogue as he passed along the street. Why, he stared at every body he met, as ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... of my prize-fighting friends called on me at the White House on business. He explained that he wished to see me alone, sat down opposite me, and put a very expensive cigar on the desk, saying, "Have a cigar." I thanked him and said I did not smoke, to which he responded, "Put it in your pocket." He then added, "Take another; put both in your pocket." This I accordingly did. Having thus shown at the outset ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... from Laura's, much cooler and larger; occupying half the width of the house; and a rather expensive struggle had made it pretty and even luxurious. The window curtains and the wall-paper were fresh, and of a quiet blue; there was a large divan of the same colour; a light desk, prettily equipped, occupied a corner; and between two gilt gas-brackets, whose patent burners were shielded by fringed silk shades, stood a cheval-glass six feet high. The door of a very large clothes-pantry stood open, showing a fine company of dresses, ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... least something very near akin to the brute, and it was with a sinking heart that I pushed open the main door and ascended the broad, easy stairs to the office. I asked if the superintendent was in, and the gentlemanly clerk at the desk told me that he was, and would be down immediately, meanwhile telling me to be seated. After the lapse of a few minutes, the superintendent, Mr. Wilkins, came into the office, his countenance beaming with benevolence. He took the card that I had brought with me, read it, and, turning round to where ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... water on my face from a passing shower? and did I not have to get up at that unearthly hour to move the bed, and step splash into a puddle, and come very near being floated away? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon my writing-desk, and soak the leather and swell the wood, and stain the ribbon and spoil the paper inside, and all because you were treacherous at the roof and let it? Have you not made a perfect rattery of yourself, yawning at every possible chink ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in this room that he passed the greater part of the time that was not given to his farm or his guests. I never entered it without finding him at his desk, with his pen or a book in hand. His correspondence was so extensive that he was always obliged to keep a secretary, though a large portion of his letters were written with his own hand. He wrote rapidly in fact, though not rapidly to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Lovelace.— The lady writes and reads upon her coffin, as upon a desk. The doctor resolves to write to her father. Her ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... stony canopy, to see that the sky was one blaze of orange, and gold, and fiery red, which in turn seemed to stain the sea, as if it was all liquid topaz, and sapphire, and amethyst, like the old jewels that had belonged to my mother, and which I had sometimes seen in my father's desk. Nothing, I suppose, could have been more lovely, nothing more grand. If we looked to the left, the rocky cliff was all glow hero, all dark purple shadow there, and the clustering oaks that ran right up to the top were as if they were golden green. If ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... of great dignity, with a bristling moustache, who had once been a schoolmaster, led the choir and carried the tenor part. It was no small privilege after the elder had announced the hymn, to see him rise and tap the desk with his tuning fork and hold it to his ear solemnly. Then he would seem to press his chin full hard upon his throat while he warbled a scale. Immediately, soprano, alto, bass and tenor launched forth upon the sea ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... at his office desk when Molly the Merry once more came into his mind. An ejaculation escaped his lips, and he made a wry face. Then, in comparison, Jinnie, with all her sparkling youth, rose triumphant before him. He loved the child, for a child she still seemed to him. To tell her now of his affection ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... time James was standing up at his desk with his riding-whip in his hand, and making signs for me to follow, which I proceeded to do, the master protesting all the time. I got my reward next day, but not as bad as I would have got had not good Mrs. Burr come to my rescue. We drove to Upland ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... into his office, thrust forward a chair, waved a comprehensive hand toward the filing cases, over the bill files, at the tabulated reports laid out on the desk. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... into my study, on the ground-floor, and took the chair at my desk. The photograph still lay where I had left it. The pillar of mist floated round the table, and stopped opposite to ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... the next morning to the bank, found this communication among the official-looking matter on the desk. The picture in the corner of the envelope was ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... toward the open doorway. Presently Hugh and another boy, their faces reddened with exertion, appeared carrying some object between them. Could it be—yes, it was a writing desk, such as Ivy had often seen in dreams and store windows, but never hoped to possess! Her heart gave a sudden jump and ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... to christen the Berceuse. You ask me in what years I knew Chopin, 1838 is the date of the manuscript in my collection which he gave me after I was married, and the last notes of that little jewel he wrote on the desk of the piano in our presence. He said it would not be published because they would play it....Then he would show how they would play it, which was very funny. It came out after his death, it is a kind of waltz-mazurka [the Valse, Op. 69, No. I], Chopin's intimate friend, Camille Pleyel, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... him and the children; yet he was proud of her cleverness, and perhaps not without hope of her coming back. And when he died he left to poor Euphemia, then half-way through the dark gorge of middle age, an old writing-desk full of little tokens of her mother— the pair of gloves she wore at her wedding, a flashy brooch, a pair of flashy earrings, and many other unconsidered trifles that he had cherished. He left her, too, Sophia's long ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... his silver-topped cane against Fitz's desk, put his hat on a pile of papers, drew his chair close and laid his hand impressively on Fitz's arm. He had the air of a learned counsellor consulting ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Washington.**** On the 1st of August, while performing the double and somewhat anomalous duty of commanding his regiment and representing Oregon in the Senate, Mr. Baker entered the chamber in the full uniform of a Colonel in the United-States army. He laid his sword upon his desk and sat for some time listening to the debate. He was evidently impressed by the scene of which he was himself a conspicuous feature. Breckinridge took the floor shortly after Baker appeared, and made a speech, of which it is fair criticism to say that it reflected ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Swift's arrival at Laracor, he gave public notice that he would read prayers every Wednesday and Friday. On the first of those days after he had summoned his congregation, he ascended the desk, and after sitting some time with no other auditor than his clerk Roger, he rose up and with a composure and gravity that, upon this occasion, were irresistibly ridiculous, began—"Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places," and so proceeded to the end of ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... comforts, there are other things that may well be added to the equipment of the guest-room. One, in particular, is a well-appointed little writing-desk, containing all the requisites for letter-writing, including stamps. Perhaps the guest has brought these things with her, more likely she has forgotten them, and it may be a matter of great convenience to her to find this little desk awaiting her. If there is a shelf above, a selection ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... was occupied by the famous Dr. Wolff, the missionary to Bokhara. He was a most energetic preacher, who thumped and pushed his cushion in a restless way, so that at last he fairly pushed it off its desk. He was quick enough to catch it by the tassel, but he did not catch his Bible, which fell on Dr. Sharpe's head or shoulder, and thence to the floor of the church. It was impossible to keep quite grave under the circumstances. Even the clergy smiled, the clerk sought refuge ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... you've seen me fill my fountain pen hundreds of times," answered Mother Blossom patiently. "You always ask me that, and you know I can't have you spilling ink all over my desk. Run away and find something pleasant to do till I finish this letter, and then we'll toast ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... place, who were wont to bow their recognitions across the nave. There was a decrepit west gallery for the band, and the ground floor was crammed with cranky pews of every shape. A Carolean pulpit stood against a pillar, with reading-desk and clerk's box underneath. The ante-Communion Service was read from the desk, separated from the liturgy and sermon by such renderings of Tate and Brady as the unruly gang of volunteers with fiddles and wind instruments in the gallery pleased to contribute. The clerk, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... those left open in the desk; merely accounts of the estate, kept with brevity and with much apparent labour; sixty years ago literature, nay, education, were at a low ebb among English country gentlemen. But all the papers were so carefully arranged, that Nathanael had nothing to do but to glance over them and tie them up—simple ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... lords of the domain, Eastling being a corruption of Eastlying. Such was the view on which Hilda Wardhill was occasionally turning her gaze, though her eyes were more frequently fixed on the pages of a large volume lying open on a dark oak reading desk fixed in the recess, and so placed that the last rays of that precious sunlight which so soon departs in the long winter season of the North, might fall full upon it. The room was of an octagon shape, with dark oak wainscoting and ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... as to the soul. A beautiful soul, housed in a beautiful body, and supplied with all the external advantages necessary to produce and perpetuate such a combination—that is the Greek conception of well-being; and it is because labour with the hands or at the desk distorts or impairs the body, and the petty cares of a calling pursued for bread pervert the soul, that so strong a contempt was felt by the Greeks for manual labour and trade. "The arts that are called mechanical," says Xenophon, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Besancon), and whose munificent patronage of arts and letters turned that city into a little Florence during the Spanish regime. In the church is seen the plain red marble sarcophagus of his parents, also a carved reading desk and several pictures presented to the church by his son, the Cardinal. There is a curious old Spanish house in the town, a relic of the same epoch. Ornans is celebrated for its cherry orchards and fabrications of Kirsch, also for ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... what would be possible. Then confessed to herself that it would not be all bad to have somebody to break her solitude, even anybody; then got over another qualm of repugnance, and drew the table near her and opened her desk. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... out, Donaldson crossed to the chemist's desk. He fumbled nervously among the bottles until he found the little vial Barstow had pointed out. He had just time to thrust this into his pocket and reseat himself before Barstow returned. At the same moment there was a firm but decidedly feminine knock ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... God! Can't you leave that letter alone, or, at least, can't you refrain from reading it aloud? I've been through it once. Put it back on the desk. ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... that looked business. One side was almost papered with ordnance maps of this and an adjoining county. Pigeon-holes abounded, too, and there was a desk six feet long, chock full of little drawers—contents indicated outside in letters of which the proprietor ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... rough benches were marked with names and crosses. On the whitewashed walls were coloured maps of Galicia and tables of the Austrian kings and queens; on the blackboard still an unfinished arithmetical sum and on the master's desk ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... Sharp in to see how it works, before I turn on the current," he said to himself. He was about to summon his parent and the aeronaut from an adjoining shop, where they were working over a new form of dynamo, when the lad caught sight of the watch charm he had left on his desk, in plain sight. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... Herr Goebel rose, and went to his desk in a corner of the room, where he indited the memorial he had outlined, and, after sprinkling it with sand, presented it ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... own age, dressed in extreme negligee, sleeves rolled up, shirt open, face and throat brown like the brown of autumn. It seemed to make things easier for the trio that Tom vaulted up onto the bookkeeper's high desk, as if he were vaulting a fence, and sat there swinging his legs, the very embodiment ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... drew the document from a pigeon-hole in his desk, adjusted his glasses and prepared to read. Then, as though struck by a sudden thought, he laid the paper down and ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... had never been entered since they left it together, for Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... of an indicator on the desk showed that Verity's private telephone had been switched on from the general office. By sheer force of routine, David picked up a receiver and placed it to his ear. The sub-editor of the newspaper whose representative ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... His guidance. The work that is to minister to the Christian life must be work conformed to the Christian ideal, and if we fling ourselves into our secular business, as it is called—if you go to your counting-houses and shops, and I go to my desk and books, and forget the Shepherd—then there is no grass by the wayside for such sheep. But if we subject our wills to Him, and if in all that we do we are trying to refer to Him and are working in dependence on Him, and for Him, then the poorest work, the meanest, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... desk (No. 56) she had to wait her turn in a disorderly queue before she could tender the bill and her five-pound note. Customers pressed round her on all sides as she put down the note and peered through the wire network into ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... and the young clergyman was sitting at his study table; the fire was burning in the grate at his right hand, and his half-written sermon lay on the desk before him. After reading the letter, at first hurriedly and amazedly, afterward more slowly, with frequent pauses, he folded it up, and, still holding it in his hand, leaned back in his chair, and remained for the better part of an hour in a state of deep ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... electric sign, bearing the words Telegram and Evening News. He entered, and at once made his way through several rooms until he reached the editorial office at the back of the building. The door was open, and seated at the desk was an elderly man, busily writing. He looked up as Reynolds appeared, and a smile ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... there would not have been the least doubt about the fact that he was a traveller travelling on his travels. He looked like a traveller, and was dressed like a traveller. He had a travelling-cap, a travelling-coat, a portable-desk, a life-preserver, a water-proof blanket, a travelling-shirt, a travelling green leather satchel strapped across his shoulder, a Minie-rifle, several trunks adorned with geographical railway labels of all colors and languages, cork-soled boots, a pocket-compass, and a hand-organ. As for the hand-organ, ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... as easily as if she had been an infant, and laid her tenderly down on one of the pew cushions; then placed the lantern on the pulpit desk, and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... He shut his desk and hurried out into the early night, not to go anywhere, but to walk up and down, to try to find his way out of the chaos, which now seemed ruin, and now the materials out of which fine actions and a happy life might be shaped. Three hours later ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... fallen fortunes—Edith Darrell dismissed contemptuously, as a cold-blooded jilt, from his memory. Well, so she had willed it—she had no right to complain. With a steady hand she tied up the letters and replaced them in the desk. The picture followed. "Good-by, Charley," she said, with a sort of smile. She could no more have destroyed those souvenirs of the past than she could have cut off her right hand. Wrong, you say, and shake ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... she could not hear what was asked? Every answer was a mere guess. After a time any child would become stupid under such conditions, believing it of no use to attempt to answer at all. This little girl was, at my suggestion, given a seat not far from the teacher's desk and especial pains was afterward taken to speak distinctly to her. . . . She has since manifested such marked improvement that, at the close of the last school year, she ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... little bedroom which Mrs Sands loved to keep as dainty and pretty as a lady's, and from the garden where the roses and geraniums did such credit to her care, and from her place in the little church where her prayer-book still lay on the desk as she had ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... each seizing the object that in his eyes appeared to be most valuable—such as a desk or workbox,—sprang after the household and left the house to its fate. They first made for the cattle-kraals, but these were already flooded and the cattle gone. Then they tried a barn which stood a little higher, but it was evidently no place of refuge, for the stream just there was strong, and ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... could not deny that it looked very bad for us. Of the original marriage there was no doubt; indeed, my father had told Torwood where to find the certificate of it, folded up in the secret drawer of his desk, with his commission in the army; and the register of Faith's burial was only too plain. The only chance there was for us was, that her identity could not be established; but Mr. Eagles did not think it would go off on this. The ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... then there were six. Six Christmas presents, one of them alive; Rob took the puppy dog, then there were five. Five Christmas presents yet on the floor; Bobbin took the soldier cap, then there were four. Four Christmas presents underneath the tree; Bobbet took the writing desk, then there were three. Three Christmas presents still in full view; Robin took the checker board, then there were two. Two Christmas presents, promising fun, Bobbles took the picture book, then there was one. One Christmas present—and now the list is done; ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... Pretty straw mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down on a praying-desk. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... John Murray, who appears to have taken his time in reading it; for it was not until 23rd December that he expressed his views in the following letter. Even when the letter was written it was allowed to remain in John Murray's desk for five weeks, not ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... after Werner, interested, and I followed. The door through to the reception room stood open and beyond was the one to Manton's quarters. I could see the promoter at his desk, receiver at his ear, an impatient expression upon his face. In the reception room a rather pretty girl, young and of a shallow- pated type I thought, was busy at a clattering typewriter. She rose and closed the door upon Manton, so as not to ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... escaping with them to America! Yet, in the midst of all this suspense, we find her industrious as ever, joining in the daytime in the family life of the household with which she was domesticated, helping to amuse the children among them, retiring to her room at ten at night, to work on at her desk till seven in the morning, according to her wont. A more cheerful tone begins to pervade her effusions. The clouds were slowly breaking on all sides at once, and a variety of circumstances combining to restore ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the fate he had anticipated for himself, productions which he threatened to inflict on his brother-officers; but, as they earnestly entreated him to keep them fresh for those who could better appreciate them, he locked the papers up again in his desk—the purser, however, who did not intend to pay him a compliment at the expense of the rest, assuring him that it would be like casting ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... don't think I should like to work for that," said Frank. "Are those cash boys?" he asked, pointing out some boys of apparently ten to twelve years, old, who were flitting about from desk to counter. ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of a room was Dick's armoury, den, and refuge. It was furnished with extreme simplicity. At the further end two rusty leather arm-chairs flanked a cast-iron stove in the corner, and were balanced in the other and darker corner by a knee-hole writing-desk littered with seeds and bulbs and spurs and bits of fishing tackle, and equipped for its real purpose with a forbidding-looking pen and inkpot, and a torn piece of weather-beaten blotting-paper. At about a third of the way down from the terrace door a great screen, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... On my desk is a contract waiting to be signed for another four years at the school. Beside it is a letter from Brother, begging me to drop everything and come home at once. Can yon guess what the temptation is? On the one hand ceaseless work, uncongenial surroundings and ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... the whole room, was a kind of little platform, on which stood a desk and an arm-chair. Mrs. Bunting guessed rightly that it was there the coroner would sit. And to the left of the platform was the witness-stand, also ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... crept over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... at my desk. I had just laid aside my pen, and was meditating whether, after the last kabar, the Queen would not have come to a decision. All at once I heard an extraordinary noise in the court. I was about to leave my room, the windows of which looked in an opposite direction, to see what ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... on his desk at the moment of writing these lines half a dozen good books, each containing a set of rules for spelling. From these it would be easy to compile a set of fairly good rules. Each of these rules, however, has exceptions, in some cases quite numerous. To remember these rules with their ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... scenting a foe,—and seating himself in a high-backed chair, he arranged his garments fussily about him, rolled up his long embroidered sleeves to the elbow, and spread his writing implements all over the desk in front of him with much mock-solemn ostentation. Then, rubbing his lean hands together, he gave a stealthy glance of covert derision round at Sah-luma and Theos,—a glance which Theos saw and in his heart resented, but which Sah- luma, absorbed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... I would quite forget myself, and sit staring into vacancy, till Mr. Davies, lifting his nose from his volume, would note my absence and call on me by name, and thump his desk, and startle me with some question on the matter we were supposed to have in hand. A mighty matter, truly, the name of some emperor or the date of some campaign—matter infinitely less real than the name of the ship that was leaving the ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Sometimes I wondered if he would remember me in his will. This, of course, was only when I had taken Phyllis somewhere, or when some creditor had lost patience. One morning in January, five years after my second meeting with Phyllis, I sat at my desk in the office. It was raining; a cold thin rain. The window was blurred. The water in the steam-pipes went banging away. I was composing an editorial which treated the diplomatic relations between this country ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... little drawer in her writing-desk. It contained the few personal relics which she could not bring herself to destroy. She was not given to the hoarding up of sentimental trifles; and the preservation of these keepsakes was a concession to that weaker side of her nature which she kept under with so ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... the stage; the orchestra was empty. The green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding minister. The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... that I have personally delivered the battery records, correctly sorted, labeled, and securely crated, to the demobilization office. The typewriter, field-desk, and stationery have been turned in, and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... few minutes a figure glided in, and by a courteous gesture was motioned to a chair. Washington opened a desk, and took from it a small ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... minister opened a cabinet and brought out the Scriptures, which were written on long pieces of skin made into a kind of paper. The pieces were kept rolled up when they were not in use. The minister brought two of the rolls and laid them on the reading desk. Someone read the Scripture lessons then, and after that anyone in the congregation who wished could go up to the front and ...
— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford
... Meg; surely not," quavered the old grandmother, who, for reasons of her own, wished to appear ignorant. Was it not to refresh her failing memory about what happened just about this time of year, a long while ago, that she had gone to her daughter's desk, and got out those old faded letters? Mrs. MacDougall would not have minded her reading them, but she would mind having them lost, for she was very methodical; and besides, many of these letters were important ones, written by hands ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... he desired Mr. Lear to call Mrs. Washington to his bedside; when he requested her to bring from his desk two wills, and on receiving them, he gave her one, which he observed was useless as being superseded by the other, and desired her to burn it, which she did, and put the other ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... dirty little box, this counting-house, with nothing in it but an old ricketty desk and two stools, a hat-peg, an ancient almanack, an inkstand with no ink, and the stump of one pen, and an eight-day clock which hadn't gone for eighteen years at least, and of which the minute-hand had been twisted off for ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of the Roman Emperors were, as we should expect, especially restless. Pliny[82] tells us how Fannius, who was engaged upon a Life of Nero, was warned by him of his approaching death. He was lying on his couch at dead of night with a writing-desk in front of him, when Nero came and sat down by his side, took up the first book he had written on his evil deeds, and read it through to the end; and so on with the second and the third. Then he vanished. Fannius was terrified, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... wants the desk for his sitting room," thought the Petria man lazily, his eye, keen as it was, failing to see the doctor in the crowd. "Let him have it, and I'll buy it from him for ten dollars more before he leaves the sale. He can't resist turning ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... anemones. Everything basked in sunlight and glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white chapel stood in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let me see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water vessel stood some withered hyacinths. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... infinitely greater number of words pass over the telephonic circuits of the world in a year than are transmitted by telegraph operators. The telephone has become an important adjunct to the transaction of business of all sorts. Its wires penetrate everywhere. Without moving from his desk, the London citizen may hold easy converse with a Parisian, a New Yorker with a dweller ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams |
