Word: clerking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Biffle got things started all right with the chaplain's prayer. Sixty holdover Senators were in their seats; 36 newly elected Senators waited to be sworn. The reading clerk read the rules, reminding the Chamber that it was the custom to swear in new members alphabetically, in groups of four...
...nineties, when hansoms jingled along the streets of London and every City clerk wore a silk hat, John was picking pockets in the Strand. King Edward came to the throne, and motors began to splutter in Piccadilly, and John's hands went on sliding into pockets. He thieved all through the four years of the first world war. Dictators rose to power and maps were altered overnight: but John, white-haired and vener able, was still standing with his itch ing fingers among the noise and bustle of the Strand...
...charged," said the clerk briskly, "with being a reputed thief, loitering to pick pockets in the street...
...apparently, did all but one of the 285 guests in the brown brick, 15-story, "fireproof" hotel. At 3:32, a switchboard light winked; a soldier in 510 wanted ice and ginger ale. Clerk Rowan sent Bellhop Bill Mobley up with it, and told the night engineer to go along for a routine building check. They had to wait in the hall about three minutes for the guest to finish his bath. They spent another three minutes in his room. When they opened the door again, the hall was ringed with fire...
Downstairs, Clerk Rowan phoned in the alarm. While he frantically roused the sleepers, flames and gas ballooned up the two elevator shafts and the two narrow stairways to the ventless roof. Stopped there, the seething mass backed up in search of outlets, shot down hallways with flamethrower force, began melting brass doorknobs, powdering plaster and licking at closed doors. Whenever a door was left open, death entered. At 3:50, when the 60-piece fire department started spindly ladders up along its scorching walls, the "fireproof," 33-year-old Winecoff, which, like most Atlanta hotels, has no outside fire escapes...