"Desk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seated at his desk scribbling idly on his blotting-pad, and rose to his feet with a look of alarm when his wife and family entered. His usually ruddy colour had disappeared, and he was white-faced and haggard in appearance; looking like a man who had received ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... score or more bookkeepers came to him with bills, letters and papers of all descriptions. To one and all he said, with a yawn, and very impatiently: "Leave what you have brought on my desk; I'll ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... open doorway of the office Racey dismounted. He dropped the reins over his horse's head and walked to the doorway. There he stopped and looked in. He saw Lanpher sitting behind his big homemade desk. Lanpher was watching him. At one side of the desk, on a chair tilted back against the wall, sat Luke Tweezy. Luke was chewing a straw. His eyes were half closed, but Racey detected their glitter. Luke Tweezy was not overlooking any ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... was seated at a desk in the governor's room, with the governor likewise seated at his side. A large book lay on the desk, in which the director wrote, or was supposed to write, what the prisoners requested or complained of, what punishments he awarded, with all the particulars ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... the state troops the preceding summer, although the government had forbidden amateurs to send wireless messages. And Henry, believing that his idolized leader could accomplish anything, now cleared a space at his desk in a corner of the shop, and wrote him a long letter, setting forth all that ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... all is a writing-desk," continued Katy. "And Johnnie wants a sled. But, oh dear! these are such big things. And I've only got two dollars and ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... glee, I sate and cow'r'd o'er my own vacancy! And as I watch'd the dull continuous ache, Which, all else slum'bring, seem'd alone to wake; O Friend! long wont to notice yet conceal, And soothe by silence what words cannot heal, I but half saw that quiet hand of thine Place on my desk this exquisite design. Boccaccio's Garden and its faery, The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry! An Idyll, with Boccaccio's spirit warm, Framed in the silent poesy of form. Like flocks adown a newly-bathed steep Emerging from a mist: or like a stream ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... he gave me hangs above my desk as I write. I am free to confess that I have performed no great exploits with it, and when I took it down from its hook the other day to look at it, I found that it had ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... possible. A fellow gets out of touch with things. Nothing but musty business affairs. Edward, hasn't the mail come yet? Wait a minute!—Do go up into my room. You'll find a document in a blue cover on the left side of my desk. Get that and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... I could see him fumbling at the safe that he kept there beside the desk. Presently he drew out a battered and dented red tin box and a bundle of papers. These he brought into the dining room and laid on the table. Then he drew up a chair, cleared his throat, rather loudly it seemed to ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... he shouted, banging his fist on the desk. "And don't you tell the papers. If anything come out, I expose you. My lawyer, Mr. Windisch, say he can have you put out of court." And Peter bustled ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... "I've known for a long time almost everything you've told me, but I didn't know how father got the letter. I thought he must have found it somewhere in the desk or in his own room, or even in the attic. You didn't kill him any more than I did, by coming into the room in mother's gown. What he really died of was a great, wonderful joy that suddenly broke a heart too weak to hold it. And, even though I've wanted my father to see me, all my life ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... nervously up from his desk at the sound of her voice. The bland smile with which he greeted her changed to a frown as his eyes rested upon Grace, and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... MacTavish of Benmacstronachan, near Auchnapeterhoolish, in the island of South Uist—has sent me in no less than a hundred and fifty-three closely-written pages! I dare say it's the size of the adjectives he uses that makes the thing so heavy," quoth Tam, and dropped it thudding on his desk. "Life is short, the art of the MacTavish long, and to tell the truth, gentlemen"—he gloomed at them humorously—"to tell the truth, I stuck in the middle o't!" (Roars of laughter, and a reproving voice, "Oh, ta pold MacTa-avish!" whereat there was pandemonium). ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... desk in Alan's living-room sat Rossland, when the door opened behind him and the master of the range came in. He was not disturbed when he saw who it was, and rose to meet him. His coat was off, his sleeves rolled up, and it was evident he was making no effort to conceal his freedom with ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... It was twelve o'clock when I first discovered my loss, and I have been turning the place upside down ever since—I and my assistants. Every drawer has been emptied, every desk and table turned over, the very carpet and linoleum have been taken up, but there is not a sign of the drawings. My men even insisted on turning all their pockets inside out, although I never for a moment suspected either of them, and it would take a pretty big pocket to hold the drawings, ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... embedded. This wall was painted white, and near it I had lamps placed which were lit at nightfall. Should a figure pass that wall I could see it from my window. No one could enter that doorway now, without running the risk of my seeing him from where I sat at my desk. ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... evenings of study at his father's great mahogany desk, pouring over medical books and journals, taking notes, sifting and re-sifting facts. He remembered one set of books in particular—Erickson's monumental three-volume text on surgery, richly bound and stamped in gold. He ...
— Small World • William F. Nolan
... future? Here! Take Father Pat's hand, and shut your eyes, and we'll go on an Aladdin trip together, this to see what became of certain other poor little boys. Here's a wonderful office, and a man is sitting at his desk. He heads one of the biggest concerns in the world, he's cultured, and generous, and a credit to his country. Suppose we go back with him thirty years. Oh, look, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... on's Honour, the other on's Gain, He fixes a Desk on Bucephalus Main, That so by that means he his Prancer bestriding, Might practise at once both ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... corner of the room. It was while I was present that he first come ter know that his thief-proof safe had been opened and that his pile of greenbacks had been stolen. The safe had been opened with the key hidden back of the tobacco jar on his writin' desk." ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... door-keeper was away, or busy, or sick, or careless, or whether the head-waiter at the dining-room was so tall that he couldn't see so short a beggar, or whether the clerk at the desk was so noisy that he couldn't hear so still a beggar, or however it was, Mary Elizabeth did get in; by the door-keeper, past the head-waiter, under the shadow of the clerk, over the smooth, slippery marble ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Vase. Around the table are suitable places for the ADVOCATES in the cause. On each side are elevated benches, occupied by the GIRLS of the Factory, behind whom are stationed platoons of the ROYAL GUARDS. At the end of the benches on the right is the jury-box, with twelve JURORS, and the desk of the CRIER, on which is a small mallet. Around the whole stage is a large gallery, crowded with the CITIZENS of Potsdam.—The entire scene is intended to represent an English Criminal Court of Law of the olden time, in full costume, with scarlet robes, ermine gowns, etc.—The following CHARACTERS ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... seemed to enter into her and give her a fitful strength. She sat down at her husband's desk and began writing rapidly, and as the thoughts came to her; and when she had finished, she inclosed her letter with the torn fragment, and, after addressing it, sealed it carefully. As she did so she heard footsteps approaching the library, and slipped it hurriedly into the open drawer, ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that two packages lay in father's office,—one for me, the other for those everlasting freedmen. John was to forward mine. He had taken up the box to write my address on it, when the yellow bundle tumbled off the desk at his feet and scared the wits out of his head. So I came in for father's secondhand clothes, and the Ethiopians ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... will, Miles, and you'll find it in my desk. There are some trifles given to you and yourn, but you want not gold, and the rest all goes to Kitty and her children. There is a p'int, however, on which my mind is very ondetarmined, and I will now lay it before you. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the narrow windows looked in on nothing but bare walls, and the hard pallet and the crucifix. And even behind that door at the end of a long corridor, in the inner cell opening from an antechamber where the Prior usually sat at his desk or received private visitors, the high jet of light fell on only one more object that looked quite as common a monastic sight as the bare walls and hard pallet. It was but the back of a figure in the long white ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... pulling a drawer in his desk open and glancing inside. "Late yesterday afternoon I received a letter from my client, Mrs. Dexter, who directed me to hand you each a new ten-dollar bill, with her best wishes ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... in the office, all dreadfully littered with papers and books, and at one of these sat a short, bald-headed man, talking rapidly to a pretty, smiley-faced young girl, who scribbled queer little scratches in a tablet. Beside another desk in the opposite corner of the room were two men, both tall and gray and pleasant appearing, but so much absorbed in their conversation that they did not notice the children's entrance. Through a nearby door came the fitful clicking ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... which gave me another grudge against him. When the extinguisher had exhausted itself, the spectre turned about and fairly raised the ceiling with his guffaws, and when he saw my ruined pages upon the desk his ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... office and library and living-room in one, a large, untidy room with books lining two sides of it, and a third devoted to shelf on shelf of bottles and jars and boxes. Near the bottle end of the apartment the Doctor had his desk and his few appliances. At the other end was a big oak table covered with a debris of books, magazines, newspapers, tobacco cans, pipes, and general litter. There was a mingled odor, not unpleasant, of drugs and disinfectants, tobacco and leather. Wade made himself ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... insult snapped the last thread of Bud's regret for what had happened. He sold the furniture and the automobile, took the money to the judge that had tried the case, told the judge a few wholesome truths, and laid the pile of money on the desk. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... the clock, the Senior Under-Graduats would bring into the hall the Juniors or Freshmen between that time and six of the clock, and there make them sit down on a Forme in the middle of the Hall, joyning to the Declaiming Desk: which done, every one in Order was to speake some pretty Apothegme, or make a Jest or Bull, or speake some eloquent Nonsense, to make the Company laugh: But if any of the Freshmen came off dull or not cleverly, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... studied while wandering among the mountains, and at intervals, adopting my knee for my desk, wrote down the results of my musing. Let not the shepherd ever forget his dog—his constant companion and best friend, and without which all his efforts would little avail! Mine knew well the places where in my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... those who follow literary pursuits. No professional person should respect himself in his work who has no special time for reading and study, and who does not conscientiously adhere to it. The pulpit, the law-office, the doctor's office, the teacher, and the editor's desk, each clamors for the man, the woman, who can think. To appreciate God and to sympathize with the human heart; to know law and the intricate special case; to understand disease and relief for the suffering patient; to have something to teach and to know how to teach it ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... allowances many save money, and those who do not, are at all events enabled to bring their families up to Washington for a little amusement. In the next place, they are so comfortably accommodated in the house, every man having his own well-stuffed arm-chair, and before him his desk, with his papers and notes! Then they are supplied with everything, even to pen-knives with their names engraved on them—each knife having two pen-blades, one whittling blade, and a fourth to clean their nails with, showing on the part of the government, a paternal regard ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... interesting a character—for see, he is going to take his distinguished station in the approaching contest. The hammer of the worthy auctioneer, which I suppose is of as much importance as was Sir Fopling's periwig of old,[187] upon the stage—the hammer is upon the desk!—The company begin to increase and close their ranks; and the din of battle will shortly be heard. Let us keep these seats. Now, tell me who ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the goods were delivered and the bill sent in. Immediately upon this being done, Eldon called upon the merchant and said, in a confident manner, as he laid the bill he had received upon his desk. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... I shouldnt be let. He hasnt even the sense to see that it would pay him to get some cheap soldiering out of me. How can a man tied to a desk from nine to six be anything—be even a man, let alone a soldier? But I'll teach him and you a lesson. Ive had enough of living a dog's life and despising myself for it. Ive had enough of being talked down to by hogs like you, and wearing my life out for ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... sitting-room after Alathea had arrived. She was writing at her desk in the little salon. I looked in and asked her if she would come in and speak to me. Then I got to my chair. She entered obediently with the block in her hand, ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... really go rather too far sometimes," said Avis. "Miss Rowe knew perfectly well this morning that you dropped your atlas on purpose, and that it was you who tied Cissie's hair ribbon to her desk." ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... with him too. Every day I wrote with him, first in red, and then in ochre to give him a rest. He seemed to love to write more than to sketch. He would jump into my hand with tail happily pointed downward as I sat down to my writing desk. And when I later saw his dark green stripes turning pastel and knew that anemia was imminent, and started to lay him down for a earned rest, he would stiffen himself as if to say, 'Oh, come, come! I'm good for ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... Robson, the Mallathorpe family solicitor, a bustling, rather rough-and-ready type of man, who came into Eldrick's room looking not only angry but astonished. He nodded to Collingwood, and flung himself into a chair at the side of Eldrick's desk. ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... his shop, he thrust his prentice boy out of it, and, unlocking his desk, took out, with an air of grave and complacent importance, a dirty and crumpled piece of printed paper; he observed, "This is new corn—it's no every body could show you the like o' this. It's the duke's speech about the Porteous ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Instead of using the night for sleep, you spend it in reading; your bedstead is a bookcase, your pillows a desk! At the time when the wearied brain asks for rest, you lead it through these nocturnal orgies, and you are surprised to find it the worse for them ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... greater part of the congregation. After the notices for the week had been given, there was a general settling back and recalling of wandering attention as Dr. Hollingsworth came forward and stood in the pastor's place at the desk. ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... shockingly strange chairs and table that were all coated thickly with dust. Somehow this dust gave Cherry a desolate sensation, it covered everything alike: the spectacle case and the newspaper that still lay on her father's desk; the cups and glasses that remained, face downward at the sink, from some last meal. Her hands and Alix's were speedily coated with it, too; they felt sad and unnatural here, in the house where they had spent ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... were covered with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms. Pretty straw mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down on a praying-desk. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they used a ruin, Sally told her to wait and see why they chose strong walls and plenty of room overhead. All round was a circle of very small biscuits like cushions, and on these the Bread-children sat. A square loaf in the middle was the teacher's desk, and on it lay an ear of wheat, with several bottles of yeast well corked up. The teacher was a pleasant, plump lady from Vienna, very wise, and so famous for her good bread that she was ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... is a scene in a little village school that will longest remain in my memory. The low forms, the master's desk, and the blackboard stand today as they did on July 25, which was no doubt the last day before the Summer vacation, as it was also the last week before the outbreak of the war. On the walls the charts remained which reminded these little ones daily that "Alcohol is the enemy," and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... until he saw the officer who had made the arrest depart, he entered the station-house. To the sergeant on duty behind the long desk he said, with much courtesy, "I am a friend of Miss Jocelyn, a young woman recently brought to this station. I wish to do nothing contrary to your rules, but I would like to communicate with her and do what I can for her comfort. Will you please explain to me what privileges ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... emotion, seemed a real solace for the moment. "We don't know how it was," he continued. "My daughter was to go to practice the music with her in the hall after school, and when she went into the school-room she found Sister Benigna sitting at her desk with The Messiah open. But she was gone. We had in Doctor Hummel, and he says it was the heart. He has thought, he says, for a year or so, that there must be some feeble action of the valves. She went to him a twelvemonth since about it, and he told her his opinion; but he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... works. An armed picket was left at the big gates, while the rest of the troops patrolled suddenly deserted streets in Ironville. In the accounting office there began again the clicking of typewriters, and Clark, at his desk, dictated a dispatch to Philadelphia. This done, he fell into a mood of strange abstraction. The car of destiny was ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... day of his birth the King of Rome was privately christened at nine o'clock in the evening, in the chapel of the Tuileries, surrounded by his family and the court; the Emperor took his place in the middle of the chapel, on a chair with a prayer desk before it, beneath a canopy. Between the altar and the rail, on a granite base covered with white velvet, had been set a superb vermilion vase which served for the baptismal font. When Napoleon approached to present his ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... like this. Here the other mornin', as I'm sittin' placid at my desk dictatin' routine correspondence into a wax cylinder that's warranted not to yank gum or smell of frangipani—sittin' there dignified and a bit haughty, like a highborn private sec. ought to, you know—who should come paddin' ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... on the subject himself, but I ascertained his wishes through my confidential dialogues with his children. Lucy seemed delighted with the idea, looking forward to the time when her brother would officiate in the same desk where her father and grandfather had now conducted the worship of God for more than half a century; a period of time that, to us young people, seemed to lead us back to the dark ages of the country. And all this the dear girl wished for her brother, in connection with his spiritual rather ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... forward heavily in his chair and rested his great arms upon John Allandale's desk. "Poker" John and he were seated in the former's office, whither the money-lender had come, post-haste, on receiving the news of the daring raid of the night before. The great man's voice was unusually thick with rage, and his ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... On the desk in there lay the deed. The negotiations had been concluded, and the price settled upon; all that was needed to complete the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... except the doctor in that little company whom John Weightman had known before—an old book-keeper who had spent his life over a desk, carefully keeping accounts—a rusty, dull little man, patient and narrow, whose wife had been in the insane asylum for twenty years and whose only child was a crippled daughter, for whose comfort and happiness he had toiled and sacrificed himself without ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... it, my young friend. Now you can sit down at my desk and open your accounts. I like to see boys methodical, and there is nothing like keeping accounts to make one accurate. Keep your books posted up, and you will know where ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... help of an outward incline; the sofa, heaped with cushions, could not conceal a broken spring, though it braved it out with the consciousness of having been sat upon by a royal princess who had once taken tea in that lodging. But the other appointments, including a pretty writing-desk and a multitude of china plates almost hiding the wall-paper, were unfractured, and the little dining-room was very cosey. After breakfast it had the habit of turning itself into a study, where one of the outwanderers used to set himself down and ask himself with pen ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... little door of Ellen's study closet and went in there, though Ellen begged her not. She pulled the door to, and stayed some time perfectly quiet. Not able to see or hear what she was doing, and fretted beyond measure that her work-box and writing-desk should be at Nancy's mercy, or even feel the touch of her fingers, Ellen at last could stand it no longer, but threw herself out of the bed, weak as she was, and went to see what was going on. Nancy was seated quietly on the floor, examining, ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... features—his wife looked on sympathetic; and it was at this unlucky moment that the subject of their late conference made his appearance cheerfully from behind the ugly pulpit, in close conference with Mr Folgate. The pulpit was a three-storeyed mass, with the reading-desk and the clerk's desk beneath—a terrible eyesore to ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Grimes, an alleged colored preacher. I immediately rushed to the door—some officers were between the green door and the outer door; I put my shoulder to green door—just then it cracked, the perpendicular piece was broken. I pushed as hard as I could with one of my feet against the judges' desk; I was there some three minutes; some one or two officers were outside pulling green door toward them. The crowd rushed in, surrounded the prisoner and left. I should think thirty or forty came into the room—Shadrach left with the crowd—there was noise and ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... him, even though a succession of audible sighs escaped his lips. At length he went over to the counter and took a sheet or two of the paper,—which was kept there for the few who desired to write home,—a quill-pen and ink; and picking up a small wooden box he seated himself upon it before a desk—which had been built from a rude packing-case—and began wearily ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... cold would kill him, was his opinion; and so, when the students came with their essays and treatises, the manuscripts were warmed at the stove before he read them. The windows of his room were never opened, so that there was a suffocating and impure air in his dwelling. He had a writing-desk on the bed; books and manuscripts lay in confusion round about; dishes, plates, and pots stood here or there, as the convenience of the moment dictated, and his only companion was ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... her," said Mary, confidently; and, without more ado, left Letty, and, going to her desk in the shop, wrote a note to Mrs. Wardour. This she gave to Beenie to send by special messenger to Thornwick; after which, she told her, she must take up a nice tea to Miss Lovel in her bedroom. Mary then resumed her place in the shop, under the frowns and side-glances ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... Samuel J. May, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Love, Miss Brown, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Jenkins, Hon. William Hay, and Giles B. Stebbins. At the evening session Mrs. Stanton read her address prepared for the Legislature, which Miss Anthony had stereotyped and published. A copy was laid on the desk of every legislator, and twenty thousand scattered like snow-flakes over ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... flint and rubble, E.E. in style. The tower (W.) is embattled and carries four pinnacles. The fine lancet windows in the chancel were discovered during restoration in 1872, as were also the fragments of the old screen, since pieced together to form the present pulpit and reading desk. The alabaster effigy in the chancel, of a knight in armour, is believed to represent one of the Scales family. There are several old brasses: (1) to William Taberam, Rector of Therfield (d. 1432), this was large, but only the upper part now remains; ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... declare that you regard this suicide as a crime against yourself and all those dear to you, then I will give you a powder which will put an end to your life without leaving such ugly traces as that pistol on your desk." ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... accounts to settle together, Mr. Thorne." Then Percival perceived, for the first time, that she held a folded bit of paper in her hand. The moment that he feared had come. He rose without a word, went to his desk and unlocked it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Mrs. Bryant had approached the table, had opened the paper and was flattening it out with her hand. He stooped over his hoard—a meagre little hoard this time—counting what he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... past 4 o'clock he desired Mr. Lear to call Mrs. Washington to his bedside; when he requested her to bring from his desk two wills, and on receiving them, he gave her one, which he observed was useless as being superseded by the other, and desired her to burn it, which she did, and put ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... There were fears; too, that the Secretary of War might think it not sufficiently respectful, or serious in its tone; but such apprehensions proved unfounded. The moment it was received and read in the War Department, it was hurried down to the House, and delivered, ore retundo, from the clerk's desk. ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five o'clock that afternoon. It stated that he had just shot his wife; that any will she might secretly have made would be invalid, as he survived her. He meant to shoot himself at six o'clock and would, if he ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... desk where he had been sitting for the last hour, his head down on his arms, trying to shut out the brave, old cry of life coming in through the open windows, pulling gently at his heart, cheeping through ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... Mr. Gusher, rising from his desk at the announcement and advancing to the railing. "I shall do myself ze pleazure, and ze honor of receiving such commands as you shall confide to ze firm," he ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... papers, and here he did what little writing he had to do. There was one window in the room, which looked out upon the garden in the rear of the house. The furniture consisted of a chair, a small portable desk, placed upon a table, an old map of the State of Maine, a dictionary, almanac, and several ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... there must have been a large lump of the Blarney-Stone, conglomerate probably, kept in the desk of our reverend instructor in the ways of syntax and the dismal paths of numbers. We have a lively recollection of the countless tables of foreign coins which we committed to memory, and of the provoking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kind old man, and home will not be itself without his white head in the reading-desk. Have you ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... They certainly won't if I can prevent them. I'll never forgive them for discussing me as they have this afternoon." There was an unpleasant light in the newspaper girl's eyes, as, closing the door of her room, she went to her desk and opening it, sat down before it, picking up her pen. After a little thought she began to write, and when she had finished what seemed to be an extremely short letter, she slipped it into the envelope with a smile of malicious satisfaction. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... took Raggedy Ann down to his office and propped her up against some books upon his desk; he wanted to have her where he could see her cheery smile all day, for, as you must surely know, smiles ...
— Raggedy Andy Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... We've got permission to send you there, if you'll go. With a yellow ticket, again—but without any razzle-dazzle this time. The only thing you'll get out of it is a chance to fight for a better chance for others some day—and a promise that there'll be more, until you get old enough to sit at a desk on Earth and fight against every bickering nation there to keep the planets clean. There's a rocket waiting to transship you to the Moon on the way to Mercury ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... hero "read the Latin tongue and the Greek letters with a nice old clergyman, who sat behind a black oaken desk, with a huge Elzevir Flaccus before him." "Here," says Borrow, "I was in the habit of sitting on a large stone, before the roaring fire in the huge open chimney, and entertaining certain of the Protestant young gentlemen of my own age ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... Isaac went to his desk, opened with great deliberation an ebony box, took out two cigars, offered one to Jack, leaned over the lamp until his own was alight, and took the chair opposite Jack's. All this time Jack sat watching him as a child does ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was fighting a hard, stern battle. His eyes were often turned towards the road, but his thoughts were mostly upon other things. Over his desk hung two pictures, and occasionally his gaze rested upon these. One was that of a sweet-faced woman, who looked down upon him with gentle, loving ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... Hope-Jones Organ Company. The position of the swell shutters is brought under the control of the organist's fingers as well as his feet. Each balanced swell pedal is provided with an indicator key fixed on the under side of the ledge of the music desk, where it is most conspicuous to the eye of the performer. As the swell pedal is opened by the organist's foot, the indicator key travels in a downward direction to the extent of perhaps one inch and a quarter. As the organist closes ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... did I do with—— Finished 'em up and put 'em away somewhere," said the assayer, dusting his hands and moving towards his desk. "Such a lot of stuff's been coming in—here they are, I reckon." He drew a half dozen small printed forms from a cavity in the desk, glanced them over briefly and handed the lot to Van. "Nothing doing. Pretty good ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... them into a room where nothing was in evidence save a punkah, a giant porcelain stove, a huge desk and chair, and a monster man. Cornelius was fleshy to enormity. He was very like a mammoth but benevolent spider. Wealthy as he was fat, while many men had cursed him, many more had blessed him. His business interests were wide and complex, ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... bare, depressingly so; bare as to its uncarpeted cottonwood floor, bare in its hard-finished, smoke-tinted walls. In it, to the casual observer, there were visible but four objects: an old-fashioned walnut desk that had once borne a top, but which did so no longer; two cane-bottomed chairs with rickety arms; and, seated in one thereof, a man. The latter looked up as the visitor entered, revealing an unshaven chin and a pair of restless black eyes over ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... EAST, Feb. 10.—But for the "field gray" coat and the militant mustache, I should have taken him for a self-made American, a big business man or captain of industry, as he sat at his work desk, the telephone at his elbow, the electric push-buttons and reams of neat reports adding to the illusion. Quiet, unassuming, and democratic, he yet makes the same impression of virility and colossal energy that Colonel Roosevelt does, but with an iron restraint of discipline ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... such a nice old man,' said Mrs. Cohn, as she recalled the photograph of the white-haired cherub writing with a quill at a property desk. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... had, since the arrival of Porthos, frequently cast his eyes with great uneasiness upon a large chest placed in front of his oak desk. Porthos comprehended that this chest, although it did not correspond in shape with that which he had seen in his dreams, must be the blessed coffer, and he congratulated himself that the reality was several feet higher ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... later into an office in which sat two men with their feet on a desk. The one in his shirt-sleeves was a smug, baldish young man with clothes cut in the latest mode. He was rather heavy-set and looked flabby. The other man ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... to the heavy oak desk which occupied a conspicuous place in the centre of one of the walls. He unlocked it and drew forth ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... imaged in the little mirror on my desk; the anxiety, tenseness in his voice, was duplicated ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... than by him. Meanwhile her vanity glowed within her, as she thus held him there, alone, to the discomfiture of other women more beautiful and more highly placed than herself; as she remembered his letters in her desk at home; and the secrets she imagined him to have told her. Then again she felt a rush of sudden disquiet, caused by this new aspect—wavering and remote—as though some hidden grief emerged and vanished. He had the haggard air of a man who scarcely sleeps. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... some years before, when the author of The Christian Year was the officiating clergyman. Mrs. Kingsley and I joined the procession and entered the church. It was a small, oddly-arranged interior—brick pavements, high-backed pews, the clerk's desk adjoining the reading-desk, but a little lower. Mr. Kingsley read the service in a measured tone, which enabled him to overcome the defect in his utterance noticeable in conversation. At the grave the rest of the office was said, and here the grief of the poor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... painfully on a chair, and took down a large volume bound in green leather, placing it on his desk; then, as if this exertion had redoubled the heat he was suffering from and exhausted his strength, he said to De Chemerant: "Sir, you have been, doubtless, a soldier; you can understand that we live a little carelessly; for, without further parley and ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning's work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... need feel no embarrassment if she is obliged to spend a few days in a hotel alone. Upon entering she would go to the desk and make arrangements for a room. When the choice is made she surrenders her hand bag to the bell-boy, who conducts her to her room. She should, for her own convenience and protection, deposit valuables or large sums of money with the hotel proprietor in the office safe. Then the responsibility ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... his private office on William Street, in New York City, dictating his morning mail, when a boy laid a telegram upon his desk. He finished the letter he was dictating, before opening the message, and ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... heavens! To stoop over a desk all day, bathed in ink, run in and out of the courts! Who would marry you then? No, no; come home to me as an officer, and ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... the ruins of Pompeii, who had stood there for sixteen hundred years, and when he was excavated was found at his post with his gun clasped in his skeleton hands. You believe this because it is written in history. I have heard politicians tell it. I have heard it told from the sacred desk. It is true; no one ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... declining sunlight filtered through the cornstalks in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory upon my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair, and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies. The room, with its one window, was already a prey to the twilight. One by one, with my trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of the political hydra, while I listened, ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... lord?" exclaimed my father, as though perhaps he might have forgotten something: then, leaning over the desk, he said, in a stage whisper: "Usher, bring me Blackstone—or ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... place of worship, or in any Anglican place of worship, you'd know that whenever you want anything for the Church from a hymn book or a hassock or a pew to a pulpit or a screen or a spire you go to Fortune, East and Sabre, Tidborough. Similarly in the scholastic line, anything from a birch rod to a desk—Fortune, East and Sabre, by return and the best. No, they're the great, the great, church and school-furnishing people. 'Ecclesiastical and Scholastic Furnishers and Designers' they call themselves. And they're IT. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... this shop, anyhow? Eh? Answer me that. Tut, tut, tut! Not a peep out of you, sir. If you had done your Christian duty, you would have taken a year's vacation when lumber was selling itself in 1919 and 1920, and you would have left Andrews sitting in at your desk to see the sort of stuff he's ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... (Aside) He is getting frightened. (Taking up a pile of papers from his desk. Aloud) Here, my would-be son-in-law, are the family papers which will ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... from nominating him to any of the mitres which death had emptied; "the original sin of his birth" was aggravated in their eyes by the actual sin of his patriotism. No wonder the sheets of paper that littered his desk, before he sunk into his last sad scene of dotage, were found scribbled all over ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... grunted doubtfully, but took a stamp out of his desk, sealed the letter, handed it over to Kim, and departed. Mahbub Ali's was a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... open upon the dressing-table, and, picking up the small leather case, left the room. He reached the lift, happily escaping the observation of the young lady seated at her desk, and descended into the hall. Once amongst the crowd of people who thronged the corridors, he found it perfectly simple to leave the hotel by one of the side entrances. He walked to the corner of the street and drew a little breath. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lights behind the back drop had gone down and Sara Lee was back again in her familiar setting, one of the clearest pictures she retained of that amazing interlude was of that crowded little room in the Savoy, its single littered desk, its two typewriters creating an incredible din, a large gentleman in a dark-blue military cape seeming to fill the room. And in corners and off stage, so to speak, perhaps a half dozen men, watching ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... letters—MR. ANDREW SLATE. A knock on the panel resulted in an immediate invitation to enter. Wingate turned the handle, entered and closed the door behind him. The man who was the solitary occupant of the room half rose from behind his desk. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... abroad, he was returning to Sequoia to take over his redwood heritage—that he discovered that a stranger and not the flesh of his flesh and the blood of his blood was to reap the reward of his fifty years of endeavour. Small wonder, then, that he laid his leonine head upon his desk and wept, silently, as the aged and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... end of the great room. There was a small high teacher's desk facing a squadron of long benches, two high windows ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... his desk turned again and once more Began to unburden his bosom and pour His heart out on paper—the poet's relief, When drunk with life's rapture ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... an' started up to the desk to pay my bill, when I had another turn. I stood still with a shock, pinchin' myself to see if I was in my right mind or only sufferin' from an extra foolin' hang-over. A jaunty young chap with out-standin' clothes, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... the Cathedral, and streaming down every alley and lane, the packed galleries, the gesticulating black figure of the preacher—this impressed on her an idea of the power of corporate religion, that hours at her own prayer-desk, or solitary twilight walks under the Hall pines, or the uneventful divisions of the Rector's village sermons, had failed ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... with his knees apart, his hands clasped, his head bent; very glum. And sometimes HORSHAM glances at the door, as if waiting for it to open. Then his gaze will travel back, up the long shiny black piano, with a volume of the Well Tempered Clavichord open on its desk, to where CANTELUPE is perched uncomfortably on the bench; paler than ever; more self-contained than ever, looking, to one who knows him as well as Horsham does, a little dangerous. So he returns to contemplation of the ceiling or the carpet. They wait there as men wait ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... whispering went around when she was seen to reach for the academic dictionary which was always the foundation of the tower of books upon the northeast corner of Miss Cramp's desk. She opened the volume and shot out ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... the Encyclopaedia handy and sat down at my desk. I had already grasped the fact that the title of my discourse was the important thing. In the list of the Society's lectures sent to me there was hardly one whose title did not impress the imagination in advance. I must be ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... where you are," remarked Stephen, "and I would advise you to stick to the desk till you have gained a thorough knowledge of mercantile affairs. You may then have an opportunity of turning them to good account, whereas at present you scarcely know enough to be ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... day after the arrival of the Dieppe goelette bringing the news of peace, Bigot sat before his desk reading his despatches and letters from France, when the Chevalier de Pean entered the room with a bundle of papers in his hand, brought to the Palace by the chief clerk of the Bourgeois ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was filled at the Linley School next morning. The tinker had come to see Trove and sat behind the big desk as work began. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... enough," Alf replied, "but I have heard that you can't argue with the instinct of a brute, and I know that it is useless to argue with red liquor. Here, let's shove the writing desk against this door," he added. "Once more, shove again. That's it. Now we'll pile benches against the other one. We can't do anything with the windows, but must simply keep out of the ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... on the following morning Doctor Gotthold was already at his desk in the library; and with a small cup of black coffee at his elbow, and an eye occasionally wandering to the busts and the long array of many-coloured books, was quietly reviewing the labours of the day before. He was a man of about ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pacing up and down his office. Suddenly he paused. Sexton still stood beside his desk, watching him respectfully. "You fool!" he snarled. "Get out of here and ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... surprises—one that met me on the very threshold of Transatlantic existence—was the discovery of my own utter uselessness. I could point to my desk and say, "There lie the proofs of my erudition—the highest prizes of my college class." But of what use they? The dry theories I had been taught had no application to the purposes of real life. My logic was the prattle of the parrot. My classic lore ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... typical guatemalteco in whole trousers and an open shirt, but of some education, for he was writing with moderate rapidity at his homemade desk. He also wore shoes. His manner was far more reasonable than that of his illiterate underlings, and we were soon conversing rationally. He appeared to know enough English to get the gist of my passport, but handed it back with ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... sitting late. Candles had been brought to light the long desk or dais where sat the Bailly in his great chair, and the twelve scarlet-robed jurats. The Attorney-General stood at his desk, mechanically scanning the indictment read against prisoners charged with capital crimes. His work was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
