"Poring over" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few hints as to what my duties would be, turned me over to him for further instruction. I found I needed but little. The pages, with their rows of figures, seemed like old friends. I almost enjoyed poring over them. Was it possible that I was going to like ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... effort, partly in order that he may combine some other advantage with the advantage of walking, but principally in order to be sure that the effort shall be an adequate effort. The same with reading. Your paramount aim in poring over literature is to enjoy, but you will not fully achieve that aim unless you have also a subsidiary aim which necessitates the measurement of your energy. Your subsidiary aim may be sthetic, moral, political, religious, scientific, erudite; ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... felt power slipping from her grasp. With one side of her character her new partner could sympathise; for Theodahad, though sprung from the loins of Gothic warriors, was a man of some literary culture, who preferred poring over the 'Republic' of Plato to heading a charge of the Gothic cavalry. But his acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature had done nothing to ennoble his temper or expand his heart. A cold, hard, avaricious soul, he had been entirely ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the beginning of Lydia's reading of the newspapers. To her father's secret amusement, she found the main details of Levine's battle as interesting as a novel. Every evening when he got home to supper he found her poring over the two local papers and primed with questions for him. Up to this moment she had lived in a quiet world bounded by her school, the home, the bit of lake shore and wood with which she was intimate, and peopled by her father ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." The painful effect upon our feelings, and upon our nervous system, of separations from departed friends, is involuntary and natural; but to cherish our griefs, to spend much time in melancholy moods, or in poring over the memorials of the departed, so as to excite and indulge morbid feelings, is not ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... you won't write. And I shan't see you...." She held him to her, her breast against his, desperate with the dread of being separated from him. "It's easy for you, at sea, with the wind and the sun; and something fresh to see, and something happening all the time. But me—in a dark room, poring over bits of straw and velvet to make hats for soppy women, and then going home to old Em and stew for dinner. There's not much fun in it, Keith.... No, I didn't mean to worry you by grizzling. It's too bad of me! But seeing ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and milord poring over the pages of the Indicateur, and heard the word Geneva dropped in a whisper. I think they mean to take the next ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... his next-door neighbor, the adjutant, the parlor was darkened, and except for the studious head of the family, now poring over some precious volume in the privacy of his den, the household had gone aloft. Davies paused a moment, irresolute. To his right the walk extended only a short distance. There were but two more houses. To his left lay the main length ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the floor with his feet and sat heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random and poring over it. Every word for him. It was true. God was almighty. God could call him now, call him as he sat at his desk, before he had time to be conscious of the summons. God had called him. Yes? What? Yes? His flesh shrank together as ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... age, and crude examples of the printer's art. Among these treasured books may be found volumes which have passed through the various branches of his family, some dating back to 1681 and 1702, and methinks I can see Lovecraft poring over these time-stained bits o' bookish lore as the monks of old followed the printed lines with quivering fingers in the taper's uncertain, flickering light. For Lovecraft appeals to me as a bookworm—one of those lovable mortals whose very existence seems to hang on the numbered ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... devil-sent word whereof he could make neither head nor tail. For the most part, his task of reading was performed in a recumbent position in the anteroom; which circumstance ended by causing his mattress to become as ragged and as thin as a wafer. In addition to his love of poring over books, he could boast of two habits which constituted two other essential features of his character—namely, a habit of retiring to rest in his clothes (that is to say, in the brown jacket above-mentioned) ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... wrested his education from books, experience, and downright hard thinking; and we Americans still like to tell of the immortal Lincoln poring over the pages of his few and hard-won volumes before the glare of the wood-fire on the hearth, or the uncertain light of the tallow dip. Benjamin Franklin got ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... eight months he could play fairly well. He also took singing lessons, as he had a pretty soprano voice. Harmony was likewise studied by this ambitious lad, but it was self taught. He had found a copy of Rameau's "Harmony" among some old books and spent many hours poring over those labored theories in his efforts to reduce them ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... couple of hours after supper in poring over a book Andy had loaned him. And it might easily be assumed that it had to do with the birds, animals, fauna and inhabitants of that great country lying north of the equator, down in ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... night lay over the great prison. Here and there in the grim corridors a guard dozed in the glare of an electric light; and in the office, too, a desk light glimmered where the warden sat at his desk, poring over a report. Once he glanced up at the clock—it was five minutes of eleven—and then he went on with ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... support to it—the alliance of the Empress Elizabeth with a man of immeasurably lower rank than Catherine's favourite; but it was important that this precedent should be established beyond dispute. Thus it was that one day, when Count Alexis was poring over his Bible by his country fireside, Chancellor Vorontsov made his appearance with ingratiating words and promises. Her Majesty, he informed the Count, was willing to confer Imperial rank on him in return for one small favour—the possession ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... gone "a kiltin' owre the brae," as he musically expressed it to Scotty; but everyone knew that he would come back in the autumn as surely as the wild ducks went south. Indoors, close to the candle, sat Hamish poring over "Waverley," and Callum could be heard tramping about in the loft, preparing to go off for the evening. Callum took great pains with his toilette these evenings, Scotty noticed, though the boys did not tease him any more about going to see Mary Lauchie; indeed, there were no more good-natured allusions ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... now, Hamilton, on his return at night from the office, had shut himself in the library, and was busily poring over a bundle of papers, when there came a timid knock at the door. In response to his call, Cicily entered. The young man greeted his wife politely enough, and even called her "darling" in a meaningless tone of voice; but the frown did not relax, and constantly his eyes wandered to the bundle ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... believe that boys can become genuinely interested in study, they should have visited the Quarry Troop headquarters a few days after the discovery of the work of the bill poster. For at least three consecutive afternoons a dozen lads spent their time in the big meeting room on the second floor poring over dry looking pamphlets which bore the stamp of the Bureau of Entomology of the United States ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... with his little comrades, Matvey is constantly poring over the Gospel. His piety increases, he prays night and day, hardly eats anything, and experiences "a singular joy at feeling himself grow weaker through the fasting." One day he notices that the priest of the village is less pious than ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... their tails clubbed and clotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns; dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics—all of it. But when the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, in whiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring over maps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud of the vanished past it certainly ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... When, after poring over the half-dozen illustrations, he was forced to the conclusion that nothing could surpass the knights of King Arthur, he opened The Last of the Mohicans and found himself captured, heart and soul, by the even more enticing Uncas and his fellows, superb bronze creatures, painted ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... of some of the dark cavaliers of the Lyndon race, whose pictures hung in the gallery at Hackton: where the lad was fond of spending the chief part of his time, occupied with the musty old books which he took out of the library, and which I hate to see a young man of spirit poring over. Always in my company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty scornful demeanour; which was so much the more disagreeable because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take hold of to ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the want of sympathy with men that the mere poring over books so often superinduces in the mind protest when judging of the Jesuits in Paraguay against the outrage done to their theories by the scheme the ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... a constant source of interest and amusement. Taking that pride in it which men conceive for the wonders of their own little world, he had made its history his study; and many a summer day within its walls, and many a winter's night beside the parsonage fire, had found the bachelor still poring over, and adding to, his goodly store of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... to envy those horsemen, and longed for the time when I could afford horses or camels of my own, to go away back into the bush and just see what was there. Many a day I spent poring over the map of the Colony, longing and longing to push out into the vast blank spaces of the unknown. Even at that time I planned out the expedition which at last I was enabled to undertake, though all was very visionary, and I could hardly conceive how I should ever manage to find the necessary ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... exert himself as much as he please, his feelings will tell him when to rest and when to begin again; let him be what Nature intended Mm to be—a happy, laughing, joyous child. Do not let him be always poring over books:— ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... not to suffer," he said, poring over his whisky, "because a woman gets hysteria. You have to think of Society, your children, house, money arrangements, a thousand things. It's all very well to talk. How do ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dave turned to the charts of the local waters. When Fernald came back with Dan Dalzell, Dave was still poring over the charts. ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... asked for something to make a nervous person sleep. Irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed would be about the best thing. She did not show any emotion; her face was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his sympathy. He looked as if he had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... vanished the moment she ushered herself into the man's presence. He was not at his desk poring over his littered correspondence. She found him standing before his favourite window, gazing out reflectively upon the grey light of the early winter day. He turned at the sound of her entry, and his smile of greeting lacked nothing ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... letters on a great warehouse near us, and what wonderful little gothic cottages did I build on the strength of the "and Son" that would shortly be added to it! The long nights with my cousin became less wearisome. I could hear the dull creaking of the letter-press, and see him sit poring over his writing, quite patiently. When the organ-grinder stopped on the corner and played "Make me no gaudy chaplet," I did not long to rush into the streets, for I had her to think about. When the clock struck eleven, and my cousin, with ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... adventurer was not done for yet. Nearly a century and a half after Marco's death a Genoese sea captain sat poring over one of the new printed books, which men were beginning to buy and to hand about among themselves. The book which he was reading was the Latin version of Marco Polo's travels. He was reading it with intentness and indeed with passion. As he read ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... as he would against it, Sunday continued to represent to him a hebdomadal vacuity of morning paper, afternoon nap and walk, unsatisfactory cold supper, and early to bed. His very capacity for monotony seemed to engender it. He could sit in Forest Park the whole of a Sunday afternoon, poring over a chance railroad time-table picked up on the bench; paring his straight, clean finger nails with a penknife; observing the carriages go by; or sit beside the lake, watching the skiffs glide about at twenty-five cents the hour; and finally, hat brim down over his eyes, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... circle of the family fireside; to be really mistress in her own house; to have her time to herself; to spend long mornings with the children; long evenings alone with her husband, even if he sat for hours poring over his big books and did not speak a word—oh, how ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... in the "ex's" in a moment. Excerpt, she found, was to pick or take out. She passed the dictionary to Diavolo, who studied the definition; but neither of them made a remark. From that day forth, however, they spent every spare moment they had in poring over Latin text-books, until they mastered the language, simply for the purpose of finding out what it was that Angelica ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... river, and shoot crows in the cornfield, and eat all the cherries they could pull, and what did the city send me in return for that? It sent me this thieving, rascally scheme of this man Perceval's, and it turned my boy's head, and lost him to me. I saw him poring over the note and reading it as if it were Gospel, and I suspected nothing. And when he asked me if he could keep it, I said yes he could, for I thought he wanted it for a curiosity, and then off he put with the black bag and the $200 he's been saving ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... thought of going to college, but now I was enthusiastic on the matter, and all my time (at least most of it) was devoted to poring over catalogues, of which I had a great number, and many of which I knew by heart from having gone over them so often, and finally a college was selected which seemed to suit me, so I went there in the fall ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... was the unforgivable sin. Had my mother discovered me poring over the half intelligible but wholly fascinating story of Adam and Eve and the Devil, she would have beaten me with the first implement to her hand. I had a moment's terror lest the possession of a work of literature should be so horrible a crime that ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... had been engaged as usual, in reading, on that unfortunate evening, he would have escaped the guilt of an act that turned out to be a serious matter rather than a joke. The habit of spending leisure hours in poring over books, has saved many boys from vice and ruin. Many more might have been saved, if they had been so fond of books as to stay at home evenings to read. It is an excellent habit to form, and tends to preserve the character ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... Bidborough. "I enjoy Huckleberry Finn as much now as I did when I was twelve; and I often yearn after the books I had as a boy and never see now. I used to lie on my face poring over them. The Clipper of the Clouds, and Sir Ludar, and a fairy story called Rigmarole in Search of a Soul, which, I remember, was quite beautiful, but can't lay hands ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the “Contrack.” “Be sure to come down to the Serai ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... reading; and his enthusiastic biographer very fairly answers that Charles Dickens's book was the great book of life, of which he was an indefatigable student. When other men were at school and at college, he was gathering up a vast experience of the hard world, and when his brother writers were poring over big volumes in their libraries, he was pacing up and down London and its suburbs with inexhaustible energy, drinking in oddities, idiosyncrasies, and wayside incidents at every pore. It is quite true: London is a microcosm, an endless and bottomless Babylon; which, perhaps, no man has ever known ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... about that one evening, towards the close of September where we had sometimes to light the lamp as early as half-past six, I returned to my rooms about that hour of the day (we shared rooms together, so fond had I grown of him, and I trust, he of me) to find him poring over the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... bookcase in the house containing a few books that had been his father's. Kolya was fond of reading, and had read several of them by himself. His mother did not mind that and only wondered sometimes at seeing the boy stand for hours by the bookcase poring over a book instead of going to play. And in that way Kolya read some ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of June John suffered a parlous blow. He was never so happy as when he was sitting in Scaife's room, cheek by jowl with Desmond, sharing, perhaps, a "dringer," poring over the same dictionary. This delightful intimacy came to a sudden end in this wise. The form-master of the Upper Remove happened to be a precisian in English. A sure road to his favour was the right use of a word. The Demon, appreciating this, bought a ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... such a critical inspection of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched horses; such a cleaning and loading of revolvers and examining of bowie-knives; such a half-soling of the seats of pantaloons with serviceable buckskin; then such a poring over ancient maps; such a reading up of Bibles and Palestine travels; such a marking out of routes; such exasperating efforts to divide up the company into little bands of congenial spirits who might make the long and arduous Journey without quarreling; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... happy that morning. For one thing, he had won honorable mention at the Schubert Society the night before; for another, that night the Engel was to sing Mignon, and the Portier had spent his Christmas tips for a ticket. All day long he had been poring over ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... too many books; she's always reading books. It is not a good thing to be always poring over print, is it, North? You have some influence with her; tell her ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... from Pretoria to obtain data from me, and they seemed annoyed when I told them that they could not prove it by my experience. With the advice to call up some ghost of the dark ages for research, I went ashore, and left these three wise men poring over the Spray's track on a chart of the world, which, however, proved nothing to them, for it was on Mercator's projection, and behold, it was "flat." The next morning I met one of the party in a clergyman's garb, ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... him up with phlegm. This gentleman has got a smattering of physic, and I am afraid tampers with his own constitution, by means of Brookes's Practice of Physic, and some dispensatories, which he is continually poring over. I beg pardon for this tedious epistle, and am—Very sincerely, dear ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... he was rubbing his wiry head with irritation, and poring over his letters for some clew, like a dunce going back through his pot-hooks, suddenly a great knock sounded through the house—one, two, three—like the thumping of a mallet on a cask, to learn whether any beer may still be ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... sat down to read it again. On the red shield above his head the gilt sheaf of thunderbolts darting between the initials of his name seemed to be aimed straight at the nape of his neck as he sat with bared elbows spread on the table, poring over the crumpled sheets. The ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... one's self the simplest out-door fact, but every such piece of knowledge is intellectually worth the time. Even the driest and barest book of Natural History is good and nutritious, so far as it goes, if it represents genuine acquaintance; one can find summer in January by poring over the Latin catalogues of Massachusetts plants and animals in Hitchcock's Report. The most commonplace out-door society has the same attraction. Every one of those old outlaws who haunt our New England ponds and marshes, water-soaked and soakers of something else,—intimate with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... second-hand books; in the cellar he bought jewels and gave money on the same to needy people. In the shop, pale youths, untidy, abstracted old men, spectacled girls, and all varieties of the pundit caste were to be seen poring over ancient volumes or exchanging words with the proprietor. But to the cellar came fast young men, aged spendthrifts, women of no reputation and some who were very respectable indeed. These usually came at night, and in the cellar transactions would take place which involved much money ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... but blustering absurdity; in the other, the poet says not truth; for CONSCIENCE is the conqueror of souls; at least it is the conqueror of mine; and who ever thought it a narrow one?——But this is occasioned partly by poring over the affecting will, and posthumous letter. What an army of texts has she drawn up in array against me in the letter!—But yet, Jack, do they not show me, that, two or three thousand years ago, there were as wicked fellows ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... conscious of a faint shock of delight on first beholding her. He had just left Priscilla, pale and heavy-eyed, in dun-colored merino, poring over a Greek dictionary, and the sudden entering the bright room, and finding himself facing Theodora North in rose-colored satin, was a ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... only going on a voyage with me," said the sailor, "that would make a man of you. I wouldn't go and be shut up with that old prig, poring over books forever." ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... were dining with the Stanleys. Francisco and Robert were squatted on the hearth, poring over an illustrated book that had come from New York. It showed the uniforms of United States soldiers, the latest additions ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Essie, controlling herself into some order, and poring over the little hand she had made captive. "I never saw a greater beauty of a ring—never. Do you know what it means, Faith?" She dropped her voice ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... for instance—are fading out of my mind. Salvator Rosa has two really wonderful landscapes, looking from the shore seaward; and Rubens too, likewise on a large scale, of mountain and plain. It is very idle and foolish to talk of pictures; yet, after poring over them and into them, it seems a pity to let all the thought excited ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... whispered, "there's the road—there's the road." A passion of self-reproach shook him. Not for nothing had Linforth been his friend. "I feel a traitor," he cried. "For ten years we have talked of that road, planned it, and made it in thought, poring over the maps. Yes, for even at the beginning, in our first term at Eton, we began. Over the passes to the foot of the Hindu Kush! Only a year ago I was eager, really, honestly eager," and he paused for a moment, wondering at that picture of himself which his words evoked, ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... brought, and Hang-won, after poring over it awhile, took a pencil and with meticulous care jotted down certain marks upon it. When he had finished, Togo turned ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... done him good,' she said. 'He used to be such a reserved creature, dawdling away day after day in his library, poring over Greek and Latin, and now he is almost ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and learn filled Count Benedetto with a simple joy. He brought forth all his treasures for the boy's instruction and the two spent many an afternoon poring over Piranesi's Roman etchings, Maffei's Verona Illustrata, and Count Benedetto's own elegant pencil-drawings of classical remains. Like all students of his day he had also his cabinet of antique gems and coins, from which Odo obtained more intimate glimpses ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... surprise, on entering Madame Berthe Louison's apartment, the signs of an approaching departure were but too evident. A stout Swiss maiden was busied stolidly packing several trunks in an indiscriminate haste, while the fair invalid herself sat at the center table poring over an opened Baedeker and the outspread maps brought on by her "business agent." Hawke's murmured astonishment was at once cut short by the decisive notes of Berthe Louison's ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... There is something ludicrous in the idea of a beauty, or a gallant, of that gay and licentious court poring over a work of five or six folio volumes by way of amusement; but such was the taste of the age, that Fynes Morison, in his precepts to travellers, can "think no book better for his pupils' discourse than Amadis of Gaule; for the knights errant and the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... just escaped to my chambers one winter afternoon from a heavy trial "at bar" in the King's Bench, Westminster, and was poring over a case upon which an "opinion" was urgently solicited, when my clerk entered with a letter which he had been requested to deliver by a lady, who had called twice before during the day for the purpose of seeing me. Vexed at the interruption, I almost snatched the letter from the man's hand, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Cliffords such weather brought no ennui. They had time for more music and reading aloud than usual. The pets in the flower-room needed extra care and watching, for the bitter wind searched out every crevice and cranny. Entering the dining-room on one occasion, Amy found the brothers poring over a map spread ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... Mr. Morris, some friends of mine propose to go into a little speculation, which will involve a large correspondence; and for reasons that I need not specify to a man like you, they do not wish to have every ragtag, bobtail post-office clerk poring over their letters, and asking impertinent questions at the delivery- window. If they can find a shrewd, square man, who knows how to keep his mouth shut, and who can't be fooled, that for a handsome consideration will put the letters away in a safe place till called for, they ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... poring over the ledger with his head down, the very picture of a faithful servant absorbed in his ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was beginning that career of prosperity which was commenced by the keenest enjoyment of existence. He has left us, in his Letters, some brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger over ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... their day, however,) they indulged in all the pastimes modern Rome afforded. They shivered through endless galleries, getting 'cricks' in their necks staring at frescoes, and injuring their optic nerves poring over pictures so old that often nothing was visible but a mahogany-coloured leg, an oily face, or the dim outline of a green saint in a whirlwind ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... Christmas books at Birmingham, I should like to get out of that restriction, and have a swim in the broader waters of one of my long books. I have been poring over "Copperfield" (which is my favourite), with the idea of getting a reading out of it, to be called by some such name as "Young Housekeeping and Little Emily." But there is still the huge difficulty that I constructed the whole with immense pains, and have so ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... of the captain, who had retained his seat at the after-end of the poop, Salve was soon the only human being to be seen on deck. The whole crew had disappeared, and might have been found poring over their letters two and two, or singly, in the most out-of-the-way places, from the main and fore top even to the bowsprit end, where one had erected a pavilion for himself out of a fold of the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... of running down each of the 18,000 names consumed days of arduous labor. It was also found that page after page of the names were written by the same hand. Experts in handwriting from the various banks in Lincoln spent night after night poring over the original petitions in the office of the Secretary of State, picking out and listing the forgeries, which were found to have been scattered ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Reb Shemuel was already poring over a Pentateuch in his Friday night duty of reading the Portion twice in Hebrew and ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... why, but they loved the old, flat, bench-like stones with the tall grasses growing rankly about them. They made jolly seats for one thing. They were all sitting on one now. Jerry, tired of leap frog, was playing on a jew's-harp. Carl was lovingly poring over a strange beetle he had found; Una was trying to make a doll's dress, and Faith, leaning back on her slender brown wrists, was swinging her bare feet in ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... quaintly-formed latch, peeped in, and entered. There was the whole collection, abandoned to my eager gaze and eager hands! How long I stood, taking down weapon after weapon, examining each like an old book, speculating upon modes of use, and intention of varieties in form, poring over adornment and mounting, I cannot tell. Historically the whole was a sealed book; individually I made a thorough acquaintance with not a few, noting the differences and resemblances between them and my own, and instead of losing conceit of the latter, ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... possession a Danish book, which, from its appearance, might be supposed to have belonged to the very old Danes indeed; but how was I to turn it to any account? I had the book, it is true, but I did not understand the language, and how was I to overcome that difficulty? hardly by poring over the book; yet I did pore over the book, daily and nightly, till my eyes were dim, and it appeared to me that every now and then I encountered words which I understood—English words, though strangely disguised; and I said to myself, Courage! English and Danish ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... things trouble him greatly and distract his attention. He sits up far into the night poring over his own work that was such pleasure a few months ago, and he can hardly keep his mind on what so delighted him then. There is quite too much on every hand, and he must add to it family complications. His beautiful home is full of jarring elements. Even Cecil grows naughty with the superabundant ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... happy to inform H.P. that the Declaration of the Sentence and Deposition of Elizabeth, the Usurper and pretended Queen of England, alluded to in his note, is in the Bodleian Library; where, a few days since, I saw Dr. Cumming poring over it; and where, I have no doubt, he, or any friend, can easily obtain a sight of it by applying to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me - for I was likely to have but few heirs - as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring over them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated very impartially, like debtor and creditor, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... French, Latin and Greek classics. He worked prodigiously and this, coupled with a remarkably retentive memory, enabled him to make remarkably rapid progress in his studies. He would have remained in the library all the time poring over his dear classic authors but for the fortunate intervention of the young members of the Myhrman family, seven in all, who frequently would storm into his room and carry him off by sheer force to their boisterous frolics. To one of these playmates, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... are, Charlie," he said to me once, as I was poring over my Caesar and struggling desperately to make out the meaning of a phrase—"what a muff you are, to be grinding away like that! Why don't you use ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of one," answered my companion; "but he brings back something which puzzles my brain— something white, with black marks upon it. He and little Billy sit poring over it by the hour. They don't eat it, they don't smell it, they don't wear it: I can't make out that it is of any use to them at all; and yet they seem as much pleased, as they study it together, as if it were ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... to see; I can understand better how such conflicts may prepare one for work. This afternoon I have, as usual, been getting ready for the Wednesday reading, and as I was requested to speak of the Holy Spirit, have been poring over the Bible and am astonished at the frequency and variety of passages in which He is spoken of. But I feel painfully unfit to guide even this little circle of women, and would be so glad to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... while books filled the shelves, and papers and periodicals strewed the tables. The furnishings spoke of comfort and a modest dignity. Obliquely in his line of vision he could see two children, seated at a table and poring over a picture-book The boy, a manly urchin, might have been fourteen, the girl a year or two younger. Her curls fell over the hand and arm supporting her cheek, so that Ford could only guess at the blue eyes concealed ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... doctor was sitting by the breakfast- table, poring over a newspaper. Breakfast was done, and Daisy herself busy with a book. So she only answered, ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... knowledge germinated in the breast of the unfortunate youth, and he learned to read at the house of a neighbour. His father-in-law set him to work in the vineyards, and thus occupied all his days; but the nights were his own. He often stole out unheeded, when all the household were fast asleep, poring over his studies in the fields, by the light of the moon; and thus taught himself Latin and the rudiments of Greek. He was subjected to so much ill-usage at home, in consequence of this love of study, that he determined to leave it. Demanding the patrimony which his father had left him, he proceeded ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... awfully dull dog with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top-story too. I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it. Then sometimes he'd look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you'd fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... suggested that of Barlaam, in Thessaly, likewise a Greek monastery; and though I had never heard of Sergius and Herrmann, the fact of their choosing such a spot was the beginning of a curious interest in their history. The very act of poring over a map excites the imagination: I fell into conjectures about the scenery, vegetation, and inhabitants, and thus, by the time P. arrived, was conscious of a violent desire to make the cruise with him. To our care was confided an American youth, whom I shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... he said. "Let's go to bed now. I'll bet you my share of the ivory they're poring over the map with a magnifying-glass! D'you remember the various places we underscored? They'll think it's a cryptogram and fret ever it all night! Come ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... heroic mood, however, the glow subsided, and poor Septimius spent the rest of the day, as was his wont, poring over his books, in which all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like pressed leaves (some of which dropped out of the books as he opened them), brown, brittle, sapless; so even the thoughts, which ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... listening, poring over books, or chatting with old Dan, when the latter was off the water, Gus got into his ragged togs again, took his gun and started out prowling. And he prowled ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... their appearance. The few who have come at all, come not as buyers, but as debtors who cannot pay, and whose business is not to make purchases but to arrange for extensions. The merchants, in despair, are poring over their ledgers; checking off the names of their insolvent debtors, a new list of whom comes by each day's mail. Their clerks sit around in idleness reading the newspapers, or thinking mournfully of the wives and children at home, who will go unclad and hungry if they are discharged ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... as much supervision over the menage as was possible, even to the extent of looking over the tradesmen's books. Of course he did not understand their cryptic symbols in the least, and it was a funny sight to see little Hildebrand poring over the small red books, and puckering his conscientious brows in an agony of puzzlement. Every now and then he would turn for enlightenment to his wife, who happily possessed a very ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... the kitchen, sir," Hardress said. "She and Miss de Lisle were poring over food—if we get no dinner to-night it ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... voice of a man. "What!" said he, "poring over the faces of dead men, when you should be foremost among the living? All Jerusalem in arms, and yet you scorn your time to gain laurels?" I sprang up, and drew my scimitar, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... succeeding days, to see Agnes poring over advertisements and writing down long lists of suggested enterprises for investigation, enterprises which proved in every case to be in the midst of an already too thickly contested field, or to be ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Tenbruggen, by name. She is in London, finding her way to lucrative celebrity by twisting, turning, and pinching the flesh of credulous persons, afflicted with nervous disorders; and she has already paid a few medical visits to old Mr. Dunboyne. He persists in poring over his books while Mrs. Tenbruggen operates, sometimes on his cramped right hand, sometimes (in the fear that his brain may have something to do with it) on the back of his neck. One of them frowns over her rubbing, and the other frowns over his reading. It would be delightfully ridiculous, ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but still, the labor of poring over Shakespeare's lines will ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... colored cap or flapped sombrero, his pipe dangling from his button-hole, his hair and beard displaying every eccentricity under heaven, the Paris student, the Pays Latiniste pur sang, lived and had his being. Poring over the bookstalls in the Place du Pantheon or the Rue des Gres—hurrying along towards this or that college with a huge volume under each arm, about nine o'clock in the morning—haunting the cafes at midday and the restaurants at six—swinging his legs out of upper windows ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... half hour Mr. Sparling and Phil were deeply engaged in poring over the books, the contracts and the innumerable details appertaining to the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... it was on the 15th of December, things reached a climax. When Ida came down to breakfast she found her father busy poring over some more letters ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the map I had made of the lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold was cached. We were, as I thought, alone in Fox-Foot's log house. That is, alone in speaking English, for his people don't understand a single word that is not Chippewa. We were poring over the map I had made, when something made me look behind me. Against the small hole in the logs that served as a window was a man's head and shoulders—a white man—and he wore a grey mackinaw. Foxy and I were on our feet at once, but the man crashed through the woods and ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... way downstairs, pausing at the door of the library, where Diana was poring over her ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... resume her long-neglected musical studies, but the piano was haunted for her now by the silent voice of Jacqueline, and she turned from it at last in despair. In this time of need, even books failed her. With her returning vigor full upon her, she could not find the patience to sit for hours poring over the thoughts of professional thinkers, or the imaginary deeds of people who had never lived—she who had lived so hard, and whose own thoughts came up aching out ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... learning, little ones?" I say. "Botany," is the sad answer "We've got to learn all these hard names, and copy these diagrams." "Well," I say, "shut up your books, and come with me." And presently I teach them more botany by contact with the flowers themselves, than they would have learned by hours of poring over lesson-books. It is so the Spirit teaches. Is gentleness or purity, self-sacrifice or prayer, the lesson that we are set to acquire? There is no need for Him to make a new revelation to us. It is enough if He but bring us face to face with Jesus, and show these qualities shining through ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper, walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, took it up, and walked off with it without ceremony. His ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... your riddle, Cranmer?" queried an older and graver gentleman, who had been intently poring over a ponderous volume. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... of arms, helmets, weird tapestries of by-gone days, that seem to be moving out on you from the walls as you first walk up to them in the dim light; think of prying into great cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not knowing what horrors may appear when you tear them open; of poring over their contents till twilight stole on you and darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying to leave it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round you, and closing ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... nature, so utterly absorbed by the fictitious weal and woe of some poor creature of the author's brain, that they neglect even what they call their "meals ;" allow their "teas" to cool, and strain their eyesight poring over page after page in the dim light of a rusty lantern. Thus also the Egyptian, after sitting in his caf with all his ears and eyes opened their widest, whilst the story-teller drones out the old tale of Ab Zayd, will dispute till midnight, and walk home disputing about ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... has only made him discontented and disinclined to unfold his arms. The survival of the Negroes in the race for existence depends upon their retaining possession of the few bread-winning occupations now open to them. But instead of better qualifying themselves for these occupations they have been poring over dead languages and working problems in mathematics. In the meantime the Chinaman and the steam-laundry have abolished the Negro's wash-tub, trained white "tonsorial artists" have taken away his barber's chair, and skilled painters and ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... but he had a serious contemplative air, very apt to occasion disgust: as for the rest, she might boast of having one of the greatest theologists in the kingdom for her husband: he was all day poring over his books, and went to bed soon, in order to rise early; so that his wife found him snoring when she came to bed, and when he arose he left her there sound asleep: his conversation at table would have been very brisk, if Mrs. Wetenhall had been as great a proficient ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... unknown eastern end of the peninsula. Of trips such as this he had been dreaming since childhood. When a mere boy on his father's farm in Michigan, he had lain for hours out under the trees in the orchard poring over a map of Canada and making imaginary journeys into the unexplored. Boone and Crockett were his heroes, and sometimes he was so affected by the tales of their adventures that he must needs himself steal away to the woods and camp out for ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Red Sea; or the innocuous but highly frivolous tales of Miss Laura Jean Diplodocus—they would hardly accept from me as worthy of serious attention such admonitions as I am constantly giving them on the subject of the decadence of literature when I find them poring over the novels of the day. Consequently even this usual solace of old age is denied to me, and ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Mercy's chamber, I founde her all be-wept and waped, poring over an old kirtle of mother's she had bidden her re-line with buckram. Coulde not make out whether she were sick of her task, had had words with mother, or had some secret inquietation of her owne; but, as she is a girl of few words, I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... little. The hardest part of the experience for her was to see how eager her uncles were to please each caller and how anxiously each watched the other's efforts and the result. To see Zoeth at the desk poring over the ledger, his lips moving and the pencil trembling in his fingers, was as bad as, but no worse than, to see Captain Shadrach, a frown on his face and his hands in his pockets, pace the floor from the back door to the front window, stop, look up the road, draw ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Fountain of Pirene. He was afraid lest King Iobates should imagine that he had fled from the Chimaera. It pained him, too, to think how much mischief the monster was doing, while he himself, instead of fighting with it, was compelled to sit idly poring over the bright waters of Pirene, as they gushed out of the sparkling sand. And as Pegasus had come thither so seldom, in these latter days, and scarcely alighted there more than once in a lifetime, Bellerophon feared that he might ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... kind of deception, it may be stated that navigators, whose actual experience has not extended to the tropical regions, are very apt, in poring over the voyages of others, to acquire, insensibly, a very confident notion that each of the great Trade-winds blowing on different sides of the Line (the North-east and the South-east by name), are quite ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... on revolving it. It went to bed and got up with me, and was with me the day long, and whenever I had a still interval, when I would pull up my horse to sit motionless watching some creature, bird or beast or snake, or sat on the ground poring over some insect occupied with the business of its little life, I would become conscious of the discussion and argument going on. And every creature I watched, from the great soaring bird circling in the sky ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson |
