"Busy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... own part to stand in the way of his advancement. It may, perhaps, be the case that a barrister is less likely to be influenced by personal convictions in taking his side in politics than any other man who devotes himself to public affairs. No slur on the profession is intended by this suggestion. A busy, clever, useful man, who has been at work all his life, finds that his own progress towards success demands from him that he shall become a politician. The highest work of a lawyer can only be reached through political struggle. As a large-minded ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... difference, that, as the spikes of the railing were from me, and consequently I met with little injury, they must have been toward him, and had penetrated his knee, and thus it was that he had received the injury. Anderson also stated that they were very busy at the hospital, receiving the men who had been maimed in the glorious battle of Trafalgar. Altogether, I made up my mind that I would take the first ship that was offered for pilotage up the river, that I might know more of what was ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... promised Nellie that I would spend it with her; but you may send for me early tomorrow, for I suppose we shall have to be rather busy during the ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and, as it could not be induced to risk a second battle, the fleet of the Romans and allies broke up for the winter; the Roman ships of war proceeded to the harbour of Cane in the neighbourhood of Pergamus. Both parties were busy during the winter in preparing for the next campaign. The Romans sought to gain over the Greeks of Asia Minor; Smyrna, which had perseveringly resisted all the attempts of the king to get possession of the city, received the Romans with open arms, and the Roman party gained the ascendency ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... building a palace for you, and had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it be reasonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all a comfortable place to live in?—that it was draughty and cold? This World is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... and the men on horseback driving their herds with the aid of the Kaffirs. After a hearty adieu, Chris and his party rode on together for some little distance before again scattering widely to recommence their work of scouting. Hitherto they had been too busy for conversation, but now they were able to give words to the satisfaction they ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... world, life must needs run smoothly. Under those high gables, behind those mullioned windows, in the beautiful old gardens lying between the stone porches and the elm-shadowed lawn, nothing, one would think, could possibly exist but leisured and pleasant existence: even the busy streets of the old city, outside the crumbling gateway, seem, for ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... duties, and the child had only occasional supervision from a hard-worked servant. Thus it happened that he was frequently alone long hours at a time in a dusky room overshadowed by the neighboring church, and naturally strayed often to the window, from whence he might look down upon the busy world outside. He recalls that he was greatly interested at one time in some workmen who were repairing the church, and that he constantly turned from his post of observation to try and imitate their labors, but his only building material was the furniture of the room, and chairs and tables clumsily ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Thoul, had drawn all the eight thousand francs that were to have been paid to him in fixed sums once a quarter," replied Josepha. "We have heard no more of the Baron, neither I nor Monsieur d'Herouville. Our lives are so full, we artists are so busy, that I really have not time to run after old Thoul. As it happens, for the last six months, Bijou, who works for ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... leaned forward and selected an olive critically. "Father would let us have anything we want, but he says mother must decide. He's so busy he hasn't time to see about children. He has to make the ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... a barred field past the furthest gates of the Kharsa. About a dozen men were busy loading the pack animals—horses shipped in from Darkover, mostly. I asked the first man I met for Cuinn. He pointed out a burly fellow in a shiny red shirtcloak, who was busy at chewing out one of the young men for the way he'd put a packsaddle ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... seemed to be fondest of bringing sticks, one of which was too long for the mouth of the jar to admit. It was very amusing to witness his efforts to get the stick in; but it would not do; the stick fell to the ground. All day long, these pretty creatures were busy at their work; one usually watched while the other was in the jar arranging the nest for their expected brood. In about a week, it was evident that their work was completed, for they carried in no more sticks or dried grass. ...
— What the Animals Do and Say • Eliza Lee Follen
... employment of these devices of the painter from the photographer's point of view of composition is not sufficient. Photography is now busy complimenting every school of painting under the sun. Yesterday it was Rembrandt's school. Now that is passed, and Carriere is better and to-morrow, perchance, it will be Raphael or Whistler or ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... are very busy making Edward's shirts, and I am proud to say that I am the neatest worker of ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... walk in, sir!" he said cordially. "I was expecting my little grandson who went out a short while ago." He peered up the street. "Did you wish to see my daughter? You will find us in a little confusion—Christinas time is always a busy season with us on account of our young man: my grandson." He lingered with ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... of the house upon the hill. He was leaving for good and all the place which had so long claimed him as master. He saw the small gathering of people still hanging about the veranda, upon which the auctioneer still stood with his clerk, busy over the sales. He noticed others passing hither and thither, as they prepared to depart with their purchases. But none of these things which he looked upon affected him in any mawkish, sentimental manner. It was all over. That little hill, with its wooded background and vast ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... will an | -ticipate, | lavish, and | dissipate All that your | busy pate | hoarded with | care; And, in their | foolishness, | passion, and | mulishness, Charge you with | ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... wanted to come," he began, before he reached them. "I'm busy enough now. We're leading; if Lestrange holds out we'll win. But he's driving alone; Frank went out an hour ago, on the second relief, when he went through the paddock fence and broke his leg. It didn't hurt ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... similar to that of South America. Palms are very numerous, but they are generally small and horridly spiny. There are none of the large and majestic species so abundant on the Amazon. I am so busy with insects now that I have no time for anything else, I send now about a thousand beetles to Mr. Stevens, and I have as many other insects still on hand which will form part of my next and principal consignment. Singapore is very rich ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... a while, musing, no longer busy with such pleasant things as flowers and weeds; then roused herself. The weariness of inaction was becoming intolerable. She went to a corner of the room, where a large mahogany box was half-concealed beneath ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... something of that inevitable beauty that arises out of the perfect attainment of ends—for very many years, at any rate. It will almost certainly be tinted, it may even be saturated, with the secondhand archaic. The owner may object, but a busy man cannot stop his life work to teach architects what they ought to know. It may be heated electrically, but it will have sham chimneys, in whose darkness, unless they are built solid, dust and ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... Shakespeare; the works of Rembrandt and Bellini fossilise at the bottom of the sea. Grace, beauty, and wit, all that is precious in music, literature, and art—all gone. In the morning there was Europe. In the evening there are no more populous cities nor busy hum of men, but a sea of jagged ice, a lurid sunset, and the doom of many ages. Then shall a scared remnant escape in places, and settle upon the changed continent when the waters have subsided—a simple people, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... criticism on Antiphon the actor and Arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of Pepys. Then he defended Messius, then Drusus, then Scaurus. He mentions all these cases in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves with their details. We only feel that he was kept as busy as a London barrister in full practice. He also defended Vatinius—that Vatinius with whose iniquities he had been so indignant at the trial of Sextius. He defended him twice at the instigation of Caesar; and he ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the busy part of our hero's life, where we shall find him acting in various characters, and performing all with propriety, dignity, and decorum.—We shall, therefore, rather choose to account for some of the actions of our hero, by desiring ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... fine fish, made a present of it to the king, who ordered it to be dressed immediately. When the cook cut open the salmon, he found poor Tom, and ran with him directly to the king; but the king, being busy with state affairs, desired that he might be brought another day. The cook resolving to keep him safely this time, as he had so lately given him the slip, clapped him into a mouse-trap, and left him to ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... men to the ridiculous demands forced upon them by their ingenious tormentors. Still, the hazing of today is comparatively inoffensive, and there is not much of it. In the winter the students are too busy to notice a newcomer, except to make him feel strange and humble by their lofty scorn. But in the autumn, when the men have returned from their long out-of-door rest, with brush and palette, a certain amount of friskiness ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... party, was a French mistress, but English by birth, and gave lessons in two or three schools. She was never at home on weekdays excepting at breakfast and dinner. After dinner she generally corrected exercises in her bedroom, but when she was not busy she sat in the drawing-room to save fire ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... devil in him. Man of prudence though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far end of the table; and, for once in his life, ate a meal without being aware of its quality. His brain was busy reviewing the events of the previous day; putting two and two together, and trying not to see that they made four. A physical chill took him as he realised how narrowly he had escaped the ignominy of betraying the fact that he had counted on the consent of this proudest ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... crossing the Atlantic by the more northern routes the other danger is from the icebergs that may be met in the steamer's path. If a fog obscure the lookout the boat is slowed down, and a man kept busy with line and thermometer taking the temperature of the water. The iceberg is kindlier than the derelict, in the chill it sends out. The presence of the danger can so be detected, and measures taken to ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... he's busy just now because it rains in so many parts of the world at this season, and he has to set his rainbow in a lot of different places. What would you advise me to ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... busy examining some little three-cornered Cape of Good Hope stamps, that she had not till now clearly comprehended ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... Sainte-Croix dropped to the ground as though felled by a lightning stroke. At supper-time, his wife finding that he did not come out from his closet where he was shut in, knocked at the door, and received no answer; knowing that her husband was wont to busy himself with dark and mysterious matters, she feared some disaster had occurred. She called her servants, who broke in the door. Then she found Sainte-Croix stretched out beside the furnace, the broken glass lying by his side. It was impossible to deceive ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... among us, and above all to the epidemic of lynching and mob violence that springs up, now in one part of our country, now in another. Each section, North, South, East, or West, has its own faults; no section can with wisdom spend its time jeering at the faults of another section; it should be busy trying to amend its own shortcomings. To deal with the crime of corruption It is necessary to have an awakened public conscience, and to supplement this by whatever legislation will add speed and certainty in ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... of promise are like the comfortable beams of the sun, which liven and refresh. 9 You see how little the bee and fly do play in the air in winter; why, the cold hinders them from doing it; but when the wind and sun is warm, who so busy as they? ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that you are so well and so happy. As nothing has happened of change in my situation but a few more months passed, I have nothing to tell you new of myself. Time does not sharpen my passions or pursuits, and the experience I have had by no means prompts me to make new connexions. 'Tis a busy world, and well adapted to those who love to bustle in it; I loved it once, loved its very tempests—now I barely open my windows to view what course the storm takes. The town, who, like the devil, when ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... other all they could think of about themselves, they had not much else to talk of. Now that she had him to employ her fancy, Statira no longer fed it on the novels she used to devour. He brought her books, but she did not read them; she said that she had been so busy with her sewing she had no time to read; and every week she showed him some pretty new thing she had been making, and tried it on for him to see how she looked in it. Often she seemed to care more to rest with her head on his shoulder, and ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... slowly and painfully, often wishing for help in my difficulties. At last I determined to learn a little about pronouns and verbs before proceeding further, and so took up the phrase-book, with which I was commendably busy, when, at about a quarter to nine, came a knock at my study door, and, behold, there was Molly with a letter! How she came by it I did not ask, being content to suppose it was brought by a heavenly messenger. I had ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... offshoot grows Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows, No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb, Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim— Then if the busy gardener, weeding out Sharp thorns and nettles, cuts the little sprout, It fades and, losing all its living hue, Drops by the mother from whose roots it grew: So was it with my Ursula, my dear; A little space she grew beside us here, Then Death came, breathing pestilence, ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... Dudeney stopped explaining, and went on with his knitting. They were roused by voices. The shadow had crept halfway down the steep side of Norton Pit, and on the edge of it, his back to them, Puck sat beside a half-naked man who seemed busy at some work. The wind had dropped, and in that funnel of ground every least noise and movement reached them like whispers up ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... daylight. All the good people here will communicate, and the evening will be given up to such merrymaking as is befitting amongst Christians. All the ceorls and serfs will be at the Hall, and the prince will share the entertainment. Herstan and Bertha have been very busy preparing for it, as also their children, Hermann, Ostryth, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... good for either of them. He grew more and more dreamy and inert. She insensibly but continually narrowed and hardened, and, without dreaming of such a thing, really came to be less and less a part of her husband's inner life. Faithful, busy, absorbed herself in the cares of each day, she never observed that he was living more and more in his children and his reveries, and withdrawing more and more from her. She did not need constant play and interchange of sentiment as he did. Affectionate, loyal, devoted as she was, there was a side ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... present that time in the fair was too busy fighting for themselves to witness for me that I was not; except I'd call upon one that would clear me entirely, which is that there young man on the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... August and the 2nd of September, during his effective dictatorship between the 10th of August and the 21st of September, afterwards in the Convention, on the first Committee of Public Safety, on the 31st of May and on the 2nd of June:[3147] we have seen him busy at work. Up to the last, in spite of his partisans, he has tried to diminish or, at least, not add to, the resistance the government had to overcome. Nearly up to the last, in spite of his adversaries, he tried to increase or, at least, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... peasant woman opened the door; she was busy lighting the 'samovar' in a tiny kitchen. She listened silently to my questions, did not understand a word, of course, and opened another door leading into a little bit of a room, low and scarcely furnished at all, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... civilization and population has already reached westward to the foot of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf of Mexico to Montana and Idaho, while even the basin of the Columbia River is rapidly filling up with an active, thriving and busy people, who can smile at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... Mor. Let fame be busy, where she has to do; Tell of fought fields, and every pompous show. Those tales are fit to fill the people's ears; Monarchs, unquestioned, move in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... busy a spell as I've had for some time," Uncle Joe declared as he hauled out the last of the small boys and then ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... discussion until we ascertain what virtue is, whether capable of being taught or not, lest haply Epimetheus should trip us up and deceive us in the argument, as he forgot us in the story; I prefer your Prometheus to your Epimetheus, for of him I make use, whenever I am busy about these questions, in Promethean care of my own life. And if you have no objection, as I said at first, I should like to have your ...
— Protagoras • Plato
... the speech of Gunnar, and his lips the word forget, But his crafty hands are busy, and the harp ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... in a yawn. He looked askance at Osborne, who was sitting near the fire absorbed in a book. The poor squire was something like the little boy in the child's story, who asks all sorts of birds and beasts to come and play with him; and, in every case, receives the sober answer, that they are too busy to have leisure for trivial amusements. The father wanted the son to put down his book, and talk to him: it was so wet, so dull, and a little conversation would so wile away the time! But Osborne, with his back to the window where his father was standing, saw nothing of all this, and went on reading. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... waylay Rome. But the canoe moved slowly out of sight downstream and toward the deep water, the paddler unseen, and the boy looked around with a weak smile. Neither seemed to have heard him. Rome was brooding, with his sullen face in his hands; the old miller was busy with his own thoughts; and the boy turned again ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... is there where you put it, I am sure," answered Abul Hassan, "though I myself have not seen it. I do not even know in what part of the warehouse you left it. But here are the keys, and as I am busy I will ask you ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... seemed generally to be away from the house beside the Downs; and the Mistress of the Kennels seemed always to be busy, and never to be in playful mood. Days passed without even one of those gentle runs behind a bicycle to which Finn had grown accustomed; days during which no one ever spoke to Finn except at meal-times, and the home seemed strangely silent and deserted. Finn was always locked ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... hum of a general awakening—for Mohammedans are early risers, and even pirates deemed it consistent with their calling to commence the day with formal—not to say ostentatious—prayers. Any one traversing the streets at that early hour might have seen men at the fountains busy with their prescribed ablutions, while elsewhere others were standing, kneeling, or prostrating themselves, with their faces turned carefully in the direction of Mecca, their ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a busy one at the book-bindery, and our hero got no chance to call on Slocum. During that time he learned that Crazy Jim had been locked up for resisting the officer and had been sentenced to thirty days on ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... rage at our defiance of his might. It was so strange and so singular that only at this particular sunset, out of the millions which have elapsed since this terrestrial ball first floated in ether, that I, or indeed any White man, should stand upon this wretched hill, so remote from the busy haunts of my fellow men. My speculations upon the summit, if, indeed, so insignificant a mound can be said to have a summit, were as wild and as incongruous as the regions which stretched out before me. In the first place I could only conclude that no water could exist in this region, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... in! It's pitiful to see a lad like that mooning away his time, when he ought to be busy at football or cricket, or playing tricks on his betters. What business has he to appreciate Nature? Tell me that! At twenty—is it, or only nineteen?—he ought to be too much engrossed in exercising his muscles, and letting off steam generally, to bother his head about ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Goldsmiths' Hall, in Foster-lane, Cheapside, to whom had been entrusted by Parliament the whole business of arranging the compositions with Delinquents whose estates had been sequestrated. To this Committee, which must have had a very busy time of it at the end of the war, when would-be compounders were flocking in from north, south, and west, Mr. Powell, among others, addressed his petition on the 6th of August, 1646, in these terms: ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... every allowance for disparity of force, the injury done by the American fire cannot be deemed satisfactory, and suggests the consideration whether the voyage to France under pressure of a diplomatic mission, and the busy preoccupation of making, manning, and firing prizes, during the brief month of Channel cruising, may not have interfered unduly with the more important requirements of fighting efficiency. The surviving officer in command mentions in explanation, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... first agitation produced by the publication of the Indulgence had subsided, it appeared that a breach had taken place in the Puritan party. The minority, headed by a few busy men whose judgment was defective or was biassed by interest, supported the King. Henry Care, who had long been the bitterest and most active pamphleteer among the Nonconformists, and who had, in the days of the Popish plot, assailed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... O'Grady. "Do you know I felt quite sorry for him about that filly. He probably won't find out what's wrong with her for about a fortnight or three weeks. He'll be so busy over this General John Regan business that he won't have time to do anything with her. But when he does ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... Chuck,' said Howard bluntly. 'I am in up to my neck, and that's all there is to it. As soon as I get through with you I am off to San Juan to see if there is any real money left in the world. I'll be back as soon as I can. But you get busy while I'm gone. First thing, here are five men you will have to give their time. Tell them why; tell them there's always a job open for them here when I've got the cash for pay-day. Then you and what's left will get your necks into your collars and go to it, long hours and hard work ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... returned the principal, as he rose and made for his private room. There was a handbowl in there, with hot and cold water, and the principal of the Central Grammar School of Gridley was soon busy ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock
... Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... And when Eliot was busy with his microscope and Jerrold had turned from her to Colin, there was Uncle Robert. He seemed to know the moments when she wanted him. Then he would take her out riding with him over the estate that stretched from Wyck across the valley of ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... this English colonel had been busy in stirring the Indians up to their dreadful work. His papers showed that. And even while the fight was going on some of the red demons came up with the scalps of white men and women to receive their pay. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... groves the lowly region lies, And rocky mountains round the border rise. Here, till the doom of Fate its fall decreed, The empire flourished of the pygmy-breed; Here Industry performed, and Genius planned, And busy multitudes o'erspread the land. But now to these lone bounds if pilgrim stray, Tempting through craggy cliffs the desperate way, He finds the puny mansion fallen to earth, Its godlings mouldering on th' abandoned hearth; ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... Krishna now turns to the gods, choosing Indra, their chief, for attack. The moment is his annual worship when the cowherds offer sweets, rice, saffron, sandal and incense. Seeing them busy, Krishna asks Nanda what is the point of all their preparations. What good can Indra really do? he asks. He is only a god, not God himself. He is often worsted by demons and abjectly put to flight. In fact he has no power at all. Men prosper because of their virtues or ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... boxes had been bedded in sheet iron was just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was balancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the modern inventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure of those ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of you, dear readers, is as bad a sleeper as I am, you will understand how thoughts swarm at midnight. Busy, bustling, stinging bees, they forbid the needed rest, and, thronging the idle brain, compel attention. Here in the silent hours the ghosts called characters walk slowly, smiling, bowing, nodding, pirouetting, going like marionettes through ...
— How I write my novels • Mrs. Hungerford
... was spent in cutting up the caribou, and putting it on a stage to dry. While they were busy with their task there came again the sound of the wild goose call. Seizing the rifles, George and Gilbert made off across the island, and soon came back with two young geese, and word that there was another ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... complaisance, to him, had become habitual. But now that doubt had arisen, it seemed to him that he noted an eagerness in her countenancing of his poker parties. Another point he could not avoid noting was that Sonny Grandison was missed by the poker and bridge crowds. He seemed to be too busy. Now where was Sonny, while he, Lee Barton, was playing? Surely not always at committee and boards of directors meetings. Lee Barton made sure of this. He easily learned that at such times Sonny was more than usually wherever Ida chanced to be— at dances, or dinners, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... buying a bed, a table, two chairs, and a few cooking utensils, she began housekeeping. Often she started out at six in the morning, not to return until dark. Most frequently she read the Bible to those who could not read. Sometimes she gave cheer to mothers busy over the washtub. Sometimes she would teach the children to read or to sew. Often she would write letters for those who had been separated from friends or kindred in the dark days. She wrote hundreds and hundreds of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... at this time was enormously busy; the passion for work had him in its grip, and even his robust constitution suffered from the enormous strain to which he subjected it by his constant abuse of coffee, which caused intense nervous irritation; and by the short hours of sleep he allowed himself. He never rested for a moment, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... Grandet; "I know what you want to say. You are a good fellow; we will see about it to-morrow, I'm too busy to-day. Wife, give him five francs," he added to Madame ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Sunday morning's paper,—and with, to a moral certainty, the word 'separate' lurking somewhere spelt with three E's, and an 'always' with two L's, and at least one 'alright.' No, my dear, I am at present too busy expressing my adoration for you to be ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... "It is not uncommon for the greater number of cases to occur in the practice of one man, whilst the other practitioners of the neighborhood, who are not more skilful or more busy, meet with few or none. A practitioner opened the body of a woman who had died of puerperal fever, and continued to wear the same clothes. A lady whom he delivered a few days afterwards was attacked with and died of a similar ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great cock-fight at Dorchester. Instantly his childish spirits are all on a fever to see the cock-fight. "Oh heavens! he would not miss the cock-fight for the world!" But how to obtain leave of absence from the fort at this busy time, was the rub; however, for such means as he was capable of using, an invention like his could not long be at a loss. In short, he went to Marion, with a doleful face, and in piteous accents, stated that his father, an excellent ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... to be a man, and had had work to do, and people to care for, and was so useful and busy that they liked me, and perhaps even forgot that I was lame. Then, it would have been nice to have lived, I think," and tears came into the little fellow's eyes. Then he heard a trumpet, one of the great silver ...
— The Little Lame Prince - Rewritten for Young Readers by Margaret Waters • Dinah Maria Mulock
... of exalted power she brought to many a sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she used to move—the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits of a delighted multitude—came strongly on the mind, and asked, in perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little. Fame and wealth were her ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... thither, were waiting in the antichamber: among them was Horatio: the alteration of his countenance on sight of her, after this absence, was too visible not to have been remarked, had not all present been too busy in paying their compliments to her, to take any notice of it. He was one of the last that approached, being willing to recover the confusion he felt himself in, lest it should have an effect on his voice in speaking to her. She, more prepared, received his salute with ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... thus secretly supplied the Creeks with the means of waging war on the Americans, claiming all the time that the Creeks were their vassals and that the land occupied by the southern Indians generally belonged to Spain and not to the United States. [Footnote: Do.] They also kept their envoys busy among the Chickasaws, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... slowly and majestically, for in the Orient one never sees an Effendi hurrying along the streets. However busy men may be, they always walk calmly and leisurely, as if quite at their ease. Behind this Effendi his ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... no to this, and while she paused, it was evident that memory was busy with suggestions ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... bungalows of India, as, in the tales of the old Jesuit missionaries, the magical air shook the frail "medicine tents," where Huron conjurors practised their mysteries. With a world of romance and of character at their doors, Englishmen in India have seen as if they saw it not. They have been busy in governing, in making war, making peace, building bridges, laying down roads, and writing official reports. Our literature from that continent of our conquest has been sparse indeed, except in the way of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... of the poem is a drawing of a pair of stocks, labelled 'The only good American securities,' Willis seems to have been too busy to Boswellise this season, but we get a glimpse of him in his letters to Miss Mitford, and one or two of the notes in his diary are worth quoting. On April 22 he writes to the author of Our Village in his usual flattering style: 'I am anxious to see your play and your next book, and I ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... How busy they were! and hark to the strange noises! Up and down behind the old wainscot, over the ceiling and under the floor they raced, and gnawed, and scratched! Malcolmson smiled to himself as he recalled to mind the saying of Mrs. Dempster, 'Bogies is rats, and rats is bogies!' The tea ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... There are busy crowds around me On ilka lang dull street; Yet, though sae mony surround me, I kenna ane I meet. And I think on kind, kent faces, And o' blythe and cheery days, When I wander'd out, wi' our ain folk, Out-owre ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... own villages, who had made compacts with the devil himself. They believed that the devil still literally walked the earth like a roaring lion: that he and the evil angels were perpetually labouring to destroy the souls of men; and that God was equally busy overthrowing the devil's work, and bringing sin ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... shifted from one staff officer to another. No one was held accountable for anything, and general confusion seemed to reign. The place was besieged with contractors and agents, and the staff was nearly worried to death. The general was always very busy—fanning himself—and the days ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... his wife are both busy and charming, with a whole troop of flaxenhaired little children to keep them occupied, besides the business of their large estate. Our intercourse is arranged on lines of the most beautiful simplicity. I ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... ate it with a slice of bread, watching her busy with the shredded meat, and when he had finished, and had filled and emptied a cup of water from the bucket in the sink, he sat down, taking her into his lap, where she at once curled up and began her toilet. He began to speak again, touching her caressingly ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... sounded they were still far too brilliant to bear her father's scrutiny. So she rang for Naomi, and said, 'Just tell Sykes to send up some lunch to me, Naomi; and if any one asks where I am, tell them I am very busy. So I am, cleaning my hands; though you needn't tell ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... have been busy; but, although they have brought in a few prisoners, mostly farmers residing in the vicinity of the enemy's camp, we have obtained but little information respecting the rebels. I intend to send out a scouting party in the morning. Lieutenant Driscoll will command ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Mr. Bowden," said Lilias, "and he's taken two tickets, but he's doubtful if he'll find time to get off. He's always so busy." ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... called the Morant Keys, a few leagues from the east end of Jamaica. The crew landed in their boats, with arms and provisions, leaving the slaves on board in their irons. This happened in the night. When morning came, it was discovered that the Negroes had broken their shackles, and were busy in making rafts; upon which afterwards they placed the women and children. The men attended upon the latter, swimming by their side, whilst they drifted to the island where the crew were. But what was the sequel? ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... busy, too; so busy that I began to wonder if indeed I should ever be done with them. Slowly they pressed me back into the room, and when they had all passed in after me, one of them closed and ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... commenced to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a foot the whole impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to resume it: but nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at Woolwich, and busy enough about other matters. ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... forth by and in the Gospel, which doth argue their not being under the Covenant of Grace, but rather under the law or old covenant (2 Cor 4:3). As, for instance, if you do come among some professors of the Gospel, in general you shall have them pretty busy and ripe; also able to hold you in a very large discourse in several points of the same glorious Gospel; but if you come to the same people and ask them concerning heart-work, or what work the Gospel hath wrought ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sure enough; and standing beside him in his customary motionless attitude was the Admiral harnessed into a great sledge surmounted by a barrel into which David was pouring the sap as fast as he gathered it. At the moment the man was busy detaching one of the sap buckets from the trunk ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... child—be calm. Whilst I attended to you, he was busy with your poor sister. You ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... and feeble. And many of us have, at one and the same moment, to work and to weep, to toil whilst our hearts are beating like a forge-hammer; to labour whilst memories and thoughts that might enfeeble any worker, are busy with us. A burden of sorrow, as well as effort and toil, is, sooner or later, the lot ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Lady Margherita had turned impatiently from him to busy herself with the Queen before he had finished his speech; then she flashed him a glance which he ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the difficulty, lent her some countenance by taking, on several public occasions, one of those elephantine trots of his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving Mr Merdle about on his trunk as Gigantic Enterprise, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... shoulders and made no reply. He was very busy just then with the metallic knobs. Suddenly we were jerked off our feet as if we had been in a trolley driven by a green motorman. Edmund also would have fallen if he had not clung to one of the handles. We felt that we were spinning through the air at a fearful speed. Still ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... and beyond the immediate reach and operation of civilization, and all efforts were mainly directed to the maintenance of friendly relations and the preservation of peace and quiet on the frontier. All this is now changed. There is no such thing as the Indian frontier. Civilization, with the busy hum of industry and the influences of Christianity, surrounds these people at every point. None of the tribes are outside of the bounds of organized government and society, except that the Territorial system has not been extended over that portion of the country known ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and sorrow is never long without a dawn of ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark.' Rasselas, ch. 35. 'Keep yourself busy,' wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, 'and you will in time grow cheerful. New prospects may open, and new enjoyments may come within ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell |
