"Desk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the saloon, which he found deserted by all save a party of men who were engaged in playing cards. They never looked up as Tom entered, being deeply interested in the piles of money before them, and he passed on to the desk and made application for a room to a man with a pen behind his ear. Without saying a word he took down a key from a board by the side of his desk and led Tom along the cabin and unlocked a door and showed him ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... letter has been found in Mr. Fielding's desk, addressed to his creditors. It expresses regret for their losses, and promises, if his life is spared, and fortune favors him, to do all in his power to make them good. No one doubts Mr. Fielding's integrity, and regrets are expressed that he did not remain in the ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... work at the plan of her house. Her mother grumbled. Brother Tom made his jokes, and Gertrude "feazed," to use her own word. The neighbors came and went, and still Susan continued to sit with drawing-tools at her desk, sketching plan after plan, and rejecting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... I happened to enter the Boys' Department of an urban Church School at about 9.15 a.m. The Headmaster was sitting at his desk, drawing up schemes of "secular" work. All the boys above "Standard III"—94 in number—were grouped together, listening, or pretending to listen, to a "chalk-and-talk" lecture on "Prayer" [of which there are apparently five ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the president answered from his desk. "Completely withdrawn from the real world. Cannot speak, hear, or even ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... like a flood and he instantly rose up to answer them. In half an hour he was at his desk, and there he lost the bitterness of his grief in his daily work. Work, the panacea for all sorrow, the oldest gospel preached to men! And because his soul was fit for the sunshine it followed him, and the men who only met ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... that instant to forsake him and he grew paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he turned and made her ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... list you wanted," and drew one out of a pile of papers on the desk. Tucker opened it with an air of satisfaction, but I could see his face ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... of the worn leather chairs in the library, Patty was sitting perfectly still, with her eyes fixed on the orderly row of papers on the Governor's desk. She wore a white dress with a black ribbon at her waist, and in the dim light, with her pale face and her cloudy hair, she had a ghostly look as if she would turn to mist at a touch. When Corinna entered, she rose and held out ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... this morning in the most industrious mood, when the misfortune befell. Close by the sanctum where the librarians sit are two desks where you write down the list of the books you want. I was doing so at the right-hand desk, on which abuts the first row of tables. Hence all the mischief. Had I written at the left-hand desk, nothing would have happened. But no; I had just set down as legibly as possible the title, author, and size of a certain work on Roman Antiquities, when, in replacing the penholder, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was seated 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 ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the bank somewhat earlier than usual, waiting impatiently for Dennison and the time to open the doors: they always arrived together. When Dennison stepped into the room, bowing in his engaging manner to each clerk as he passed to his own desk, I confronted him, shaking him warmly by the hand. At that moment all the others fell to writing and figuring with unusual avidity, as if thinking of anything under the sun except ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... half an hour from twelve when this brief meeting and colloquy took place between the two captains. A coach, into which Captain Osborne's servant put his master's desk and dressing-case, had been in waiting for some time; and into this the two gentlemen hurried under an umbrella, and the valet mounted on the box, cursing the rain and the dampness of the coachman who was steaming beside him. "We shall find a better trap than this at the church-door," ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of making his peace with Hugh, of meeting Westervelt's hard stare, aided this resolution, and, sitting at his desk, he wrote a long and passionate letter, wherein he delineated with unsparing hand his miserable failure. He took a pride and a sort of morbid pleasure in punishing himself, in denying himself any ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... first and second books of that work the East India Company is criticised with the greatest severity.... I have no doubt that owing to Pulteney's negotiations it lay unrevised and unaltered during four years in the author's desk." ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put him back in his chair. ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... 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 a hymn; and then ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and always inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the High Street whose ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... south from the main entrance leads to the Current Periodicals Room (Room Number 111). Here about 4,500 current periodicals are on file. A hundred of these are on open racks. The others may be obtained upon application at the desk. A classified finding list gives the reader the titles of periodicals kept here. As this room is sometimes confused in the public mind with a popular or club reading room, it should be remembered that this is one department in a building primarily devoted to the reference work of the Library. ...
— Handbook of The New York Public Library • New York Public Library
... Strong, saluting his commanding officer as the elder spaceman left the room. He turned back to a large desk in the center of the room where Roger Manning was busy noting figures on a large chart, showing the areas already covered and listing the squadrons engaged in ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... writing table in the War Office, opening letters. On his left is the fireplace, with a fire burning. On his right, against the opposite wall is a standing desk with an office stool. The door is in the wall behind him, half way between the table and the desk. The table is not quite in the middle of the room: it is nearer to the hearthrug than to the desk. There is a chair at each end of it for persons having business with the general. ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... of that sort eventually drove me to it. I passed my viva-voce examination at the hands of the young lady at the desk, paid my fees, got my testamur, and was shown into the torture-chamber, where the head executioner was busy adjusting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... to his desk and selects a "Who's Who" from a little pile of reference-books on it. He walks round to his chair, sits down in it and begins to turn the pages, murmuring names beginning with "C" to himself as he gets near the place. When he finds it, he murmurs "Clifton—that's ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... the Carl-Friedrichs-Strasse to the Margrave's Pyramid, and back to the hotel, where Dare also decided to take up his stay. De Stancy left him with the book-keeper at the desk, and went upstairs to see if the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the room; the books alone were worth more than his earthly possessions. From a desk loomed a bust of Webster. Shadows seemed to leap from it; the sombre lips bespoke the futility of striving against ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... on him, or fate. Besides, he's damned. That man I do suspect A coward, who would burden the poor deuce With what ensues from his own slipperiness. I have just found a wanton-scented tress In an old desk, dusty for lack of use. Of days and nights it is demonstrative, That, like some aged star, gleam luridly. If for those times I must ask charity, Have I not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... person with sandy, mutton-chop whiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. His braid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedingly well-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-topped desk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls and the dignity of a ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... saw that a desk, opposite him, stood between the two windows that faced the garden. It seemed very old-fashioned, to Chris—no neat folded writing paper, but large bold sheets covered in Mr. Wicker's delicate handwriting lay on the open top, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... battleship" was the way he told of his wild career. The boys at Reherrey loved and respected him. His Bible class was the most enthusiastic I saw in France. When he announced a Sunday evening service the hut was filled. Candles served as chandelier and desk lamp. With a sergeant who was a live wire at the piano and Briggs as song leader, the singing of the fellows not only "raised the roof" but it also raised ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... finally closed on one cold, gray afternoon in the early part of December. As Hiram tore his bond across and then tore it across again and again, Squire Hall pushed back the papers upon his desk and cocked his feet upon its slanting top. "Hiram," said he, abruptly, "Hiram, do you know that Levi West is forever hanging around Billy Martin's house, after that pretty ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... The telegram or any cause of emotion sets her to shaking. She cries for no cause; the least alarm makes her hand shake, and even her writing, if she should chance to become the subject of observation when at the desk, betrays her state of tremor. What caused all this trouble? What made her, as she says, good for nothing? I have, of course, put an extreme case. We may, as a rule, be pretty sure, as to this condition, that the woman has had some sudden shock, some severe domestic trial, some long ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... detictive that iver was in a story book. I've been r-readin' about him an' if I was a criminal, which I wud be if I had to wurruk f'r a livin', an' Sherlock Holmes got afther me, I'd go sthraight to th' station an' give mesilf up. I'd lay th' goods on th' desk an' say: 'Sargeant, put me down in th' hard cage. Sherlock Holmes has jus' see a man go by in a cab with a Newfoundland dog an' he knows I took th' spoons.' Ye see, he ain't th' ordh'nry fly cop like Mulcahy that always runs in th' Schmidt ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... heard him patiently. The dusty wrinkled boots of the merchant rested on the desk. His chair was tilted back in such a way that the weight of his body was distributed between the back of his neck, the lower end of the spine, and his heels. He looked a picture of sleepy, indolent ease, but Tom knew he was not missing the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... say that you are bashful in assuming your new privileges. Then you had better go back to your old habits, because you always used to come where I was. You must come and go now like my very second self." Then he came forward from the desk at which he was wont to stand and write, and essayed to put his arm round her waist. She drew back, but still he was not startled. "It was but a cold kiss I gave you down below. You must kiss me now, you, as a ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... that such acquaintance had also its risks, the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... toward the gate, saw one curious thing. A sentry stood by the railway official who was taking up tickets, and two or three times he stopped and questioned civilian passengers. Two of these, moreover, he ordered into the ticket office, where, as he went by, Harry saw an officer, seated at a desk, examining civilians. ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the green shade, with his head bent over white paper, Mr. Sibley transferred figures to folios, and upon each desk you observe, like provender, a bunch of papers, the day's nutriment, slowly consumed by the industrious pen. Innumerable overcoats of the quality prescribed hung empty all day in the corridors, but as the clock struck six each was exactly ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Stone of this city, large dealers in furniture, have given the use of a handsome and convenient desk which will enable us to bring order out of chaos. So you can imagine us, surrounded by all convenient appliances, hard at work in our new quarters a good part of every day for this last month before ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... he got about twelve years ago Come to us out of bed in his furred mittens and furred cap Court full of great apprehensions of the French Declared he will never have another public mistress again Desk fastened to one of the armes of his chayre Do outdo the Lords infinitely (debates in the Commons) Enough existed to build a ship (Pieces of the true Cross) Enviously, said, I could not come honestly by them Erasmus "de scribendis epistolis" For I will be hanged before I seek to him, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger
... hunt. As he had never destroyed the letters, they must exist; but, in the name of mischief, where? He seemed to remember thrusting his own letters to Chloe into a desk of his schoolboy days which used to stand in his London sitting-room. Very likely some of hers might be there too. But the thought of his own had by now become a much greater anxiety to him than the wish ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... reader must be chosen, who can bring out the light and shade in the story—one who can make the listeners feel the pathos of Carol's brief, helpful existence and the contrasting homely humor of "the Ruggleses in the rear." A reading-desk and lamp must stand below the platform, and the audience-room be left in darkness. The reader will give the signal for the opening and closing of the curtains, pausing long enough for a full recognition ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... some one known to be pledged to another candidate, or professing himself under no obligations to any man, would swaggeringly or shamefacedly, as the case might be, announce as his name was called from the alphabetical list by the brazen-voiced reader in front of the speaker's desk that his choice for a United States senator was ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... papers were mixed, I left my writing-desk open; pray lock the drawers and desk both, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... down the columns of figures and such words as gross receipts, increase of population, sinking fund, redeemable at 105 after 1920, churned vigorously and meaninglessly through my brain. But I was not going to let him know that to understand the circular I should have to take it away quietly to my desk in Nassau Street, and spend an ...
— Mother • Owen Wister
... some Hebrew letters, executed as journeymen painters usually do execute them, had a less cheerful look than the highly-coloured lion and unicorn on the gallery in front. The clerk's box, the reading-desk, and the pulpit, piled one above another, had a symmetrical effect, to which the umbrella-shaped sounding-board above gave a distant resemblance to a Chinese pagoda. The only things which gave warmth or colour to the interior as a whole were the cushions and pew curtains. There were plenty of them, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... towards the end of May that Macassar Jones, presenting himself before the desk of the senior clerk at one o'clock, begged for permission to be absent for two hours. The request was preferred with meek and hesitating voice, and with ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... kinsman's poor taste. He took many a bed apart, scraped off the disfiguring varnish, sandpapered and oiled the wood, and put it together in new and beautiful forms. He made several tables, a cabinet, a bench, half a dozen chairs, a set of hanging shelves, and even aspired to a desk, which, owing to the limitations of the ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... or three revivals. I remember, when Mr. Nettleton was preaching in Litchfield, going to carry a note to him from father; and for a sensitive, bashful boy like me it was a severe ordeal. I went to the room where he was speaking, with the note in my trembling hand, and had to lay it on the desk beside him. Before I got halfway across the floor I was dazed and everything seemed to swim around me, but I made out to get the note to him, and he said: 'That's enough; go away, boy,' and I sort of backed and ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... reached the music room, which was bare of instruments, pictures, furniture, all save a tall desk upon which lay a heap of music paper. Neshevna made a loping dart to the desk—she was like a wolf in her movements—and threw a handkerchief over it. Lenyard watched her curiously. Scheff gave one of his good-natured ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... for Mr. Kennedy after having disposed of his early morning business. There was a scowl on the owner's face, but it had not been caused by the telegram which lay on the desk before him, informing him that Phil was not seriously hurt. That was a source of keen satisfaction to the showman, for he felt that he could not afford to lose ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Captain-General himself is sometimes present in the sanctuary, and, after a familiar chat about the happy landing of "the contraband,"—as the traffic is amiably called, the requisite rouleaux are insinuated into the official desk under the intense smoke of a fragrant cigarillo. The metal is always considered the property of the Captain-General, but his scribe avails himself of a lingering farewell at the door, to hint an immediate and pressing need for "a ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... way the seething crowd of anxious brokers on the floor got word of the decision before ten o'clock struck. Immediately upon the adjournment of the Committee Mr. George W. Ely the Secretary of the Exchange ascended the Chairman's desk in the board room and made the formal announcement, which was greeted with cheers of approbation. The President promptly appointed Messrs. H. K. Pomroy, Ernest Groesbeck, Donald G. Geddes, and Samuel F. ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... expected to find anything, but because a good soldier should never neglect his scouting operations. He went first into the little lobby at the entrance, where the offices were. Antoine had lighted a candle and left it on the desk of the bureau. Otherwise he could have seen little in the room as the twilight was advancing fast, and the white gloom, made by the falling ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... taught, in the twilight let through the windows of oiled paper. The seats were of hewn blocks, so heavy that the boys could not upset them; in the midst was a great stove; and against the wall stood the teacher's desk, of un-planed plank. But as Glass used to say to his pupils, "The temple of the Delphian god was originally a laurel hut, and the muses deign to dwell accordingly in very rustic abodes." His labors in the school were not suffered to keep him from higher aims: he wrote a life ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... forty-five, looked up from the desk where he had been writing, as he uttered this request; but his voice trembled slightly, and was replete with tenderness, as he spoke the ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... desk, he opened a long casket which contained numerous little parcels, all tied up with a slender cord, and on each was written ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... marriage to Capt. Jack Crawford had turned out so unhappily—some men were brutes, weren't they? There was a hidden romance gnawing at the Big Four's heart, and Phoebe Snow had a picture of James K. Hackett on her desk and wanted to start a poultry farm. The Santa Fe had been married once, but had taken her maiden name, it was so ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... chambre to follow the carriage on horseback. One day the First Consul, while returning to Paris, ascertained a short distance from the chateau that he had forgotten his snuff-box, and sent me for it. I turned my bridle, set off at a gallop, and, having found the snuff-box on his desk, retraced my steps to overtake him, but did not succeed in doing so till he had reached Ruelle. Just as I drew near the carriage my horse slipped on a stone, fell, and threw me some distance into a ditch. The fall was very severe; and I ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... plank, quartered and beaded; shingled with 18-inch pine shingles; sawed frame, and frame work ceiled with quartered plank, beaded, and floored with 1-1/4-inch plank, with proper cornice under the eaves, with pulpit, desk, communion table, etc. With doors, windows & seats, after the manner of the Upper Church, and all the proper facings and mouldings; and window shutters, to be shingled with single tiers, weather boarded with eights, and filled with tens or brads; ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... twice; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word 'death' he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... works he can be better judged as a sculptor than he could be if the effect of the whole depended partly upon painting. The choir-stalls in the Cathedral of Ulm and the fountain in the market-place, called "Fischkasten," are his most important works; but a singing-desk, now in the museum, and other lesser pieces are also excellent examples of his style. The choir-stalls have an immense number of figures and a mass of ornament, which made them far richer than any such work of an earlier date, and none that have since been made have ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... my own room and at the partly open doorway of the library, where I was able to watch him in secrecy. Several times I saw him bend over a small book and study it with the intent regard of a disciple, and each time that he referred to a certain page he pounded his fist on the desk and cried to himself: "God ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... was beginning to sing decidedly now and the telephone inside the grated window suddenly sat up a furious ringing. Billy's eye came round the corner of the window, scanned the empty platform, glimpsed the office desk inside and the weighty figure holding the receiver, then vanished enough to be out of sight, leaving only a wide ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... which have come to hand. True, I have not written to you as frequently as during the first few weeks of my residence here. For the last month I have been very much occupied by public business. You will need no other proof of it when I tell you that near twenty unanswered letters are now on my desk, not one of yours among them, however, except that received last evening. I have not even been to the theatre except about an hour, and then it was more an errand of ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... calculation, the professor leaned over his desk. One hand held his massive brow; the other guided ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... expense, and exposure to secure, is in direct conflict with my military plans, implies a want of confidence in my capacity to judge when General Loring's troops should fall back, and is an attempt to control military operations in details from the Secretary's desk at a distance...As a single order like that of the Secretary's may destroy the entire fruits of a campaign, I cannot reasonably expect, if my operations are thus to be interfered with, to be of much service in the field...If I ever acquired, through the blessing ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Is it not better than to be pent up in a city? Here we breathe the pure air of the woods; we listen to the songs of the birds; we are not chained to the desk or confined from morning till night in a ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... as a dining-room, since this interferes with the orderly work of the house, no less than with the comfort of the family. It may with propriety, however, be made also the sewing-room, and, in general, the mother's managerial office. Here she should keep her desk and her household account-books, and meet the tradesmen and other business callers. It is also more suited than the parlor for use as a family reading-room and working library. Disorder that betokens use, such as magazines on the center-table, or of papers on the desk, ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... was a point to be considered. The things must be took out of the drawers and the attached desk, or the governor he'd never have it at the shop. He was a person of the most delicate sensibility, who shrank from making himself responsible for anything whatever. Them drawers must be emptied out, or nothing could be done. Why—you'd only ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... speech of Mrs. Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman was upon the Government of the country in which we live—that she should reside in sight of the Capitol of Washington and never get nearer the interior of that building than the reporter's desk. Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked to us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... from the envelope, and glanced at it with faint interest, so Beaumont-Greene thought. Then he picked up a magnifying glass and played with it. It was a trick of his to pick up objects on his desk, and turn them in his thin, nervous fingers. Beaumont-Greene was not seriously alarmed. He had great faith in a weapon which had served ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... farmer isn't upon very familiar ground—or if every farmer doesn't know his own manure heap as well as Mr. Symons knew his writing desk— ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... questions of Cocker, or the slip-lines of Butterworth, amid whole fleets of smacks, frigates, and brigantines. My new master, professionally acquainted with this secret property of arithmetic and copy-books, laid hold of mine, and, bringing them to his desk, found them charged with very extraordinary revelations indeed. The blank spaces were occupied with deplorably scrabbled couplets and stanzas, blent with occasional remarks in rude prose, that dealt chiefly with natural phenomena. One note, for instance, which ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed the letter, handed it over to Kim, and departed. Mahbub Ali's was a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... only eleven hundred things to do before eating a bite of lunch on the top of his desk, will get up and gravely instruct her. Which is exactly ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... little difficulty he procured a small piece of not very clean paper and a very short bit of lead pencil, and, using the top of one of the wagons, as he sat on the seat, for a desk, he indited ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis
... Bentley (Dissertation upon Phalaris, p. 48) might justly, though quaintly observe, that "you feel, by the emptiness and deadness of them, that you converse with some dreaming pedant, with his elbow on his desk."] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... I could see him fumbling at the safe that he kept there beside the desk. Presently he drew out a battered and dented red tin box and a bundle of papers. These he brought into the dining room and laid on the table. Then he drew up a chair, cleared his throat, rather loudly it ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... of the hovel and the workshop; that even to the unlettered they sound as common-place; this is a phenomenon which must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of civilization; ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... upon the memory. Whole volumes of fugues, sonatas of Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and the new men are memorized, as a matter of course. Better wrong notes, in the estimation of the more superficial musical public, than playing with the music on the piano desk. And then to top all these terrible things, you must have the physique of a sailor, the nerves of a woman, the impudence of a prize-fighter, and the humility of an innocent child. Is it any wonder that, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... does it cost, do you say," he inquired of the Promoter, "to buy a postage stamp at the desk here? I want to put one on a letter I have in my pocket. May I slip it into the post-box myself, or do I have to call a flunkey, present him with a dollar, and respectfully request him to insert it ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... affair is examined, the more clearly does the guilt of the Duke and Duchess appear; for three days ago, Malezieux, who is in the Bastille, gave up his writing-desk. The first thing that was found in it was a projet, which Malezieux had written at the Duchess's bedside, and which Cardinal de Polignac had corrected with his own hand. Malezieux pretends that it is a Spanish letter, addressed to the Duchess, and that he had translated it for her, ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... the desk and dabbed a little ink from each bottle on to the blotting paper. "It was not printed in this room," he said; "this is black ink and the other purplish. It was done by a thick pen, and these are fine. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... AMBON (Gr. ambon, from anabainein, to walk up, the reading-desk of early Basilican churches, also called purgos. Originally small and movable, it was afterwards made of large proportions and fixed in one place. In the Byzantine and early Romanesque periods it was an essential part of church furniture; ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ought to see him, anyway. At least see him." He turned to Jo-Anne, who was sitting at the next desk, writing up some reports. ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... he is naturally bad," answered the judge, who sat in a big chair back of a high desk. "From what I can learn, he has been under William Leavitt's control since they were children. Shorty tried to get away from his brother twice, but each time William found and punished him so brutally ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... my ranch life was as follows: Each morning, at eight-thirty, having been reading or correcting proofs in bed since four or five, I went to my desk. Odds and ends of correspondence and notes occupied me till nine, and at nine sharp, invariably, I began my writing. By eleven, sometimes a few minutes earlier or later, my thousand words were finished. Another half-hour at cleaning up my desk, and my day's work was done, so ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... at his desk, like a big spider for who time has no meaning. Before him lay two newspapers, folded so as to expose paragraphs heavily indicated by blue pencil-marks. They were not financial journals, and for that reason it was improbable that he would have seen these ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... were imported during the latter part of the century. Mrs. Elizabeth Digges owned five Spanish tables, two green carpets and a Turkey-work carpet; Mrs. Elizabeth (Mason) Thelaball, of Lower Norfolk County, had among her possessions a small desk and a writing-slate. In the goods consigned, 1694, by Perry and Lane of London to Mrs. Elizabeth Woory, of Isle of Wight ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... entered the doctor's office a few moments before in obedience to the invitation sank into a luxurious chair. The doctor looked at him casually, and, touching an indicator at the side of his desk, said: ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... Congress will recall a little chair that daily rolled down the aisle to the front to the Speaker's desk. It contained the emaciated form of a man whose weight at his best was but ninety pounds—Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, "whose little body lodged a mighty mind." No one who saw Mr. Stephens could ever forget him. He looked as though he had just ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... on you in the middle of the term out of a blue sky, as it were, was underhand and unsportsmanlike, and would not do at all. Pillingshot wished that he could put his foot down. He would have liked to have stalked up to Mr Mellish's desk, fixed him with a blazing eye, and remarked, 'Sir, withdraw that remark. Cancel that statement instantly, or—!' or ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... grate, in which the charcoal was crackling and peeling and running like frying grease, to become red, he sat down in front of his desk and ran over ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... his empty key box and went on to the telephone desk. It was Mary V, he guessed. He had promised to call her up, but there hadn't been any news to tell, nothing but the flat monotony of inaction, which meant failure, and Johnny Jewel never liked talking of his failures, even ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... well-kept, prosperous look. He found its owner in a small room furnished as an office. Files of papers and a large map of the Western Provinces hung on one wall; and Clarke was seated at a handsome American desk. He wore old overalls, and the soil on his boots suggested that he had been engaged in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... basking in the sun outside, breathing the perfume of the flowers, and idly watching the clouds as they floated on before the light summer wind. Presently the schoolmaster took his seat behind his desk, and as he seemed pleased to have little Nell beside him, she busied herself with her work, entering into conversation with the schoolmaster while the scholars conned their lessons, and watching the boys with eager and ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... again and looked thoughtfully at the pile of legal documents in the case of Woodman against the American Chemical Company lying on his desk. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... stranger, but still without any talking beyond what was required for the purposes of the meal. After it was over, and grace was said by one of our party, my lady rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in and cleared away the supper things: then they brought in a portable reading-desk, which was placed on the dais, and, the whole household trooping in, my lady called to one of my companions to come up and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day. I remember thinking how afraid I should have been had I been in her place. There ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... long, single-breasted frock-coat hung loosely enough about his shoulders, yet buttoned tightly over a stomach that was so incongruous as to seem artificial. The sleeves of the coat were glossy from much desk rubbing, and its front advertised a rather inattentive behavior at table. The Colonel's dress was completed by drab overgaiters and poorly draped trousers of the same once-delicate hue. Upon his bald head, which was high ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... luck this afternoon," he said. "You remember Appleby setting me a hundred-and-fifty the day before yesterday? Well, I showed them up to-day, and he looked through them and chucked them into the waste-paper basket under his desk. I thought at the time I hadn't seen him muck them up at all with his pencil, which is his usual game, so after he had gone at the end of school I nipped to the basket and fished them out. They were as good as new, so I saved them up in case I ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... from the looms. 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
... busy place. Three or four typewriters were clicking away, operated by sallow-faced girls, and behind a tall desk were two bookkeepers, in one of whom Uncle John recognized—with mild surprise—the tramp he had encountered at Chazy Junction on the morning of his arrival. The young fellow had improved in appearance, having discarded his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... a kindness, he renewed his quid of tobacco, turning quickly to the littered desk ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... was busy at his writing-desk when I entered; but when he looked up I saw the light of instant recognition in his eye. Never, I think, did another prisoner at the bar strive harder to read his sentence in his judge's eyes than I did in that moment of suspense. I liked not much the look ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... piled on little shelves, and bright bookcases are filled with reports and various documents concerning the society, all bound so exactly. The good-natured man of the kind face sits in refreshing ease behind a little desk; the wise-looking lean man, in the spectacles, is just in front of him, buried in ponderous folios of reports. In the centre of the room stands a highly-polished mahogany table, at which Brother Spyke is seated, his elbow rested, and his head leaning thoughtfully ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... in the Middleville High School, sat wearily at her desk. She was tired, as tired as she had ever been on any day of the fifteen long years in which she had wrestled with the problems of school life. Her hair was iron gray and she bent a worn, sad, severe face over a mass of ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... the accident, if, indeed, there is such a thing as accident in this world of ours. Just think for one moment what would have been the result if you had carried that bag to your office, put it in your desk, and never said a word about it till to-morrow morning, when there would perhaps have been an advertisement in The Times, offering fifty pounds reward. You might have got the money and been happy, and ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... minutes Owen sat drumming on his desk, lost in thought. "By George, that's a queer case. Her other reason is the real one. I wonder what ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... the power of appointing one of the three vicars—who was known as the "Official"—to hold courts and grant licences. The court was held in the western part of the north aisle, the Official presiding, seated at a desk, the two other vicars sitting one on each side of him, while at a long table sat the churchwardens, sidesmen, the vestry clerks, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... imminent grief the idea was squeezed out of my mind, perhaps because you were so far away and I did not know if I could find you even if I tried. Pausing for a moment before I dismissed Savage, I rose from the desk at which I was writing and began to walk up and down the room thinking what I would do. I am not certain if you saw it when you were at Ragnall, but it is a large room, fifty feet long or so though not very broad. It has two fireplaces, in both of which fires ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... the pulpit desk and showed a few coins drawn from the pocket of Hingston's pantaloons which he was wearing. "These shall be enough, for out of these three rusty old coppers I can make millions of ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... never, or not until lately, had a comic paper ranking with Punch or Charivari or the Fliegende Blaetter, every newspaper has had its funny column. Our humorists have been graduated from the journalist's desk and sometimes from the printing-press, and now and then a local or country newspaper has risen into sudden prosperity from the possession of a {564} new humorist, as in the case of G. D. Prentice's Courier-Journal, or more recently of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... division. The Squire's son had been in the last war as a boy, and like Sergeant Cane had left the army since. All the morning he had been cursing an imaginary general, seated in the War Office at an imaginary desk with Smith's own letter before him, in full view but unopened. Why on earth didn't he answer it, Smith thought. But he was calmer now, and the Squire and Sir Munion ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... me bring all my books and sit up at that little table beside his desk for a week. Of course I didn't mind that a bit, because then I could see what everybody in the room was doing instead of just the few around me. The only thing I prayed for was that Miss Muggins wouldn't come in ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's what I'm ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... The ceilings and floors were simply continuations of the walls, except for the glow-plates overhead. One room held a small cabinet for his personal possessions, a wide, reasonably soft bed, a small but adequate desk, and, in one corner, a cubicle that contained the necessary sanitary ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... furniture should remain in the little room, Patricia merely adding her own desk, and that she should retain it until another room might be secured from Miss Ardsley. Patricia was to move in the next day and, most alluring of all, Rosamond Merton told her that she should have regular hours of use of the fine grand piano which stood in ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... all of them sufficiently spacious for the purposes required, but which were made oppressive by their general dinginess and by a smell of old leather which pervaded them. In one of them sat at his desk Mr. Crabwitz, a gentleman who had now been with Mr. Furnival for the last fifteen years, and who considered that no inconsiderable portion of the barrister's success had been attributable to his own energy and genius. Mr. Crabwitz ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... the aging man said gratefully and hurried into the next room. Mead rapidly opened the windows, and some of the man's nervousness left him. He sank down into the visitor's chair in front of Mead's desk, his eyes drinking in the distances beyond the windows. "Thank ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... was gone, Magsie, with a thoughtful face and compressed lips, took two packages of letters from her desk and wrapped them for posting. She fell into deep musing for a few minutes before she wrote Rachael's name on the wrapper, but after that she dressed with her usual care, and carried the package to the elevator ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... more! He don't do nothing but lounge on the front of his desk, and be too lazy to keep up 'Amen,' while I at my time of life go about, from Absolution to the fifth Lord's prayer, with a stick that makes my rheumatics worse, for the sake of the boys with their pocket full of nuts. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... withered hand the latch of her own shop-door, seeming to be at the threshold, yet at the same time seated in her armchair behind the counter. She was asking alms of herself, and heard herself speaking from the doorway and also from her seat at the desk. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... quitted historical exposition and announced that he would speak on four heads. Carmichael, from his corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the tassels which hung therefrom—one of the minor glories of the Free Kirk—were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping from between his white wasted fingers. A pulpit lamp came between Carmichael and the Rabbi's face, but he could see the straining ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... office; Fraisier, arch-concocter of the whole scheme, Tabareau, appearing on behalf of Schmucke, and Schmucke himself. Gaudissart had come with him. Fraisier had been careful to spread out the money on Berthier's desk, and so dazzled was Schmucke by the sight of the six thousand-franc bank-notes for which he had asked, and six hundred francs for the first quarter's allowance, that he paid no heed whatsoever to the reading of the document. Poor man, he was scarcely in full possession of his faculties, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... without adequate proofs, have bound Shakespeare an apprentice to some country attorney; as Mr. Malone has sent him without sufficient warrant to the desk of some seneschal of a county court: but these are obscurities that require other lights than conjecture and assertion, which, by proving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... teaching. The first lesson had been read, and the ruler of the synagogue took from the sacred place where it was kept another parchment roll, and coming down the steps he handed it to Jesus. It was the roll of Isaiah, and as Jesus went up to the reader's desk He opened and unrolled it until He came to ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... coach, and drove to No. 16, Throgmorton Court, Minories. The house was dirty outside, and the windows had not been cleaned apparently for years, and it was with some difficulty when I went in that I could decipher a tall, haggard-looking man seated at the desk. ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... me, where was I? Oh, yes! Hambridge, poor fellow, was very much upset at the prospect of abandoning his expedition and I, knowing from experience what such a disappointment means, sympathized with him. Your check was at that moment lying on my desk. So—so—It was rather on the spur ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... electric lights behind him with an admirable air of finality. The extraordinary talk was at an end. He moved about the cabin, putting chairs straight and toying with the papers on his desk. Occasionally he threw a swift and searching glance at his companion, like a man who wished to note the effect of ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... end of their name. I'll undertake, that if you read the superscriptions to all the offices in the kingdom, you will not find three letters directed to any but esquires. I have myself a couple of clerks, and the rogues make nothing of leaving messages upon each other's desk: one directs, to "Degory Goosequill, Esq."; to which the other replies by a note, to "Nehemiah Dashwell, Esq.; with respect." In a word, it is now, populus armigerorum, a people of esquires. And I don't know, but, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... the library, which is much the same as the great writer left it at his death, and the chair and desk which he used still stand in their accustomed places. The most curious feature of the library is the rows of dummy books that occupy some of the shelves, and even the doors are lined with these sham leather backs glued ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... K. C. B. The admiral who "stuck close to his desk, and never went to sea." His reward was the appointment as "ruler of the Queen's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... guards were rats, and they gnawed the intelligence of me, gnawed all the fine nerves of the quick of me and of the consciousness of me. And I, who in my past have been a most valiant fighter, in this present life was no fighter at all. I was a farmer, an agriculturist, a desk-tied professor, a laboratory slave, interested only in the soil and the increase of the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... commonplace enough, but it is really fascinating. There are places in the Village,—notably one on Greenwich Avenue,—where these clever craftsmen make wonderful things from cubic forms of wood, from boxes and sticks and laths and blocks. They can make anything from a desk to a tall candlestick, and, softly coloured, the square, wooden objects make a highly decorative effect. It is a simple art but a striking one, and the aesthetic sense, the instinct for balance and proportion and ultimate beauty of line and ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... had still a segment to consider, and after that the immense table occupying the centre of the room, a table which in its double capacity (for it was as much desk as table) gave more promise of holding the solution of the mystery than anything to which she had hitherto given ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... great History and Arithmetic books that Herr Badger always keeps on the desk in front of him?" said Knut. "We'll scoop out the insides and fill them with fireworks. Then directly he comes into School, we'll let them off. What an explosion there'll be! He will be frightened! No more sums and ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... on. "Not the kind that usually comes out here on such expeditions, he admits. She did not speak to any one, except once in very low tones to the man she was with, and then she was standing by the fireplace out in the main office, quite a distance from the desk. She went upstairs alone, and he gave some orders to Burton before following her. That was the last time Burton saw her. The waitress went up with a specially prepared supper ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... gave a little click at the back of his throat, placed the mirror on the floor and stole across the Persian carpet of an unknown antiquity and value to a painted deal writing desk which had once reposed in a shop window in Westbourne Grove; and which, on account of its little drawers and little cupboards with painted doors, had given intense joy to the woman whose wealth in hard cash in the bank and jewels in the safe was almost incredible. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... from the army, January 28, 1861, and had accepted service under the new regime. His office was in the same old room in the Lafayette Square building, which he had in 1853, when I was there a commissary, with the same pictures on the wall, and the letters "U. S." on every thing, including his desk, papers, etc. I asked him if he did not feel funny. "No, not at all. The thing was inevitable, secession was a complete success; there would be no war, but the two Governments would settle all ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Tressilian that the lethargy, under which his old friend appeared to labour, had, even during his few weeks' absence, added bulk to his person—at least it had obviously diminished the vivacity of his eye, which, as they entered, first followed Master Mumblazen slowly to a large oaken desk, on which a ponderous volume lay open, and then rested, as if in uncertainty, on the stranger who had entered along with him. The curate, a grey-headed clergyman, who had been a confessor in the days of Queen Mary, sat with a book in his hand in ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... from the entrance directly into it; there I shall have an old writing-desk, and this nook will be ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... that the Rotundo, as its name imports, was a circular hall, of large extent, with a flagged floor, an arched coiling, and white walls. These were without windows, for the hall was lighted from above. On one side, near the wall, stood a desk or rostrum upon an elevated dais, and by the side of this a large block of cut stone of the form of a parallelopipedon. The use of these two ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... and on the instant mechanically replaced. The fallen leaves were collected and sorted by the officers present, and at once placed in one or other of another set of exactly similar instruments. Any one possessing a private wire can write at his own desk in the manual character a letter or message on one of these slips. Placing it in his own instrument, it at once reproduces itself exactly in his autograph, and with every peculiarity, blot, or erasure, at ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Jefferson seated at his desk and putting on the finishing touches to his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Enter ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... bills upon Hamburg and London. He lodged in the Hotel des Quatre Nations, Rue Grenelle, where the landlord, who is a patriot, introduced some police agents into his apartments during his absence. These broke open all his trunks, drawers, and even his writing-desk, and when he entered, seized his person, and carried him to the Temple. By his correspondence it was discovered that all this money was to be brought over to England; a reason more than sufficient to incur the suspicion of our Government. Van der Winkle spoke very little French, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for the most complicated crime on record. But Louise Van Burnam, while weak and volatile enough to enjoy the romantic features of this transformation scene, even going so far as to write out the order herself with the same effort at disguise she had used in registering their assumed names at the desk, was not entirely his dupe, and having hidden ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... in looking over my papers, I found in my desk the following copy of a letter, sent by me a year since ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... must be over 20,000 people shut in. Cases have been known in which a hopeful candidate was crushed to death in the crowd at the gate. Each candidate is first identified, and he is assigned a certain number which corresponds to a cell a few feet square, containing one board for a seat and one for a desk. Meanwhile the printers in the building are hard at work printing the essay texts. Each row of cells has two attendants for cooking, etc., assigned to it, the candidates take their seats, the rows are locked from the outside, the themes are handed out, the contest has begun. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various |
