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As long as I was rich, my evenings and afternoons would be my own; the clerk must keep my books, the clerk could do the jostling and bawling in the exchange; and I could turn my mind to landscape-painting and Balzac's novels, which were then my two pre-occupations. To remain rich, then, became my problem; or, in other words, to do a safe, conservative line of business.
Various items of information picked up at Mannering, mostly from his sister Alice, had made him wonder whether some jealousy of a more vital and intimate kind than appeared might not be at the root of Pamela's behaviour. He was not observant at this period of his life, except of things relating to his engagement to Beryl, his work, or those inner pre-occupations which held him.
Those who yesterday were absorbing nectar from the corollas will to-day repose their tongue and the glands of their sac, and gather red pollen from the mignonette, or yellow pollen from the tall lilies; for never shall you see a bee collecting or mixing pollen of a different colour or species; and indeed one of the chief pre-occupations of the hive is the methodical bestowal of these pollens in the store-rooms, in strict accordance with their origin and colour.
Lincoln was not merely giving the practical attention to this difficulty that might perhaps be expected; the Chaplain was amazed to find that at that moment, at the turning point of the war, a few days only after Vicksburg and Gettysburg, with his enormous pre-occupations, the President's mind had room for real and keen distress about the toes of the blacks in the Cow Island.
At length, however, in the late summer, or early autumn of 1861, the novelist was sufficiently free from literary pre-occupations for another tour, and another series of Readings in London to be projected. The arrangements for each were sketched out by Mr. Arthur Smith, as the one still entrusted with the financial management of the undertaking.
My sole criticism of those leaders of commerce and industry in Belfast, who, whenever they turn their attention from their various pre-occupations, import into Irish politics the valuable qualities which they display in the conduct of their private affairs, is that they do not go further and take the necessary steps to give practical effect to their views outside the ranks of their immediate associates and followers.
The Swedish lady admitted but with no cordiality that human kindness could hardly speak more plainly in a human face than from those eyes. Yet the mouth and chin were thin, strong and determined; so were the hands. The man's whole aspect, moreover, spoke of assured position, and of a keen intelligence free from personal pre-occupations, and keeping a disinterested outlook on the world.
He would stare up from river and street and merry gardens; his haunting eyes looked mockingly out of green realms of stirring foliage, and his voice was like a sardonic echo to the happy voices of the children, laughing at their play under the flickering shadows, of mothers discussing their cares and interests, of men in blouses, at work by the water-side, or solemn, in frock-coats, with pre-occupations of business and bread-winning.
It is one of their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice.
And the same consideration of the ceaseless and natural pre-occupations of men in the daily struggle will reconcile the wise man to all the disappointments, delays, shortcomings of the world, without shaking the firmness of his own faith, or the intrepidity of his own purpose.
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