"At work" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... work? What say the walls of Jerusalem? Everyone without exception. Do we not see people of all classes at work—rich men and poor men, people of all occupations, priests, goldsmiths and apothecaries, and merchants? men of all ages, the young and strong, and the old and white-headed? those from all parts of the country—men of Jericho, and Gibeon, and Mizpah, side by ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... and straw from the stacks He plugged the knot-holes and caulked the cracks; And a dipper of water, which one would think He had brought up into the loft to drink When he chanced to be dry, Stood always nigh, For Darius was sly! And whenever at work he happened to spy At chink or crevice a blinking eye, He let the dipper of water fly. "Take that! an' ef ever ye git a peep, Guess ye'll ketch a weasel asleep!" And he sings as he locks His big ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Alexandria about that time described it as having "upwards of three hundred houses," many "handsomely built."[49] In 1795 Thomas Twining passed through Alexandria and commented: "What struck me most was the vast number of houses which I saw building ... the hammer and the trowel were at work everywhere, a cheering sight."[50] The Duc de la Rochefoucauld in the following year stated: "Alexandria is beyond all comparison the handsomest town in Virginia and indeed is among the finest in ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... She was not at work; she was not pausing over it. Her head hung down over her breast; her hands and arms ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... something preternatural about it—it was magic at work, a counterfeit presentment of the power of God; or rather it was a fugitive image of a ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... exclaimed, "it is true! My manners are shocking. Yet, in a way, I have an excuse. I have been hard at work for the last few days. I was writing all night until quite late this morning. It was because I could not sleep that I came out to sit under the trees—where ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there now but when Uncle goes down town and the maids are all at work I don't know what to do with myself; and when I saw you all here among the trees I just hurried down, I was so glad to see a crowd of girls, but naughty Prince ran ahead and scared you away! What ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... effectually debar her from using that influence he knew she possessed, and keep her wholly and solely his own; a strange kind of feeling, when, in reality, the wide contrast between them made her an object of dislike, only to be accounted for by the fact that a dark, suspicious, jealous temper was ever at work within him. ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... find out what he means, what influences have been at work, what is underneath it all. Warn him of the danger of even appearing doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm. The one person whom the public will not have in politics is the trifler. Think how many there have been, brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false step, a single ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... pleased with your hospitality, and giving an excellent account of you. Were you not struck with the fantastical coincidence of our nocturnal disturbances at Abbotsford with the melancholy event that followed? I protest to you the noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on the premises at the time. With a few additional touches, the story would figure in Glanville or Aubrey's Collection. In the mean time you may set it down with poor Dubisson's ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... of the Rufus Smith had departed from the island, and our relations with humanity were severed. The thought of our isolation awed and fascinated me as I sat meditatively upon a keg of nails watching the miracle of the tropic dawn. The men were hard at work with bales and boxes, except Mr. Tubbs, who gave advice. It must have been valuable advice, for he assured everybody that a word from his lips had invariably been enough to make Wall Street sit ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... ornament, how far would this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings? Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it: nor, even if we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings, could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required all to be executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... child. She was a tidy, pleasant-faced dame, was "Old Mother Growser;" and as to her boy, there wasn't a brighter lad of his age in all the village. His real name was James, but he had always been so spry and handy that when he was a little bit of a chap the neighbors called him "Nimble Jim." At work in the cottage garden, or at play on the village green, even at his books and slate, he was ever the same industrious, active "Nimble Jim," and always a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... she came in; for the pride and irritation and struggling rebellion which had all been at work, were smothered or at least kept under by her subdued feeling, and her brow wore an air of almost shy modesty. She did not see the two faces which were turned towards her as soon as she appeared, though ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got it home he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the water with ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... edition gives even color to such an opinion. The first two scenes of this act prepare one's mind for the tragedy and lay out its action; and they do so, as far as design is concerned, with great skill. The first short scene announces the supernatural character of the agencies at work; the next tells us of the personages who are to figure in the action and the position in which they are placed. In the second scene King Duncan and his suite, marching toward the scene of conflict, and so near it that they are within ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... selected for their stupidity—in folk-tales. Friar Bacon was defrauded of his labour in producing the Brazen Head in a similar way. In one of the legends about Virgil he summoned a number of demons, who would have torn him to pieces if he had not set them at work (J. S. Tunison, Master Virgil, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... their flares they had seen numbers of "Englishmen" advancing over the shoulder of the hill. When the rush came, one German officer told me, he, in his short sector of the line alone, had three machine-guns all hard at work. The attack reached the remnants of the German wire. Some brave men picked a path through the tangle, and, in spite of the cross-fire, managed to reach the German trench. They were very few. We have since discovered men in the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... numbered by the dozen. Missionaries bring consuls, and consuls bring commerce and colonisation. On the Gold Coast of Western Africa, whence came the good old 'guinea,' not a washing-cradle, not a pound of quicksilver was to be found in 1862; in 1882 five mining companies are at work; and in 1892 there will be as ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... the instrumentality; but, then, influences are every where at work to check the growth of the plant of grace, and these must be overcome. There is danger that missionary education may be made worse than useless by allowing the sympathies of pupils to become alienated from the masses around them. Children ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... other men of genius, is slightly ridiculous. Undeniably, there is something comic about the picture of the Norwegian dramatist, spectacled and frock-coated, "looking," Mr. Archer tells us, "like a distinguished diplomat," at work amongst the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... ages of fourteen, when the law allows some form of wage-earning, and that of sixteen to eighteen years, when they may safely shift for themselves, should halve the wage-earning hours (four instead of eight each day or twenty-four instead of forty-eight a week or alternate weeks at work or study); should double the numbers set to each stated task in shop or factory; should treble the supervisory control of society, in a union of Health Board, School Board, and Employers' and Employees' Council; and should quadruple the fitly trained teachers, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before? Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to perceive the truth—that is why the greatest poets are ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... in distinguishing art from science, Taine remarks, that in disengaging from their complexity the causes which are at work in nature, and the fundamental laws according to which they work, science describes them in abstract formulas conveyed in technical language. But art reveals these operative causes and these dominant laws, not in arid definitions, inaccessible ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... "Preparation for the Academy, or Old Joseph Nollekens and his Venus" (1800). It is perhaps the Miss Coleman here upon the model-stand who nearly caused a domestic breach between old Nollekens and his jealous spouse—the group on which he is at work being his "Venus Chiding Cupid," which was modelled for Lord Yarborough. The Life of the Sculptor Nollekens, by his pupil John Thomas Smith, contains some amusing contemporary gossip. He describes the ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... was also held to be a public danger. Canada also adopted the policy of excluding Chinese, but not before there had been a considerable immigration into British Columbia. Two factors, a racial and an economic, are at work to bring about these measures of exclusion. As indentured labourers Chinese have been employed in the West Indies, South America and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... per cent. Nine persons out of every ten under such circumstances would have failed at once. But nil desperandum was the motto of our Frenchman. He saw that he had been 'bit' by his commercial friend, and he immediately set his wits at work to turn the tables upon him. So, late in the evening of the next day he repaired to the dwelling of the importer, and told a long and pitiful story of his embarrassments. He said his conscience already smote him for making so heavy a purchase while in failing circumstances, and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of goldenrod and brambles. At the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of the river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... been constantly at work in America forces the chief object of which has been to keep alive hostility to Great Britain. Of native Americans who trace their family back to colonial days, there are still some among the older generation in whom the old hatred of the Revolutionary War yet burns so strongly ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... yellow, the wild notes of the feathered tribe, &c. This was on getting sight of Dusky Bay. The effects of such charming panorama were visible on all the crew; "emotions of joy and satisfaction," he tells us, "were strongly marked in the countenance of every individual." He is quite aware of the magic at work in his own mind, when contemplating the picture, and accordingly very candidly and very justly says, "So apt is mankind, after a long absence from land, to be prejudiced in favour of the wildest shore, that ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... personally by the present writer; and it is his belief that during this short period, especially from 1890 to 1900, the Hill enjoyed as perfect a communal life as in the Period of the Quaker Community. The same social influence was at work. An exceptionally strong principle of assimilation, to be studied in detail in this book, which made of the original population a century and a half earlier a perfect community, now made a mixed ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... men in this village is a plain, tall, elderly person, who is overseeing the mending of a road,—humorous, intelligent, with much thought about matters and things; and while at work he had a sort of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, which shows him to be the chief. In the evening he sits under the stoop, silent and observant from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... health was not at this time fully restored, but he was hard at work. Even when he went for a short rest to his villa near Toulon he was obliged to take a cipher with him, and, having no secretary at hand, spent much of his time (most grudgingly) in ciphering ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... taught us (and for most of us Cambridge continued the teaching) that to be of any real importance and consequence among his fellows a man must be "good at games," or perhaps—but this more rarely—"good at work." Such is the simple creed of the undergraduate. If he satisfies neither of the above requirements, then he recognises, with greater or less sadness, that he is an ordinary man, the "average undergraduate." He is one of ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... been hunted hard and chased a long way, saw a Countryman at work in a wood and begged his assistance to some hiding-place. The man said he might go into his cottage, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... much of its beauty to the fact that it was written but a few months before the composer's marriage. In one of his letters to his betrothed he writes, "Yesterday I composed all the forenoon and thought of you very often, for I was at work on a scene of Agatha, in which I still cannot attain all the fire, longing, and passion that vaguely float before me." And his son testifies that Weber's love influenced all his work at the time. "It was the reason," he says, "that Weber took to heart, above everything ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... hour, Nadasti, with artillery bursting out and quivering battle-lines, is at work accordingly; hurls up 1,000 Croats for one item, and regulars to the amount of "forty companies in three lines." The grenadiers, somewhat astonished, for the morning was misty and their hussar-posts had come hastily in, stood upon their guard, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Word rather than to the arguments and deductions of the schoolmen. And for the abuses of evil priests that have sprung up, my Lord Cardinal sought the Legatine Commission from our holy father at Rome to deal with them. But Dr Colet saith that there are other forces at work, and he doubteth greatly whether this same cleansing can be done without some great and terrible rending and upheaving, that may even split the Church as it were asunder—since judgment surely awaiteth such as will not be reformed. But, quoth he, 'our Mother-Church is God's own Church and I will ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... along the creek the Union army, including his own regiment, was forming in line of battle but his colonel had not yet called upon him for any duty. Warner and Pennington were also resting from their long and exciting ride, but the sergeant, who seemed never to know fatigue, was already at work with his men. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... must have been a little light-headed some part of that night. My poor Nora, I am certain, never slept, but I can only hope her imagination was less wildly at work than mine. From time to time I spoke to her, and every time she was awake, for ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... revelation. Jack's eyes twinkled, and she hitched her body half aside, as if to conceal her features, where emotions that were unusual were at work with the muscles. Rose thought it might be well to leave the man and wife alone—and she managed to get out of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... touched hand a strange thrill had moved them both, and sent the warm blood to stain Angela's clear brow, like a wavering tint of sunlight thrown upon the marble features of some white Venus; only in each other's eyes they found a holy mystery. The spell was not yet fully at work, but the wand of earth's great enchanter had touched them, and they were changed. Angela is hardly the same girl she was when we met her a little more than a fortnight back. A nameless change has come over her face and manner; the merry smile, once ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... his papering, and Matty was far advanced with hers, the children received one day a visit from Mr. Learning, who came to observe their progress. Nelly was so hard at work in her spare room, that she did not hear his step, and was a little startled when she felt a heavy hand laid ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... enduring through all time—I presume that this also is one of the laws of the kingdom of God. And I think that facts—to which after all is the only safe appeal—prove that it is so; that we see the same law at work around us every day. I think that pestilences, conflagrations, accidents of any kind which destroy life wholesale, even earthquakes and storms, are instances of this law; warnings from God; judgments of God, in the very strictest sense; by which He tells men, in a voice awful ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... the point of view of the party politician, it Is quite different. Each party has its elaborate "machine" for electing state and national officers; and in order to be kept at its maximum of efficiency the machine must be kept at work on all occasions, whether such occasions are properly concerned with differences in party politics or not. To the party politician it of course makes a great difference whether a city magistrate is a Republican or a Democrat. To him even ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... were other causes at work. Among these a prominent place should be given to an alteration in the intellectual interests of the Italians themselves. The original impulses of the Renaissance, in scholarship, painting, sculpture, architecture, and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... at meeting Surrey, and Surrey was equally glad to see once more his old favorite, for Jim and he had been great friends when he was a little boy and had watched the big boy at work in his father's foundry,—a favoritism which, spite of years and changes, and wide distinctions of social position, had never altered nor cooled, and which showed itself now in many a pleasant shape and fashion so long as ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... the water, she drove across the wind a little way from the shore, and fouled an old brig belonging to the firm; and for the rest of the night was heard the shouting and singing of the numerous volunteers, who were hard at work clearing the vessels, and mooring the newly ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... conceive the trouble which they have given us. Your mother is almost crazy about them; nor are we without fears as to you. I say now, as I said in my former letter, that I wish my children were all at home at work. I am convinced that an education will only prove injurious to them. If I had as many sons as had the patriarch Jacob not one should ever again go nigh a college. It is not a good calculation to educate children for destruction. The boys' conduct has already brought a disgrace ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... man," said Tommy, heartily. "I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I'm sure it's neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You'd think editors ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the channel above. The falling of trees could not possibly have produced such an effect; and there were no high bluffs abutting on the rivulet, that could have fallen into its bed. I began to believe that human hands had been at work; and I looked for the prints of human feet. I saw none, but the tracks of animals were numerous. Thousands of them, at least—great broad feet, webbed like those of a duck, but with sharp claws—were impressed ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... three days later, and Dick & Co. were at work at their main task during this summer camping, which was to train hard and try to fit themselves for the football squad when high ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... imploied for the buying of large Venetian Looking-glasses, Indean Chainy, Plush Stools and Chairs, Turkish Tapistry, rich Presses and Tables, yea and whatsoever else was needfull for neatness and gallantry; we see now, that all her sences are at work, where ever they may or can be, to save and spare all things, and to take care that there may not so much as a match negligently ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... influence is at work among the men," said Hartog to me one evening, when we sat together alone in the cabin, for Van Luck, except at meals, seldom joined us. "As sailors, they ought to know that treasure hunts often prove disappointing, and they will each receive a good ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... death of his wife was probably a question of a few hours at most. But he had promised that the boots on which he was at work should be finished that night; and he had conscientiously withdrawn from his wife's bedside that he might ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... consists of bats and closures. You will have marvelled that so large a percentage of bricks can appear to have been delivered broken; but this you would have been able to account for had you watched the builder at work, noting his vicious practice of halving a sound brick whenever he wants a bat. It is an instinct, deep-rooted in bricklayers, against which unprofessional remonstrance is useless—an instinct that he fights against with difficulty whenever popular prejudice calls for full bricks on the face. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... artists know, and his own discoveries besides, and so never be troubled about methods any more. Not that the knowledge even of his own particular methods is to be of purpose confined to himself and his pupils, but that necessarily it must be so in some degree; for only those who see him at work daily can understand his small and multitudinous ways of practice. These cannot verbally be explained to everybody, nor is it needful that they should, only let them be concealed from nobody who cares to see them; in which case, of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the bench, and began to put the pieces together. They were quite naked, but they had wee little scissors and hammers and thread. Tap! tap! went the little hammers; stitch, stitch, went the thread, and the little elves were hard at work. No one ever worked so fast as they. In almost no time all the shoes were stitched and finished. Then the tiny elves took hold of each other's hands and danced round the shoes on the bench, till the shoemaker and his wife had hard work not to laugh aloud. ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... thought which has evidently been at work before this unworthy method of making war reached the pitch of efficiency which has been demonstrated in its practice shows that the Germans must have harbored these designs for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... idle, but Stubb was slow. Augur—Augur used liquor, and the Deacon had long ago firmly resolved that not a cent of his money, if he could help it, should ever go for the accursed stuff. But there was Hay—he hadn't seen him at work for a long time—perhaps he would be anxious enough for work to do ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... the Queen's Park in the International of 1872, and also chosen to that post next season in London, Gardner, who has also joined the great majority, was the most extraordinary player of his day. He was so versatile that I have seen him at work in all the different positions of the field—goalkeeper, back, half-back, and even forward—but it was as a goalkeeper that he excelled. A very indifferent kicker out in front, when the ball came up, he sometimes made mistakes with the feet; but when I remember the brilliant men ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... been at work all the more eagerly in the fields of association and memory, attention and emotion, habit and volition, distraction and fatigue. Here subtle methods have been elaborated, methods which surely common sense cannot supply, and which showed differences of mental behavior ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... with gold pan and camera, working my way up Spruce Creek, a branch of Pine. I found men cheerily at work getting out sluice boxes and digging ditches. I panned everywhere, but did not get much in the way of colors, but the creek seemed to grow better as I went up, and promised very rich returns. I came back rushing, making five miles just inside an ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... in the statement that Iris was a ready volunteer. Soon all hands were at work, and it was due to the girl's forethought that strips of linen were procured from Luisa Gomez, and healing herbs applied to the cuts and bruises of the injured men. Sylva was all for leaving the two soldiers on the island, but Coke's sailor-like acumen prevented ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... through the land, as week after week the Indian news of mutiny and massacre reached us. It was a surprise to the country at large, more than to the authorities, who were informed already that a spirit of disaffection had been at work among our native troops in Bengal, and that there was good reason to believe in the existence of a conspiracy for sapping the allegiance of these troops. Later events have left little doubt that such a conspiracy did exist, and that its aim was the total subversion ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... however, there was a more poisonous ferment at work between the two lads, which came late indeed to the surface, but had modified and magnified their dissensions from the first. To an idle, shallow, easy-going customer like Frank, the smell of a mystery was attractive. It gave his mind something to play with, like a ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... office, unusually late, he saw her still at work—no doubt doing over again some bungled piece of copying. She had her normal and natural look and air—the atomic little typewriter, unattractive and uninteresting. With another smile for his romantic imaginings, he forgot her. But when he reached the street he remembered her again. The threatened ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... alive some little hope that some day I may yet see him again. But that was in the early summer. It is now winter, and the beech has brown spots. Among the limes the sedges are matted and entangled, the sword-flags rusty; the rooks are at the acorns, and the plough is at work in the stubble. I have never seen him since. I never failed to glance over the parapet into the shadowy water. Somehow it seemed to look colder, darker, less pleasant than it used to do. The spot was empty, and the shrill ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... nineteen per cent of the amount of fuel it burns, and inventors are hard at work in all directions to make an engine that will burn only the fuel needed to run it. Here is a much more valuable machine—the human engine—burning perhaps eighty-one per cent more than is needed to accomplish its ends, not through the mistake of its Divine Maker, but through the stupid, short-sighted ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... terms of the wars of the Samnites, and disparagingly of the Etrurians, who "were not," he said, "as an enemy to be compared with other enemies, nor as a numerous force, with others in point of numbers. Besides, he had an engine at work, as they should find in due time; at present it was of importance to keep it secret." By these hints he intimated that the enemy was circumvented in order to raise the courage of his men, damped by the superiority of the enemy's force; and, from their not having fortified ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... strange in it as well. What was it? That she could not define. At any rate, from her brother's account, it seemed to her very simple, tedious and boring. Apparently he had lived just anywhere, and had done just anything; at work one day, and idle the next; it was also plain that he liked drinking, and knew a good deal about women. But life such as this had nothing dark or sinister about it; in no way did it resemble the life she imagined her brother ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... perversion of all the principal functions of government, had it in their power to discover the whole. Mr. Hastings was obliged, in consequence of that concealment, to support her and to support him. Every evil principle was at work. He bought a mercenary silence to pay the same back to them. It was a wicked silence, the concealment of their common guilt. There was at once a corrupt gratitude operating mutually by a corrupt influence on both, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Western spirit is assuredly at work in the Indian countries, but the vital question for Indian Governments is, How far it has changed the ideas ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... Japanese garden from sitting on an old English refectory table in the dining-room. A Japanese garden needs very careful management. I have three native gardeners working at it day and night. At least they maintain the attitudes of men hard at work, but they don't seem to do much; perhaps they are afraid of throwing one another out of employment. The head gardener spends his time pointing to the largest cactus, and saying (I suppose in Japanese), "Look at my cactus!" The other two appear to be washing his Sunday shirt for him, instead of ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... him. The same Treachery was used to all the rest; and all in one Instant, in several Places of the Ship, were lash'd fast in Irons, and betray'd to Slavery. That great Design over, they set all Hands at Work to hoist Sail; and with as treacherous as fair a Wind they made from the Shore with this innocent and glorious Prize, who thought of nothing less than such ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... of choices is certain to enlarge with time, and the ease with which right choices can be made. In this computer age, mathematical models of river systems, including the Potomac, are at work manipulating hydrological data and quickly indicating optimum coordinated solutions for given water problems that formerly would have taken many weeks to solve, if indeed men could have arrived at such exact solutions at ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... but I had not paid much attention to it, until, wandering through the opening in the box hedge and on along the gravel path, I saw unfamiliar figures moving in the billiard room, and turned, hastily retracing my steps. Officialdom was at work already, and I knew that there would be no rest for any of us from ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... with all hands at work, the buckets are washed and distributed. They are left in sets of half-a-dozen at convenient distances through the orchard, or else are turned bottom-upwards on the snow, one at the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... telling me a shocking story of how the body of a young girl was picked out of the Thames (about the time you took me away from London) and buried in the name of Roma Roselli. He actually saw the grave and the tombstone! Some scoundrel has been at work somewhere. Who is it, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... hurry when she saw how late it was: the birds had been up hours before her, and were all busily employed building their nests; every bush resounded with the songs of these little creatures while at work, and Downy knew she must not be idle, for she had much to do; being very hungry she first went to an oak which grew at some little distance, and here she found plenty of acorns among the leaves—of these she ...
— Little Downy - The History of A Field-Mouse • Catharine Parr Traill
... the same name should have been writing at the same time; for in such cases the weakest must go to the wall. Mr. Frederick Tennyson's fame has been eclipsed by the Laureate's; and there was little chance of a hearing for the author of the Martyr'd Souldier when James Shirley was at work. From the address To the Courteous Reader, it would seem that Henry Shirley did not seek for popularity: "his Muse," we are told, was "seldome seene abroad." Evidently he was not a professional playwright. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... herbage lies, Yon gay pavilion curtained deep With silken folds thro' which bright eyes From time to time are seen to peep; While twinkling lights that to and fro Beneath those veils like meteors go, Tell of some spells at work and keep Young fancies chained in mute suspense, Watching what next may shine from thence, Nor long the pause ere hands unseen That mystic curtain backward drew, And all that late but shone between In half-caught ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... wind shifted to the south. Hatteras then set his sails and had the fires put out; for many days the crew were kept hard at work; every few minutes they had to tack or bear away, or to shorten sail quickly to stop the course of the brig; the braces could not run easily through the choked-up pulleys, and added to the fatigue of the crew; more than a week was required for them to reach Point ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... been another force at work of equally far-reaching importance. This force is the modern idea of democracy, in which justice is modified by good-will. With the ancients justice meant "that every man should practise one thing only, that being the thing to which his nature was most perfectly adapted." ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... after two hours' provocation on her part and stern patience on Monck's. Stella, at work in the drawing-room, heard a sudden sharp exclamation from the verandah where Monck was seated before a table littered with Hindu literature, and looked up to see Tessa, with a monkey-like grin of mischief, smoking the cigarette which she had just snatched from between Monck's ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... passed the tent on her way to get water at the river. His grandmother was at work in the tepee with a pair of old worn-out sloppy moccasins. The young man sprang to his feet. "Quick, grandmother—let me have those old sloppy moccasins you have on your feet!" ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... left Norwich a few words must be told. As Mrs Lawrie had then told him, he was little better than a pauper. He had, however, collected together what means he had been able to gather, and had gone to Cape Town in South Africa. Thence he had made his way up to Kimberley, and had there been at work among the diamond-fields for two years. If there be a place on God's earth in which a man can thoroughly make or mar himself within that space of time, it is the town of Kimberley. I know no spot more odious in every ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... only contrast to this general air of exhaustion and weariness on every side was a corps of sappers, who were busily employed upon the high grounds above the village. Early as it was, they seemed to have been at work some hours,—at least so their labors bespoke; for already a rampart of considerable extent had been thrown up, stockades implanted, and a breastwork was in a state of active preparation. The officer of the party, wrapped up in a loose cloak, and mounted upon a sharp-looking hackney, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... His mother, on the other hand, maintained that he should free himself at once and at any cost. A few months earlier he could easily have persuaded her that he was right; but she seemed changed since he had parted from her, and he fancied that his father's influence had been at work with her. This he resented bitterly. It must be remembered, too, that he had begun the interview with a preconceived prejudice, expecting it to turn out badly, so that he was the more ready to allow matters to ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... department, considering the methods pursued, checking the expenditure on this, on that, on the other. He interviews the partners, the managers, the men down through the various grades; the books are open to him. He presents his diagnosis and writes his prescription. The "business doctor" has been at work in the churches—in our Church. He has looked into many things. He has made some suggestions. They have not all been foolish, but, as yet, he has not quite hit upon the very thing. He has, however, not altogether ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... and Carr saw in that instant that each knob and lever on the control panel glowed with an unearthly brush discharge. Not violet as of high frequency electricity, but red. Cherry red as of heated metal. The emanations of the cosmic monster were at work on the Nomad. A glance through the forward port showed they had but a few miles to go. They'd be in the clutches of the horror in minutes, seconds, at the rate they were traveling. Mado slumped in his seat, his proud ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... July 1820, and the shadows were beginning to lengthen over Ashacombe village on a burning summer's afternoon. The men were still at work, and most of the women also; for, early though it was, a farmer was cutting a field of wheat over the hill on the far side of the valley, a field which was always the first in the whole parish to ripen. So the men were cutting and the women were binding, for women did more work in the fields in ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... 13:31-33). 6. Sin is seen by its own darkness, and also in the light of the Spirit; but the Spirit itself neither discovers itself, nor yet its graces, by every glance of its own light. 7. A man may have the Spirit busily at work in him, he may also have many of his graces in their vigorous acts, and yet may be greatly ignorant of either; wherefore we are not competent judges in this case. There may a thousand acts of grace pass through thy soul, and thou be sensible of few, if any, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and would have to last for another five at least. On week-days he dressed in blue guernsey and corduroys, and smoked a clay pipe. His broad-brimmed clerical hat alone distinguished him from the farm-labourers in his parish; but when at work upon the church—patching its shingle roof, or pouring mortar into its gaping wounds—he discarded this for a maroon-coloured cap, not unlike a biretta, which offered less surface ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... prevented us from taking greater advantage of our great initial success, which certainly surprised and disorganised the enemy. But it was not merely the weather which broke down at a critical moment. There were other causes at work to delay and impede success. I strongly suspect that the British infantry units were still suffering from their tremendous exertions in 1916; and they certainly had not the confident assurance of victory which inspired the terrible sacrifices on the Somme. Hitherto our artillery had ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... shall see, are beginning to feel and to assert their individual importance, as against the strict rules and traditions, civil or religious, of the life of the family and the State. This is a tendency that had long been at work in Greece, and is especially marked in the teaching of the two great ethical schools of the post-Alexandrian period, the Epicureans and Stoics. The influence of Greece on the Romans was already strong enough to have sown the seeds of individualism in Italy; but the tendency was at the ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... put to hard work he needs some food of a more concentrated and highly nutritious nature than grass; but while labor may necessitate grain, the health of his system yet demands a liberal allowance of grass. In direct opposition to this many farmers keep their horses off pasture while they are at work, which comprises almost the entire season of green pasture. I have frequently heard farmers say that their horses did best during the spring and summer, if kept in the stable at night. I can only say that I have found the very opposite to be true and I believe I have carefully and faithfully tested ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... matter of fact, he had thought of nothing else. He had the title of the picture in his mind: "The Author at Work in ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... Hollander teachers, who had returned to Europe after the outbreak of the war, and formed a valuable element in the permanent staff of the Education Departments of the new colonies. In 1903 there were 475 of these over-sea teachers at work in the two colonies, as against some 800 ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... in search of him. This was, as Tone notes in his journal, on the ill news reaching France, "a terrible blow." O'Conor's arrest in Kent, Sampson's in Carlisle, and the other arrests in Belfast and Dublin, proved too truly that treason was at work, and that the much-prized oath of secrecy was no protection whatever against the devices of the Castle and the depravity of its secret agents. The extent to which that treason extended, the number of associates who were in the pay of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... this agitation a slave insurrection was a mere corollary. With so much electricity in the air, a single flash of lightning foreboded all the terrors of the tempest. Let but a single armed negro be seen or suspected, and at once on many a lonely plantation there were trembling hands at work to bar doors and windows that seldom had been even closed before, and there was shuddering when a gray squirrel scrambled over the roof, or a shower of walnuts came down clattering from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... he turned from the declamation and the impracticable designs of this impassioned literature to the vast scheme of co-operation that had been suggested rather than described to him, there seemed more hope. If all these various forces that were at work could be directed into one channel, what might they not accomplish? Weed out the visionary, the impracticable, the anarchical from their aims; and then what might not be done by this convergence of all these eager social movements? Lind, he argued with himself, was not at all a man likely ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... great curiosity to see him. Whether this was gratified is not clear; but Candia described the gardens of the convent, which he entered, as glowing with imitations of fruits and vegetables all in pure gold and silver! *18 He had seen a number of artisans at work, whose sole business seemed to be to furnish these gorgeous decorations for the ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... earth on it: then mix the plaster in the bag with the water in this vessel and build up the tomb again with the stones and plaster it over as before, lest any see it and say, 'This tomb has been newly opened, albeit it is an old one;' for I have been at work here a whole year, unknown to any save God. This then is the service I had to ask of thee, and may God never bereave thy friends of thee, O my cousin!" Then he descended the stair; and when he was out of sight, I replaced the trap-door and did as he had bidden me, till the tomb ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... brought them to grass. And they say that if a man will listen of a still night about those old shafts, he may hear the ghosts of them at working, knocking, and picking, as clear as if there was a man at work in the next level."—Yeast; a Problem: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... building incircled the little, glowing room as the velvet incircles the jewel in its case. Occasionally faint sounds came from the distance—the movements of cleaners at work, a raised voice, the slamming ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... years' growth, umbrageous and green. Beds of roses, in great variety, were spread around, and filled the air with fragrance, while the climbing species of that beautiful flower was equally pleasing to the eye. I observed convict Greeks (Pirates.)—acti fatis—at work in that garden of the antipodes, training the vines to trellises, made after the fashion of those in the Peloponnesus. The state of the orange-trees, flourishing in the form of cones sixteen feet high, and loaded with fruit, was very remarkable, but they had risen from the roots of former ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... eve of his anniversary. They took into their confidence Mr. Otto Dresel, warmly valued by Agassiz both as friend and musician, and he arranged their midnight programme for them. Always sure of finding their professor awake and at work at that hour, they stationed the musicians before the house, and as the last stroke of twelve sounded, the succeeding stillness was broken by men's voices singing a Bach choral. When Agassiz stepped out to see whence came this pleasant salutation, he was met by his young ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... pen of that doughty champion of the Faith, Charles Leslie, busy at work on the Socinian controversy. His letters on this subject had been begun some years before this date; but they were not finally completed until the eighteenth century was some years old. Leslie was ever ready to defend what he held ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... trying to induce her eminent cousin to come to tea. The Imp, in response to that official missive which had made such an impression on her, was compiling her reminiscences of Heidelberg and Addie Tristram. Everybody was at work, and it was vaguely understood that Mr Disney was considering the matter, at least that he had not consigned all the documents to the waste-paper basket and the writers to perdition—which was a great point gained with Mr Disney. "No hurry, give me time"—"don't ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope |
