"Engrossing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no idea how engrossing such a profession may become. Just as the blacksmith says: "By hammer and hand all Art doth stand," just as the baker thinks that all the solar system revolves around his morning delivery of rolls, as the postmaster-general believes that he alone is the preserver of society—and surely, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... pervaded it, and with which I hoped I had now done, I was still at a loss to see how I could recross the Loire in face of the Vicomte de Turenne's enmity. I might have troubled myself much more with speculating upon this point had I not found—in close connection with it—other and more engrossing food for thought in the capricious behaviour of ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... she had kept her troth less well, had only availed herself of that freedom which he gave her, to disregard her promise. And this was the more strange in that I never doubted the strength of his attachment; it remained engrossing and unchanged, the largest part of his life. No alien shadow had ever come between him and the memory of the little girl with the violet eyes, to whom he at least was bound. But a shadow was there; ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... The engrossing nature of his occupation as engineer did not hinder DesBarres from being an ambitious land speculator. In 1765 he obtained, in conjunction with General Haldimand and one or two others, a grant of the Township of Hopewell, ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... in my heart, the contents of Miss Howe's letter almost engrossing me, the moment that Miss Harlowe and Mrs. Moore (accompanied by Miss Rawlins) came in: but in my countenance all the gentle, the placid, the serene, that the glass could teach; and in my behaviour all the polite, that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... is no common cause that thus draws men out of themselves for others. Then, too, I greatly doubt where there are such hard-worked men as the general secretaries,—days and evenings filled with work that never ends; the work the more engrossing and exacting because it combines physical and mental with spiritual responsibility. We who know this are not surprised to find the strength of these men failing. Those who employ them should carefully ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... This engrossing love was not agreeable to the Widow Lawton. If less was accomplished in a day than usual, she would often exclaim, "That brat takes up too much of your time." And not unfrequently Chloe was compelled to go to the beach and leave Tommy fastened up in the kitchen; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... printing from negatives, in all the details of that wonderful and delightful art. To any one who has some artistic taste, photography, both in its interesting processes and glorious results, becomes a most attractive and almost engrossing pursuit. It is a delightful means of educating the eye for artistic feeling, as well as of educating the hands in delicate manipulation. I know of nothing equal to photography as a means of advancing one's ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... advice, guided their education, strove to form their characters, and traced for them the honorable careers which he wished them to pursue. Very few men who had risen to the heights reached by Washington would have found time, in the midst of engrossing cares, to write such letters as he wrote to friends and kinsmen. A kind heart prompted them, but they were much more than merely kind, for when Washington undertook to do anything he did it thoroughly. Whether it was a treaty with England, the education of a boy, or the service of a ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... story to tell which will move amidst tragic circumstances of too engrossing a nature to be disturbed by archaeological interests, and shall not, therefore, minutely describe here what I observed in Nuremberg, although no adequate description of that wonderful city has yet fallen in my way. To readers unacquainted with ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... perhaps the only opportunity which she and her daughter might enjoy of seeing each other, even the interview between the two queens would have been declined.[362] As it was, however, Philip excused himself on the plea of engrossing occupations. ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of his dignity caused him to answer: "I was afraid you'd forgotten the hour. Beaufort must have been very engrossing." ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... nothing. Do you know, when I was there I abandoned myself to living; I played the lizard in the sun. Happiness is very engrossing, and ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... real player, besides, Whist was never so engrossing as to exclude occasional remark; and some of the smartest and wittiest of Talleyrand's sayings were uttered at the card-table. Imagine, then, the inestimable advantage to the young man entering life, to be privileged to sit down in that little chosen coterie, where ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... distinctions with regard to wit in its relations to fancy and judgment. Addressed to "a friend in the country," it surveys in a rapid and engaging manner the productions of Isaac Bickerstaff and his followers which are engrossing the interest of London. In other words it is an early example of a popular eighteenth-century form, of which Goldsmith's more extended Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning is the ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... executed. How much would good health and spirits be worth to me!" and a month later, "I am still plagued with headaches and sometimes heartaches." Sleepless nights now came upon him. All this time, however, he was absorbed in his one engrossing task. Leupold's "Theatrim Machinarum," which fell into his hands, gave an account of the machinery, furnaces and methods of mine-working in the upper Hartz. Alas! the book was in German, and he could not understand ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... Henry had indeed ceased to regard his wife with the ardour of romantic passion; nor had the solid feelings of affectionate esteem supplied its place; but he loved her still, because he believed himself the engrossing object of her tenderness; and in that blest delusion he had hitherto found palliatives for her folly and consolation ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... for ultimate success in case circumstances permitted the renewal of his suit? Would the enthusiastic loyalty, which at this animating moment left no room for a softer passion, survive, at least in its engrossing force, the success or the failure of the present political machinations? And if so, could he hope that the interest which she had acknowledged him to possess in her favour might be improved into a warmer attachment? He taxed his memory to recall every word she had used, with the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and Horatia's ailments were abating, so, as her temper was not alleviated, Lucilla thought peace would be best preserved by sallying out to sketch. A drawing from behind the cross became so engrossing that she was sorry to find it time for the early dinner, and her artistic pride was only allayed by the conviction that she should always hate ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Josiah Quincy, whose reminiscences were to me very interesting, his accounts of conversations with John Adams perhaps more so than anything else. At various clubs I met most charming people, the most engrossing of these being Arthur Gilman, the architect: then, and at other times, I sat up with him late into the night,—once, indeed, the entire night,—listening to his flow of quaint wit and humor. The range of his powers was perhaps best ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... men, out in the tropics, as offers to hand a shawl or carry a parasol. They are soft-hearted, bold to face the world, and very confident in circumstances. Then, too, they are ignorant of any other way to progress with a flirtation which is all-engrossing. In warm latitudes it is so natural to make an offer after the fifth dance. It is the way of the people in those latitudes, and seems to lead to no harm. Men and women do marry on small incomes; but they do not starve, and the world goes on wagging. Mary Bonner, however, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... he gave up this task till his death in 1864 Mr. Dilke's life had one all-engrossing preoccupation—the training of his grandson Charles. But to the last, literary research employed him. In 1849 he helped to establish Notes and Queries 'to be a paper in which literary men could answer each other's questions'; and his contributions to this paper [Footnote: Its founder ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... New Motherhood, slowly and timidly, is beginning to answer, "No." It is becoming more and more visible, in this deeper, higher demand for race improvement, that we might provide better educational conditions for the young of the human species. For the all-engrossing importance of the first years of childhood, it is time that we prepared a place. This is as real a need as the need of a college or school. We need A PLACE FOR BABIES—and our homes arranged ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... reading of his orders, and the matter terminated in a fruitless exchange of argumentation.[200] In April, 1808, Rose quitted the country, and redress for the "Chesapeake" injury remained in abeyance for three years longer. Interest in it had waned under more engrossing events which had already taken place, and it was relegated by both Governments to the background of diplomacy. Admiral Berkeley had been recalled, as a mark of his Majesty's disapproval. He arrived in England in the beginning of 1808, some six months after the outrage, accompanied ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... that you will read this thoughtfully and weigh my warnings. Dear heart, you have everything in life to make you happy, do not spoil your chances; return to Paris, I entreat you, as soon as Macumer comes back. The engrossing claims of society, of which I complained, are necessary for both of you; otherwise you would spend your life in mutual self-absorption. A married woman ought not to be too lavish of herself. The mother of a family, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of producing hazilberts is engrossing me at the present time, my greatest pleasure in nut culture still comes, as it always shall come, from actual work with these trees. It is both a physical and mental tonic. I recommend nut tree culture to everyone who enjoys spending his time out-of-doors, who is inspired ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... the fact that, when our first parents were placed in the garden of Eden, they wore no clothes. It was not until after they had acquired the knowledge of good and evil that they turned their attention to the subject of dress, which is now the engrossing thought ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... de Chatillon and his pretended rival, the Duke de Nemours, in order that they might rob the poor Duchess of her last consolation, the esteem and affection of Conde. Left in Guienne, without any great or engrossing occupation, with a vacant mind, discontented both with others and herself, Madame de Longueville was no longer the brilliant Bellona of Stenay, but her pride and dignity, which she could not lose, never failed to sustain her. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... shocking condition, without binding, and contained no more than a fragment. The last page was numbered "341," and the first page "129." One hundred and twenty-eight pages, therefore, were certainly lost at the beginning, and I know not how many at the end; but what was left was sufficiently engrossing to hold me standing by the window, until the wrinkled face of the priest looked in again to inform me that unless I wished to sleep in the library, I must be ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... each for a man to move comfortably. Beneath the loop-holes runs a wooden platform for the men to stand on. Behind the loop-holes, in the ceiling, are large hooks to hang guns on. Many of the loop-holes are labelled with men's names, written in a good engrossing hand; and between the loop-holes, and level with them, are pinned coloured postcards and photographs of women, girls, and children. Tucked conveniently away in zinc cases underground are found zinc receptacles for stores ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... lad sat for some time staring into the fire, as though lost in self-communion; and Cuthbert could easily imagine that affairs connected with his life in this country were engrossing his attention. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... If they were, they would know that a really absorbed and happy child is almost portentously solemn. It hasn't the time to waste on smiles; the building of sand castles and fortresses is infinitely too engrossing an occupation. A smile will greet the anticipation; it is lost in the stupendous joy of the fact. But as smiles are evidently considered de rigueur by the designers of posters, and as the mere anticipation ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... little rivulets of sensation, both external and internal, discharge themselves. Now this is that part of man to which the exercises of religion properly belong. The pleasures of the understanding, in the contemplation of truth, have been sometimes so great, so intense, so engrossing of all the powers of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other kind of pleasure. How short of this are the delights of the epicure! How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... been the graves of buried liberties." She feared that, under the "forms" of subverted laws, the liberties of a helpless people would indeed be buried. She had little care for the Nation. It was of those she had served and whose future she regarded with such engrossing interest that she thought. She did not dream of remedying the evil. That was beyond her power. She only thought she might save some from its scath. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... himself, and in making these arrangements he took care to find his son abundant and varied employment. But all his well-meant efforts were in vain. Luis could not detach his thoughts from one all-engrossing subject; and at last, although Count Villabuena had expressly forbidden any correspondence between his daughter and young Herrera, the latter, after some weeks' absence, unable to resist any longer his desire to hear from Rita, ventured to write to her. The letter was intercepted by the count, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... mother? Was he little or big? Did he weigh eight pounds or ten? Did he live to be a man? None of these things are recorded, and we shall never know. After this supreme event few entries appear in the diary through the years. Life has become engrossing, important. Let us hope it was sufficing and not full of failure and trouble; let us enjoy the pleasure of believing so, as we well may. The clock, the cyder, the thermometer, the little Bille: what more important ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... was not only expensive, but often very difficult to procure; whence arose the practice of erasing old writing from it, and engrossing it a second time. Such manuscripts are called "palimpsests." Modern art has found the means of discharging the more recent ink, and thus restoring the original writing, by which means we have recovered many valuable pieces, particularly Cicero's lost book, de Republica ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... satisfaction that the person who was seated at her left, having at the beginning engrossed the conversation, without having been requested by any one to talk, persisted with an imperturbable coolness in engrossing it to the end of the dinner. This was the old Marechal de Bassompierre; he had preserved with his white locks an air of youth and vivacity curious to see. His noble and polished manners showed a certain gallantry, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Ruth were talking of the beauties of Washington. But no such thoughts were engrossing pretty Mollie's attention. Mollie's mind was dwelling on the society pleasures the "Automobile Girls" expected to enjoy at the Capital City. Grace Carter was listening to Barbara's and Ruth's ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... illuminating, inspiring, refreshing and captivating thoughts and ideas about life. No philosophy is deeper than that which underlies these stories; no psychology is more important than that which finds its choicest illustration in them; no chapter in the history of thought is more suggestive and engrossing than that which records their growth and divines their meaning. Fairy tales and myths are so much akin that they are easily transformed and exchange costumes without changing character; while the legend, which belongs ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... servant bears evidence to tracking them to other meeting-places, and to finding in the letter-bag letters addressed to Maude Cibras in Randolph's hand-writing. One of these was actually unearthed later on. Indeed, so engrossing did the intercourse become, that it seems even to have interfered with the outburst of radical zeal in the new political convert. The rendezvous—always held under cover of darkness, but naked and open to the eye of the watchful Hester—sometimes clashed with the science ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... 'Oyo,' are known by their long necklaces of tattoo. They are termed the Jews of Western Africa; they are perfect in their combination, and they poison with a remarkable readiness. The system of Egba 'clanship' is a favourite, sometimes an engrossing, topic for invective with the local press, who characterise this worst species of 'trades-union,' founded upon intimidation and something worse, as the 'Aku tyranny' and the 'Aku Inquisition.' The national proverb ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... monstrous her conduct must appear to them. She could see it all so clearly from their point of view. That had always been after all her poor merit, that she could see things from other people's point of view. Her vision indeed of them, of the way they took things, was apt to be so vivid, so engrossing that it left her with no point of view of her own. She carried into life itself and all its relations her virtue as an artist, that effacement of her observing self in ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... and 1700, for instance, they varied from 40s. to 240s. a cwt., so that they may yet see them at a remunerative figure. 'Upon the whole', says an eighteenth-century writer, 'though many have acquired large estates by hops, their real advantage is perhaps questionable. By engrossing the attention of the farmer they withdraw him from slower and more certain sources of wealth, and encourage him to rely too much upon chance for his rent, rather than the honest labour of the plough. To the landlord the cultivation of hops is an evil, defrauding ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... of his retirement lies not in misanthropy, of which he had no tincture, but part in his engrossing design of self-improvement and part in the real deficiencies of social intercourse. He was not so much difficult about his fellow human beings as he could not tolerate the terms of their association. He could take to a man for any genuine qualities, as we see by his admirable sketch ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... memory for faces, and though she could not recall his name, felt more at home at once, not so lonely and adrift. Soon a quaint brightness showed in her eyes, looking at the toilettes of the passers-by, and at each shop-front, more engrossing than the last. Pleasure, like that which touches the soul of a young girl at her first dance, the souls of men landing on strange shores, touched Margery Pendyce. A delicious sense of entering the unknown, of braving ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... had been thus courting solitude, and absorbed by the engrossing excitement of hunting, the restless spirit of immigration, and of civil and physical improvement, had not been idle. After the peace the tide of population poured into the country in a continual stream and the busy ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... those derisive words. Her mind was bent on pursuits of a far loftier and more engrossing nature. In respect to the weather—except on Sabbath mornings, when it was impossible to credit Grandpa with perfect fairness and impartiality of judgment—Grandma, it must be said, had real faith in the ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the proceed! Verily we need a new Political Economy written, deeper than that of Malthus or Smith, to inform them. Our precious time, our cordial regards, the diversion of our mind from our regular duties, the neglect of already engrossing relations in our business or profession, the surrender of body and soul, they require for the prey of idlers and strangers! Had our correspondents drawn upon us for a sum of money, had a highwayman bid us stand and deliver our purse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... such matters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not only did his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every day presented to him in some new form, but in the midst of these engrossing occupations he found leisure—that is, he made it—to review the past transactions of the Firm, and his share in them, during a long series of years. Frequently when the clerks were all gone, the offices dark and empty, and all similar ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Half-Way Covenant. But times had changed, and the churches could not keep pace. The attempts to enforce religion were fruitless,[e] and only go to show that political interests, that wars,[f] with their accompanying excitement and license, and that engrossing civil affairs had torn men's minds from the old interests in religious controversies and in ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... Is it love? Yes; but not as men call love. Ours is heavenly love, ardent, but yet spiritual; intense, but without passion; a burning love like that of the cherubim; all-consuming, all-engrossing, and enduring ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... this evening, up until past eleven o'clock, in social chat with a neighbor, who had "dropped in to spend the evening" with him. During the conversation between them, the subject of most engrossing and universal interest in that community, that ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... their appetites spoilt by a surfeit of sweetmeats, every one moody and bored, as if they found each other's company intolerable, and all of them eagerly awaiting the moment when they might return to their engrossing pursuits again. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Morris expressed to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Calvert one evening when the Marquis had retired after an hour's animated conversation on the all-engrossing subject of politics, during which he had given the three gentlemen an account of his campaign in Auvergne. But Mr. Jefferson, being in entire sympathy with Lafayette's ideas, could not agree at all with Mr. Morris's estimate of him and would listen to no strictures on him, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... constant bandying of compliment, joke, and repartee, among the merry and self-satisfied lordlings who assumed the right of engrossing the conversation, course after course came and passed in rapid succession, till a sufficient variety of viands and other substantial esculents had been served to warrant the introduction of the lighter delicacies ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of the past, but the stage from the highest point of view is still distinctly attractive"; so decided Chellalu, and resolved to devote herself thenceforth to this new and engrossing pursuit. She chose the scene of her first public performance without consulting us. It was the open floor of the church, on a Sunday morning, in the midst of a large congregation. This ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812, he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in 1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he was appointed to fill his place. When it is considered how peculiarly engrossing the study of languages is known to be, and especially how attractive for an enthusiastic scholar like Mezzofanti, it might be supposed that for him the office of librarian could have been little more than a nominal one. But the library of Bologna to the present day bears abundant evidence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... arrived at the main gateway of the Temple and he swung round into the narrow lane, it was suddenly borne in on me that I had made no arrangements for the night. Events had followed one another so continuously and each had been so engrossing that I had lost sight of what I may call my ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... Pain is pleasure, and want is comfort, and death is sweetness when once that golden mist is round it. So it was that Stephens could have sung with joy as he faced his murderers. He really had not time to think about them. The important, all-engrossing, delightful thing was that she could not look upon him as a casual acquaintance any more. Through all her life she would ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... intended to aver that there was any privity or concert in this particular manipulation—yet it is suggestive. The Impeachment had been dragging since the 22nd of February, to May 26th—more than three months,—and had been everywhere the engrossing topic of the time. It was becoming tiresome-not only to the Senate, but ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... predicted. To lock one, denotes successful enterprises and well chosen friends. A broken one, signifies failure and discordant surroundings. To be troubled to get through one, or open it, denotes your most engrossing labors will fail to be remunerative or satisfactory. To swing on one, foretells you will engage in idle and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... was unusually full for that time of night; some topic of engrossing interest seemed to engage all minds until Willock's figure was recognized; then, indeed, he held the center of attention. Men gathered eagerly, curiously, but without the hostility they would have displayed had not a message regarding Red Feather reached ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... in muddy white lines of sandbags running snake-like across the fields, and the officer identified points on the map to me. Every tree and hedge and ditch in the panorama were graven on his mind; all had language for him. His work was engrossing. It had risk, too; there was no telling when a shell might lift him off the cushion and provide a hole for the burial of ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Europe, she must, till she acquired strength enough to assert her own right, acknowledge some one. As well, perhaps, Britain as another; and it might have been as well to have been under the states of Holland as any. The same hopes of engrossing and profiting by her trade, by not oppressing it too much, would have operated alike with any master, and produced to the colonies the same effects. The clamor of protection, likewise, was all a farce; because, in order to make that protection necessary, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... indifferent, as if rendered irresponsible by the force of the hurricane, which made the very thought of action utterly vain. Besides, being very young, he had found the occupation of keeping his heart completely steeled against the worst so engrossing that he had come to feel an overpowering dislike towards any other form of activity whatever. He was not scared; he knew this because, firmly believing he would never see another sunrise, he remained ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... faith in the career of his friend and master, and looked forward to the time when it might not be impossible that he himself might find a haven in a commissionership. Recently Mr. Ferrars had been able to confer on him a small post with duties not too engrossing, and which did not prevent his regular presence in Hill Street, where he ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... own stateroom. Annesley, alone next door, had plenty of books to read, parting gifts from the Waldos; but the most engrossing novel ever written could not have held her attention. The landscape changed kaleidoscopically. She wondered when they would arrive at Albuquerque, wondered, yet ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... the preaching and the bent of mind of a set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... end of what has been a long and engrossing task, it becomes a pleasant duty to acknowledge the help which has been received from teachers in school and college. Various chapters, either in manuscript or in the proofs, have been read by Professor James M. Leake of Bryn Mawr College; Professor J. C. Hildt of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... engrossing of Mr. Nasmyth's later pursuits has been the science of astronomy, in which, by bringing a fresh, original mind to the observation of celestial phenomena, he has succeeded in making some of the most remarkable ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... traders of the Goldsmiths' Company began to complain that alien traders were creeping into and alloying the special haunts of the trade, Goldsmiths' Row and Lombard Street; and that 183 foreign goldsmiths were selling counterfeit jewels, engrossing the business and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to the Jesuits, and above all to the Jesuits of France. A letter from Jogues, written during his captivity, had already reached France, as had also the Jesuit Relation of 1643, which contained a long account of his capture; and he had no doubt been an engrossing theme of conversation in every house of the French Jesuits. The Father Rector was putting on his vestments to say mass; but when he heard that a poor man from Canada had asked for him at the door, he postponed the service, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... cat-o'-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever demonstrating the merits of his implement. Soon, discovering that he was thankless and unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk, the law-office of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This gentleman, not finding enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of mischief, allowed him to sweep his rooms and blacken his boots. Little Joliet, after giving a volatile air to a great many of his employer's briefs by making paper chickens of them, showed his imperfect sense ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... he had gone through many trials since we last met. When I left him in Khartoum ill with guinea-worm in the leg, he was on his way to Cairo; but after my departure he had been tempted by the slave-traders to re-engage in the infamous but engrossing career, and he too had become a slave-hunter. He had never received any pay, as the custom of the slavers was to pay their men in slaves. Mohammed had never been fortunate in his domestic affairs; he was not a favourite ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... watched the engrossing process. Even when the attenuated thread was broken, and the golden rain descended in slow, infrequent drops, Kaviak stood waiting, always for just ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... heart of a semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the Anglo-Indian officials would not—if even they could—protect me, since I should have crossed over without their permission. But I never even gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea—to find and see my Guru. Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma. I had an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... are concealed in every chapter of this completely engrossing detective story. The horrible fascination of the tragedy holds one in rapt attention to the end. And through it runs the thread of a ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... occupation of hunting in the forests around. His thoughtful mind, during these long and solitary rambles, was undoubtedly occupied with plans for the future. Emigration to his beautiful Kentucky was still his engrossing thought. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... would, could get to know him or win his confidence. They used to wonder what Fletcher did with his spare time, what were his pursuits, what were his hobbies, if he had any. They suspected that Fletcher had some hobby of an engrossing kind, since in everyday life he conveyed the impression of a man who is walking in his sleep, who acts mechanically and automatically. Somewhere else, they thought, in some other circumstances, he must surely wake up and take a living interest ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... up to the villa, leaving Mr Gerard and Jill busy playing tennis, roving about on the shore, or engaged in that other engrossing occupation of throwing stones. For the first day or two she made excuses, and strolled away to join Mrs Alliot, but it soon became apparent to her quick senses that neither that lady nor, strangely ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... as the eyes of a child. Also, the good humor which usually pervaded her sunny features led people to ignore their plainness. In dress, Josie was somewhat eccentric in her selections and careless in methods of wearing her clothes, but this might be excused by her engrossing interest in people, ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... days in the garden—digging up kava roots, stringing them on twine and hanging them up in the hall to dry, and in many another homely task. In the evening they played chess, and, as neither knew the game, they were well matched, and spent engrossing evenings over it. Sometimes they would light a lantern and walk over to see Mr. Caruthers, the lawyer, who lived more than a mile away. When he saw the flicker of their lantern through the palm-trees ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... that the interests connected with getting a living are only material and hence intrinsically lower than those connected with enjoyment of time released from labor, and even if it were admitted that there is something engrossing and insubordinate in material interests which leads them to strive to usurp the place belonging to the higher ideal interests, this would not—barring the fact of socially divided classes—lead to neglect of the kind ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... bathed in that bright Canadian sun which so seldom pierces our murky atmosphere on the other side of the Atlantic. I began to think that persons were to be envied who were not forced by the necessities of their position to quit these engrossing interests and lovely scenes, for the purpose of proceeding to distant lands, but who are able to remain among them until they pass to that quiet corner of the garden of Mount Hermon, which juts into the river and commands a view of the city, ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... hand. The ageing of his manuscript of the Vita Burtoni, to take a further instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or varnish. This document was also written partly in an attorney's regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton 'transcribed' a great quantity of ancient documents, including AElla, a Tragycal Enterlude—far the finest of the longer Rowleian poems—the Songe to AElla and The Bristowe ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... was in the full swing of her many engrossing occupations: teaching, writing articles for newspapers, attending socialistic meetings, and taking part in political discussions—she was essentially a modern product, this Bernardine—one day she fell ill. ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... twenty-one years of age, he made an extended journey with George Forster over the continent. Forster wrote the following after they had visited the cathedral at Cologne. After describing the glories of the structure he adds: "My attention was arrested by a yet more engrossing object: before me stood a man of lively imagination and refined taste, riveted with admiration to the spot. Oh, it was glorious to see, in his rapt contemplation, the grandeur of the temple repeated as it were by reflection!" ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... incompetency of the Viceroys, since it was difficult to find any man of ability who would undertake the office. And for some years things went on with very little change, great lords of different ranks having equally no object but that of controlling the Castle and engrossing the patronage of the government, and in not a few instances of also procuring large grants or pensions for themselves, each seeking to build up an individual influence which no Viceroy could ever have withstood, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... to-day, when every problem of business is so engrossing, demanding a man's full time and thought. It is the rare man who can devote himself to business and be fresh for the service of others afterward. No man can, with efficiency, serve two masters so exacting ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... leading forlorn hopes to playing Chopin the Poles are unequalled. Mr. Conrad has returned to his old habitat in fiction. An ingenious map shows the reader precisely where his tragic tale is enacted. It may not be his most artistic, but it is an engrossing story. Compared with Chance, it seems a cast-back to primitive souls; but as no man after writing such an extraordinary book as Chance will ever escape its influence (after his Golden Bowl, Mr. James was quite another James), so Joseph Conrad's ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... yer," one man shouted. He threw off his equipment, and began to dig as he had never dug before. Each spadeful was safety for another inch of his body. It was fighting against time for protection of life and limb. The work was engrossing, exhilarating. Some of the men were too tired, too apathetic, too lazy to dig trenches as deep as they might have done. They had to ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... was sure he would tell her mistress. For a short time, there never was a couple who had just fucked, in more of a foolish funk than we were; I have often thought of our not hearing the thundering knocks of a postman, whilst we were fucking, though the bed-room door was wide open; what engrossing work it is so to deafen people. Then after unsuccessfully struggling to see her cunt, and kissing, and feeling each others' genitals, and talking of our doings and our sensations for an ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... after the work of the Commission was done (Dec., 1604—Nov., 1605). For nearly another year Bacon had no public work. The leisure was used for his own objects. He was interested in history in a degree only second to his interest in nature; indeed, but for the engrossing claims of his philosophy of nature, he might have been the first and one of the greatest of our historians. He addressed a letter to the Chancellor Ellesmere on the deficiencies of British history, and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... presentation to an audience of one, namely, the infant Timothy, of the life of the Red Indians and their Squaws. Underneath the nursery table, with a tablecloth, some chairs and a concertina, they were presenting an admirable and entirely engrossing performance. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... should be given to agriculture; and a stop put to that pernicious practice of graziers; engrossing vast quantities of land, sometimes at great distance; whereby the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... absorbed, rapt, transfixed, riveted, mesmerized, hypnotized; glued to (the TV, the window, a book); breathless; preoccupied &c (inattentive) 458; watchful &c (careful) 459; breathless, undistracted, upon the stretch; on the watch &c (expectant) 507. steadfast. [compelling attention] interesting, engrossing, mesmerizing, riveting. Int. see!, look, look here, look you, look to it!, mark!, lo!, behold!, soho!^, hark, hark ye!, mind!, halloo!, observe!, lo and behold!, attention!, nota bene [Lat.], N.B., note well; I'd have you to know; notice!, O yes!, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the woman assumed an expression of indomitable resolution. She looked like one incapable of a weakness—like one who, mastered by an engrossing purpose, feels that all else is trivial, and to be as little regarded as the dust which the traveller ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... to get me the inclosed list of books, which I find are culpably absent from my library. It is a very engrossing prospect, this child's mind: it is a blank parchment, ready for any writing, and apparently anxious ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... into his rugged countenance, one cheek of which was distended with a preposterously large bite of bread and butter. The great Mathews himself never acted his part so well. What admirable devotion to the one engrossing object in hand! What a perfect and convincing display of a hearty appetite! What obvious unconsciousness of being looked at, and what a genuine and sudden burst of indignation when, owing to a touch ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... going to deny Dr. Vereker, evidently, or else there really was something very engrossing about her G string. Sally went on, while she dog's-eared her music, which was new, to get good turning-over advantages ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... him, as his little Christina's, who, in all that needed taste and skill rather than strength, was worth all his prentices and journeymen together. Some fine bold wood-cuts had been produced by their joint efforts; but these less important occupations had of late been set aside by the engrossing interest of the interior fittings of the great "Dome Kirk," which for nearly a century had been rising by the united exertions of the burghers, without any assistance from without. The foundation had been laid in 1377; and at length, in the year of grace 1472, the crown of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reflection of her thoughts, when the daughter of Tiepolo spoke of the risks he had run to gain her love, and woman glowed in every lineament of her mild face, when the youthful bride touched on the nature of the engrossing tie which had united them, and which was far too holy to be severed by ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was retained on the general staff and assigned to the important post of censor of the press. His duties were most engrossing, for not only were the proofs of all the local newspapers submitted to him, but also all other printed matter. One day a large number of handbills were confiscated at a printer's and brought in for his inspection. He was very busy and asked his native private secretary to look them over for ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... head; upon her breast her crossed hands shone ivory white. Two or three times the right hand, in signing the cross, uncovered a ring upon the left—the wedding ring probably. Her bearing was of a person not so old as persecuted by an engrossing anguish. She did not ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the dearth of corn, arising in a great measure from the iniquitous practice of engrossing, was so severely felt by the common people, that insurrections were raised in Shropshire and Warwickshire by the populace, in conjunction with the colliers, who seized by violence all the provisions they could find; pillaging without distinction the millers, farmers, grocers, and butchers, until ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... it has never been tried before. In fact, if I had not thought that it would be such a comparatively easy thing to go to the pole, I believe I should have been there long ago; but I have always considered that it could be done at some season when more difficult and engrossing projects ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... Michael has taken all this to heart,' she said, as soon as Crauford had left the room; 'he is very feeling, and then he is so fond of Audrey.' And as Mrs. Ross sighed in assent, she went on with the topic that was engrossing them at that moment—how Audrey was to be induced to leave ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... time they talked horse, usually an engrossing subject, but after a bit the conversation flagged. The Kid rolled many cigarettes which he tossed away unfinished, and the old man waited in silence for that which he knew could not long be delayed. It came at last in the form of a startling question. "Old-timer," said the ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... few days the most engrossing topic in A.P. was what shall I wear, and what will you wear. There was an amount of shopping to be done, and dressmakers to be consulted and employed before the great event of the season came off. At length the important evening ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... distinctive feature of his career, however, was a permanent enlargement of the horizon of Indian statesmanship to a sphere beyond the confines of India and even of Asia, a change due to new movements in the vast international conflict then engrossing the ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... opposite to it, that can engage natural beholders, and far less the prosecution of a temporal worldly interest of the people of God, to the destruction of all opposite to it, at least to the diminishing of all other men's gain and advantage, the engrossing of all earthly privileges into the hands of saints. That is such a thing that never entered into the heart of the shining lights of the primitive times. O how doth the stream of their exhortations run cross to this notion! I am sure there is nothing in its own nature, such a stumbling ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... his class and kind, he was thoroughly acquainted with the physical woman, and he took that first and very engrossing volume of the great Book of Mulier for all the history. A powerful wing of imagination, strong as the flappers of the great Roc of Arabian story, is needed to lift the known physical woman even a very little way up into azure heavens. It is far easier to take a snap-shot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that the family should return at once to their city home. Mr. Vosburgh had a few days of leisure to superintend the removal, and then his duties would become engrossing. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... wretched state of the country: for he supposed it impossible, with the power and influence which must attend British subjects in all their transactions, that monopoly could be avoided; and he preferred an avowed monopoly, which brought benefit to government, to a virtual engrossing, attended with profit only to individuals. But in this opinion he did not seem to be joined by Mr. Francis, who thought the suppression of this and of all monopolies to be practicable, and strongly recommended their abolition in a plan ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pattern from the higher, the whole mass was learned. In England, the very reverse of this takes place. Here, for the most part, those alone frequent our towns, whose doom it is to labour for their bread, they have no leisure from the engrossing pursuits of wealth; business, like a jealous mistress, leaves them no time for other objects. In spite of various disadvantages of soil and climate, the taste for rural pursuits seems part and parcel of our nature, and that species ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... some things that we don't talk about to another man, even when we know each other as well as I know you. Why should we, when that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made interesting to another? The time came at last when they were to leave Birchespool, and my mother and I ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... faults. I never thought of your settling at Cliveden in November, if your house in town is free. All my wish was, that you would come for a night to Strawberry, and that the next day I might put you in possession of Cliveden. I did not think of engrossing you from all your friends, who must wish to embrace you at ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... see, I am vain enough to think that. Well, you also interested me, and I urged my aunt to press you to stay. It has been very pleasant, and when you go it will be very humdrum again; our conversation, mustering, rounding-up, bullocks, and rabbits. That, of course, is engrossing in a way, but not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said? Had he not spoken of the things that Caspar Brooke had done? For almost the first time Lesley began to wonder what made her father so busy. She had never heard a word concerning the pursuits that Mr. Kenyon had mentioned as so engrossing. "The splendid work at Macclesfield Buildings:" what was that? The people whom he had helped: what people? Whom could she ask? Not her father himself—that was out of the question. He never spoke to her except on trivial subjects. She remembered with a sudden and painful ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... not the oeconomy of the French that I am censuring, but their vanity, which, engrossing all their means of expence, prefers show to accommodation, and the parade of a sumptuous repast three or four times a year to a plainer but more frequent hospitality.—I am far from being the advocate of extravagance, or the enemy of domestic order; and the liberality which is circumscribed ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... men not so great. One feels likewise that the stately reticence of a man like Sisley is worth far more to us now, if only because we find in his works as they hang one beside another in numbers, a soberer and more cautious approach to the theme engrossing him and the other artists of the movement of that time. In the pictures of Sisley there is the charm of the fact for itself, the delight of the problem of placing the object in relation to the luminous atmosphere which ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that man entertain of his talents, who believes their slightest efforts worthy ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... honored me with some notice without recollecting ever to have seen me before; for I now had wit and sense. As I spoke, people listened, and I could not, for the life of me, comprehend myself how I had arrived at the art of maintaining and engrossing so easily the conversation. The impression which I perceived that I had made on the fair one, made of me just what she desired—a fool; and I thenceforward followed her through shade and twilight wherever I could. I was only so far vain that I wished to make her ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... into this view of the case; what he had been struck with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's manner and Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... seen some children with an engrossing taste for painting, music, and sculpture, who would rush straight to their favourite pursuit, without being diverted by anything else, and who, if they found the desired place already taken, would show disappointment, and ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... presumptuous to believe that the day will dawn when this world will know whether Venus or Mars is inhabited? And if either or both of them shall be found to be peopled, among the many questions of engrossing interest to be studied it seems clear to me that the most important will be the moral and spiritual ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... misery. The idea is plausible and superficial. An overpowering taste for any subject—botany, zoology, antiquities, music—is properly affirmed to be born with a man. The forces of the brain must from the first incline largely to that one species of impressions, to which must be added years of engrossing pursuit. We may gaze with envy at the fervour of a botanist over his dried plants, and may wish to take up so fascinating a pursuit: we may just as easily wish to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the bath; a man cannot re-cast his brain nor re-live his life. A taste ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... well settled in the world is both natural and laudable; but then great care ought to be taken to moderate this passion, in order to prevent it from engrossing the mind too much; for it is the nature of ambition, not only to stop at nothing that tends to its gratification, but also to be ever craving new acquisitions, ever unsatisfied with the former.—One favourite point is no sooner gained, than another appears in view, and ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... voice my profound admiration for Murray Leinster's brilliant and engrossing story, "Murder Madness." It's the best serial you've printed so far; though I have high anticipation for Arthur J. Burks' latest novel, "Earth, the Marauder."—Mortimer Weisinger, 3550 ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... said. 'You gentlemen mustn't think that I haven't been following your most engrossing conversation. I guess I haven't missed a syllable. I find that a game of Patience stimulates the digestion after meals and conduces to quiet reflection. John S. Blenkiron is with ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... precocious scientific capacities. His father, perceiving his strong scientific bent, and desirous that he should first of all acquaint himself with languages before the absorption of the severer, but more engrossing, study seized him, had withdrawn from his sight all mathematical books, and carefully avoided the subject in the presence of his son when his friends were present. This, as might be expected, only quickened the curiosity of the boy, who frequently begged his father to teach him ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... large discretionary power granted by the surgeons, and the generous confidence and aid extended by the Sanitary Commission, in furnishing whatever supplies she asked for, soon gave Mrs. Barker all the facilities she desired for her useful and engrossing work. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... light with which they instantly shine in his eyes. He takes a new kind of care of them altogether. In mature life, all the drudgery of a man's business or profession, intolerable in itself, is shot through with engrossing significance because he knows it to be associated with his personal fortunes. What more deadly uninteresting object can there be than a railroad time-table? Yet where will you find a more interesting object if you are going on ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... as to his financial position, and he did not want either Butcher or Verschoyle to know that money trickled through his fingers. He wanted their support after this success to advance his schemes. Therefore he borrowed from Clara, and she, entirely indifferent to all but the engrossing development of the play, allowed Sir Henry to pay for her food, to give her meals alone with him in the aquarium, and even to buy her clothes and jewels. She took not the slightest interest in them, but, as it seemed to ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... purpose of personal advantage, but with the deepest filial love and gratitude have we assembled this day. Of all professions and callings, from many States, from public business and from engrossing private pursuits,—you, my young friend who have just come, with hesitation and ingenuous fear, to add your name if you may, to the honored rolls of the college, and you Sir,[37] whose memory runs back to the beginning of the century, the oldest or nearly ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... this State in 1864 he served with ability as committee clerk, having accepted the position at the solicitation of the late David Scott (of John), who was a member of that body. While acting as committee clerk, Mr. Johnston had the honor of engrossing that section of the Constitution which abolished slavery in the State of Maryland. Many years afterwards he presented the pen used on that occasion to Frederick Douglass, then United States Marshal of the ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... there is the child-like saint, the devout and spiritual John; there is the repentant woman of Magdala; and there are many others who betake themselves to that sacred place—"the upper room." One all-engrossing thought fills their minds. "The promise of the Father which ye have heard of me. The promise of the Father! The promise of the Father! O, when will He come? We would know more about our departed Lord. He is ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... was plenty to distract her mind from such disquieting matters. The station work happened to be particularly engrossing just then, and day after day saw Norah in the saddle, close to her father's big black mare, riding over hills and plains, bringing up the slow sheep or galloping gloriously after cattle that declined to be mustered. There were visits of inspection to be made to the farthest portions of ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... as a whole, it is of engrossing interest. And I must confess I should not think much of any boy who, beginning Balzac with this series, failed to go rather mad over it. I know there was a time when I used to like it best of all, and thought not merely Eugenie Grandet, but ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... father the fact of presence, real meeting, actual talk, seemed more engrossing than the thing talked. Oh that I had a really grateful heart to the Lord for ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... some little alteration in her dress, and went down, perfectly calm, and outwardly at ease, to a tete-a-tete dinner with her son. When they were left alone at the table she suddenly changed the subject from the commonplace to the engrossing theme occupying both their minds, and, leaning ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... avoid smiling at Bulstrode's singular views of our suit; but, as Anneke was ever with me an engrossing theme, spite of our situation, which certainly was not particularly appropriate to love, I did not feel equal to quitting it abruptly. The matter was consequently pursued. As I asked Bulstrode to explain himself, I got from him the following account ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... objects of engrossing interest are still far off in the distance. Staffa, the smaller and nearer of the two, presents but an unimposing front from the quarter by which we approach, being oval in form, low, and with a gently undulating surface, in which respect it does not differ materially, except in its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... detain him as he rose and turned to go within in order to find mine host or Annette. The two Frenchmen took no further heed of him: wrapped up in the all engrossing subject-matter they remained seated at the table, leaning across it, their faces close to one another, their eyes dancing with excitement, questions and answers—as soon as the stranger's back was turned—already tumbling out in confusion ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... of specific varieties of living things which occupy the humid portions of the surface of our planet, as far back as can be traced, there does not appear, with the exception of man, to have been any particular engrossing race, but a pretty fair balance of power of occupancy—or rather most wonderful variation of circumstance parallel to the nature of every species, as if circumstance and species had grown up together. There are, indeed, several races which have threatened ascendancy in some particular regions; ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... at Leamington the remainder of the winter, which passed fleetly and happily. Emily, for the first time, gave way to that one feeling, which, to a woman, is the all-important and engrossing one, enjoying her happiness in that full spirit of content, which basking in present joys, attempts not to mar them by ideal disquietudes. The Delmes cultivated the society of the Vernons; Emily and Julia became great friends; and Sir ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... consultation and debate had gone on, it is impossible to say, as the farther consideration of the subject was all at once interrupted, by new occurrences which here suddenly intervened, and which, after engrossing for a time the whole attention of the company assembled, finally controlled the decision of the question. A crowd of peasants and shepherds were seen coming from the mountains, with much excitement, and loud shouts and outcries, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as was said, Blueskin was the one engrossing topic of talk, and it added not a little to Levi's prestige when it was found that he had actually often seen that bloody, devilish pirate with his own eyes. A great, heavy, burly fellow, Levi said he was, with a beard as black as a hat—a devil with his sword and pistol afloat, but ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... acquainted. Emily, although confiding in the fullest manner in the truth and worth of her lover, had felt an inexplicable sensation of pleasure, as she heard the earl speak of his sister by the name of Marian; love is such an unquiet, and generally such an engrossing passion, that few avoid unnecessary uneasiness while under its influence, unless so situated as to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... a week passed without some new development in the long and difficult struggle to improve the means of navigation. Among the scores of men who engaged in this engrossing but discouraging work, there is one whom the world is coming to honor more highly than in previous years—John Fitch, of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. As early as August, 1785, Fitch launched on a rivulet in Bucks ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... Press Association. That same year there was lively effort to decide which one of twenty women candidates should be elected State librarian. Miss Lucy Barron was elected and a large number of women engrossing clerks were appointed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... she began to study German, and in three months was reading with ease Goethe's Faust, Tasso and Iphigenia, Koerner, Richter, and Schiller. She greatly admired Goethe, desiring, like him, "always to have some engrossing object of pursuit." Besides all this study she was teaching six little children, to help bear the expenses ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the object; to ignore the strife for free government, and be placidly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... work took another direction. All the ladies imitated Indian dimity patterns, on muslin, in coloured silks or thread, with the tambour-frame and needle;[613] but in 1707 the "Broiderers' Company," we presume, found that the Indian manufactures were engrossing the market, and a fresh statute was obtained, forbidding the importation from India of any wrought material. This cruel prohibition carried its own punishment. The Indian trade was ours, and we might have adapted and assimilated ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... sheepishly and said, "Well, it was engrossing. You'd better unhook the beast; he had a ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... and seating them before the dangling remains of a murderer, while the lesson of brotherly love is impressed are shocking when they are not amusing; but to the child the doings of the naughty and repentant little Fairchilds are engrossing; and experience proves to us that the twentieth-century child is as eager for the book as were ever his nineteenth-century grandfather ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... in a raging delirium, and for nearly a week did I remain utterly unconscious of all that surrounded me, entirely engrossing the attention of my companions, and taxing their energies and ingenuity to the utmost to prevent my leaping out of the cot or doing myself some injury, in the unnatural strength and violence of the fever ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... like himself, sauntering about, have come to a stop under the spread canvas. Unlike him, however, they are not silent, but engaged in conversation, in a low tone, still loud enough for him to hear every word said. And to every one he listens with interest so engrossing, that his breath ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... been absolutely impossible for a long while; but I now reach a stage at which it seems possible to jot down a line. Caroline's recovery, extending over four months, has been very engrossing; at first slow, latterly rapid. But a fearful complication of affairs ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... was a sound made by the gorging, a distinct sound born of gluttony, not audible, but to be felt by my sensitive surfaces, a sort of emanation, not from the gorgers, but born from the engrossing intensity of the gorging act. I shall always remember it, a distinct 'ummmmmmm,' constant, and rising and falling at times to a trifle faster ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... plunging into that world anew. But behold, the absorbing scene had been imported hither. What had been the engrossing world had dissolved into an uninteresting outer dumb-show; while here, in this apparently dim and unimpassioned place, novelty had volcanically started up, as it had never, for ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... unequal interest—the twin heroes, Sir Gervaise Oakes and Bluewater, engrossing whatever charm it possesses, and reacting disastrously on the tedious scenes wherein they bear no part; but they certainly do walk and talk like sound-hearted sons of Neptune, and there is no resisting the spell of the battle and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... later that a legal-looking letter arrived, directed to him, beautifully written in the roundest and crabbiest of engrossing hands. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn |
