"Scribbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the substance of Don John's administration. Never was chivalrous crusader so out of place. It was not a soldier that was then required for Philip's exigency, but a scribe. Instead of the famous sword of Lepanto, the "barbarous pen" of Hopperus had been much more suitable for the work required. Scribbling Joachim in a war-galley, yard-arm and yard-arm with the Turkish capitan pacha, could have hardly felt less at ease than did the brilliant warrior thus condemned to scrawl and dissemble. While marching from concession to concession, he found the states conceiving daily ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to Austen. On St. Valentine's Day of that year when, to tell the truth, he was seated in his office scribbling certain descriptions of nature suggested by the valentines in Mr. Hayman's stationery store, the postman brought in a letter from young Tom Gaylord. Austen laughed as he read it. "The Honourable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... permission of the admiral, but, if granted, he would willingly do as he was requested. No sooner had the interpreter translated the captain's reply than the great man, taking out writing materials from a box, seated himself on the floor, and began scribbling away on a scroll of paper, in wonderfully large characters, a note to the envoy. As line after line was finished he rolled it up, and then, with due formality, handed it to the captain, who had the curiosity ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... And he left town about then didn't he?" Mrs. Fairboalt was scribbling italicized notes on her memory—"hard, beautiful, empty, and easy to ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... performances, are conspicuous amongst the comedies of the Restoration dramatists for sheer brutality. During Pope's boyhood he was an elderly rake about town, having squandered his intellectual as well as his pecuniary resources, but still scribbling bad verses and maxims on the model of Rochefoucauld. Pope had a very excusable, perhaps we may say creditable, enthusiasm for the acknowledged representatives of literary glory. Before he was twelve years old he had persuaded ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... throat, and would have been the belle of the party had Hamilton permitted other attentions. But she gave him all the dances he demanded, and although her bright manner did not lapse toward sentiment for a moment, he went home so elated that he sat scribbling poetry until Laurens pelted him with pillows and ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... sisters were amused by her stories; but Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence; and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious discouragement. When she was fifteen, her father took a second wife. The new Mrs. Burney soon found out that her stepdaughter was fond of scribbling, and delivered several good-natured lectures on the subject. The advice no doubt was well meant, and might have been given by the most judicious friend; for at that time, from causes to which we may hereafter advert, nothing could be more ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she unclosed her eyes Valerie sat cross-legged on the grass by the hammock, the writing case on her lap, scribbling away as though ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... on either side benches arranged in rows followed the curve of the wall. There was a long table on the platform, at which sat the lieutenant who had summoned us, with a sergeant seated on either hand. The sergeants were acting as court clerks, scribbling busily on sheets of blue ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... scribbling. "Personal habits are tabu? I so regret. The demonstration." He waved grandly at the tray. "Anti-grav sandals? A portable solar converter? Apologizing for this miserable selection, but on Capella they told me—" He followed Melinda's entranced gaze, selected a tiny ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey
... encouragement it gives to the improvement and prosperity of the country; and who, acting on their own judgment, never come forward in an election but on some important occasion. When this body moves, all the little barkings of scribbling and witless curs pass for nothing. To say to this independent description of men, "You must turn out such and such persons at the next election, for they have taken off a great many taxes, and lessened the expenses of government, they ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... you will, but the services of no single individual are indispensable. Atlas was just a gentleman with a protracted nightmare! And yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves into a great fortune and thence into the bankruptcy court; scribblers who keep scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to all who come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a pin instead of a pyramid; and fine young men who work themselves into a decline, and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes upon it. Would you not suppose these ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his excellences, if not forced by his necessities to publish without correction, and throw many productions into the world he would have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been got without money, or money without scribbling.... I am sorry not to see any more of Peregrine Pickle's performances; I wish you would tell me his name,"—Letters and Works (Lord Wharncliffe's ed.), vol. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looking at, in spite of my unfashionable garments; and I blessed her for the amiable condescension, and thought her in return as beautiful as an angel. I never saw her again—but I caught myself scribbling her name on my desk, and I covered many sheets of waste paper with indifferent rhymes in ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... oneself, suspicious, and morbidly sensitive. And as I realize now I have always had plenty of such causes. All my friends and relatives have always taken a condescending tone to my writing, and never ceased urging me in a friendly way not to give up real work for the sake of scribbling. I have hundreds of friends in Moscow, and among them a dozen or two writers, but I cannot recall a single one who reads me or considers me an artist. In Moscow there is a so-called Literary Circle: talented people and mediocrities ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... in separate quarters with their husbands and children, while the maids passed the night in large sleeping-barracks adjoining the worksheds. They were now enjoying the evening respite and had gathered in two groups. One party were watching an Egyptian girl who was scribbling sketches on a tablet; the others were amusing themselves with a simple game. This consisted in each one in turn flinging her shoe over her head. If it flew beyond a chalk-line to which she turned her back she was destined soon to marry the man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he remarked to himself with evident satisfaction as, turning the photographic print, he took note of certain cabalistic numbers written in the corner, scribbling them ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... improviser; with notes she never bothered herself; in her letters to Flaubert she laughed over the human documents of Zola, the elaborate note taking of Daudet, for she was blessed with an excellent memory and a huge capacity for scribbling. Not so Zola. Each book was a painful parturition, not the pain of a stylist like Flaubert, but the Sisyphus-like labor of getting his notes, his facts, his characters marshalled and moving to a conclusion. Like Anthony Trollope, when the last page of a book was finished he began another. He was ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... his information from those forks of the creek medicos who constitute the chief contributors to his columns—and who would probably encounter fewer charges of incompetence if they expended less time in scribbling "rot" and more in careful reading. Still I can scarce refrain from weeping over such a tale o' woe. In the terse vernacular of the "mother country," hit touches me 'eart—so much so that I hereby authorize anybody to whom W. J. Bryan owes a doctor bill to ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... at the pathetic figure before her, and suddenly forgot all her promises not to get entangled in any more plots or other dangerous enterprises, and almost before she realised what she was doing, she was scribbling a message in French on the back ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... Riviera will set her up again. Stanley asks after her when he writes, but he has rather dropped me of late. I suppose it's because I was too busy to answer, though he ought to know that in New York harbor a fellow has no time for scribbling, whereas, out on the plains they have nothing else to do. He sent me his picture a while ago, and I tell you he has improved wonderfully. Such a swell moustache! I meant to have sent it over for you and Nan to see, but I've mislaid ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... Such, without wit, are Poets when they please, 590 As without learning they can take Degrees. Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful Satires, And flattery to fulsome Dedicators, Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more, Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595 'T is best sometimes your censure to restrain, And charitably let the dull be vain: Your silence there is better than your spite, For who can rail so long as they can write? Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600 And lash'd so long, like tops, are lash'd asleep. False steps ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... glory sit; And as the moon who first receives the light, With which she makes these nether regions bright, So does he shine, reflecting from afar The rays he borrowed from a better star; For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, Admired by all the scribbling herd below, From French tradition while he does dispense Unerring truths, 't is schism, a damned offense, To question his, or trust your ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... with long-drawn satisfaction, scribbling rapidly. "I understand, and you thought, miss, that you could not judge an actor for me! What was ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... that his weaknesses and his failings should be disclosed to public view.... Johnson, after the luster he had reflected on the name of Thrale ... was to have his memory tortured and abused by her detested itch for scribbling. More injury, we will venture to affirm, has been done to the fame of Johnson by this Lady and her late biographical helpmate, than his most avowed enemies have been able to effect: and if his character becomes unpopular with some of his successors, it ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... hotel, another was a secluded nook in the pine grove beside Carver's Pond, a pretty little sheet of water on the Bayport boundary. On pleasant Saturday afternoons or Sundays, when the poetic fit was on him, Albert, with a half dozen pencils in his pocket, and a rhyming dictionary and a scribbling pad in another, was wont to stroll towards one or the other of these two retreats. There he would sprawl amid the beachgrass or upon the pine-needles and dream and think and, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... there's a farce in the idea, and I may try it one of these days," he said, scribbling in his note-book. "A refuge for broken-down chambermaids, venerable bell-hops grown gray in the service, and the head waiter who amassed a fortune in tips and then toyed with the market once too often and lost his ill-gotten gains. What was the head waiter's ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... morning of the 4th of May she sat, night-gowned, on the foot of her white bed, with chestnut hair all fluffy about her neck, eyes bright and cheeks still rosy with sleep, scribbling away and rubbing one bare foot against the other in the ecstasy of self-expression. Now and then, in the middle of a sentence, she would stop and look out of the window, or stretch herself deliciously, as though life were too full of joy for her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... don't eat much, and if any one calls her to dinner, never heeds them; but when she conceives herself arrived at a suitable stopping-place, drops her paper, runs to the pantry, snatches a piece of gingerbread, and back to her scribbling again, munching ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... with myself all the morning? I can't go out, it's raining. If I open the piano, I shall disturb the industrious journalist who is scribbling in the next room. Oh, dear, it was lonely enough in my lodging in Thorpe Ambrose, but how much lonelier it is here! Shall I read? No; books don't interest me; I hate the whole tribe of authors. I think I shall look back through these pages, and live my life ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... There are so many little things, like common-sense, to be considered. For this is just a matter which concerns you and Paul Vanderhoffen—a literary hack, a stuttering squeak-voiced ne'er-do-well, with an acquired knack for scribbling verses that are feeble-minded enough for Annuals and Keepsake Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea. For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... from one year's end to another, sat that prodigious book-worm, Cotton Mather, sometimes devouring a great book, and sometimes scribbling one as big. In Grandfather's younger days, there used to be a wax figure of him in one of the Boston museums, representing a solemn, dark-visaged person, in a minister's black gown, and with a ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is somewhat stale. Talk of the hatchet, and the faces pale, Wampum and calumets and forests dreary, Once so attractive, now begins to weary. Uncas and Magawisca please us still, Unreal, yet idealized with skill; But every poetaster, scribbling witling, From the majestic oak his stylus whittling, Has helped to tire us, and to make us fear The monotone in which so much we hear Of "stoics of the wood," and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Here, seated in the car again, as we waited to see the oxen unyoked and the boy paid, a girl came out from the little house with a large volume, in which she asked us to sign our names. The Cherub scrawled something; and as Dick was scribbling, Carmona strolled across, to see whether or no I entrusted my name to the book. I had meant not to do so, but now I would have changed my mind had not Colonel O'Donnel stopped me. "I wrote your name, Cristobal," said he, in his ambrosial voice; and the ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Virgil is significant. His early devotion to Edward Young, the grandiose author of the Night Thoughts, is not to be wondered at; though the inspiration of the youthful Burke, either as poet or critic, may be questioned, when we find him rapturously scribbling in the margin ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... found his food in such pieces of English literature as were floating about, in "Robinson Crusoe" and "Sinbad;" at ten he was inspired by a translation of "Orlando Furioso;" he devoured books of voyages and travel; he could turn a neat verse, and his scribbling propensities were exercised in the composition of childish plays. The fact seems to be that the boy was a dreamer and saunterer; he himself says that he used to wander about the pier heads in fine weather, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... keeping my head for the examiners' questions, the mending of my pens, the big barren room with the books about and the other fellows scribbling away for dear life, the landladies in this close and that square, with faces hardened and tempers sharpened by generations of needy students, out of whom they must nevertheless make their scanty livings, the penetrating Edinburgh airs, the thinness of my cloak and the clumsiness of my countrified ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... office at night, to take him with me to my rooms, as the bearer of any supplemental or happy after-thought, in the editorial way, that might occur to me before the paper went to press. One night I had been scribbling away past the usual hour of dismissing Wan Lee, and had become quite oblivious of his presence in a chair near my door, when suddenly I became aware of a voice saying in plaintive accents, something that sounded like ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, bluff old father, for very shame, disowns it. Thus has it come to pass, that one or two minds, in this golden age of scribbling, have, to speak radically, been the true originators of a million volumes, which haply shall have sprung from the seed of some singular book, or of books ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... wire during the day," George said, scribbling on a loose leaf from his pocket-book, which he had to search ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... letter is written and gone. It was to Dr. Parke Alden. I sent it to his hospital in Michigan. I made it short, because by nature I write just endless, having gotten in the habit from making up stories for the girls and scribbling them off when kept in, which in the past was frequent. This is what ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... While young Thorpe was scribbling questions, protestations, and extravagances of every kind, in rapid succession, on the slate; and while Madonna, her face half smiling, half tearful, as she felt that he was looking up at it—was reading what he wrote, trying ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... words," if I may use the phrase, has cooled our judgment and our passions together; and the first letter is torn: 't is too severe; we write a second; we blot and interline till it is nearly illegible; we begin a third; till at last we are tired out with our own angry feelings, and throw our scribbling by with a "Pshaw! what's the use of it?" or, "It's not worth my notice;" or, still better, arrive at the conclusion, that we preserve our own dignity best by writing without temper, though we may be ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the colour come and go in her cheeks, and thought he had never beheld anyone so entrancing. He rose quickly, without making further attempt at explanation, and left the room. One or two tear drops stained the paper on which the girl was scribbling. She didn't like giving pain to anyone, but could not hold herself to blame for what had happened. She made up her mind to leave the Daily Bugle and seek employment elsewhere, but next day Mr. Hardwick showed ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... think I'll be walking back. And look you here, young gentleman. We've had a pleasant meeting, and I'd like to see you again. Just take this card"—scribbling a few words on it in pencil—"and the night you favour us with your presence in the house, come round and see me in me dressing-room between the acts. You've only to show that, and they'll let you in at once. I'd like your impressions ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... or 'cellist out of his profession than the public library, as many once feared, will drive the bookseller out of business. For the library, after persuading people to read, has taught them how much pleasure may be had from owning a book, with the privilege of marking it and scribbling one's own ideas on the margins, and not having to rush it back to headquarters at inopportune moments and pay to a stern young woman a fine of eight cents. Likewise people are eventually led to realize that the joy of passively absorbing ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Sir Francis tossed him half a crown, and entered the vehicle, which clattered away with him in the direction of Cromwell Road. Stopping at a particular house in a side street leading from thence, he bade the cabman wait,—and, ascending the steps, busied himself for some moments in scribbling something rapidly in pencil on a leaf of his note-book by the light of the hanging-lamp in the doorway. He then gave a loud knock, and inquired of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Well, I've been scribbling away all this time and haven't given you any news whatever. Helen came back the other day from a visit to Boston where she enjoyed herself greatly. To-night she has gone out to the movies with a young protegee of ours, ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... clouded majesty here Dulness shone. Four guardian Virtues, round, support her throne: Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears; Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake Who hunger and who thirst for scribbling sake; Prudence, whose glass presents th' approaching jail; Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise. Here she beholds the chaos ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... a docile girl, ready always to heed her father and her "Daddy Crisp," ready to obey her kindly stepmother, and try to exchange for practical occupations her pet pastime of scribbling. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... at the amount of locomotion which I contrived to combine with all this scribbling. I must have gone about, I think, like a tax-gatherer, with an inkstand slung to my button-hole! And in truth I was industrious; for I find myself in full swing of some journey, arriving at my inn tired at night, and finishing and sending off some article before I went to my bed. But it ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... cherished the belief that your irregularities were only such as you say are customary with bank officers. I believe it is not customary, however, for the president of a bank to abstract fifteen thousand dollars of the bank's cash and substitute for it a mere pencil scribbling on a scrap of paper, ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... writer, but the sum paid him for the contribution. If the wretched dupe who assassinated Jaures had known that the trashy articles on the Three Years Law he had been reading were not the voice of France in peril, but the ignorant scribbling of some poor devil at his wits' end to earn three francs, he would hardly have thrown away his own life to take that of the greatest statesman his country has produced since Mirabeau. It is hardly ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... pin, hath caught the family supper. So is it with him who is proverbially born not made. His friends say: 'O, you should go to such-and-such falls; you 'd write poetry there, if you like. We all said so'; or, 'What are you doing in here scribbling? Look through the window at the moonlight; there's poetry for you. Go out into that if you want sonnets.' Of course, he never takes his friends' advice; he has long known that they know nothing whatever about it. He is probably quite ignorant of metrical law, but one precept instinct taught ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... days. But other ideas reigned then: Henchard's creed was that proper young girls wrote ladies'-hand—nay, he believed that bristling characters were as innate and inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence when, instead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,— ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... some breakfast. She had to repeat her query three times, he was writing so busily, and then he answered her "no" as if his thoughts were elsewhere. The old woman hungrily eyed the paper upon which he was scribbling, and went away with ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Royal Victoria Hotel, Cork, having walked down the Limerick entrance to the balmy Tipperary, a little shooting, more or less, is unworthy a moment's consideration. Besides which, my perpetual journeying and interviewing and scribbling have made me so thin that Captain Moonlight himself would be bound to miss. However, it is well to be prepared for the worst, so—Pax vobiscum, and away ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... young men with vast ideas of personal importance, amateurs and patrons! City Hall is the brain of New York, of the continent, and it is one of the laws of the world that brains will rule. Rebel as muscles merely of the body politic, and ye rebel against inexorable law: that scribbling literati in the fifth story—for newspapers like men have their brains in the upper story—is more potent than you in settling the artistic position of a Lucca or a Rubenstein, a Dickens or a Dore, a Tennyson or a Carlyle. Have ye ever read a wonderful ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... they are most entertaining, though their statements usually require a few grains of salt before swallowing. One of these bold Border men, known to us as "Nobby," is awfully disgusted at my bad habit of letter writing. As a rule I am scribbling when he strolls up, and get greeted with the jeering remark, "At it again." Some days back, after reflectively expectorating, he delivered himself thus on letter writing: "I don't often write. When I do, I sez 'I'm all ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... be a novel character: I think you might paint him very well. You may think this a very silly suggestion, and so, indeed, it is; but, in good truth, nothing else but the first words of that foolish ballad put me upon scribbling my "Rosamund." But I thank you heartily for the poem. Not having anything of my own to send you in return—though, to tell truth, I am at work upon something, which if I were to cut away and garble, perhaps I might send you an extract or two that ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... importance. I really am concerned to find that this, what many would deem trifling incident, has so much disturbed my mind. I fear I should not have slept in peace to-night if I had been deprived of this opportunity of relieving my mind by scribbling to you, and now I lament that you cannot possibly receive this till Monday. May I hope that there is now some intelligence on the way to me? or must my patience be tried till I see you on Wednesday? But what nonsense am I writing? ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... can submit to everything and laugh at it; he alone knows the entire worthlessness of merit; he alone uses his loudest voice and his boldest type whenever he has to speak or write of those who are placed over his head, or occupy any position of influence; and if they do a little scribbling, he is ready to applaud it as a masterwork. He alone understands how to beg, and so betimes, when he is hardly out of his boyhood, he becomes a high priest of that hidden mystery which ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... printer, to shew Warburton's letter, as it was raising a body of enemies against him. He thought it foolish in Warburton to write so to the printer; and added, 'Sir, the worst way of being intimate, is by scribbling.' He called Warburton's Doctrine of Grace a poor performance, and so he said was Wesley's Answer. 'Warburton,' he observed, 'had laid himself very open. In particular, he was weak enough to say, that, in some disorders of the imagination, people had spoken ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... back is toward us. He is seated at his desk. His head is bent over his writing, and his round shoulders are quite prominent. He is scribbling rapidly. A quire of foolscap, occupying the only clear space on his desk, is melting rapidly beneath his pen. The desk itself is a heap of confusion. Here is Mr. Greeley's straw hat; there is his ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the justice when he sits in his chair. The left wall is hidden by cases containing documents. In the foreground, beginning at the wall to the left, six chairs stand in a row. Their occupants would be seen by the spectator from behind.—It is a bright forenoon in Winter. The clerk GLASENAPP sits scribbling at his table. He is a poverty-stricken, spectacled person. Justice VON WEHRHAHN, carrying a roll of documents under his arm, enters rapidly. WEHRHAHN is about forty years old and wears a monocle. He makes the impression ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... would frequently make political and other speeches; he was calm, logical and clear always. He attended trials, went to court always, read the Revised Statutes of Indiana, dated 1824, heard law speeches, and listened to law trials. Lincoln was lazy, a very lazy man. He was always reading, scribbling, writing, ciphering, writing poetry, and the like.... In Gentryville, about one mile west of Thomas Lincoln's farm, Lincoln would go and tell his jokes and stories, &c., and was so odd, original and humorous and ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... to you before half-past eight to-morrow morning, come straight to my house," said the Duke, scribbling the telephone ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... nestlings, should make choice of a tenable bough and helpful partner, and set up a separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I shall be, in effect, homeless—a boarder around upon my rebukeful relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and who will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone of my departed youth—my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than I, should your brother see cause to refuse ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... old Dinah says. She has a great deal that I haven't. Yes, indeed, she has! I suppose little Flossy is going through tribulation over that tiresome party. I wonder why one-half of the world have to exist by tormenting the other half? Now, Marion Wilbur, stop scribbling names ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... and the deafness of the public to such literary verdicts. But a few years ago a favourable review in a first-rate paper was "fifty pounds in the author's pocket": now it is not worth as many pence unless signed by some well-known scribbling statesman or bustling reverend who caters for the public taste. The decline and fall is well expressed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... successful exponent of the new revolutionary ideas—making Corinne and her prototype seem dim and ineffectual—was undoubtedly George Sand. The badly-dressed woman who earned her living by scribbling novels, and said to M. du Camp, as she sat before him in silence rolling her cigarette, "Je ne dis rien parceque je suis bete," has exercised a profound influence throughout Europe, an influence which, in the Sclavonic countries especially, has ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... dress and in his quiet demeanour—was reading a treatise on algebra; the second, Theophilus, a musician, whose tunic was as bright as his flaming hair, was mending a small organ; and the third, Rufinus, a rather pale, short-sighted, and untidy youth, was scribbling on a tablet. The scribes were busy sorting old records and putting them ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... not an imposing room. A fat pasty-faced man sat behind a scarred neoplast desk, scribbling his signature on forms that he was taking from an immense stack. The room was lined with records of one sort or another, untidy, poorly ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... scribbling his name on the doorpost with his pen, and rubbing it out again with the feather. 'Will you leave a ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... not feel any desire to write? "No," he said, "frankly I do not—the world is so full of pleasant things to do and hear and see, that I sometimes think myself almost a fool for having spent so much time in scribbling. Do you know," he went on, "a delicious story I picked up the other day? A man was travelling in some God-forsaken out-of-the-way place—I believe it was the Andes—and he fell in with an old podgy Roman priest who was going everywhere, in a state of perpetual fatigue, taking ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... produces a quality, both in the writing and in the illustrations of the German newspapers, which is unknown in America. Many of the illustrated papers indulge in pictorial flings which may be compared only to the scribbling and coarse drawings, in out-of-the-way places, of dirty-minded boys. With the exception of the well-known Fliegende Blaetter, Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representative, there is nothing to compare with the artistic excellence and restrained ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... fifteen pictures, and you then get your fingers in the till." He paused and all hope fled from his face. "Droozle won't live nearly long enough to get all of that shrinking done. And in the meantime that scribbling snake is writing me out ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... ink and paper. He took up the pen. But after scrawling and scribbling for ten minutes, the sheet was filled with circles and arabesques, and the one single ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... he looked at his neighbour to see whether he had been making notes. The latter was a man much older than himself, and was busily writing upon loose sheets. He did not look up, but he seemed to understand what Greif wanted, for he handed him, or tossed him, the piece of paper on which he was scribbling, numbered the blank page beneath it, and went on quickly without even turning his eyes. Greif thanked him, and in the next pause of the lecture copied the notes into his own book. At the end of the hour Greif returned the sheet and repeated his thanks. He did not know the man, even by sight, a ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to the desk. He picked up a pen and riffled through the pages to the last one. There he signed his name, scribbling rapidly, ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... the last ten or fifteen years, that, in my way through this troublesome world, I became captivated with the idea of starting a newspaper. That I had some talent for scribbling, I was vain enough to believe, and my estimate of the ability I possessed was sufficiently high to induce me to think that I could give a peculiar interest to the columns of a weekly paper, were such a publication entirely ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... coming. She didn't know herself until this morning. She happened to be walking on the quay at St. Peter's Port. The outward-bound boat was on the point of starting for England. A wave of affection swept over Miss Goodwin. She felt she must see you. Scribbling a note, which she despatched to her mother, she went aboard. She came straight here. Then, when I had finished with her, when I had lied consistently about you for an hour, she told me she must return. 'I must not see James,' she said. 'You have torn my heart. I should break ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Of high and low denomination, For what you speak, and what you write, Dread you at once, and bear you spite. Such freedoms in your works are shown They can't enjoy what's not their own; All dunces too, in church and state, In frothy nonsense show their hate; With all the petty scribbling crew, (And those pert sots are not a few,) 20 'Gainst you and Pope their envy spurt, The booksellers alone are hurt. Good gods! by what a powerful race (For blockheads may have power and place) Are scandals raised and libels writ! To prove your honesty and wit! Think with ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... into syllables, and even after the combination has been achieved and the written word can be made from the syllables it is not yet understood. Yet the child could see, even before the first instruction in writing or the first attempt at scribbling, every individual letter in the dimensions in which he writes it later. So, too, the speechless child hears every sound before he understands syllables and words, and he understands them before he can speak them. The child commonly learns reading before writing, and so understands the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... wasn't touching them. Looking's not touching, anyway. What are you doing? It's queer taste to sit scribbling here half ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... at the risk of all popularity, just given a coup de patte to certain sages extremely the fashion at present, I am not going to let you off without an admonitory flea in the ear. Don't suppose that any mere scribbling and typework will suffice to answer the scribbling and typework set at work to demolish you—write down that rubbish you can't—live it down you may. If you are rich, like Squire Hazeldean, do good with your money; if you are poor, like Signor Riccabocca, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... days came we crouched together in the cave like night-birds sheltered from the day, and we whispered and recounted and planned. I scribbled in my diary in pencil, and he re-wrote my scribbling in bright-coloured chalks, and drew side pictures and wrote poems. Many are the pages we thus wrote together; some he wrote, some I wrote, and there are many from both of us in this volume. When I thought to make a book he laughed and ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... come,—why do you sit there scribbling so late, Helen? Come, and enjoy this beautiful night with me. Ay, what a world of invisible life amid the dew and darkness utters its glad voices; even the little insect we never saw by day, makes us feel for ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... in the fact that Louise, dreamy and distraught, stood at her bedroom bureau that night, scribbling "Washington" here and there over a sheet of paper. But there was something significant in the fact that she scratched the word out every time she wrote it; examined the erasure critically to see ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... of invitation she was scribbling, and stopped to think; and a moment or two after, at a summons from a caller, Mrs. Whitney left ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... three novel-sized volumes from the prolific pen of Mr. Grattan, whose Highways and Byeways have probably started off hundreds of scribbling tourists to the Continent, much to the annoyance of the keepers of old castles and other necromantic haunts. These Legends, however, have little to do with the Rhine, which is perhaps fortunate for their success, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... fourth, the arms of Bearn, two cows passant, gorged with collars and bells; in the second and third, three garbs; over all a cross." On the front edge of the slab Mr F.J. Baigent discovered the name Petrus Gavston or Gauston twice encised, but to this "scribbling" Mr Weston S. Walford, who has a note on this tomb in the fifteenth volume of the Archeological Journal, does not attach much importance, for it may merely record the engraver's conjecture as to the person here ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... door and was running for all he was worth down the valley. Three quarters of an hour later he startled a quiet and peaceful telegraphist by darting, breathless and dirty, into a sleepy country post office, snatching a telegraph form and scribbling down a message in ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... winter at Saint-Sulpice, but, like Boufflers a little later, far from singing the Canticles, he employed his time in the more mundane occupation of scribbling love-songs. At the end of the winter he was appointed vicar in a little town of his native department. "Vicar!" said Joachim; "I'll not disturb myself for such a trifle." Shortly afterward he was nominated Abbe de Bernis; but not a step would he budge from the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... craft nowadays, not because he has taste for literature, but because he has an incurable faculty for scribbling. He has no culture, and he soon loses the power of taking pains, if he ever possessed it. But he can talk with glib superficiality and imposing confidence about every conceivable subject, from a play or a picture ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... doubtless waiting for us to come to the monastery, and lay our necks under the feet of their Abbot, begging his clemency. They are ready to believe any story we care to tell touching the influence of such scribbling over us. You Segfried, owe me some reparation for this morning's temporary defection, and to you, therefore, do I trust the carrying out of my plans. There was always something of the monk about you, Segfried, and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... magician, and that was to work its change according to the wind, as it blew from north or south, east or west. But that would have been troublesome in practice, and the Bellows having once entered my mind, brought there I think by some scribbling of the pencil that showed Conan protecting himself with an umbrella, seemed to have every necessary ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... long thrilling tales, many of them based on personal experience in his wide travels in many lands. He was a magnificent raconteur and Dick propped up among his pillows drank it all in, listening like another Desdemona to strange moving accidents of fire and flood which his scribbling ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... he sat scribbling on his knees, at the foot of his bed, dipping stumps of pens worn to the feathers in ink, soot, coffee-grounds, covering with illegible writing candle-wrappers, packing-paper, newspapers, playing cards, even thinking of using his shirt for the same purpose after starching it. Leaf ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... interview, and begged in vain. Heravy, who had been on one of his exploring journeys, angrily refused to see the King whose men had broken his quiet and wasted his time. Before his death, he had run over the world (men said) from China to the Pyrenees and from Abyssinia to the Danube, "scribbling his name on every wall," and his survey of the Eastern Empire was the single matter in which Turks and "Romans" made common cause,—for Greeks and Latins at Byzantium alike read Heravy, like a Christian ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... avoid the temptation to cheer my spirits by scribbling a few lines to you while I sit here alone, all the household being at church—the sole occupant of an ancient parsonage among lonely hills, which probably will never hear the whistle of an engine till I am ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Being off the road at Possum Gully, you escape them.) For the love of life, next time you write, fire into the news at once and don't half-fill your letter telling me about the pen and your bad writing. I am scribbling at the rate Of 365 miles an hour, and don't care a jot whether it ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... "And what does that amount to? The banks and the police stations will be notified and every little public-house between here and Land's End will change one for the scribbling of 'John Jones' across the back. No, Mr. Draycott, it's awkward, I dare say, but you must make up your mind to wait until you can get fresh supplies from home. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... impeachment of Warren Hastings and the death of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, are samples of the literature with which my mind was stored. Every boy, I suppose, attempts to imitate what he admires, and I was eternally scribbling. When I was eleven, I began a novel, of which the heroine was a modern Die Vernon. At twelve, I took to versification, for which the swinging couplets of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers supplied the model. Fragments of prose and ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... looked upon her with so much indifference, for she brought death to the brothers of Durrisdeer. After all the desperate episodes of this contention, the insults, the opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery, it was reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scribbling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled, to cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers into savage and wintry deserts, there to die. But such a thought was distant from my mind; and while all the provincials ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scene on an afternoon a month later. DAVID is discovered at his desk, scribbling music in a fever of enthusiasm. MENDEL, dressed in his best, is playing softly on the piano, watching DAVID. After an instant or two of indecision, he puts down the piano-lid with a bang and ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... trust Andreas to dare and to endure—to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him dreadfully when he was gone—even Villiers, who liked good cooking, owned to thinking long for ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... window before his desk was open, he had the pleasure of the fresh air, and the smell of the blossoms from the orchard, and the sound of the waving of the tall trees in the wind, and the cawing of the rooks as the trees waved. These things all made him enjoy scribbling away to his mother, as well as finding his mind grow easier as he went on. Besides, he had not to care for the writing; for he had met Mr Tooke by the church, and had got his leave to send his letter without anybody's looking at it, as he had something very particular ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... which the lover might have his meals or pay his visits; so, when the Marchesa di Prie fell ill of a malady which required absolute repose and silence, Alfieri was bound to spend the whole morning seated at the foot of her bed. During one of these weary watches, it came into his head to kill time by scribbling some dramatic scenes on loose sheets of paper, which he hid during the intervals of his visits under the cushion of an arm-chair. A Piedmontese and a thorough ignoramus, he had scarcely ever attempted to write even ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... a mere machine, a spring For freaks fantastic, a convenient thing, A point to which each scribbling wight must steer, Or vainly hope for food or favor here, A summer's sigh, a winter's wistful tale, A sound at which th'untutor'd maid turns pale, Her soft eyes languish and her bosom heaves, And hope delights as ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... position. His wife's sudden death has left him very lonely as he has no children,—you could be a daughter to him, and it would be a great leap upwards for you, socially speaking. You would be much better off under his care than scribbling books." ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... their only hope of liberty depended on their situation being made known to some countrymen resident in Mogador, Harry took up the pen, and, with much difficulty, succeeded in scribbling the following letter:— ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... her writing cabinet and was hastily scribbling a letter to her son in which the delicate health, timid disposition and other inevitable attributes of the new boy were brought to his notice, and commanded to his care. When she had sealed and stamped the envelope Henry ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... "Sam was always scribbling when not at the wheel," said Bixby, "but the best thing he ever did was the burlesque of old Isaiah Sellers. He didn't write it for print, but only for his own amusement and to show to a few of the boys. Bart Bowen, who was with him on the "Edward J. Gay" at the time, got hold of it, and ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Microscope, test tubes, phials, double stethoscope, eye-glass, stationery cabinet with note-paper, pen, pencil, calendar, Bradshaw, blotter, scribbling block, hand bell, ash-tray ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... skilful pilot. From time to time he consulted the compass on the board before him, and changed his course ever so slightly. Presently he released one hand from the driving wheel, and scribbling on a little block of paper which was inserted in a pocket at the side of the seat he passed ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... hand of the master himself,—being made up, of course, of what people had to say to him; but one hundred and thirty-eight such books—though in many cases but a sheet or two of foolscap doubled together, generally filled with mere lead-pencil scribbling, now by his brother, now by the nephew, then by Schindler or the old housekeeper, upon money matters and domestic arrangements, but often by artists, poets, and literary men, not only of Vienna, but in some cases even from England, and in one from America—must ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... reached Lamb Court. If it was dark in Pall Mail, what was it in Lamb Court? Candles were burning in many of the rooms there—in the pupil-room of Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, where six pupils were scribbling declarations under the tallow; in Sir Hokey Walker's clerk's room, where the clerk, a person far more gentlemanlike and cheerful in appearance than the celebrated counsel, his master, was conversing in a patronising manner with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entering the class-room, where he could see the back of her head through the glass partition whenever he turned his eyes that way. As he went on giving and hearing lessons his forehead and eyebrows twitched from concentrated agitation of thought, till at length he tore a scrap from a sheet of scribbling paper ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... to dinner. I am glad of it. I was scribbling such nonsense, when I have so much to write better ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... lips full of laughter, A Vice with a rose in her hair, You condemn in the present and after, To darkness of utter despair: But a sin, if no rapture redeem it, But a passion that's pale and played out, Or in surgical hands—you esteem it Worth scribbling about! ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... farther, I may safely urge, that all this is no more than the same with what is done by several seemingly great and wise men, who with a new-fashioned modesty employ some paltry orator or scribbling poet, whom they bribe to flatter them with some high-flown character, that shall consist of mere lies and shams; and yet the persons thus extolled shall bristle up, and, peacock-like, bespread their plumes, while the impudent ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... painted by Bierstadt was sent to our apartment for me. Never before had I received such appreciation for my amateur scribbling. ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... gaze, was Usakuma, the Incarnation of the Unmentionable One. In another litter, as securely screened, was the son of the Lord-of-many-Lands, endeavouring to endure a perpetual bath of sweat in the sacred cause, peeking professorial eyes through the interstices, scribbling in a notebook. Behind again marched Mungongo bearing a smouldering brand of the Sacred Fire; then Yabolo, reinstated in office for a reason that any politician will understand. After him came more litters ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... again; but it is of the earth after all, and I have the "many-twinkling smile of Ocean," though there is no soft woodland dell to make it more beautiful by its contrast. Well, I have had a happy hour scribbling away, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the cook in the garden of the next house, she slipped out of the rear door, and across the lawn, where, that her coming might look like a mere happening, she took a bit of paper from her pocket, and commenced scribbling upon it. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... hastily scribbling his name on Agatha's programme. "Fine ship; I know her well by name. Know 'em all on paper, you know. I'm an insurance man—what they call a doctor— Lloyd's and all that; missing ships, overdue steamers, hedging and dodging, and the inner walks of marine insurance—that's yours truly. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... reputation. Mr. Brown, impatient of a recluse life, quitted the school, and came again to London; and as he found his old companions more delighted with his wit, than ready to relieve his necessities, he had recourse to scribbling for bread, which he performed with various success. Dr. Drake, who has written a defence of our author's character, prefixed to his works, informs us, that the first piece which brought him into reputation, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... the East less his slave: Japan a mercantile nation, China and Turkey in his fiscal net. So, looking round the globe toward the middle of November, he could observe scarcely a nation which he could not, by scribbling a telegram, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... eventually published them. The notarii attended these discussions and let nothing be lost. The rise of the scrivener, of the notary, dates from this period. The administration of the Lower-Empire was frightfully given to scribbling. By contact with it, the Church became so too. Let us not press our complaints about it, since this craze for writing has procured for us, with a good deal of shot-rubbish, some precious historical documents. In Augustin's case, these reports of his lectures ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... against this. If Helen's old ancestor, having nothing better to do, had wanted to write down a Latin motto, he should have put it in his pocket-book, or, better still, on the even more transitory pages of the blotter, instead of scribbling on the beautiful diamond panes of the old Grange windows. But Helen had laughed and said: "I should think he lived before the time of blotters, dear! No doubt the morning sun was shining on the glass, Ronnie, ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the pencil-case to extend the lead, and placing one of his huge feet upon a divan to steady himself, wrote rapidly with the paper on his knee, as a man used to scribbling notes ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... all to pieces," remarked Jack, as he went on with his pie and coffee; but the waiter was scribbling something upon a slip of paper, and when it was done he put ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... and as the Princess neared it she saw that the doors were wide open. She walked in fearlessly, and found herself in a large hall, with walls entirely covered with cockle-shells. Long stone tables filled the middle of the room; at which a crowd of small brown-coated men were seated, scribbling away with long pens, but ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... country, they stopped at a tavern, where he found a friend with a volume of Shakespeare open before him. Schubert took up the volume, turned a few pages, became interested in one of the pieces, took up some waste paper, and scribbling the lines proceeded to write a melody. This was the so-called "Shakespeare Serenade," "Hark, Hark, the Lark." The "Serenade," in D minor, is said to have been conceived in a similarly impromptu manner. In 1816 the great tenor, Vogl, made Schubert's acquaintance, having ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... manuscript often throw light upon the history of the text contained in the manuscript. And the palaeographer knows that any scratch or scribbling, any probatio pennae or casual entry, may become important in tracing the ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... you write books? I ask the question, Because I'm told that everybody writes That what with scribbling, eating, and digestion, And proper slumber, all our days ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... distant point of a journey, or on viewing any remarkable object of their curiosity, have at all times been fond of carving or scribbling their names on the spot, to boast of their prowess to after-comers; and never had any place been more favoured with memorials of this kind than the great statue of Amenhothes at Thebes. This colossal ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... For scribbling hasty notes, he prefers huge lead pencils, such as he favored in parliamentary days; pencils 15 inches long, similar to those used by ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... of readiness; all present, even Sir Henry, stood within a circle around Walter Butler. So I stepped quietly into the hallway and hastened up the stairs to my chamber, which I locked first, then seized paper and quill and fell to scribbling: ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... her my card, scribbling the street and number of Bancroft's in pencil in the corner. ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to that room in Mount Street in which poor Archie practised diplomacy, and whither the courageous Doodles was carried prisoner in those moments in which he was last seen of us. The Spy was now sitting alone before her desk, scribbling with all her energy—writing letters on foreign policy, no doubt, to all the courts of Europe, but especially to that Russian court to which her services were more especially due. She was hard at work, when there came the sound of a step upon the stairs. ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... a month! During my lonely weeks One person actually climbed the stairs To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz— But Berlioz always was original. Meissner was also here; he caught me unawares, Scribbling to my old mother. "What!" he cried, "Is the old lady of the Dammthor still alive? And do you write her still?" "Each month or so." "And is she not unhappy then, to find How wretched you must be?" "How can she know? You see," I laughed, "she thinks I am as well As when she saw me ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... nephew Finot, a good fellow, as good a fellow as you will find, if you can find him, that is, for he is like a fish, always on the move. In his way of business, there is no writing, you see, it is setting others to write. That sort like gallivanting about with actresses better than scribbling on sheets of paper, it seems. Oh! they are queer customers, they are. Hope I may have the honor of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... begged him to explain, thus leading Tom to an exposition of the laws of rhyme, in which, as far as English was concerned, he happened to be something of an expert, partly from an early habit of scribbling in ladies' albums. About these surface affairs, Godfrey, understanding them better and valuing them more than Tom, had yet taught Letty nothing, judging it premature to teach polishing before carving; and hence this little ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... running around to get material for your novel, I am inventing all sorts of pretexts not to write mine. I let myself be distracted by guilty fancies, something I am reading fascinates me and I set myself to scribbling on paper that will be left in my desk and bring me no return. That has amused me, or rather that has compelled me, for it would be in vain for me to struggle against these caprices; they interrupt me and force me...you see ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... reason was probably the absence at the moment of a larger lion. The bigger beast would come and the smaller would then incontinently vanish. It was at all events characteristic, and what was of the essence of it was grist to his scribbling mill, matter for his journalising hand. That hand already, in intention, played over it, the "motive," as a sign of the season, a feature of the time, of the purely expeditious and rough-and-tumble nature of the social boom. The boom as in itself required—that ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... ceased scribbling, he leaned forward with elbows on his knees and ran his eyes slowly and wonderingly over each line in turn, whispering the words destined to become so famous. Phoebe leaned a little away from her companion, resting one hand on the bench, while she watched his face with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to Adams, "Gage," said he, "was a good-natured, peaceable, sociable man while here (in New York), but altogether unfit for a governor of Massachusetts. He will lose all the character he has acquired as a man, a gentleman, and a general, and dwindle down into a mere scribbling governor—a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... be a sort of weak philosophy I am trying to teach you, but it is the happiest. If I can save any man from self-delusion, I want to do it. I 'll tell you why. When I was at school some fool put it into my head that I could write. I hardly know how it came about. I began scribbling of my own accord and for my own amusement. Sometimes I showed the things to my friend, who was a fool: he bade me keep on, saying that I had talent. I did n't believe it at first. But when a fellow keeps dinging at another with one remark, after a while he grows to believe it, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Daniel Whittle Harvey is speaking; the House is thin; the subject is dull; and I have stolen away to write to you. Lushington is scribbling at my side. No sound is heard but the scratching of our pens, and the ticking of the clock. We are in a far better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last week; and the company is more decent, inasmuch as that ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... bit of paper on which I had been scribbling down a few memoranda that I feared might escape my mind, I hastened into the hallway to meet a somewhat spare, tall, and extremely erect-appearing man. He greeted me with a smile and a bow—a rather dry smile and a rather stiff bow ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... forces, Larry again had no time to plan. Rather, there was nothing he could plan, for only one way was open to him. He dashed into the pawnshop and into the back room. At the Duchess's desk Hunt was scribbling at ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... forward, turned back again, measured, examined, and after half an hour's minute inspection, he returned silently to where he had left his horse, and pursued his way in deep reflection and at a foot-pace to Fontainebleau. Louis was waiting in his cabinet; he was alone, and with a pencil was scribbling on paper certain lines which D'Artagnan at the first glance recognized as unequal and very much touched up. The conclusion he arrived at was, that they must be verses. The king raised his head and perceived D'Artagnan. "Well, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... you wait for me," he answered, seating himself. "You know how it is when you get to scribbling—you never know when to stop. And the scenery, up here, won't let you go. Positively fascinating, that view is! If the Plutes knew of it, they'd put a summer ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... memory. I recollect reading them, and can quote passages from any mentioned. I have, of course, omitted several in my catalogue; but the greater part of the above I perused before the age of fifteen. Since I left Harrow, I have become idle and conceited, from scribbling rhyme and making love to women. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... told showed distinct ability: a short story, of possible merit but questionable morality, which had been accepted on the spot by a not too particular periodical and had never been paid for—that was the extent of his scribbling. And yet—Margaret might be right. . . . One never knows till one tries: and Vane grinned to himself as that hoary platitude floated through his mind. . . . Then his thoughts passed to the other side of the picture. Margaret, dispensing admonition and pills, in her best professional manner, ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... where the Praetor usually sat, remain entire. There is a large building and court yard near one of the gates of the city supposed to have been a barrack for soldiers; three skeletons were found here with their legs in a machine similar to our stocks. The scribbling and caricatures on the walls of this barrack are perfectly visible and legible. When one wanders thro' the streets of this singularly interesting city, one is tempted to think that the inhabitants have just walked out. What a dreadful lingering death must have befallen these inhabitants ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... on one side, his elbows squared, and his swaggering martial air, made for Bedford Row, and stalked into the attorney's offices as if he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was scribbling there. He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing way, as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his brains, fifty times his money, and a thousand times his experience, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Sloan was scribbling on a memorandum pad before Bannon had finished speaking. He made a false start or two, but presently got something that seemed to please him. He rang for his office boy, and told him to take it to ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... what fits she had, Declared unhappy Prose was mad! Epics he wrote and scores of rebuses, All as neat as old Turnebus's; Eggs and altars, cyclopaedias, Grammars, prayer-books—oh! 'twere tedious, Did I but tell thee half, to follow me: Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy, No—nor the hoary Trismegistus, (Whose writings all, thank heaven! have missed us,) E'er filled with lumber such a wareroom As this ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al |
