"Busy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of wickedness seemed let loose among the girls. Madam was away, and the other teachers were busy in their rooms. Fannie had been out for a walk and was near the door of her room, when a dozen or more of the girls surrounded her, clasping hands together so she was ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... unmixed delight, whoever can tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the brain be silent for a time, let him read in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... cutwater was between us, and I didn't see him again, though I heard his convulsive gurgling and screaming from the other side of the ship. Then the sounds stopped, and I think he must have gone under; but I was too busy with myself to speculate much. I was trying to get a finger-nail grip on that smooth, black side slipping by me, but could not. There was nothing to get hold of, and no ropes were hanging over. Then I thought of the rudder and the iron bumpkin on it that the rudder-chains fastened to, and swam ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... cry day and night unto him?' Now what can God's elect have to keep on crying for, night and day, but righteousness? He allows that God seems to put off answering them, but assures us he will answer them speedily. Even now he must be busy answering their prayers; increasing hunger is the best possible indication that he is doing so. For some divine reason it is well they should not yet know in themselves that he is answering their prayers; but the day must come when we shall be righteous ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... better treatment. I'd like a really big story, treated artistically, and one that would fit perfectly into the background of the Red Mill—nothing slapdash and carelessly written, or invented on the spur of the moment by a busy director——" ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... the first day if he would not like to go into the serving-room and see it while they were serving dinner. She tried to conceal her pride in the busy scene—the waitresses pushing in through one valve of the double-hinged doors with their empty trays, and out through the other with the trays full laden; delivering their dishes with the broken victual at the wicket, where the untouched portions were put aside and the rest ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... electric-railway stock is the most popular and in many instances the most profitable. The introduction of electric power has reduced the working expense one half and in most instances has doubled the traffic without any reduction in fares. The buyer should make sure that the road is in a busy community able to sustain it, that its franchise will protect it from dangerous competition, and that the securities have been ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... go to the School of Mothercraft? You remember, it was at Chautauqua for the summer? And it's back in New York now. I've been meaning to ask you or Grandmother or Aunt Louise to take me there some Saturday, only we've been so busy with the Ship we didn't have time for anything else. You remember it?" she asked anxiously, for she had especial reasons for wanting her mother to remember the School ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... generation, if not its own, dislikes the continual obtrusion of an element in which it has no interest. Hence oblivion, often unjust, is the punishment which the egotist suffers. Even our age, interested as it is in personalities, has little time to spare for those of Byron or Carlyle; it is too busy with the characters of its own contemporaries to trouble about those of its predecessors. But no Greek writer is forgotten for this cause. Whatever their other offences, the Greeks are free from literary egotism. Directness turned their ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... ourselves, I and my two secretaries, in our official costumes, and departed at three o'clock, accompanied by an interpreter. We arrived. The court of the house was filled with people who appeared busy and hurried, and who came and went, carrying cases and packages. The interpreter, after having exchanged several words with an employee of the ministry, said ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera—though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power—failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... for anything, but the business actually in hand and the most expeditious way through it. The contentiousness is not close enough and rapid enough to hold the interest of a practical assembly, which, though it was a hundred times less busy than the House of Commons to-day, seems to have been eager in the inverse proportion of what it had to do, to ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Of Justification by Faith"; "XII. Of Good Works"; "XIII. Of Works before Justification"; "XIV. Of Works of Supererogation"; "XV. Of Christ alone without Sin"; and on the 12th of October they were busy over Article XVI. "Of Sin after Baptism." But on that day they received an order from the two Houses (and Scottish influence is here visible) to leave for the present their revision of the Thirty-nine Articles, and proceed at once to the stiffer ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... of us dined ashore with Omai, who gave excellent fare, consisting of fish, fowls, pork, and puddings. After dinner, I attended Otoo, who had been one of the party, back to his house, where I found all his servants very busy getting a quantity of provisions ready for me. Amongst other articles, there was a large hog, which they killed in my presence. The entrails were divided into eleven portions, in such a manner that each of them contained a bit of every thing. These portions were distributed to the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... had called upon her many times since those two trips they had taken around the settlements and looking over his condemned property, but she had been busy, or out somewhere on her errands of mercy, so that Laurie had got very ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... twenty-four books. It is said he has left behind him more than forty thousand treatises in criticism, metaphysics, and divinity: but few of them in a state of completion. They are now destined, perhaps, to wrap up spices. You see what mutation the busy hand of Time has produced, while you have consumed in foolish, voluntary exile that time which might have gladdened your friends, benefited your country—But reproaches are useless. Gather up the wretched relics, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... upon her and slain her had she not been busy with the tremendous realisation of the fact that by a glance and a gesture she had conquered the customs official—a foreigner and a stranger. She wanted to be alone and ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... the mining man. "You and Kitty quit looking like the Atlantic Ocean in distress. We've got to endure the grief and get busy. We'll get Lindsay out of ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... awhile, and they talked a little of the childish days, for he was still ever a child to her. Then he rose to leave her, and she asked him, as was her wont, if there was anything that she could do for him, for it shamed her, she said, to sit and idle, when she had been so busy once, and when there was still so much to do. And he said, "No, dear nurse, there is nothing at this time." And he hesitated for an instant, and then said, "There is indeed one thing; I have a business to do to-night, that is hard and difficult; and I do not know what the end ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... policy disappointed. If a system of customs duties can be framed that will set the idle wheels and looms of Europe in motion and crowd our warehouses with foreign-made goods and at the same time keep our own mills busy; that will give us an increased participation in the "markets of the world" of greater value than the home market we surrender; that will give increased work to foreign workmen upon products to be consumed by our people without diminishing the amount of work to be done here; that will enable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... for more'n a day, I never was one to roam, But I likes to sit on the busy quay, Watchin' the ships that says to me— "Always somebody ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... 140 With nimble glance are seen; they, unalarmed, Now near in airy circles sing, then speed Their random flight back to their sheltering bowers, Whose silence, broken only by their song, From the foundation of this busy world, Perhaps had never echoed to the voice, Or heard the steps, of Man. What rapture fired The strangers' bosoms, as from glade to glade They passed, admiring all, and gazing still With new delight! 'Tis solitude around; 150 Deep solitude, that on the gloom of woods Primaeval fearful hangs: ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... later the dark curl of a light air of wind shattered the starlight in the sea, and our canvas fell asleep. I called to the watch to trim sail, and in a few moments the decks were busy with the figures of men pulling and hauling and surging out at the ropes in sulky, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... elements against thee join'd, In one more various animal combined, And framed the clamorous race of busy humankind. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... epidemic of lynching and mob violence that springs up, now in one part of our country, now in another. Each section, North, South, East, or West, has its own faults; no section can with wisdom spend its time jeering at the faults of another section; it should be busy trying to amend its own shortcomings. To deal with the crime of corruption It is necessary to have an awakened public conscience, and to supplement this by whatever legislation will add speed and certainty in the execution of the law. When we deal with lynching even mote is necessary. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... stir of people, who are busy, but not hurried: this absence of hurry distinguishes the streets of Rotterdam from those of certain parts of London, which, from the color of the houses and the serious faces of the citizens, remind many travellers of the Dutch city. Faces white and pale—faces the color ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... her father. He was busy stringing a lute, and they had not spoken for some time; they often spent quite long whiles without speaking, and only occasionally they raised their eyes to see each other. The sensation of the other's presence was sufficient for ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... not exactly, as one might say, any business of mine; and I mind well what is said in St. Paul's Epistle to Timothy, that women should not be tattlers and busy-bodies; but for all that, I hope it is no sin to wish a young creature that's under one's roof, and that's dying by inches—of something—the Lord only knows what—for Dr. Reid doesn't. He saw her walking in, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... in his room, and which was used for storing away papers and records of the mission. Hidden as the box was, under piles of papers, the Father felt tolerably safe regarding his treasure, and immured as he had been ever since, in the busy affairs needing his whole time and attention, he had almost forgotten it. But on this day he had made up his mind to hide it more effectually. Late that night, after the entire mission was still in sleep, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... John Colborne and his special council were busy in the exercise of their legislative functions. Ordinances were passed for substituting martial law, for suspending the habeas corpus, for the attainder of persons against whom the sentence of courts-martial ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... roads the sumach blazed scarlet, and over the rude stone fences blood-red lines of fire followed the trend of leaf and vine. Golden pumpkins lay in the furrows of the corn; showers of apples carpeted the grass of the orchards; the crows in straight lines, and the busy squirrels worked from dawn ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the oil for several miles to the nearest railway station. In a few years the whole oil region of Venango County was an inextricable tangle of these primitive pipelines. Thus, before the Civil war had ended, the western Pennsylvania wilderness had been transformed into the busy headquarters of a new industry. Companies had been formed, many of them the wildest stock-jobbing operations, refineries had been started, in a few years the whalers of New England had almost lost their occupation, but millions of American homes, that had hitherto had to spend the long ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... was staggering under the shock of the French Revolution. The head of Louis XVI was severed in January; the knife of Charlotte Corday was plunged into the heart of Marat in July; Marie Antoinette, the grey discrowned Queen of thirty-eight, mounted the scaffold in October. The guillotine was very busy, and France was frantic amid internal disruption and the menace of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... in the passage,—'Your friend is at the door of the theatre,' said he; 'do not let him go home on foot to-night; the streets of Naples are not always safe.' I immediately remembered that some of the Calabrian bravos had been busy within the city the last few weeks, and suddenly meeting Cetoxa—but ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... such a poem as 'The Two Voices' have brought solace and light; how full of salutary lessons are the political poems 'You ask me, why, though ill at ease' and 'Love thou thy Land', and how noble is their expression! And, even where the poems are less directly didactic, it is such refreshment as busy life needs to converse with them, so pure, so wholesome, so graciously human is their tone, so tranquilly beautiful is their world. Who could lay down 'The Miller's Daughter, Dora, The Golden Year, The Gardener's Daughter, The Talking Oak, Audley Court, The Day Dream' without ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... character was every quality that in woman invites and engages respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Castlewood found the sad lonely little occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, knowing who that person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy obeisance to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... again. This depresses me very much as you may suppose. You will have to divorce me, and I must marry some respectable Kadee. I have been too 'lazy Arab,' as Omar calls it, to go on with my Arabic lessons, and Yussuf has been very busy with law business connected with the land and the crops. Every harvest brings a fresh settling of the land. Wheat is selling at 1 pound the ardeb {188} here on the threshing-floor, and barley at one hundred and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... young woman followed him. I gathered up my scribblings and put them away. The gentleman took off his overcoat, and shining out of the breast pocket was a bright revolver. I grew afraid, though, generally speaking, I am too busy to think of being afraid. There was a trans-Atlantic look about the gentleman, a Mississippi appearance about the too conspicuous revolver, and, I admit, I thought of some Fenian leader and wondered what Stephens was like. I heard ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... in running for a mean inferior office. He felt nauseated with himself. Worse, he felt a horrible new doubt of his wife. Mrs. Appleton had been to him the type of woman he disliked, worldly, shallow, busy with the sticks and straws; yet now there would creep in a suspicion that some of the things he had forgiven to Lena's beauty and lack of sophistication were close of kin to the older woman's more blatant materialism. Materialism was ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... desired, could probably not have mitigated the terrors of this vengeance. But there was little sign anywhere of an inclination to mercy. Courts-martial and executions continued long after the heat of combat was over. A year passed, and the tribunals were still busy with their work. Above ten thousand persons were sentenced to transportation or imprisonment before public ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... time in skinning a bird he had just before shot, and we were all busy in preparing the camp, when we heard Jup shriek out. He had ample reason for doing so. He had gained the branch of the tree on a level with the nest—filled with skeletons and bones of other birds and animals ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... made no reply. He was very busy just then with the metallic knobs. Suddenly we were jerked off our feet as if we had been in a trolley driven by a green motorman. Edmund also would have fallen if he had not clung to one of the handles. We felt that we were spinning through the air at a fearful speed. Still ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... been born at a time when her own activities were at their height. As Portia herself had said, when she and her two brothers were little, their mother had been too busy to—luxuriate in them very much and during those early and possibly suggestible years, Portia had been suffered to grow up, as it were, by herself. She was not neglected, of course, and she was dearly loved. But when, for the first ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... came Sir Aglovale and Sir Percivale riding by a churchyard, where men and women were busy, and beheld the dead squire, and they thought to bury him. What is there, said Sir Aglovale, that ye behold so fast? A good man stert forth and said: Fair knight, here lieth a squire slain shamefully this night. How was he slain, fair fellow? said Sir Aglovale. My fair sir, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... I am horribly busy to-night, Robert, and I gave orders I was not at home to any one. Even my father had a comparatively cold reception. He complained of a draught the ...
— An Ideal Husband - A Play • Oscar Wilde
... powerful enemy was raised to crush it in the first year of its existence. Of this more before we part. Enough for us now to know: that the little colony, in spite of opposition, increased and multiplied; people lived in it, were married in it, and died in it, undisturbed by the busy rush of the outside world, until, in the last months of 1869, just fifty-seven years after its formation, it ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... merge it even in the blaze of a peerage. Of the five Miss Harpers, of whom one was dead, and another, the all-important "married sister," Mrs. Dugdale, lived in a town close by. Of Eulalie, the pretty cadette who was at some future time going to disappear behind the shadows of matrimony; of busy, housekeeping Mary, whom nobody could possibly do without, and who couldn't be suffered to marry on any account whatever. Last of all, was the eye, ear, and heart of the house, kept tenderly in its ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... leaders had been developed during the struggle for independence, among whom no little ill feeling was aroused by their scramble for recognition. Then there were some who were jealous of Bolivar's great popularity and influence with the people. They were busy in trying to turn public opinion against him by telling the people that he would use his power to add to, rather than lighten, their burdens. This feeling was intensified when he presented his plan of government for Bolivia to Congress on May 25, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... few lines on a postal card to say that she had sent the maple sugar, or could Ina get her some samples. Now she wrote a few lines on a postal card to say that she was going to die with cancer. Could Dwight and Ina come to her while she was still able to visit? If he was not too busy.... ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... on his estate, and the like, he was merely paying his tribute to the spirit of the time (which reached him even in his seclusion), and imitating the innumerable village schools and Sunday schools in the capitals (for secular instruction of the laboring classes who were too busy for education during the week) in which the aristocratic and educated classes in general took a lively interest.[44] But the leisure afforded by country life enabled him to compose his masterpieces. "War and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Easily—Pour boiling water over the cooking apples and they will be much easier to peel. This will be found a considerable saving of time when busy. ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... that the fortune he had made was sufficient to warrant him in devoting himself entirely to archaeology, and though exceptional circumstances obliged him to return to business for a little, he finally cut himself loose from it in 1863, and took up the task which was to occupy the remainder of his busy life. ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... the foregoing events, the editors and proprietors of newspapers had more than enough 'copy' to keep them busy. The narrow escape of the King from assassination, followed by his excommunication from the Church, worked a curious effect on the minds of the populace, who were somewhat bewildered and uncertain as to the possible undercurrent of political meaning flowing beneath the conjunction of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... caverns that autumn fills With the blue shadowiness of distant hills; Whose luminous grey pillars bear The stooping sky: calm is the air, Nor any sound is heard to mar That crystal silence—as from far, Far off a man may see The busy world all utterly Hushed as an old memorial scene. Long evenings I have sat and been Strangely content, while in my hands I held a wealth of coloured strands, Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins Of soft bright wool. Each ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... kept pace beside him. In front of her in the little garden the bees droned, a belated butterfly or an early moth fluttered slowly over the flower-beds, a thousand little creatures buzzed and hummed, all busy working out their tiny destinies, as she, too, was working out hers, and each doubtless looking upon their own as the central point of the universe. A few months for the gnat, a few years for the girl, but each was happy now in the heavy summer air. A beetle scuttled out upon the gravel path ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Palestine. It was probably on the great road leading from Damascus to the south, 'by the way of the sea,' (Matt. 4:15.) There was great wisdom in selecting this as a place to open a great public ministry. It was full of a busy population. The exceeding richness of the wonderful plain of Gennesaret supported the mass of inhabitants it attracted. Josephus (B. J., iii, 10:8) gives a glowing description of this land."—Deems Light of the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... to concentrate is the happy, busy man. Time does not drag with him. He always has plenty to do. He does not have time to think over past mistakes, ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... well. Very busy of course, and very much delighted with your mother's gifts to the church. All her own work, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sigh for toys. Your sceptres and your crowns, and such like things, Are but a better kind of toys for kings. In things indifferent Reason bids us choose, Whether the whim's a monkey or a Muse. What the grave triflers on this busy scene, 410 When they make use of this word Reason, mean, I know not; but according to my plan, 'Tis Lord Chief-Justice in the court of man; Equally form'd to rule in age or youth, The friend of virtue and the guide to truth; To her I bow, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... however, in spite of the violent exertions of the humane bourgeoisie, no immediate prospect of its succeeding in bringing about such a disposition among the workers. The workers have taken it into their heads that they, with their busy hands, are the necessary, and the rich capitalists, who ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... with hypocrisy. A poet polishes words until they glitter with beauty, charging them with fulminating meaning—straightway he is called mad by men who sweat and toil on the stock exchange. Have you ever, my dear Quell, watched those little, grotesque brokers on a busy day? No? Well, you will say that no lunatic grimacing beneath the horns of the moon ever made such ludicrous, such useless, gestures. And for what? Money! Money to spend as idiotically as it is garnered. The world is crazy, I tell you, crazy, to toil as it does. How much cleverer ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a sly, meaning look in Evan's direction went to a console at the left of the room, and affected to busy himself in arranging the objects upon it. In reality his long ears were stretched for sounds coming through the little door. Having satisfied himself that the Deaves' were good for several minutes in there, he came towards ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... quantity of provisions, as a sufficient store for such an expedition, intending in a week or fortnight's time to open the dock, and to launch out the boat for that purpose. But one morning as I was very busy upon something necessary for this occasion, I called Friday to me, and bid him go to the seashore, and see if he could find a turtle or tortoise, a thing which we commonly had once a week, as much upon account of the eggs, as for the ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... kicked about some of the blazing embers in his anxiety to get into the thickest of the smoke, and so find relief from his tormentors. These embers set fire to the dry moss. While the travellers were busy with supper, they were startled by a loud, crackling sound. Before any of them could jump up, they heard a roar, which was followed by a mighty illumination. One of the neighbouring pines had caught fire, and blazed up as if it had been ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... now came forward with bed candles, to show Miss Carden to her room. Grace was going up, as a matter of course, when Jael, busy helping the footman with her boxes, called after her: "The ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... why I should reject the substitution of "busy-less," even if I had not a better mode of overcoming the difficulty, is properly adverted to by MR. SINGER, viz. that the word was not in use in the time of Shakspeare. The only authority for it, at any period, quoted in Todd's Johnson, is this very (as I contend) corrupted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... God! Aunt Lambert, I shall die!" She was better when mamma came up from the workroom with the young lady's bottle of salts. You see the women used to meet me: knowing dear Theo's delicate state, how could they refrain from compassionating her! But the General was so busy with his levees and his waiting on Ministers, and his outfit, and the settlement of his affairs at home, that they never happened to tell him about our little walks and meetings; and even when orders for the outfit of the ladies were given, Mrs. Goodison, who had known and worked ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a few instructions and passed on—it was a busy night for him and all his brethren, and they could not linger over one man. Lucia still sat by the side of Prescott, applying cooling bandages, according to the surgeon's instructions, and no one sought ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could not keep his mind and pen from church and national politics. Indeed, during the entire English renaissance there was no professional critic. Literary criticism was not a field to be tilled, but a wood to be explored by busy men who could find time ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... the first bay-leaf, rewarding the first poet of English song, authoritatively conferred? These and other like questions are of so material concern to the matter we have in hand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escaped the exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselves with other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profounder mysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in brief monograph the outlines of a natural history of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... thing they are transformed into another; especially news of this kind, which do suit and feed the bad humour of the vulgar. 'Tis obvious to any man how true that is of Tacitus, how void of consideration, of judgment, of equity, the busy and talking part of mankind is. Whoever therefore gives heed to flying tales, and thrusts himself into the herd of those who spread them, is either strangely injudicious, or very malignantly disposed. If he want not judgment, he cannot ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... arrived quite laden with parcels and letters addressed to "Miss Diana Hewlitt". As Mrs. Fleming had prophesied, everything came at once, and her young guest spent a busy and ecstatic half-hour opening her various packages. Scent, French chocolates, Parisian embroideries, gloves, ribbons, and other dainty vanities such as girls love were raved over and spread forth on the table, while Diana devoured the contents of her letters. From ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the wind. The main had been left for a while longer. In the fore riggings, Jacobs, the Ordinary Seaman in the Mate's watch, was following another of the men aloft to the sail. The Mate's two 'prentices were already up at the mizzen. Down on deck, the rest of the men were busy clearing up ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... the little busy bee" Christie Aunt Betsey's Interlarded Speech Mrs. Stuart. Hepsey Christie as Queen of the Amazons Mr. Philip Fletcher Mrs. Saltonstall and Family "No, I thank you" Helen Carrol Mrs. King and Miss Cotton The Rescue "C. Wilkins, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... from servitude in Spain. The waste places of Africa were peopled with the industrious agriculturists and artisans whom the Spanish Government knew not how to employ. The foundries and dockyards of Algiers teemed with busy workmen. Seven thousand Christian slaves laboured at the defensive works and the harbour; and every attempt of the Emperor to rescue them and destroy the pirates was ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... for other's woe, Let me have smiles and tears to give; And all my busy care bestow, In some ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... The cloak-makers were so busy they had no time to attend meetings, and being little accustomed to method and discipline, they suffered their organization to melt away. By the time the "season" came to a close the union was scarcely stronger than it had been before the strike. As there ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... settlement is rice, of which they export large quantities. There are but few Dutch here: the Javanese are numerous and their chief lives with considerable splendour. They have good roads and posts are established along the coast; and it appears to be a busy and well-regulated settlement. Latitude 7 degrees 36 minutes south. Longitude 1 degree 44 minutes ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... was a grand and busy day. Mr. Swinerton has been some time arranging a meeting for all our house, with Lady De Ferrars, whom you may remember as Charlotte Ellerker, and her lord and sisters: and this morning it took place, by mutual appointment, at his lodgings, where we met to breakfast. Dr. Johnson, who already ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... the children were all as busy as bees helping to get Barbara ready. They assisted in choosing her new frocks and hats, and the style of making; and poor Miss Smith, who came to sew for her, was nearly distracted by their popping in every now and then ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... the mountain winds to the glade Where the dead of the Moonlight Fight lie low; A hand reaches out of the thin-laid mould As begging help which none can bestow. But the field-mouse small and busy ant Heap their hillocks, to hide if they may the woe: By the bubbling spring lies the rusted canteen, And the drum which the ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... to be up here," my pretty companion was saying. "We had such a busy season in London." And then she went on to describe the Court ball, and two or three of the most notable functions about which I had read in my English ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... of the country. Two notable companion pictures of this kind are the Departure of the Cradle, and the Return from the Nurse, founded upon a phase of French village life quite unknown in many other countries, namely, the custom among busy working-people of sending their infants out to board with nurses. Unnatural as was the custom, it by no means indicated a lack of family affection, as is seen in these charming compositions. In both cases, the ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... He says "safe and sane" has been his motto throughout a long and busy life and this here proposition don't sound like neither one to him. The boys tell him he's missing a good thing by not throwing in with us. They say I'm giving 'em each a big block of stock, paid up and non-assessable, and they don't want him to come round later when they're ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... papers and red-tape, and an old man with a white head, the modest youth was for drawing back—and said, "O, you're busy—call again another time." But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him, and begged him, with a smile, to enter: whereupon Mr. Foker took off the embroidered tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of mothers) and advanced, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the lips of the poor curé, that Galluchio and his followers were in the maquis of a range of mountains to our right. The curé was busy in his vineyard when we passed, but as soon as he recognised our French companion, he left his work for a few moments to join us. ‘Sir,’ said he, addressing himself to M. Cottard, ‘I feel myself ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... Ural region, and has become the Black Country of Russia. The vast lonely steppe, where formerly one saw merely the peasant-farmer, the shepherd, and the Tchumak,* driving along somnolently with his big, long-horned, white bullocks, is now dotted over with busy industrial settlements of mushroom growth, and great ironworks—some of them unfinished; while at night the landscape is lit up with the lurid flames of gigantic blast-furnaces. In this wonderful transformation, as in the history of Russian industrial progress generally, a great ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... is the joy of a summer's morning in Kent, are so hauntingly beautiful that it is hard to believe that no disillusionment need be anticipated when the ancient city is entered and the great church seen at close quarters in the midst of a little city whose busy streets are agog with twentieth-century interests; and yet apprehension is entirely needless. From St. Dunstan's Church, where Henry II. stripped himself to a shirt and cloak on entering as a penitent, the road is ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... again, but I trust that that will not be in my time, for assuredly the regiment, although willing to fight against all other enemies of France, would refuse to march against our countrymen. Now, Sergeant MacIntosh, I know that you must be anxious to get back to your inn. You will have a busy time this afternoon unless I am greatly ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... Cairn resumed. "A water rat rose within a foot of me and a kingfisher was busy on a twig almost at my elbow. Twilight was just creeping along, and I could hear nothing but faint creakings of sculls from the river and sometimes the drip of a punt-pole. I thought the river seemed to become suddenly deserted; ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... I say? Of fowls of ev'ry kind That in this world have feathers and stature, Men mighten in that place assembled find, Before that noble goddess of Nature; And each of them did all his busy cure* *care, pains Benignely to choose, or for to take, By her accord,* his formel ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... buffets from the hand of Fate? Wunpost cursed and turned to raw whiskey. It was the infamy of it all; the humiliation, the disgrace, the insult of being trimmed by a lawyer—twice! Yes, twice in the same place, with the same contract, the same system; and now this same Flip Flappum was busy as a hunting dog trying to hire one of his partners to sell ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... stab of pain. Does she really hate me so? She did not mention the money, so I wonder if it is that she does not yet know her father is cleared? I bowed as coldly as I used always to do, and she asked me if I had a chapter ready for her to type? I answered that I had not, because I had been too busy with other ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Theology, and then gather his peas for dinner, very likely gathering some hint for his work at the same time. He would converse with his classical neighbour, Mr. Yates, or he would reply to his invitation that he could not come, for that he was busy knitting. He would station himself at his garden wall, which overhung the river, and watch the progress of a cast-iron bridge in building, asking questions of the architect, and carefully examining every pin and screw with which it was put together. He would loiter along a river, with his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... council-house, and the last that left it. And if no public business engaged him, it was very hard to have access, or to speak with him, he being retired at home and locked up. And when any came to the door, some friend of his gave them good words, and begged them to excuse him, Nicias was very busy; as if affairs of State and public duties still kept him occupied. He who principally acted this part for him, and contributed most to this state and show, was Hiero, a man educated in Nicias's family, and instructed by him in letters and music. He ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Tommy were busy clearing away the supper things. Jim went out to bring the horses in nearer to camp, where he tied them up for the night. At Janus's direction the driver also made a bed for the two men out among the trees some distance from the tent that was to be occupied by Miss ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... weather-stained and covered with honeysuckle. Flat stones in a setting of grass led from the gates to the arched doorways, hollyhocks rose above hedges of box, and from the verandas one could look out upon the busy harbor and the houses of New Bedford rising in steps up the sloping hills to a sky-line of tree-tops and church spires. The mate had told me that for what he had rented a flat in New York he had secured one of these charming old world homes. And as I passed them I began ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... conge"—to take leave. Such cards are sent when one is to be absent from home for a considerable period. They are left to be mailed after departure. Thus the intending traveler is not incommoded by well-meant but ill-timed calls at an hour when she is most busy. "P. p. c." cards intimate the acquaintance is to be resumed on ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... ideas on paper, I next taught her the braille system. She learned it gladly when she discovered that she could herself read what she had written; and this still affords her constant pleasure. For a whole evening she will sit at the table writing whatever comes into her busy brain; and I seldom find any difficulty in reading ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... the causes of the misfortune. The causes may be several. You may have been reading worthless books. This, however, I should say at once, is extremely unlikely. Habitual and confirmed readers, unless they happen to be reviewers, seldom read worthless books. In the first place, they are so busy with books of proved value that they have only a small margin of leisure left for very modern works, and generally, before they can catch up with the age, Time or the critic has definitely threshed for them the wheat ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... a lovely May afternoon. The woods about the field to the northward were full of birds, and the young leaves scarcely hid the solemn shapes of a company of crows that patiently attended the corn-planting. Two of the men had finished their hoeing, and were busy with the construction of a scarecrow; they knelt in the furrows, chuckling, and looking over some forlorn, discarded garments. It was a time-honored custom to make the scarecrow resemble one of the poor-house family; and this year they intended to have Mrs. Lavina Dow protect the ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... much of a coward to be afraid. Well, we're going to be blighted Argonauts, but we've got to get busy over our outfits. We haven't got any too ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and contrived until the misspending of five cents seemed a genuine calamity to her, She walked to cheap markets, and endured the casual scorn of cheap clerks. She ironed Bert's ties and pressed his trousers, saving car fares by walking, saving hospitality by letting her old friends see how busy and absorbed she was, saving food by her ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... Farewell the busy town, The wealthy and the wise, Kind smile and honest frown From bright, familiar eyes. All these are fading now; Our brig hastes on her way, Her unremembering prow Is leaping o'er the sea, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Hall, Oxford, and left the university three years afterwards without taking a degree. His first book—a translation of Paola Giovio's treatise on Emblems—appeared in 1585, when he was about twenty-two. In 1590 or 1591 he was travelling in Italy, probably with a pupil, and no doubt busy with those studies that finally made him the first Italian scholar of his time. In 1592 he published his "Sonnets to Delia," which at once made his reputation; in 1594 his "Complaint of Rosamond" and "Tragedy of Cleopatra;" and in 1595 ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ready; many a knight stood there. Thither men bare whatever clothes they had. Busy they were until the even tide, then full merrily they set forth from home. Tents and pavilions were raised upon the green beyond the Rhine. When this had happed, the king bade his fair wife tarry with him. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... her often during his visits to the cottage, busy at work in her garden, which was much smaller than the Captain's, but he had never ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the retros and retard us to the speed of what we're chasing," he said. "That will equalize our orbits very nearly. Get busy on that scope if you're up to it. ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... these defects can be removed and we grow up into the image of God. If you hold but little or no examination of your conduct there may be many imperfections in your ways of life displeasing to God, and yet unknown to you. You will find it beneficial to frequently seclude yourself from the busy whirl of life, and enter into profound ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... Penguin Island on the 15th January, that island being a league from the small one; and here they found such abundance of these birds, that many ships might have been amply supplied by them instead of one, for they procured above 900 of them in less than two hours. Next day, while busy in salting the penguins, a heavy storm came on from the N.W. by which the ship was driven out of sight of the island, and to so great a distance that de Weert lost hopes of getting back to it again; on which he reduced the men to an allowance of four ounces of biscuit daily. They got back however ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... and the management of the helm required his undivided attention; nevertheless his mind was busy with anxious thoughts and plans of escape. He thought with horror of a French prison, for there were old shipmates of his who had been captured years before, and who were pining in exile still. The bare idea of being separated indefinitely, perhaps for ever, from Minnie, ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... was not to be at all; for at five o'clock we came to the Post at Lachine, and here the governor and the others were to stop. During all the day I had waited for my chance to say a word of apology to his excellency, but it was no use; nothing seemed to help me, for he was busy with his papers and notes, and I also had to finish up my reports. The hours went by, and I saw my chances drift past. I knew that the governor held the thing against me, and not the less because he saw me more than once that day in speech with his niece. For she appeared anxious to cheer ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... improvement.... His inclination to accumulate crude and undigested information, sufficiently evinced in some of his tours, had their full scope: he then lost himself, and bewildered others, in the confusion of detail. I question if he ever had the power of correct abstract reasoning. His imagination was too busy for it: his eye was too ravenous, devouring all within its reach."—General Introduction to Statistical Account ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... waiting on the back porch for a dram, and when the darkness settled the fiddles were talking old tunes and nimble feet were busy. Little Jason did his wonderful dancing and Gray did his; and round about, the window-seats and the tall columns of the porch heard again from lovers what they had been listening to for so long. At midnight the hunters rode forth again in pairs into the crisp, brilliant air and under the kindly ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... offered to his remains, and of the assassination of his numerous sons, and of his brother. One son, he heard, had been sent off by Maurice to implore aid from the Persians; he had been overtaken and put to death by the emissaries of the usurper; but rumor, always busy where royal personages are concerned, asserted that he lived, that he had escaped his pursuers, and had reached Ctesiphon. Chosroes was too much interested in the acceptance of the rumor to deny it; he gave ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson |
