"Poring over" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the doctor's prescription in his pocket, and goes down to Cairo for a specialist. He comes, this one, to disturb their peace of mind with his indecision. It is not infantile paralysis, and he can not yet say what it is. Khalid meanwhile is poring over medical books on all the diseases that children are ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... accounts and made memoranda, and some half-dozen volumes that constituted his library. In this nook, shut off from the observation and society of the others, yet able to overhear and, if he chose to open the door, to oversee also all that went on in the larger room, Johnston spent, his evenings poring over his books by the light of a tallow candle, the only other light in the room being that given forth ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... though I tried to draw her out on the subject, and to dispel the gloom that hung about her ideas concerning him, I could not succeed. Yet each foreign post-day she watched for the arrival of letters—knew the post mark, and watched me as I read. I found her often poring over the article of ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... of your riddle, Cranmer?" queried an older and graver gentleman, who had been intently poring over a ponderous volume. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... other hand, 'an ancient serving-maid seventy-nine years of age,' inured to Prophecy and the Bastille from of old, sits, in an upper room in the Rue-de-Contrescarpe, poring over the Book of Revelations, with an eye to Robespierre; finds that this astonishing thrice-potent Maximilien really is the Man spoken of by Prophets, who is to make the Earth young again. With her sit devout old Marchionesses, ci-devant honourable women; among ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... road, "is rich in pathos. My father, as you can imagine, is an impossible man to live with. My poor mother was taken to an asylum years ago. Her malady takes a curious form: she is never violent, but spends all her time in poring over books, magazines and papers. Every time she finds the word HUSBAND in print she crosses it out ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... Erica, with eyes dim with grief and weariness, was poring over the books in her father's study, Rose was being initiated into all the delights of the ballroom. She was in her glory. Everything was new to her; she enjoyed dancing, she knew that she looked pretty, knew ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... beyond the pursuit of King or people, and hurl his defiance from its walls to all the intruders which threaten the balance of the mind. No one has yet discovered this castle, for it exists only on paper. When Mr. Gordon Selfridge requires mental relaxation, he may be found poring over the plans which are to be the basis of this fairy edifice. Moat and parapet, tower, dungeon, and drawbridge, are all there, only awaiting the Mason of the future to translate them into actuality. But the success of Mr. Selfridge lies in his frugality, and not in his dreams. ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... piled on the floor beneath it. The Board of Strategy sent presents; so did Miss Dawes and Georgianna. As for Captain Cy he spent many evening hours, after the rest of his household was in bed, poring over catalogues of toys and books, and the orders he sent to the big shops in Boston were lengthy and costly. The little girl's eyes opened wide when she saw the stocking and the treasures heaped on the floor. She sat in her "nighty" amidst the wonders, books, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to his nephew, as he had a son of his own; but he taught him all he knew, and at his dead Gilguerillo entered an office, where he worked for many hours daily. In his spare time, instead of playing with the other boys, he passed hours poring over books, and because he was timid and liked to be alone he was held by everyone to be a little mad. Therefore, when it became known that he had promised to cure the king's foot, and had ridden away—no one knew where—a roar of laughter and ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... 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 ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... from an apple-tree near by, where a ten-year-old girl sat perched among its gnarled branches. She had a dog-eared book of fairy tales on her knee, and was poring over it in such blissful absorption that she had forgotten there were such things in all the world as ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that civilization at this hour is going down into the abyss—dragging you and your churches and your Congo savages with it? I who do understand these things—I have to go out and fight alone, while you are shut up in your churches, mumbling your spells and incantations, and poring over your Hebrew texts! And think of what I must suffer, knowing as I do that the spirit that animates you—the fervor and devotion, the 'hunger and thirst after righteousness'—would banish horror from the earth forever, if only it could be guided ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... until dark Seaton worked in the laboratory, either alone or superintending and assisting the men at work there. Every night when Crane went to bed he saw Seaton in his room in a haze of smoke, poring over blueprints or, surrounded by abstruse works upon the calculus and sub-atomic ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... 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 ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... organises his 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; you may devote yourself to a man, a topic, an epoch, a ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... was the only thing in it which she loved; and, when she thought I was quitting it, she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. She was from morning till night poring over good books, and devotional exercises. Her favourite volumes were Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's Translation; and a Roman Catholic Prayer Book, with the matins and complines regularly set down,—terms which I was at that time ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... colonel of the British forces in the Netherlands, was poring over the manuscript narrative of David Ingram, mariner. Ingram had in 1568-69 taken the widest range of travel that had ever been taken in the new continent, of which it was still held doubtful by many whether it was or was not a part of Asia. "Surely," Gilbert said to his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... on an old gentleman who had become generally disgusted with "dese yere churches roun year." I found him poring over a big, well-worn Bible, the perspiration pouring down his shiny face, and with a big pair of spectacles resting on the tip of his nose. With an air of superior wisdom he surveyed me over the top of the spectacles, and then solemnly stated to the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various
... little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that impression which those about him received from him. Poring over his crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying by a strange variation of the alchemist's dream to discover the secret, not of an elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather giving immortality to the subtlest and most delicate ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... 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
... 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
... 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 you, and hearing that plan, it's made ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... another visitor appeared in the dimly lighted shop, where Luke Tulliver was poring over a newspaper at one end of the counter ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... putting forth its buds, and had 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 ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... his hand, and drawing the gold and crimson snare toward him, opened it. When Anice came into the room she found him poring over it. His ragged cap lay with Nib, at his feet, his face was in a glow, his hair was pushed straight up on his head, both elbows were resting on the table. He was spelling his way laboriously, but excitedly, through the story of the foot-print on the ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... annual corn-yield of every county in Iowa by half a million dollars. This is history. Many a farmer, riding in his motor- car to-day, knows who made possible that motor-car. Many a sweet-bosomed girl and bright-browed boy, poring over high-school text-books, little dreams that I made that higher education possible by my ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Lord 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 ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... 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 little Catholic Missal. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... lived in those parts.... The last Patriarch of Ochrida, whose name was likewise Arsenius, spent the remainder of his life in exile at Mt. Athos, and there, in another monastery, was a pale, sickly monk, poring over crabbed MSS. This Paissu, a Bulgar, had entered, like his elder brother, the great Serbian monastery of Hilendar. We know from him that while the various Orthodox monks of Mt. Athos—Greeks, Bulgars, Russians, Serbs and Vlachs—were frequently at loggerheads, yet the others even more frequently ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... "Behold me, then, poring over my shorthand report, and beginning to transcribe it. At the end of the first ten lines, I was struck with stupor. I knew not if I were awake or dreaming. 'What! mad?' They must be themselves insane who dare assert so monstrous a proposition!—More ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 to-morrow," were their ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... probability of success that she had represented Paris, and not Budmouth, to her grandfather as in all likelihood their future home. Her hopes were bound up in this dream. In the quiet days since their marriage, when Yeobright had been poring over her lips, her eyes, and the lines of her face, she had mused and mused on the subject, even while in the act of returning his gaze; and now the sight of the books, indicating a future which was antagonistic to her dream, struck her with a positively painful jar. She was ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the pure enjoyment of a poet to whom a world of wonders has been disclosed. I talked of my solitary pleasures to none. Alone with my microscope, I dimmed my sight, day after day and night after night, poring over the marvels which it unfolded to me. I was like one who, having discovered the ancient Eden still existing in all its primitive glory, should resolve to enjoy it in solitude, and never betray to mortal the secret of its locality. The rod of my life was bent at ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... stupid, deaf, lame; vacantly winking in the gleams of sun that now and then crept in through the open doors, from the paved yard; shading their listening ears, or blinking eyes, with their withered hands; poring over their books, leering at nothing, going to sleep, crouching and drooping in corners. There were weird old women, all skeleton within, all bonnet and cloak without, continually wiping their eyes with dirty dusters ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... permanently interfering with the sweet, narrow 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
... of 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 ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... Livingstone still sat with intent gaze, poring over the page of figures before him. The expression on his face was one of profound satisfaction. He had at last reached the acme of his ambition—that is, of his later ambition. (He had once had other aims.) He ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... spend her whole time poring over her picture. She gathered samphire, helped to sort the fish when it was brought in, or mend the much-despised net; but every day she spent some time diligently tracing out the letters she knew and spelling over G ...
— A Sailor's Lass • Emma Leslie
... will in all probability find me still poring over this old Intelligencer, which is full of rumors of approaching ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... without similar consolation in his life, although passed apart from Annie. For, not to mention the growing pleasure that he derived from poring over Annie's childlike letters—and here I would beg my reader to note the essential distinction betwixt childish and childlike—full of the keenest perceptions and the happiest phrases, he had soon come ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... with venomous glances; for though they were good neighbors at all times, each, in this matter, was hungry for the advantages to be got out of old Antoine's plot of ground. They were very poor; they toiled in the scorched or frozen fields all weathers, or spent from dawn to nightfall poring over their cobweb lace; and to save a son or gain a cabbage was of moment to them only second to the keeping of their souls secure of heaven by Lenten ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... 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 ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... a mood to see Jarvis for two more days. Instead of trying to win her forgiveness for a wrong—he had not committed—he stuck the closer to his stateroom, where, with the solicitous attention of Rusty, he lived a drone-like and peaceful existence, poring over books. They were not fiction or philosophy—the Kentuckian's interest was in Baedeker and other books on Spain. With the same application which had carried him over the thin ice of college examinations, he had grasped a valuable understanding of the customs ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... differences between two white literary men seem slight indeed,—same clothes, same spectacles, same harmless disposition, same habit of scribbling on paper and poring over books, etc. "Just two white fellows," the Veddah will say, "with no perceptible difference." But what a difference to the literary men themselves! Think, Mr. Allen, of {259} confounding our philosophies together merely because both are printed in the same magazines and ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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 ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... left hand is the shelter for the rank and file. Here several gaunt, hollow-eyed, and hairy troopers are sitting on rough benches at a trestle-table, playing dominoes and draughts, or poring over tattered books by the light of the flickering oil-lamps, with tin reflectors, that hang against the earth walls. None of them are smoking, though several are sucking vigorously at empty pipes; and the rapacious light that glares in every eye ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... meeting several people on the road and stopping to tell them about the hall. The news flew like wildfire. Gilbert Blythe, poring over a text book at home, heard it from his father's hired boy at sunset, and rushed breathlessly to Green Gables, joined on the way by Fred Wright. They found Diana Barry, Jane Andrews, and Anne Shirley, despair personified, at the yard gate of Green Gables, ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an extension of the west wing of the McClintock bungalow. From one window the beach was always visible; from another, the stores. Spurlock was invariably at the high desk in the early morning, poring over ledgers, and giving the beach and the stores an occasional glance. Whenever McClintock had guests, he loafed with them on the ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... disturbed Shelley himself; but, after all, it gave him some satisfaction to be a martyr for the cause of free speech. He went to London with his friend Hogg, and took lodgings there. He read omnivorously—Hogg says as much as sixteen hours a day. He would walk through the most crowded streets poring over a volume, while holding another ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... with nothing but the ghost of their former passion, the ghost of their former ideal, to keep them company, was on the whole very bleak and cheerless. Alfieri, working off his over-excitement in a system of tremendous self-education, sitting for the greater part of the day poring over Latin and Greek and Hebrew grammars, and exercises and annotated editions, till he was so exhausted that he could scarcely digest his dinner; the Countess killing the endless days reading new books of philosophy, of poetry, of fiction, anything and everything that came to hand, writing piles and ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... commence a course of study at a late period in life, frequently evince their zeal at the commencement by poring over their books twelve or more hours each day. The progress of such students is soon arrested by physical and mental depression. In such instances, it would be more judicious to commence with only three or four hours' vigorous application each day, and gradually protract the period of study ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... suffrage. The work 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... in the shadow of the Rockies, yet in the very "light of things," it is his wish to finish his days as he began them, in opening up for those who come after him the great regions of the still undeveloped West, and in poring over the lesson learned as a ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... and made way for her, like a courtier for a princess, and seated her in the north parlor in the best rocking-chair, as if it were a throne. Then he sat down opposite her, with his Shakespeare book still on his knees. That morning he had been poring over "Romeo and Juliet." His imagination was afire with the sweet ardor of that other lover, and he would gladly have identified Dorothy, as she sat there, with Juliet; and ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... customers during the entire time, and those bought but 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, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... three times since, when staying at watering-places in the summer, he had mounted a hired hack. So that his ideas of sport were gathered entirely from books and pictures, to which, when they treated of that subject, he was devotedly attached. What happy hours he had spent poring over Jorrock's Hunts, Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour, and the works of the Old Shekarry! When he went to a picture-gallery he was listless until he came upon some representation of moving adventure by flood or field, and then the rest of the party could hardly drag him away. He had a little collection ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... fields, and there I read it.” It was impossible not to commiserate the fate of Ignazio Mugio, the Lombard refugee. A very different character was old Pietro, the steam-boat agent. Groping our way with some difficulty up a gloomy staircase, in the dusk of the evening, we found him, spectacles on nose, poring over a gazette by a feeble oil lamp. The old man was so eager for news that it was difficult to fix him to the object of our inquiries; and then he expatiated on the attractions of the neighbourhood, and the “chasse magnifique de grèves,” ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... built a pretentious mansion, and adorned it with works of art which were more costly than artistic. Of medium height, he was still quite stout, but his once full, heavy face and his deep set eyes began to sag from the encroachments of extreme advanced age. He could be seen every weekday poring over business reports at his office on Prince street—a one-story, fireproof brick building, the windows of which were guarded by heavy iron bars. The closing weeks of his life were passed at his country seat at ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... were interrupted by a small boy who entered and asked for a stamped envelope. A few people, later on, came in to find out if there was any mail for them. But during the intervals she kept on poring over those pages. One by one the lights of Carcajou were going out. Carreau's fiddle had stopped whining long before. The cat lay asleep in the wood-box, near the stove, with the kitten nestled against her. Old McGurn called down ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... have done my best. When you've said those four words, Tallente, any man ought to have philosophy enough to add, 'Whatever the result may be, it isn't going to be my funeral.' Look at you—haggard, losing weight every day, poring over papers, scheming, planning, writing articles, pouring out the great gift of your life twice as fast as you need. No one will thank you for it. It's quite enough to give half your soul and the joy of living to work for others. Keep something up your sleeve for yourself, Tallente. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unloading the chest and poring over the papers, trying, by means of my ill-remembered Latin, to make out the sense of the kindred Spanish, that before I was ready to go for my boat the tide was up and pounding on the rocks below the cave. I find ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... and catch newts, and beetles, and spiders, and frogs, and come home and stick pins through the miserable wretches, or cut them up, without a pang of remorse, into little pieces. You see my young master, or my young mistress, poring over one of their spiders' insides with a magnifying-glass; or you meet one of their frogs walking downstairs without his head—and when you wonder what this cruel nastiness means, you are told that it means a taste in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the machine-room; and I, after having partaken of a cup of tea and some hot buttered toast which old M'Dermott had provided for me, sat nodding and dozing on one side of the fire. The old cobbler had fallen fast asleep on the other side while poring over a dictionary, noting down sonorous and impressive-sounding words with which to embellish the oration he intended to deliver ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Silence betweene Alle, he suddainlie burst out laughing, and cried, "I know 'tis on the Stalk, I've seene it, Kit, myself! Oh, had you seene, as I did, the Blockheads poring over the Title, and hammering at it while you might have walked to Mile ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Ben had in his little room poring over his books, for he soon had several of his own; but his favorites were Hammerton's "Animals" and "Our Dumb Friends," both full of interesting pictures and anecdotes such as boys love. Still nicer times working about the house, helping ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... I liked to see her. Her spirits, also, seemed less gay and buoyant than usual, and when Sir John and Harry left us, and she had no longer any motive for exertion, a kind of languor came over her, producing a listless distaste for all her former employments; and she would sit for hours poring over one of the Italian poets, without exchanging a word with any one. In order, if possible, to rouse her from this state of apathy, I used every means in my power to interest and amuse her; but, unfortunately, my time ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... is not now one of the chief diversions of the fair sex. At one time, however, when ladies had fewer amusements than they have now, they spent much time poring over almanacs, and placed implicit trust in what they found recorded there, especially in the forecasts and prognostications for the future of those born on certain days and under so-called lucky or unlucky stars. One of the most popular calendars ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... 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 of the documents which proved ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... his grammar, it is a perfect curiosity of dog's ears. The leaves and cover are all curled and ragged. Many of the pages are worn away with the rubbing of his elbows as he sits poring over the hopeless volume, with the blows of his fists as he thumps it madly, or with the poor fellow's tears. You see him wiping them away with the back of his hand, as he tries and ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "it is much better fun to play and amuse yourself all day than to sit poring over books. Study does not ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... While I had been poring over this map and the directions with it in my office at San Francisco it had seemed an easy thing to follow them, but in this dense, tropical jungle I ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... are not to visit Susan Montgomery's sins on Gordon's head. I shall come home early, and make you go to bed at nine o'clock, to punish you for your obstinacy. By the by, Edna, Hagar tells me that you frequently sit up till three or four o'clock, poring over those heathenish documents in my son's cabinet. This is absurd, and will ruin your health; and beside, I doubt if what you learn is worth your trouble. You must not sit up longer than ten o'clock. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... "Just retribution, Constance, for poring over your propagandist sheets instead of reading our wholesome literature," Farraday retorted. "Had you done your duty by the Household magazines you would ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... which Fred could obtain no answer. To look at him, one would have imagined that eating, sleeping, and herding reindeer were the only lessons that he was able to teach. Yet it was found on inquiry that some of them could read Norse; and Sam actually discovered an old man in one of the huts poring over a New Testament in that language. There seemed something strangely incongruous in all this. They were dirty and uncouth; they had no houses, no tables or chairs, no civilised habits of any kind; yet they could read, and they ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... to fidget. A hundred days passed, and Cappy visited the hydrographic office and spent a long time poring over charts of the air currents in the China Sea, along the coast of Asia and in the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 lively time ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... manufactured from the office paper a pair of false cuffs to keep his own clean, and having examined the nibs in both his penholders and sharpened his pencil, set to work. From then till one o'clock he remained at his desk, solemnly poring over figures, casting accounts, comparing balance-sheets, writing letters, occasionally going for some purpose or another into the clerks' office or into the room of one of the partners. At one he went to luncheon, taking with him the portion ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... you will; think 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 you up in obscurity ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... His father, Henry Frohman, was both idealist and dreamer. Born on the pleasant countryside that encircles the town of Darmstadt in Germany, he grew up amid an appreciation of the best in German literature. He was a buoyant and imaginative boy who preferred reading plays to poring over tiresome school-books. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... the young man quietly; and soon after he strolled into the quaint old library, to begin poring over a heavy law-book full of wise statutes, forgetting everything but the task he had in hand; while Captain Revel went out to walk to the edge of the high cliff and sat down on the stone seat at the foot of the properly-rigged ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... in any other way. A masculine hand had opened the orifice through which was escaping the last bubble of her existence.... And the horrified captain, poring over her sad profile with its purpling temple, thought that he never would be able to blot that ghastly vision from his memory. The phantasm would diminish, becoming invisible in order to deceive him, but would surely come forth again in all his ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... into his office, a big room with a busy aspect. At one end were two or three girls industriously thumping typewriters; McNeil, the producer, was sorting manuscript on Goldstein's own desk; a young man who served as the manager's private secretary was poring over a voluminous record-book, wherein were listed all the films ever made by the manufacturers of the world. On a sofa in a far corner reclined the injured "star" of the company, Maud Stanton, who—being half asleep at the moment—did ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... all down on their knees poring over my late companion's handiwork. A moment later, as with one consent, they all looked up and stared at me. I looked away and smoked ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... by a man named Cochran, a resident of Richmond, in Virginia, who, after poring over the Book of Revelation for years, convinced himself that he had obtained a clew to the mysteries contained in the writings of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... hour Mr. Sparling and Phil were deeply engaged in poring over the books, the contracts and the innumerable details appertaining to the work ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... circumstances I was 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 ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... 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) and a habit ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... table in the room, near the window, which was always covered with loose papers; but these loose papers were on this occasion again covered with sheets of parchment, and a pale-faced man, of about thirty, whose beard had never yet attained power to do more than sprout, was sitting at the table, and poring over the parchments. Round the room, on shelves, there was a variety of iron boxes, on which were written the names of Mr Slow's clients,—of those clients whose property justified them in having special boxes of their own. But these boxes were there, it must be supposed, for temporary ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... had long passed away. He was now a bachelor past fifty, bearish and uncouth in his appearance, and ungracious in his deportment. Secluded in his chambers, poring over the dry technicalities of his profession, he had divided the moral world into two parts—honest and dishonest, lawful and unlawful. All other feelings and affections, if he had them, were buried, and had never been raised to the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... their meal. Bless you, you have no idea what lazy rascals the Portuguese are; their laziness is absolutely phenomenal; they are positively too lazy to live long, and so most of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still below poring over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased to call his mind what spot to steer for in order to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... books, and again looked over the pictures, each time finding something new, ever widening the panorama of life before her eyes, unfolding the beauties of nature and the vigorous creative capacity of man. Nikolay often found her poring over the pictures. He would smile and always tell her something wonderful. Struck by man's daring, she would ask him incredulously, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... more. Her letters showed the growing home-sickness. Dr. Carr felt that the experiment had lasted long enough. So he discovered that he had business in Boston, and one fine September day, as Johnnie was forlornly poring over her lesson in moral philosophy, the door opened and in came Papa. Such a shriek as she gave! Miss Inches happened to be out, and they had the house to ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Ruth found Maggie poring over the Year Book of Ardmore College, rather an odd interest for a girl of her class. But Maggie was rather an odd girl anyway, and Ruth forgot the matter in her final preparations ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... thought I should not be acting incongruously in publishing these five books with a special dedication to you. Although in this point I should not wish you to resemble your father too closely. He is in the way of poring over his books every day from dinner until midnight, which is wearisome to his wife and attendants and a cause of much grumbling among the servants; so far he has been able to do this without loss of health; still, I do not think it wise for you to take the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... trenches and the daily list of deaths and wounds. Winter had closed down upon us in Flanders, and through its fogs and snows came the news of that conflict round Verdun to the waiting army, which was ours. The news was bad, yet not the worst. Poring over maps of the French front, we in our winter quarters saw with secret terror, some of us with a bluster of false optimism, some of us with unjustified despair, that the French were giving ground, giving ground slowly, after heroic resistance, after dreadful massacre, and steadily. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... admit, to the annoyance of people who are not so obsessed. Nevertheless, he is on the right track; and being so thoroughly absorbed and in earnest, he ought to improve. You will find him buying every new book that comes out and poring over its pages. He may play in a few competitions, but his time is more seriously occupied with practice and improvement. He wisely deprecates the continuous strain of match play. He prefers to acquire a working knowledge of the game, to make the various ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... inordinately young and foolish. She wondered how she had ever endured the trivial chatter of Kitty Mason and the school-boy antics of Pink Bailey and Johnnie Rawlings. After declining half a dozen invitations she was left in peace, free to devote all her time to composing her letters, to poring over plays and books about the theater, or to ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... country that year repented of his vices so sincerely as Richard Hardie loathed his virtue. And he did not confine his penitence to sentiment: he began to spend his days at the bank poring over the books, and to lay out his arithmetical genius in a subtle process, that should enable him by degrees to withdraw a few thousands from human eyes for his future use, despite the feeble safeguards of the existing law. In other words, Richard Hardie, like thousands before ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... at the back of the stage showed a solitary figure sitting on a log of wood, poring over the map spread upon his knee, by the light of one candle stuck in a bottle. There could be no doubt who this was, for the buff-and-blue coat, the legs, the nose, the attitude, all betrayed the great George laboring to ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... who lived there, and she was already making clothes for the women of "the young married set." She evidently had great natural aptitude for her work. She knew, as she said, "what people looked well in." She never tired of poring over fashion books. Sometimes in the evening I would find her alone in her work-room, draping folds of satin on a wire figure, with a quite blissful expression of countenance. I could n't help thinking that the years when Lena literally had n't enough clothes to cover herself might have something ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... old storekeeper always carried a well-chosen stock of juvenile fiction in cloth; and those fellows who were fond of spending their spare hours in reading the works of old favorites like Optic and Alger, as well as numerous more recent additions to the ranks of authors, were to be found poring over the contents of numerous book shelves and racks, deciding which volume they would ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... was a young schoolboy, poring over the multiplication tables, his father and his father's friends were busy dividing. They were dividing, to put it more fully, husbands from families as a means of requesting ransom, and money from banks as a means of getting the same cash without use of the ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... let him mention "Autobiography of Ben Franklin," or "Pushing to the Front," or something we all know. Red Shirt has been seen once in a while bringing a magazine with a red cover entitled Imperial Literature to the school and poring over it with reverence. I heard it from Porcupine that Red Shirt gets his supply of all foreign names from that ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... devoted himself to his work. While Benjamin and the lawyer were still poring over the scattered morsels of the letter which had been first discovered, and trying to piece them together again, the chemist had divided the greater part of the fragments specially confided to him into two halves each; and had correctly ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... gradual and instinctive process of becoming. The reason, in a word, was not awake; the mind of man was ignorant of its own treasures and its own capacities. It is pathetic to think of the mediaeval students poring over a single ill-translated sentence of Porphyry, endeavoring to extract from its clauses whole systems of logical science, and torturing their brains about puzzles more idle than the dilemma of Buridan's donkey, while all the time, at Constantinople ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... made our bow to Mr. Cambridge, in his library, than Johnson ran eagerly to one side of the room, intent on poring over the backs of the books[1091]. Sir Joshua observed, (aside,) 'He runs to the books, as I do to the pictures: but I have the advantage. I can see much more of the pictures than he can of the books.' Mr. Cambridge, upon this, politely said, 'Dr. Johnson, I am going, with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... from one of his neighbors; and, in a short time, by working evenings, he obtained sufficient money to purchase a book of his own, and had a half dollar left, with which he bought a second-hand dictionary. Every night found him poring over his books; and, as soon as it was light enough in the morning to see, he was up and reading. During the day, his mind was pondering over the things he had read, while his hands were diligently employed in the labor ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders |
