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More "Alert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Always alert and on the spot at the right time!" cried the Emperor, then added mournfully, "So was our ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... financier, and already the possessor of a large fortune. Having served in the Thirty-first Congress, he had returned in 1859, after an absence of eight years, to remain four years longer. Strong, alert, and sufficiently positive to be stubborn, he possessed the confidence of Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who approved his plan of issuing $100,000,000 legal-tender, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... excelled young Charles of Sweden. Reckless in the face of danger, and brave as he was reckless, he was ever on the alert for any novelty in the manner of hunting that should make the sport even more dangerous and exciting. So young Arvid Horn was not surprised when the king said ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... individual member must hold himself constantly alert to find what his "people" at home want: always on the lookout for signs of approval or disapproval from his constituency. And the constituency on its side does not hesitate to let him know just what it thinks of him and precisely what jobs it ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... insight; and, north of the Alps at least, there are no others which can be compared to them. The Hans Imhof shows a shrewd and forbidding schemer for gain on a large scale—a face which produces the impression of a trap or closed strong box, but, being so alert and intelligent, seems to demand some sort of commiseration for the constraint put upon its humanity in the creation of a master, a tyrant over himself first and afterwards over an ever-widening circle of others. The ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... alert and watchful, on the lookout for submerged trees and floating debris; for at the swift rate we were now floating, any collision would have ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... girlhood to old age, under every conceivable condition, and is brought face to face with all kinds of persons and trials. In all circumstances Becky is true to herself; her ingenuity, her wit, her selfishness, her audacity, her cunning, her clear, cool, alert brain, even her common sense, her spirit of justice, when she herself is not concerned, and her good-nature, when it could cost her nothing—all this is unfailing, inimitable, never to be forgotten. Some good people cry out that she is so wicked. Of ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Spanish subjects who, escaping the vigilance of their Government, shall be found guilty of privateering against the United States. I do not apprehend serious danger from these privateers. Our Navy will be constantly on the alert to protect our commerce. Besides, in case prizes should be made of American vessels, the utmost vigilance will be exerted by our blockading squadron to prevent the captors from taking them into Mexican ports, and it is not apprehended ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... imprisoned earth. It would whisper at night at the windows, it would smile invisibly under the sun, it would steal into men's minds and work its will upon them. And already Henrietta felt its power. She was in a new world, dull but magical, torpid yet alert. ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... fragments with fulminates, it would seem that the peace of the neutral States is the result, not of their being more civilized, but less heavily armed. And when we see that the effect of the enterprise is not to redouble civil vigilance and stimulate the most alert and jealous political criticism, but on the contrary to produce an assumption that every constitutional safeguard must be suspended until the war is over, and that every silly tyrannical expedient such as censorship of the press, martial law, and the like, ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... at the man. His thin lips had come together in a straight line. His hollow cheeks were flushed. Every sense was as alert as a fencer's. If he had lived long like that, no wonder his eyes had gone bad. Yet last night Monte himself had lived like that, pacing his room hour after hour. Only it was not work that had given a cutting edge to each minute—not life, whatever Noyes meant by that. His thoughts ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling bass of the thunder rumbled over ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... day, whenever Charlotte could bring her work into the sitting-room, she sat facing the glass door. She was not exactly happy; she was too strangely excited for happiness; but she was keenly awakened and alert. Every nerve in her seemed keyed up to its ultimate tension, and if the shadow of a cloud passed, even if a red leaf fell outside, she looked ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... was but a moment's work to feel his way to the velvet folds and draw them aside, fortunately without rattling the brass rings from which the curtain depended. And then Maitland was in the passage, acutely on the alert, recognizing from the continued click of metal that his antagonist-to-be was still at his difficult task. Inch by inch— there was the tapestry! Very gently the householder ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... at papa and Seryozha, thinking, "I wonder if they saw that I took that skull for a hare." But papa would be sitting keen and alert on his English saddle, with the wooden stirrups, smoking a cigarette, while Seryozha would perhaps have got his leash entangled and could ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... on and for a long time neither man moved. At last Rios, if Rios it was, withdrew a little, slipped behind a tree, passed to another and disappeared. Kendric did not see him again though he kept alert every instant. At last came the time when the sun slipped down behind the ridge and the dusk thickened and the stars came out. Kendric rose, stiff and weary, and began his slow, tedious way down into the canon. His long enforced stillness during which he had not dared doze a second, had served ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... lamentable, though, in fact, not worse than that of the few white loyalists who had been true to the Union during the war. These last were singled out as special objects of attack, and were, therefore, obliged at all times to be on the alert for the protection of their lives and property. This was the natural outcome of Mr. Johnson's defiance of Congress, coupled with the sudden conversion to his cause of persons in the North—who but a short time before had been his bitterest enemies; for all this ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... shelter beneath some large tangled roots on the opposite bank. As he crossed the river, I put a third bullet into him, firing from the saddle, and as soon as he came to bay I gave him a fourth, which finished him. This leopard was a very fine old male. In the conflict, the unfortunate Alert was wounded as usual, getting his face torn open. He was still going on three legs, with all his breast laid bare by ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... town, but cannot force the heart; and Mansoul is reduced to the greatest straits and sadness. In this extremity, prayers are incessantly offered up to Emmanuel; but, for a long time, they can obtain no satisfactory answers. Both parties are on the alert; but Diabolus finds it impossible, either by treachery or by storming with his legion of doubts, to gain possession of Heart-castle. Being worsted in a general engagement, the doubters are slain, and are buried with their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... extemporized at a few moments' warning, in cases of emergency. The Puma of our northern forests, although by no means so terrible a foe as the Leopard, is still a blood-thirsty creature, and while he shuns the gaze of man with the utmost fear, he is nevertheless constantly on the alert to spring upon him unawares, either in an unguarded moment or during sleep. A hungry Puma, who excites suspicion by his stealthy prowling and ominous growl, may easily be led to his destruction at the muzzle of a gun, baited as we ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... own face in a glass—as the speech of my own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... before their mood could alter, the Pretty Lily scourged them with the tongue of a humorous woman. She held her course, moreover; the two boats drifted so quickly apart that when she turned, to fling a comic farewell after the white men, they could no more than descry her face, alert and comely, and the whiteness of her teeth. Her laughing cry still rang, the overthrown leader still floundered in the water, when the picture blurred and vanished. Down the wind came her words, high, voluble, quelling all further mutiny aboard ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... possible for them to do it. But destiny, my special destiny, was at work. I was standing near, talking with affected gaiety to several young ladies, who, however, must have remarked my preoccupation; for my second sense of hearing was alert to what was being said by the group of which the girl in white was the center, when I heard her say: "I think his playing of Chopin is exquisite." And one of my friends in the group replied: "You haven't met him? Allow me——" Then turning to ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... made the man respond immediately to any noise or unusual sight. There was no period of stretching or yawning. Mick was asleep one instant, and fully awake the next and shouting "Daylight". The black boys were also light sleepers, trained out of their native laziness by association with alert whites. There was Yarloo, who had come in from the west with Boss Stobart's message and had joined the white man's plant at once; and Ranui, a tall fine man from North Queensland, who showed both in his build and name a trace of Malay blood; and Ted and Teedee, two boys who had been with Mick ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... and from him she did hear about the robbery all that he knew or heard. When three days had passed,—when six days, and even when ten days were gone, nobody had been as yet arrested. The police, according to Frank, were much on the alert, but were very secret. They either would not, or could not, tell anything. To him the two robberies, that at Carlisle and the last affair in Hertford Street, were of course distinct. There were those who believed that the Hertford Street thieves and the Carlisle ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... attorney, and Harry Stevens, whose father was a well-known automobile manufacturer, were the other members of the group. These latter two were members of the Black Bear Patrol of New York. All the lads appeared to be about eighteen years old. Their tidy uniforms, their well-knit frames and their alert attitudes bespoke the constant ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a little room back of it. His personality divided itself. There was one Ross Wilbur—who could not make his hands go where he wanted them, who said one word when he thought another, and whose legs below the knee were made of solid lead. Then there was another Ross Wilbur—Ross Wilbur, the alert, who was perfectly clear-headed, and who stood off to one side and watched his twin brother making a monkey of himself, without power and without even the desire of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... coming in such style, was, of course, likely to be honoured in every possible way by the landlord of the inn, and accordingly he was shown most obsequiously to the handsomest apartment in the house, and the whole establishment was put upon the alert to attend to any orders he might choose ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... shall we be so near them, and not eat them? This night these flocks and women shall be ours." They plunged into the water, but were soon entangled in the holes and mud of the narrow passes. The La Salas, too, were on the alert, poured showers of arrows upon them, and pushed forward their cavalry. The Arabs were totally discomfited, and Barca Gana was wounded in the back through ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... is very shy, and is always on the alert. Its sense of hearing, of smell, and of sight is very acute, and the most skillful hunter will sometimes search the mountain pastures for days without securing his game. When the troop is grazing, a sentinel is always appointed, who stands on the watch sniffing the air. At the least ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... love of adventure blazed up once more. His moment of weakness had passed. The thrill was in his blood, his nerves were tightened. He was ready for what might come, seemingly still half asleep, yet, indeed, with every sense of intuition and observation keenly alert. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... balustrade, making no attempt to defend himself, and seemed, in his sudden terror, anything but the bold, alert fellow who had ascended the stairs two minutes before. 'I was a fool,' he groaned. 'I saw your man Simon here; and Fanchette, who is as good as a man, was with her mistress. And I went to stable the horses. I thought no evil. And now—My God!' he ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Mr. Gladstone upon the interpretation of Genesis. His supposed] "unjaded appetite" [for controversy was already satiated; and he begged leave to retire from] "that 'atmosphere of contention' in which Mr. Gladstone has been able to live, alert and vigorous beyond the common race of men, as if it were purest mountain air," [for the] "Elysium" of scientific debate, which "suits my less robust constitution better." [A vain hope. Little as he liked controversy at bottom, in spite of the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... these and other facts of their appearance, and curiously questioned whether this were the best that a great material civilization could come to; it looked a little dull. The men's faces were shrewd and alert, and yet they looked dull; the women's were pretty and knowing, and yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression of the vast, prosperous commercial class, with unlimited money, and no ideals that money could not realize; fashion and comfort were ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... blacker than when one rides into them conscious of the presence of enemies and alert for signs and sounds. But custom dulls the edge of apprehension. De Spain rode slowly up the main road without expecting to meet any one, and he reached the rise where the trail forked to Duke's ranch unchallenged. Here ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... head and the other holding a glowing cigar, he contemplated the scene, his favourite hour of the day. Each moment another and another light flitted across the heavy blackness, showing red or green, while the lights on the moving sampans darted back and forth in the darkness, restless and alert. He had left it to Walker. He had stopped thinking of his impending nephew for a few moments, and his mind had relaxed, as the mind relaxes when an evil has been postponed from time to time, and normal feeling reasserts itself after the ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... be useful to France. But this was an enterprise not easy either to inaugurate or carry out. The colonial establishments of Spain were at that time hermetically sealed against all intercourse with foreign nations. Armed ships, like watch-dogs, were ever on the alert, and foreign merchantmen entered their ports only at the peril of confiscation. It was necessary for Spain to send out annually a fleet, under a convoy of ships of war, for the transportation of merchandise and supplies for the colonies, returning ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... Eaton, was later to upset the equilibrium of the Jackson Administration—and other favorite lodging houses were the scenes of midnight conferences, intimate conversations, and mysterious comings and goings which kept their oldest and most sophisticated frequenters on the alert. "Incedo super ignes—I walk over fires," confided the straitlaced Adams to his diary, and not without reason. A group of Clay's friends came to the New Englander's room to urge in somewhat veiled language that their chief be promised, in return for his support, a place in the Cabinet. A Missouri ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... other tables mechanically alert to Plank's cards dropping in rapid sequence as he played alternately from his own hand and the dummy, permitted her thoughtful eyes to wander toward Agatha from moment to moment. How alluring her subtle beauty, in its own strange way! How perfect her accord with her ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a smile and a jest, They'll respond with a jest and a smile, for there's life in each age-burdened breast, And confidence, comfort, and cheer. Here again clustered close round the fire Are a number of grizzle-look'd men, every one is a true "hoary sire," Bowed, time-beaten, grey, yet alert and responsive to kindness of speech; And see how old eyes can light up if you promise a pipe-charge a-piece. For the comforting weed KINGSLEY eulogised is not taboo in this place, Where the whiff ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... the pistol and with no powder upon his person for further reloading, he could not share Jack's eagerness to meet the Committee again. When Surry gave over rolling with his tongue the little wheel in his bit, and with lifted head and eyes alert perked his ears forward towards the hill they had just crossed, he slipped the hackamore hurriedly into place and ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms—anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert—Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... seemed to ripple through the room. The atmosphere grew tense, electric—alert as with ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... continued disastrously. At last, when darkness came on, both sides were forced to cease firing. Now and then, only when a flash of lightning lit up the terrible scene, the firing of bullets demonstrated that the Boers were still thoroughly on the alert. ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and simple in manner as most men who have spent their lives "east of the Suez". After five minutes in his society one understands why he is the idol of the neighbourhood. He looks ill, poor dear, but his blue eyes are still clear and alert, and he twinkles them at you in such a shrewd, ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a moment he tried to appear alert, earnest, ambitious but not too ambitious, fearless, devoted to the cause, and indispensable. For a moment. Then he gave it up and ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... his orders in every direction. His object was to put the yacht around so that he could get out of the course of the Dunkery Beacon and pass her in the opposite direction to which she was going, but nobody on board seemed to be sufficiently alive to the threatening situation, or to be alert enough to do what was ordered at the very instant of command; and Burke, excited to the highest pitch, began to swear after a fashion entirely unknown to the two ladies and the members of the Synod. His cursing and swearing was of such a cyclonic and all-pervading character that some ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... were the only organisers in the world!—We've taught them better!' he said, with a laugh in his pleasant eyes, the whole man of him, so weary the night before, now fresh and alert in the ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... obtaining food—unlike the herbivora—is irregular and often at long intervals, gorge themselves upon opportunity and are in the habit of sleeping after a meal. The frugivora and herbivora, however, are alert and ready to fly from their enemies should such appear. The conveying of so much nourishment to the liver and blood stream at one time, is probably a greater tax on them. A light lunch between the ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... cannot spare Hill, can you not send me some other troops? If we cannot be successful in defeating the enemy should he advance, a kind Providence may enable us to inflict a terrible wound and effect a safe retreat in the event of having to fall back. I will keep myself on the alert with respect to communications between us, so as to be able to join you at the earliest possible moment, if such a movement becomes necessary."* (* O.R. volume ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... approvingly; he was behaving calmly, and didn't need being put at ease. They talked at random—at least, Hauserman tried to make it seem so—for some time about his work, his book about the French Revolution, current events. He picked his way carefully through the conversation, alert for traps which the psychiatrist might be laying for him. ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... incidents of the trip had been stored away for this very purpose. They ceased to be trivial when recorded as Mary Lee's alert eyes had seen them, and with the colour her amusing descriptions lent. It was a letter that seemed to carry a breath of fresh air with it into the stuffy dining-room on Bank Street, where her mother first ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... promised five guineas to the man who should discover the objects of our search. Often did Tom and I climb to the mast-head and scan the horizon, and so did many others: but those who were stationed at the look-out were equally on the alert. The ship's company were now in a very fair state of discipline, owing to the incessant practice, and every evening the hands were turned up to skylark—that is, to play and amuse themselves. There was one amusement which was the occasion of a great deal of mirth, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "wakeful Palinurus" of old song Drowsed at the last, and floods his corpse did whelm; But thou hast ever been alert as strong, Pilot who never slumbered at the helm. Impetuous youth aspires to rear a realm, And the State-bark to steer In other fashion. Is it faith or fear Fills the old Pilot's spirit as he moves Slow from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various
... England, he sought and secured the acquaintance of Rudyard Kipling, whose alert mind was at once keenly interested in what Bok was trying to do. He was willing to co-operate, with the result that Bok secured the author's new story, William the Conqueror. When Bok read the manuscript, he was delighted; he had for some time been reading Kipling's work with enthusiasm, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... to any of you to indulge a vein more serious than befits the wine-cup, marvel not. It has long been my wont to share our city's passion for noble-natured souls, alert and emulous ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... Harriet Byron, Clarissa, Amelia, and Sophia Western were all equally delightful, and it was not the negative charm of the innocent and colourless woman, the amiable doll of the nineteenth century, but it was a beauty of nature depending upon an alert mind, clear and strong principles, true womanly feelings, and complete feminine charm. In this respect our rival authors may claim a tie, for I could not give a preference to one set of these perfect creatures over another. The plump little printer and the worn-out man-about-town ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a brother pilgrim upon the weary road. But hark you, friends! when we are in arms and the good work is to be done, on the march, in the field, or on parade, then let your bearing be strict, soldierly, and scrupulous, quick to hear and alert to obey, for I shall have no sluggards or laggards, and if there be any such my hand shall be heavy upon them, yea, even to the cutting of them off. I say there shall be no mercy for such,' here he paused and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... finds much to perplex, to weary, and to sadden. So it was with the Swiss professor. He was always in the sanctum sanctorum of his spirit, striving to attain the truth; with Hamlet-like irresolution he poised in mind before the antinomies of the universe, alert to see around a subject, having the modern thinker's inability to be partisan. This way of thought is obviously unhealthy, or at least has in it something of the morbid. It implies the undue introspection which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the window, alert and tense. He flew to the desk, found the envelope, steamed it open at the kettle, extracted the sealed envelope and Colonel Hare's note. He smiled as he read the letter and changed his plans completely. He would not play messenger; he would use ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... spots of reddish brown. Freak situations in which to locate their nests are often chosen by these birds, such as the brake beam of a freight car, in the crevices of old wells, hen houses, etc. The birds are one of the most useful that we have; being very active and continually on the alert for insects and beetles that constitute their ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... wooden leg; it was then that the full significance of 'lamiter' came to her. He was covered, however, as Salemina had supposed, and the occurrence gave us a precious opportunity of chaffing that dungeon of learning. He was tolerably alert and vigorous, too, although he certainly did not impart elegance to a vehicle, and he knew every street in the court end of Edinburgh, and every close and wynd in the Old Town. On this our first meeting with him, he faltered only when Francesca asked him last of ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... young woman who controls the sale of miscellaneous goods was alert and smiling behind her counter. Whatever Crossan might be doing she at all events was attending to her business. Godfrey took no notice of her. He led me through the shop to the yard behind it. He pushed open the door of one ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... of the mysterious sea. The thoughts of all his lifetime could have been expressed in six words, but the stir of those things that were as much part of his existence as his beating heart called up a gleam of alert understanding upon the sternness of his aged face. The flame of the lamp swayed, and the old man, with knitted and bushy eyebrows, stood over the brake, watchful and motionless in the wild saraband of dancing shadows. Then the ship, obedient to the call of her anchor, forged ahead slightly and ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... his eyes on the alert for a good spot where they could pass the next night, and it lacked half an hour to sunset when he gave utterance to a shout, and pointed with his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... who had sent them, for Kingston had herself seen him carrying the flowers and entrusting them to a commissionnaire with a message for Miss Brooke. She believed, too, that Lesley knew from whom they came. But she was not sufficiently alert and interested just then to make these matters of great importance to her. She did not think it worth her while to say how much she knew. With a short quick sigh she turned away, and expected to see her young mistress quit the room at once, still with that ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... of the Boulevard and the "Cafe Anglais," let us turn to the dandy of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays Latin—the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert. The following is M. de Bernard's ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... when I was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table. They spoke familiarly to each other, almost as brothers. But I sensed that they had been separated for some time. At last one of them made references to France and England, and I concluded that ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... description. For all the marks of his profession that he bore on his face, in the shape of lumps and scars, he might have been a curate. His face looked tough, and his eyes harboured always a curiously alert, questioning expression, as if he were perpetually "sizing up" the person he was addressing. But otherwise he was like other men. He seemed also to have a pretty taste in Literature. This, combined with his strong and capable air, attracted Sheen. Usually he was ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London; but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely filthy lucre. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... in New England there was a girl a few years back with an alert mind, an assertive personality, and a tremendous fund of energy. She was in the habit of giving constructive suggestions to the heads of the departments in which she worked, and because of her youth and manner, they resented it. "I ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... the suppressed excitement of this last half hour will ever be forgotten by those who were present. No one could tell at the last minute what would happen. Would the enemy be surprised or would he be ready on the alert to pour a terrible fire on the boats as they ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... past midnight before we slept. The child was restless, and urged her grandmother to tell her Eskimo stories. O Duk Dok slept heavily, unconscious of all around her. My own senses were on the alert. I listened intently to catch every sound, but we were too far away from the hotel to hear the carousal that I well knew was there in progress. The mushers from the dance were hourly expected home, and would then add their part to the midnight orgies. The low droning of the old Eskimo ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... up to the tent and looked in, the beating of his own heart nearly choking him. Dr. MacTavish slept on the lounge, the peaceful sleep of a child, or of a man who has done good work. Beside the bed sat Dr. Clay, watching, alert, hopeful. From the tent door where he stood he could see the little white face on the pillow and he knew from the way the child breathed that she was sleeping easily. The eastern wall of the tent was rosy with the dawn. Then he went back to the stable, hitched up his ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... running with their necks stiff and their heads stretched out. The contempt, conceived from their appearance, they took pains to increase; sometimes falling from their horses, and making themselves objects of derision and ridicule. The consequence was, that the enemy, who at first had been alert, and ready on their posts, in case of an attack, now, for the most part, laid aside their arms, and sitting down amused themselves with looking at them. The Numidians often rode up, then galloped back, but still contrived to get ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... repeated General Jackson's order to my brigade commanders and directed them to listen to the sound of Stuart's guns. We all confidently expected to hear the welcome sound by two o'clock at least, and as that hour approached every ear was on the alert. Napoleon at Waterloo did not listen more intently for the sound of Grouchy's fire than did we for Stuart's. Two o'clock came, but nothing was heard of Stuart. Half-past two, and then three, and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... so many of their countrymen to the horrors of penal servitude. But they saw no reason to suppose that the swoop was about to be made on them. On the fifteenth day of September, 1865, there were no perceptible indications that the authorities were any more on the alert in reference to Fenian affairs then they had been during the past twelve months. It was Friday; the Irish People had been printed for the next day's sale, large batches of the paper had been sent off to the agents in town and country, the editors and publishing clerks ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... to be graceful, steady, strong; The Eye to be alert and observing; The Memory to be accurate and retentive; The Heart to be ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... before night. 'Then come in the sweets of the evening':—the Queen, the coronation, the last new play, the next fight, the insurrection of the Greeks or Neapolitans, the price of stocks, or death of kings, keep them on the alert till bedtime. No question comes amiss to them that is quite new—none is ever heard of that is ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that the gentlemen entered, so there was no further talk of painted ladies; and, besides, Maurice was alert to catch Eleanor's eye, and go home! "Edith is capable of saying anything!" ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... rage and jealousy, shot through Esmond's heart, as he caught the look she gave the Prince; and he clenched his hand involuntarily and looked across to Castlewood, whose eyes answered his alarm-signal, and were also on the alert. The Prince gave his subjects an audience of a few minutes, and then the two ladies and Colonel Esmond quitted the chamber. Lady Castlewood pressed his hand as they descended the stair, and the three went ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... you looking?" he asked. "We may be able to direct you to your friend," he added, more courteously, his alert eyes taking in every detail of the ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... advance: "Now help, Death, help!" And the other one, who seemed to lag too much, Was shouting: "Lano, were not so alert ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... eventually would lead to Jim's vindication; she deplored my lack of faith in my companion; she marveled that I, too, should have fallen so easily a prey to the sharpers who were deceiving her hot-headed, obstinate father, whose senses were alert for every word or sign that would smirch, by even so much as a shadow, the man he would overthrow. If it had been possible for Gabrielle Tescheron to understand that I had read her impulsive father's character aright, and that my loyalty to Jim Hosley at the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... flared to a 98.4 then started inching down again. The young reporter sat up, alert, from where he had been dozing. The loud clang of a bell had ...
— The Circuit Riders • R. C. FitzPatrick
... and the Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of Marmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, rejoicing at its birth and at the jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to the shadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I suddenly said aloud a wild, mad thing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a shrieking maniac thing for Hell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: 'This ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... or two to keep watch and to attend upon the horses. About an hour after midnight, when the moon was about going down, a distant shout was heard—presently a second, more distinctly and nearer to us. We were immediately upon the alert, and the shouts being repeated, we could no longer doubt but that the Armenian was at hand. We then shouted in return, and not very long after we saw him appear. He was almost exhausted with fatigue, but still strong enough to be able to relate his adventures ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... expansion. Despite the extreme cold, his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and the red wrists and hands were well covered with tough, seasoned flesh. The eyes that watched the roasting bird were intent, alert, keenly interested in that particular task, and in due course, in any other ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... taken her bag, found a vacant seat, put her next the window and sat down by her before Lydia, quite breathless with the shock of seeing him, could do more than notice how vigorous he looked, his tall, spare figure alert and erect, his ruddy hair and close-clipped beard contrasting vividly with his dark-blue flannel shirt and soft black hat. He was on a business trip, evidently, for on his knees he held a tool-box with large ungloved ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... knowledge may be read in two moods. The reader may keep his mind passive, willing merely to receive the impress of the writer's thought; or he may read with his attention strained and alert, asking at every instant how the new knowledge can be used in a further advance, watching continually for fresh footholds by which to climb higher still. Of Shelley it has been said that he was a poet for poets: so Darwin was a naturalist ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... were constantly passing and repassing, apparently engaged in their ordinary pursuits; but a close observer could detect by the interchange of a word, a motion, or a significant glance, that they had a mutual understanding and a common purpose, and were on the alert and quick and observant of all that ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... sent me on to Scandor. I had now learned enough of the Martian language to speak, imperfectly. That mental facility, which is the amazing and most wonderful thing in Mars, was perhaps more slowly roused in me. But daily I became known, and more alert and inflamed with thought and the eager intuition ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... spot, so I went with him, and together we took a big circle through the encinal, keeping alert for game signs. Before we had gone far, evidence became plentiful, not only of turkeys, but of peccary and deer. Where the turkeys had recently been scratching, many times we dismounted and led ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... on a couch, indicates that false hopes will be entertained. You should be alert to every change of your affairs, for only in this way ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... a prominent industry in New England at this time, the alert mind of Daniel Anthony conceived the idea of building a factory and using the waters of Tophet brook and of a rapid little stream which flowed through the Read farm. This was done, and proved a success from the beginning. A document is still in existence by which "D. Read agrees ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... very slow, and we spent the next day having baths in Souastre. On the 1st March we moved into the new front line, round the East edge of Gommecourt, while the Boche was still holding Pigeon Wood. The enemy was very alert, as General H.M. Campbell, the C.R.A., discovered; he went into the wood, thinking it unoccupied, and was chased out by a fat Boche throwing "potato mashers." In the evening the Headquarters moved into a German dug-out, but the enemy still ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... up the Capilano the banished chief had built his solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current of air, what faltering note in the voice of the Medicine Man had deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led him to understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration, not ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic. For if he had refused to ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... women on the platform gazed at the door of the Pullman car with expectant eyes. Judy Kean in a black velvet suit and a big picture hat headed the delegation. Only two passengers descended from the sleeper: a middle-aged, worn-looking woman in shabby black and a young man whose alert brown eyes took in at once the crowd of college girls and Judy, resplendent in ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... the chief difficulty consisting in putting myself in 2 places at once—one close to the depot of our goods in the barrow, the other before the officer with the keys. Kitty was wedged in a corner with a writing case and, I think, Donald's sword. My English companion was equally on the alert, but Farmer Dinmont would have excited all your compassion, or rather admiration; for here amidst the din of tongues and arms, unable to move hand or foot, he stood with a smile of mingled resignation and wonder; at length, the search being concluded to the satisfaction of both parties, we ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of the matter about which you inquired. Even now I receive letters urging me to buy something or other about which I sent a letter of inquiry when I was in America. At night, if you stroll round the town you will be amazed by the ingenious and clever signs which the alert minds of the trades people have invented, such as revolving electric lights forming the name of the advertiser with different colors, or a figure or shape of some sort illustrating his wares. But even this is not thought sufficient. Circulars are often sent to everyone, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... of a clean life of effort was upon them, and there was a certain lithe gracefulness in the unconscious poses of the straight-limbed men. There was no sign of limp slovenliness about them. Even in their relaxation they were intent and alert, and, as she watched them, Laura realized something of their restless activity and daring optimism. They believe in anything that is good enough in that country, and are in consequence cheerfully willing to attempt anything, even if to other men it would appear altogether visionary and impossible, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... radiance as white as a bread-board. In the social hall, the happy exiles were rejoicing noisily, but Roddy stood apart, far forward, looking over the ship's side and considering bitterly the mistake of the morning. His melancholy self-upbraidings were interrupted by a light, alert step, and Pino Vega, now at ease, gracious and on guard, stood ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... deeply, and glad of a diverting subject, Elizabeth delivered John's report of Jean. The effect was most gratifying. Her aunt grew immediately alert and full of eager questions. Elizabeth had very little to tell. She wisely kept her own impressions of the young man to herself, but she dwelt upon the glowing report of Dr. Bagsley both John and Charles Stuart had given, not forgetting to add that he had greatly ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... twentieth time by her own unflagging counsel; even the judge became all but inattentive on the point, before it was finally dropped on an intimation from the jury that they had made up their minds about the chains; but no trace of boredom had crossed the keen, alert face of the unknown gentleman ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... along the shore, and announced that a boat, filled with white men, was coming up the river. This was by no means agreeable tidings to Mr. Hunt, who correctly concluded it to be the boat of Mr. Manuel Lisa; and he was vexed to find that alert and adventurous trader upon his heels, whom he hoped to have out-maneuvered, and left far behind. Lisa, however, was too much experienced in the wiles of Indian trade to be lulled by the promise of waiting for him at the Poncas village; on ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... enveloped in fog, succeeded to the fine night. Before seven o'clock—so watchful and alert are boys when mischief is afloat—most of those who had been in the conspiracy were assembled, and waiting round the schoolroom doors. Generally, they could tear up at the twelfth moment. They would not have missed the sight of Charles Channing's arrival for half-a-crown apiece, ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the usual school drone, and the boys under the floor resumed their game. It was an extremely interesting game, closely contested. Each player watched the other's actions with an alert and suspicious eye, and this want of confidence led directly to the boys' undoing; for presently Dick detected Jacker in an attempt to deceive, and signalled 'Down!' with an emphatic gesture. 'Gerrout!' was the word framed by the lips of the indignant ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... stupor, she aroused him again, to eat. He could take but little of the food, but called for more of the drink, and felt the soul of it thrill along his frozen nerves until they awoke, sharpened, alert, and eager. He lay so, with closed eyes a little time, floating in an ecstasy that seemed to be half stupor and half of keenest sensibility. Then he opened his eyes. She was kneeling by the couch on ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... they look knowing, and you see, to your horror, that the girl is blushing. Evidently she is under fire too. Still, you keep it up. She makes a better comrade than any of the men. You feel that you are out of mischief when you are with her. She keeps you alert. You never are bored, but really you are not as fond of her as you were of your college chum even. She treats you a trifle, just a trifle, differently from all the other men. This goes to your ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... became alert, as the Master had been, listening to the song of the water-carrier, now becoming less ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... was a small, alert man with a conciseness of speech and manner that is associated in my memory with the bristle of his red mustache cut short and hard across a decisive mouth. He radiated nervous vitality; and I understood, as I studied ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... a change in railroading since my time. Years ago I can remember when I used to ride in a caboose and enjoy myself, and before good fortune had made me the target of the alert and swift-flying whisk-broom of the palace car, it was my chief joy to catch a freight over the hill from Cheyenne, on the Mountain division. We were not due anywhere until the following day, and ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... thought of sleep was repugnant to him. He would often drop asleep at odd hours over the campfire whilst his comrades were discussing and planning, and they would let him sleep in peace at such times; but at night he was alert and wide awake, and they were glad enough to give him his request, and let him keep watch whilst they ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... transportation, and everything would have gone on very well indeed had it not been for the most culpable and unwarranted interference of that lawless party of men, who might almost be said to amount to a nationality, who were continually on the alert to take from Spain everything she could take from America. The English, French, and Dutch governments were generally at peace with Spain, but they sat by quietly and saw their sailor subjects band themselves together and make war upon Spanish ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... disgusting worship of the genius of the place.—From the dandy of the Boulevard and the "Cafe Anglais," let us turn to the dandy of "Flicoteau's" and the Pays Latin—the Paris student, whose exploits among the grisettes are so celebrated, and whose fierce republicanism keeps gendarmes for ever on the alert. The following is M. de Bernard's description ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they were on the alert for pursuing Indians, but by degrees they were able to feel confidently that they had journeyed beyond the territory occupied by the inimical people, and Brazier began his collecting once more, and the boys ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... had sunk to sleep he became further aroused by a very peculiar sound in the wall (as it seemed), close to which his bed was stationed; and instead of drowsing off again, he woke up with all his faculties on the alert, much as a watchdog does, and sitting up in bed he listened ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... found out something definite, something which the War Department could take hold of; a lever, as it were, to pry up the whole scheme. He was thinking of these things, but his mind was nevertheless alert to the little trail signs which it had become second nature to read. So he saw, there in the dust of the trail, where a buggy had turned around and gone back whence it had come. He saw that it had been traveling toward ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... quickly as might be. Down went the gallant little band — with the exception of two stalwart huntsmen and four of the younger amongst the boys, who were left to guard the head of the path — not knowing the risk they ran: whether they would find an alert and well-armed foe awaiting them at the bottom, or whether they might fall upon the enemy unawares. Very silent and cautious were their movements. The Huntsman and the Gascon brothers moved noiselessly as cats, and even the less trained youths ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in fact never spent a thought on making life a good thing to the man she had married. She wished she had endeavoured or might now endeavour to make herself agreeable to him. But it was too late! Sir Wilton would instantly imagine a rumour of the lost heir, and be on the alert for her discomfiture! If only he had not yet made a later will! He must die one day: why not in time to make his death of use when his life was of none! No one would wonder he had preferred the offspring of her noble person to the lost brat ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... suffering badly from worms, and the remedies at our disposal, unfortunately, were not effective. All the fit dogs were being exercised in the sledges, and they took to the work with enthusiasm. Sometimes their eagerness to be off and away produced laughable results, but the drivers learned to be alert. The wireless apparatus was still rigged, but we listened in vain for the Saturday-night time signals from New Year Island, ordered for our benefit by the Argentine Government. On Sunday the 28th, Hudson waited at 2 a.m. for the Port Stanley monthly signals, but ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... how lovely was the look of this! Eight young girls,—young ladies, for those who prefer that more dignified and less attractive expression,—all in the flush of youth, all in vigorous health; every muscle taught its duty; each rower alert, not to be a tenth of a second out of time, or let her oar dally with the water so as to lose an ounce of its propelling virtue; every eye kindling with the hope of victory. Each of the boats was cheered as it came in sight, but the cheers for the Atalanta were naturally the loudest, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fresh and cool. It was possibly the atmospheric clearance which accounted for the fact, that, however, fatigued he had been, or appeared to be, at the end of his conversation with the inspector, Monsieur Dupont was now particularly wide-awake and alert. ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... Shirley was alert as a cat. Van Cleft was too dazed to understand his sudden move, as the criminologist caught up the receiver, and placed his palm for an ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the while; and there was never a time that the lookout did not have to keep his eyes on the alert, because of the traps and snares that lay in wait for the voyagers ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... bleached at the extremities to a hempen hue. His bristly hair was cut short, and stood aggressively erect upon a bullet head, his clothes were soiled and greasy beneath a gray coating of dust. A pair of alert, lead- blue eyes and a certain facility of movement belied the drawl that marked his nativity. He removed his hat and bowed at ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... of Cataluna, making his formal entry into Barcelona on the fifteenth of February, 1519. The Jeronymite fathers had arranged for the sale of the royal haciendas in Hispaniola, and Las Casas, ever on the alert to secure advantages for his colonists, presented a petition asking that they should be maintained for one year at the royal expense. The vexation of the Bishop of Burgos augmented visibly at this fresh claim for assistance, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of the American Society for Scientific Research. In a room of the biological department there, the precious fragment of golden quartz lies guarded. A microscope is over it, and there is never a moment of the day or night without an alert, keen-eyed watcher ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table. They spoke familiarly to each other, almost as brothers. But I sensed that they had been separated for some time. At last one of them made references to France and England, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Honeychurch, suddenly alert. "I don't see any difference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... on springs and leaned against the rail, looking down quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast—the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking—the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... invoked carita. They accompanied this demand by the corrupted cry of "nix munjay"—nothing to eat,—which they enforced by most expressive gestures, extending their mouths, and exhibiting rows of ravenous-looking teeth. The caleche drivers, too, were on the alert, and respectfully taking off their turbans, proffered their services to convey the Signore to Floriana. Delme declined their offers, and, passing a draw-bridge which divides Valletta from the country, made his way through an embrasure, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... Commander of the brig Alert, in October, 1817, saw A REEF extending for a considerable distance in a North-East and South-West direction. The Alert ran along the reef for twenty-five miles: about the centre Mr. Brodie saw two sand islets in latitude ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... convenience. If through cowardice or wavering she allowed the moment to pass, she could never again hope for another such opening. Already the Chieftain was watching her with surprise and curiosity, the softness of the last few minutes giving place to the usual alert good-humour. ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... newcomer was precisely a gay young man when he climbed into the omnibus; but, an hour later, as he stood in the doorway of the edifice he had indicated as his destination, depression seemed to have settled into the marrow of his bones. Plattville was instantly alert to the stranger's presence, and interesting conjectures were hazarded all day long at the back door of Martin's Dry-Goods Emporium, where all the clerks from the stores around the Square came to play checkers or look on at the game. (This was the club during the day; in the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... with soldiers unless they were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had been one of the crowd, tired, casually fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at last. He was a young, alert, beardless man, who whistled as he came. John Arniston was instantly beside him as he stooped to ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the conversation, for each took his position behind the tree barricade with all senses alert for any indications of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... dormant senses seemed to be on the alert. Fully fledged plans flashed through her brain. She went into the cabin, and barred the door. She made every movement swiftly, as if she had not an instant to spare. Who could tell? He might return even before dark. He had been hard to baffle, and she did not feel at all secure. It ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... one of the duties of the colony to preserve the seeds of different vegetables and grain, because the Professor intended to put out for their use, as soon as spring came, a garden, which would avoid the necessity of constantly putting them on the alert to hunt the different foods. Sometimes it was necessary to go considerable distances to get the various foods. As long as they were on the island it was the part of prudence to act like sensible business men, and ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... on the alert himself, and kept everybody else on board on the alert, in the hopes, by some means or other, of inflicting a heavy blow on the abominable slave-trade, for he felt as much interest in the matter as did ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... begun to show the strain to which you have been subjecting yourself. Your failure last Friday night to land Mrs. Gollet's ruby dog-collar when her French poodle sat in your lap all through the Gaster musicale is evidence to me that your mind is not as alert as usual. By all means, go away and rest up. I'll take care of ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... fear that he could not be frightened into running away. He ceased wagging his tail, and, though he continued to look up at her, his eyes no longer smiled. Her action and noise he identified as unfriendly, and he became alert and watchful, prepared for whatever hostile act she might ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... clothed with rank weeds and grass and small brush—but he knew it must be there. When he turned his horse from the water and went his way, his mind was no longer given up to idle dreaming of love words and a girl. This fencing business concerned him intimately, and his brain was as alert as his eyes. For he had not meant that Dilly should ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... 'consciousness of a presence.' But the difference for me between the two sets of experience is as great as the difference between feeling a slight warmth originating I know not where, and standing in the midst of a conflagration with all the ordinary senses alert. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... laughing outright in the mist of smoke; the chatter narrowly escaped being a din; and at intervals a diminutive boy entered and bawled the name of a midget at the top of his voice, Priam was suddenly electrified, and Mr. Oxford, very alert, noticed the electrification. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... though his mind seemed heavy enough, his body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. 'I didn't mean to be cross, Loo,' he said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. 'I know you are fond of me, and you know I am ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... he originally offered to the world his interpretation of dreams was as circumstantial as a legal record to be pondered over by scientists at their leisure, not to be assimilated in a few hours by the average alert reader. In those days, Freud could not leave out any detail likely to make his extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those willing to ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... time, but the remark had set us all on the alert, straining ears and eyes—the musketeers with their pieces balanced in their hands, the captain out in the middle of the block house with his mouth very tight and a frown on ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that you are going to bring your account back to us, Mrs. Salisbury," said the alert salesman who waited upon them. "We are always sorry to ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... little withered old man. He was born in our house—I know, for it chanced that mention was made of it this very day I am describing. Pons was all of sixty years. He was mostly toothless, and, despite a pronounced limp that compelled him to go slippity-hop, he was very alert and spry in all his movements. Also, he was impudently familiar. This was because he had been in my house sixty years. He had been my father's servant before I could toddle, and after my father's death (Pons and I talked ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... their shirts into strips to make ropes to support the girls by sticks driven into the mountain side. It was in one of those intervals that the distinct strokes of a woodman's axe were heard high on the upland at the point where the trail descended to the canyon. Every ear was alert, but only those on one side of the canyon could get a fair view of the spot. This was the good fortune of Captain Fairfax and Georgy Piper, who had climbed to the highest bush on that side, and were now standing up, gazing excitedly in ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... distasteful task she set him. He submitted to the separation, wrote daily, but sent no tidings of his progress, told her nothing when they met that night, and had left her an hour before asking her to have patience till he could show his finished work. Now, with her eye upon the door, her ear alert to catch the coming step, her mind disturbed by contending hopes and fears, she sat waiting with the vigilant immobility of an Indian on the watch. She had not long to look and listen. Manuel entered ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... name William Pitt, very much resembled Diamond Tom, his illustrious grandfather—Nature bred back. William was strong in body, firm in will, active, alert, intelligent. Times had changed or he might have been a bold buccaneer, too. He was all his grandfather was, only sandpapered, buffed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... warning. Near the middle of the following afternoon, a noticeable lull in the wind occurred, followed by a leaden horizon on the west and north. The next breeze carried the icy breath of the northwest, and the cattle turned as a single animal. The alert horsemen acted on the instant, and began throwing the cattle into a compact herd. At the time they were fully three miles from the corral, and when less than halfway home, the storm broke in splendid fury. A swirl of snow accompanied the gale, blinding the boys for an instant, but each ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... were seated, one March morning in 189—, in the private office of French and Company, Limited, on lower Broadway. Mr. Kirby, the junior partner—a man of thirty-five, with brown hair and mustache, clean-cut, handsome features, and an alert manner, was smoking cigarettes almost as fast as he could roll them, and at the same time watching the electric clock upon the wall and getting up now and then to stride restlessly back ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... drafted aboard the Dixie, where, within a week of his joining, he was promoted to be one of the four quartermasters. So much older than the majority of his comrades, quick, alert, obedient, and responsible, he was naturally amongst the first chosen for what are called leading seamen. Never was a man more in his element than George Raymond. He shook down into naval life like one born to it. ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... was not gone to bed!" exclaimed Blaize, "I had just taken a couple of rufuses, and was about to put on my nightcap, when, hearing a noise without, and being ever on the alert to defend my master's property, even at the hazard of my life, I stepped forth and ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with a drizzle of rain, and through the slits in the temple walls we could see the many fires in the camp well cared for, the men and women in skins and rags toasting before them, with steam rising as the heat fought with their wetness. Folk seated in discomfort like this are proverbially alert and cruel in the temper, and Nais frowned as she looked on the inclemency ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... capable-looking Irishwoman, in a dress of dark-blue duck, with a white collar and white cuffs, heard a warming, big voice, and caught a ready and infectious smile. In all the surrounding confusion Mrs. O'Connor was calm and alert; so normal in manner and speech indeed that merely watching her had the effect of suddenly cooling Susan's blood, of reducing her whirling thoughts to something like their old, sane basis. Travel was nothing to Mrs. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Vodell reached the landing at the top of the stairway, he stopped to look about the place with curious, alert interest, noting with quick glances every object in the immediate vicinity of the hut, as if fixing them in his mind. Satisfied at last by the thoroughness of his inspection, he went toward the house, but his step ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... him, shrewdly alert. He had never before ventured to utter words of counsel on this delicate subject. But having started, he was minded to make a neat job of it. Adam had never been the man to leave a thing ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Cowboys hobbled by in their peggy, high-heeled gait, as clumsy afoot as penguins; men in white shirts without coats, their skin too tender to withstand the sun, walked with superior aloofness among the sheep which had come to their shearing pens, preoccupied in manner, yet alert, watching, watching, on ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... if to emphasize it all, with the exception that proves the rule, he detailed one slight case where he thought my father was at fault,—-a detail so slight that I now forget what it is. In reading the Log kept by the discharged mate, Amerzeen, on the return trip in the Alert, I find that every incident there recorded, from running aground at the start at San Diego Harbor, through the perilous icebergs round the Horn, the St. Elmo's fire, the scurvy of the crew and the small matters like the painting of the vessel, to the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... But, between Goldsmith and Block, who were now in a state of frantic activity and full of insane suggestions, and the wardrobe mistress who was always having to be told how to do something, every minute was occupied. She would try desperately to keep an ear alert for what was happening on the stage, in order to be on hand for her entrances. But, in spite of her, it sometimes happened that she'd be snatched from something by ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... interval there came a knock at the box door. I said, "Come in!" The door opened, and there, to my utter amazement, stood Dale Kynnersley—Dale, sleek, alert, smiling, attired in the very latest nicety of evening dress affected by contemporary youth—Dale such as I knew and loved but ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... midnight, and the surf diminished rapidly, which caused us to be on the alert at a very early hour on the 22d, but we had to wait until six A.M. for the return of Augustus, who had continued out all night on an unsuccessful pursuit of deer. It appears that he had walked a few miles farther along the coast, than the party had done ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... and that only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous. This is by no means true, and in some respects it is the reverse of the truth. Certainly, hard work, a natural and simple life, and a lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the rural lad chaste in thought and act until the period of adolescence is completed. Ammon, for instance, states, though without giving definite evidence, that this is common among the Baden conscripts. Certainly, also, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... nearest chair and ran a hand across his fleshy face. He was balding and jowly, but his face was creased from a smile that was almost habitual, and his eyes were active and alert. ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... eyes were ever on the alert, noticed that Roland gave some injunctions to The Lifter, and he likewise observed the latter lay his finger upon his lips. Turning to the Captain, he muttered a few words in a voice that was inaudible, and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the cliff, and when they stood on the hill Henry noticed again the thinness of his comrade. But the color was returning to his cheeks, and his eye had regained the alert, jaunty look of old. Henry calculated that in a week Shif'less Sol would be nearly as strong as ever. The shiftless one saw his ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the little crab's claws. It is even said that the crab in recognition of the benefits bestowed by his indolent friend keeps him acquainted with what is passing on around, and as he is much more active and alert than his companion he sees danger much farther away, and gives notice of it, asking for the door to be shut by lightly pinching the mussel's gill. But this gratitude of the Crustacean towards a sympathetic ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... set about to search for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the mathematicians of the Bureau give to longitudes. They literally ransack the whole kingdom. At the first ray of hope all the post-offices in Paris are alert. Sometimes the receiver of a missing letter is amazed at the network of scrawled directions which covers both back and front of the missive,—glorious vouchers for the administrative persistency with which the post ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... miles of the British border at the Chinese fortlet of Settee, a palisaded camp whose gateway also was hung with heads of dacoits. A Chinese Shan was in command, a smart young officer with a Burmese wife. He was active, alert, and intelligent, and gave me the best room in the series of sheds which formed the barracks. I was made very comfortable. There were between forty and fifty soldiers stationed in the barracks—harmless warriors—who were very attentive. At nightfall the tattoo was beaten. The gong sounded; ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... exuberance was genial, hearty, and on occasion brutal; hers was exalted, impulsive, "head-long," [26] intense, and often fantastic and quaint. His imagination flamed forth like an intenser sunlight, heightening and quickening all that was alive and alert in man and Nature; hers shot out superb or lurid volcanic gleams across the simplicity of natural chiaro-oscuro, disturbing the air with conflicting and incalculable effects of strange horror and strange loveliness. It might have been averred of Browning ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... stepped to his side, so that the three of them faced the unknown together. It was just as well. Outlined in that circle of light, and not six feet in front of them, stood a great chair upon a wide platform; and seated in it, erect and alert, his wide open eyes staring straight into those of the three, was the frightful mountainous form of Strokor, the ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... precisely because it thinks within the limitations of politics. The more acute, the more alert it is, the more incapable it is of perceiving social crime. The classic period of political understanding is the French Revolution. Far from perceiving the source of social defects in the principle of the State, the heroes of the French Revolution rather perceived in social defects the ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... him think of his call for help that morning, the call made him think of the answer, the beautiful woman before him made him think that possibly she might be the answer instead of the other one. He rather doubted it, but it might be a chance. Mickey was alert for chances for Peaches, so he smiled again, then he asked: "Are you in such an ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... great orators, Michel de Bourges and Jules Favre, with their keen political perception, had declared from the first, save a slow long struggle, avoiding decisive engagements, changing quarters, keeping Paris on the alert, saying to each, It is not at an end; leaving time for the departments to prepare their resistance, wearying the troops out, and in which struggle the Parisian people, who do not long smell powder with impunity, would perhaps ultimately take fire. Barricades raised everywhere, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... them, that they might take their places; others assert, that from a disorderly practice, too common in our bivouacs, of vociferating to each other, the name of Hausanne, a grenadier, being suddenly called out loudly, in the midst of a profound silence, was mistaken for the alert cry of aux armes, which announced a surprise by ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... encountered and vanquished in the open field by the Irish general, we should have expected that the details of such a glorious event would have been collected with the greatest care from the accounts of eye-witnesses. The bards and historiographers should have been on the alert to do justice to their country on so great an occasion. They were on the spot, they were beside the victors, and they had no excuse whatever for ignorance. Yet here is the miserably cold, jejune, feeble, and ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... stood the veteran sentinel, watching vigilantly over the interests of his country. With an eye undimmed by age, a quick ear, a ready hand, an intellect unimpaired, he guarded the citadel of liberty, ever on the alert to detect, and mighty to repel, the approach of the foe, however covert or however open his attacks. Never did the Union, never did freedom, the world, more need his services than now. A large territory, of sufficient extent to form several States, had been blighted by slavery, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... departure there was a brief silence, during which all stood alert. Then, Tato, still half suspended against the cliff, said in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... a parcel of poetical young sprigs, who had just weaned themselves of their mother university" and, having more wit, than experience, "put but a slender value, as yet, upon their maiden performances." Paced with this golden opportunity to attach a company of authors to his establishment, the alert Tonson baited his trap with mutton pies. In other words, according to Ward, he invited the poetical young sprigs to a "collation of oven-trumpery" at the establishment of one named Christopher, for brevity ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... now a question of how far they had gone. Should I follow and endeavour to overtake them? It was now bright daylight, and the risk would be great. Long before this, Gayarre and his friends would be up and on the alert. No doubt parties were already traversing the Levee Road as well as the bye-paths among the plantations. At every step I might expect to meet either ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... which had been lying in Miss Atwood's lap had gradually slipped forward and at this moment dropped to the floor. As she reached down to pick it up, Morgan's alert eyes noted a purplish mark on ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... then. Nobody has the same right to "bother" me, as you call it, that you have, for I love nobody so well; besides, as for Emily, she is a deuced deal quicker in her processes than you are, and snaps up one's affairs by the nape of the neck, as a terrier does a rat, and unless one is tolerably alert one's self, she is off with one in her zeal in no time, whither ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... shall find the biggest scoundrel of them all, no doubt," added mademoiselle, who was alert and cool. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... her a look of unconscious admiration. Her pretty cousin's indifferent air seemed to support the theory that she had actually rejected the prince of partis, which, in fact, was exactly what it was meant to do. Hen had never really thought that Cally had it in her. She threw her alert eye around to see where they were. The car had turned south at Twelfth Street, had crossed Centre, and was now rolling into a quarter of the town very different-looking, indeed, from Washington Street. Hen said they were all right for Dunbar Street and told Cally to cheer up. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... until 1868. He himself was an officer of the Irvin artillery, Cutts' battalion, being a part of Walker's artillery in Longstreet's corps. Entering the army at seventeen years of age, Charles E. Irvin was a veteran at twenty-one. He was brave, alert, tender, and true. He recalls that when his company joined the army in Richmond, Robert Toombs, then Secretary of State, gave them a handsome supper at the Exchange Hotel. "I remember," said he, "with infinite satisfaction, that during the seven months I accompanied ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... and a tremor passed through his frame as the rider drew near; otherwise he did not stir from his position; but it was enough. The girl turned, on the alert at once, and met him with a smile, and the young man looked at her as if an angel had deigned to smile upon him. There was a humility in his fine face that sat well with the courage written there, and smoothed away all hardness for the time, so ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... earth like a galloping herd. Bounds to profundity let there be none, Let there be nothing too madly absurd. Ponder on pebbles or stock exchange shares, On the mission of man or the life of a bug, On planets or billiards, policemen or bears, Alert all the time for the sight of ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... continually harassed by their father, who bemoans the fact that he has given them an education. Besides, another sadness troubles him: Nil, his adopted son, whom he has had taught the trade of a mechanician,—an alert and industrious fellow,—wants to marry Polya, a girl without a fortune. The father is beside himself, for, if Nil marries, he will never be in a condition to pay back the money that has been spent on him. But Nil protests: he is young, and, some day, he will repay his debt. He has not ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... earliest twentieth century books—Roberts's History of Letter Writing (1843) with Pickering's ever-beloved title-page and his beautiful clear print; the Litterature Epistolaire of Barbey d'Aurevilly—a critic never to be neglected though always to be consulted with eyes wide open and brain alert; finally, two Essays in Dr. Jessopp's Studies by a Recluse and in the Men and Letters of Mr. Herbert Paul, once a very frequent associate of mine. The title of the first mentioned book speaks it pretty thoroughly. "The Art ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... rapturous vision of the universe Kabr never loses touch with diurnal existence, never forgets the common life. His feet are firmly planted upon earth; his lofty and passionate apprehensions are perpetually controlled by the activity of a sane and vigorous intellect, by the alert commonsense so often found in persons of real mystical genius. The constant insistence on simplicity and directness, the hatred of all abstractions and philosophizings,[Footnote: Nos. XXVI, XXXII, LXXVI] the ruthless criticism of external religion: these ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... painter from his easel, to scan the effect of each new touch—to note what has been done and to measure what remains. It is a great living and breathing entity, informed with the concrete life of three generations of mankind the most alert and the most restless of all that have existed. This sensation of exceptional endowments is self-nourishing and ever-growing; and our little nook of time is coming to view all the paths of the past, broad or narrow, direct or interlacing, straight or obscure, as so many roads ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... was that of a private confessor in Bretagne, and whose temporary disguise was that of a horse-dealer. "Such a maid as thou describest is as certain to want and have a confidant as she is to wear that trumpery. Thou wilt find—or, rather, we shall find—the whole house up and alert, and ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... with which Ensign Butler advanced, running forward to reach a fence, and hold it as a cover from which to ply their rifles. Butler instantly proposed, and was permitted, to anticipate them. Calling upon some of the most alert and active men of the company, he ran directly to meet the Indians at the fence. He and his comrades out-stripped the enemy, and getting possession of the fence, kept the advantage of the position for their advancing friends. This incident, of however little importance as ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... and highly specialised duties all tending to one common end. The headquarters staff is a big one. There are superintendents in charge of the departments, men whom no emergency can ruffle—calm, methodical and alert, ready to act in the time one can make ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... was feeding on the edge of a cliff, moving here and there, leaping lightly across some gully, tossing its head up for a precautionary sniff. Suddenly it gave a bound and stood still, alert. Two great clumsy "Hirsch-kuehe" had taken fright at some imaginary danger, and, uttering their peculiar half grunt, half roar, were galloping across the alm in half real, half assumed panic with their ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... object; and not despair even if frequent failures attend the attempt. Ever since I left Baramula I have been endeavouring to catch another of the green butterflies, as beetles had eaten my first specimen. But they are very alert on the wing, and I could not get near one. The last two or three marches I had not seen any, having got out of their locality, but to-day a solitary one flew by me and I knocked it down, caught it, and secured it in my toper. Success ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... our government with the Pacific railroads has created a strong prejudice among the masses against such subsidies as were granted to those corporations, but it is probable, with the people on the alert, that Congress would not again permit great impositions to be practiced against the government. When the great advantages to be derived by the people of the United States from the use of this canal and the small outlay required are considered, it would seem to be a wise policy for our ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... could have pictured a stranger or more unearthly sight than the wonderful "White Eagle" poised at ease amid the tossed-up clouds of spray flung from the seething mass of waters, while at her prow stood a woman fair as any fabled goddess—a woman reckless of all danger, and keenly on the alert, with bright eyes searching every nook and cranny that could be discerned through the mist. Clear above the roaring torrent her voice rang like a silver trumpet as she called her instructions to the two men who, equally defying every peril, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... he wouldn't be telling me about it. But Henderson couldn't be rushed, and I knew it. I kept the alert look on my face and thought of other things, while waiting for him to ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... you ask me; I must be A member sure of some fraternity: Why no; I've taken no man's shilling; none Of all your fathers owns me for his son; Just where the weather drives me, I invite Myself to take up quarters for the night. Now, all alert, I cope with life's rough main, A loyal follower in true virtue's train: Anon, to Aristippus' camp I flit, And say, the world's for me, not ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... which photography offers are worth restating. It helps to draw one closer to nature and to seek fresh air. Through the exercise and cultivation of choice, it teaches how to decorate the home, to dress with taste, and to keep an alert eye and mind on the passing events of the world. Because the Association knows that photography is able to teach these things, it sought the aid of art museums and public libraries to conduct photographic exhibitions so that children and adults may not only see fine examples of the ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1920 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... pickpockets may be better imagined than described. Many, doubtless, had come from great distances, confident of a golden harvest. Let us hope that the authorities of Toulon were equally on the alert. Marseilles no more resembles Lyons, Bordeaux, Nantes, than those cities resemble each other. Less elegant than Lyons, less majestic than Bordeaux, gayer by far than Nantes, the capital of Southern France has a stamp of its own. Today, as three thousand years ago, Marseilles may be called ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... word; that girl was Hester Thornton. She had been drawn into the circle by an intense curiosity; but she had made no comment with regard to Cecil's conduct. If she knew anything of the mystery she had thrown no light on it. She had simply sat motionless, with watchful and alert eyes and silent tongue. Now, for the first ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... that your mother need not be ashamed to let you write for her? Do you help her tactfully and consentingly—the only help which rests people—or do you argue each point, so that it is far less trouble to do the thing twice over than to ask you? Are you prompt and alert in your movements, or do you indulge in that exasperating slowness, which some girls seem to consider quite a charm? Do you wait till the last minute, and then leisurely put on your things, with serene unconsciousness of the fret it is to every one's temper? If you want to see ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... throughout all the Slave States, and from that time on, no serious agitation occurred in any one of them, looking toward even the most gradual emancipation. On the other hand, the advocates of the extension of the Slave-Power by the expansion of Slave-territory, were ever on the alert, they considered it of the last importance to maintain the balance of power between the Slave States and the Free States. Hence, while they had secured in 1819 the cession from Spain to the United States of the Slave-holding Floridas, and the organization of the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... clearly, first of all—what, if it hadn't been for her preoccupation, his voice, tone, accent would have warned her to expect—so visibly a gentleman; and then, with the even pink of his complexion, his yellowish hair and beard, his alert, friendly, very blue blue eyes—with his very blue blue flannels too, and his brick-red knitted tie—he was so vivid ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the clearing of the land before the cabin, and peers right and left up the trail and down the trail, and then leans and listens. Then he takes a glance back over his shoulder at his companion and follower, Gar Dosson, and being sure that he too is on the alert and close on his heels, he steps forward. Again the man leans and listens, but seeing no signs of life and hearing no sound, he straightens up, walks close to the cabin, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... with the past in his thoughts. He was now safe from it beyond any possible peradventure, and he began to plan for the future. He had prepared himself for the all-night ride, if he should decide to take it, with a cup of strong coffee at Wellwater, and he was alert in every faculty. His mind worked nimbly and docilely now, with none of that perversity which had troubled him during the day with the fear that he was going wrong in it. His thought was clear and quick, and it obeyed his will like a part of it; that sense of duality in himself no ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... favour of the many-headed, Charlie now proceeded from threats to action. His right fist swung round suddenly. But Beale was on the alert. He ducked sharply, and the next moment Charlie was sitting on the ground beside his fallen friend. A hush fell on the Ring, and the little man in the purple tie was left repeating his ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... She knew the great white ewe with a blue ribbon on her neck, and the huge ram with twisted horns that made her half afraid. Would he mind Scotch plaid, she wondered, as he raised his head and eyed her? She sat alert, ready for swift flight up the slope behind her in case of attack, but he turned to his pasture in the pit with the air of one ready to waive trifles, and ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... dark and deserted, for the heavy-hearted people had nothing to call them out of their houses at that hour. Nevertheless, Ned was feverishly on the alert, and, almost without his knowing it, his machete had jumped out of its sheath, ready for whatever might ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... women of Johannesburg are doing noble work. Dr. Murray says it is astonishing how intelligently alert and self-sacrificing they are proving themselves to be. A story has been told me of a Boer woman who was fearfully mangled; she bore the necessary surgical operation with fortitude, but wept copiously when a green baize petticoat, which she had recently ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... health was now ruined, for fevers, sleeplessness, gout, and eyestrain kept him in constant pain, and at times made even that strong mind of his a little queer and wobbly. But on one point at least it remained alert and lucid,—he still could think out his course clearly. With a view to avoiding the treacherous winds and coastwise currents that had previously wrought such havoc with his ships, he set his rudders due east on leaving ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... incontestable. The greater losses of the British whenever the armies met on even terms proved the superior marksmanship of the American militiaman. The adaptation of the fast-sailing schooner to privateering was further evidence of an alert intellect which was quick to adapt means to ends. This quality, to be sure, has been bred in every frontier folk by the very necessities of existence, but it appeared in marked strength in the American of this time. While the shipbuilders of New England were laying the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... "Alexis is right. This malady has taken the ambition out of me. I may be Immortal, but if I am, then I am an Immortal without ambition. I seem to be lost, to be suddenly diffused into space or time, to be a kind of vapour. Something has dissolved in me—something hard, bright, alert. I do not know why I am here. The car came round as usual to take me for my morning run. I got in—why I ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... busily and pleasantly engaged in eating that he paid no heed to the aspect of the sky. Nor, indeed, was there anything of very serious import in its changes. But Henry Burns, alert as ever, saw certain signs of wind in some light banks of cloud that began to gather in the western sky, in ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... valuable aid to my chief packer in watching the animals at night. His senses became so keen as to be quite reassuring in regard to robbers at night, and from that time on he was really a valuable man, active and alert. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... that the former sense of security and indifference was a thing of the past. From this time on the scouts must keep constantly on the alert to guard against a sudden surprise. They must learn to watch for danger in every quarter, and not allow themselves ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... shewed she meant what she said. Like no client at law that ever sought his lawyer's chambers, on any errand. Before Mr. Inchbald had reached the first landing, she was posted before the desired door, and had tapped there with very alert fingers. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... though he had never seen such a thing before. He was puzzled by me, but he soon decided that I was not worth bothering about, for he made no stay. He padded slowly on towards Chard, evidently well-pleased with himself. Suddenly he stopped dead, with one pad lifted, a living image of alert tension. He was alarmed by something coming along the road by which I had come. He turned his head slightly, as though to make sure with his best ear. Then with a single beautiful lollopping bound he was over the hedge to safety, going in that exquisite curving rhythm of movement ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... the senses, into the town, but cannot force the heart; and Mansoul is reduced to the greatest straits and sadness. In this extremity, prayers are incessantly offered up to Emmanuel; but, for a long time, they can obtain no satisfactory answers. Both parties are on the alert; but Diabolus finds it impossible, either by treachery or by storming with his legion of doubts, to gain possession of Heart-castle. Being worsted in a general engagement, the doubters are slain, and are buried ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... GODDARD'S aim; For he, as from the daily Press we learn, An obvious plagiarist of good JULES VERNE, Would have us build a Bertha fat enough To send a charge of high explosive stuff Across the intervening seas of space Bang into Luna's unoffending face. Meanwhile our own alert star-gazing chief, DYSON (Sir FRANK), is rather moved to grief Than anger by the astronomic pranks Played by unbalanced professorial cranks, Who study science in the wild-cat vein And ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... and population of Irkutsk were on the alert. The measures to repel an attack on the points hitherto unassailed had been taken. The Grand Duke and General Voranzoff visited the posts, strengthened by their orders. Wassili Fedor's corps occupied the North ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... to make notes, and he pulled out his little note-book. With that in hand he fell a-thinking again. Would that chap tell her the 'tecks were after them? If so, would she be as anxious to get away as HE was? He must be on the alert. If possible he must speak to her. Just a significant word, "Your friend—trust me!"—It occurred to him that to-morrow these fugitives might rise early to escape. At that he thought of the time and found it was half-past eleven. "Lord!" ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... of their stay in the mountains she revolved all these things in her mind as they lay side by side on their fir couch, he asleep in a deep, dreamless fatigue, she alert and tense after the long day in the spirituous air, the night wind sighing to her from the upper branches of the firs. To-morrow they would start for the West, to begin the prose of life. Suddenly a thought flashed over her that stopped ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... The castle guard, he gathered, was a little less than perfectly alert. This would be simple. He touched the controls of his body shield to raise himself a few inches above the cobblestones, and floated between the two sentries, going slowly to avoid making ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... years beforehand, and his is still the best refutation. A careful study of this Eighth Book settles the relation between balladist and poet by a simple presentation of the facts in their proper co-ordination, and also puts the alert reader on the track of the genesis of the Wolfian Prolegomena. For there can hardly be a doubt that Wolf, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, derived his main conception of Homer from the present Book and from the part that Demodocus, the bard, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... always yearned for the recovery of the child; and, the wish being father to the thought, he fully shared with "Cobbler" Horn himself the expectation that she would eventually return. This expectation kept him on the alert; and there is little cause to wonder that even so slight a sign as the poise of the secretary's head, or the manner in which she walked, should have induced him to think, for some passing moments, that his long-cherished desire had been fulfilled ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Belgian private, who had his headquarters in the Strafe-Barrack, showed us many little kindnesses. He had as his batman one of the prisoners whose term of punishment had expired, and Bromley, who was always quick-witted and on the alert, offered himself for the job, and was taken, and in that way various little favors came to us that we ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... Should Hester be strong in her purpose to remain seated as at present, she also must remain seated. Weariness and solicitude for her baby might perhaps drive the young mother to bed. Then she also would go to her bed,—and would rest, with one eye ever open, with her ears always on the alert. She was somewhat sure of herself. Her life had not been so soft but that she could endure much,—and of her purpose she was quite sure. Nothing would trouble her conscience if she could succeed in keeping her daughter separated from ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... BEVERAGES are those which contain a drug that stimulates the nervous and the circulatory system; that is, one that acts on the nerves and the circulation in such a way as to make them active and alert. Common examples of these beverages are coffee, tea, and cocoa or chocolate. If the nerves are in need of rest, it is dangerous to stimulate them with such beverages, for, as the nervous system indirectly affects all the organs of ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... One such work indeed there is, delightful in itself, technically exquisite, most interesting by its history, which properly finds its place beside the larger, the full-grown, physical perfection of the Discobolus, one of whose alert younger brethren he may be,—the Spinario namely, the boy drawing a thorn from his foot, preserved in the so rare, veritable antique bronze at Rome, in the Museum of the Capitol, and well known in a host of ancient and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... he threw the line far out, with a strong, high swing of his long arm. And as she looked, a lusty bass—heavy, full of fight—took the hook, and she saw the man stand motionless, intent, alert, at the instant he first felt the fish. Then she caught the skillful turn of his wrist as he struck—quick and sure; watched, with breathless interest as—bracing himself—the fisherman's powerful figure became instinct with life. With ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... thrilling series of mystery stories for girls. Nancy Drew, ingenious, alert, is the daughter of a famous criminal lawyer and she herself is deeply interested in his mystery cases. Her interest involves her often in some very dangerous and ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... difference in Dotty's attitude. She walked as quickly as before but she was not quite so alert. Also, she kept turning her head suddenly from side to side with a gesture of an inquisitive bird, a little uncertain which way ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... however, of putting the garrison on the alert, for the messenger who came off with a request for me to land my men informed me that a party of midshipmen had brought in the intelligence of ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... his bow. The Leader, ever keen and alert, exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "The fire! the fire!" Immediately many hands were rubbing the flaming wood into the earth. Commands were hastily given by the Leader; and the warriors, with palpitating ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... line of thought further, had not there occurred an incident which brought the conversation to a close. Looking up, the two saw approaching them across the lawn, evidently coming from the little railway station, and doubtless descended from this very train, the alert, quick-stepping figure of a man evidently a stranger to the place. Jim and Sarah Ann Bowles stepped to one side as he approached and lifted his hat with ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... as usual, her allotted household tasks. There was no change in the outer performance of the hours, but Mata remained alert, disturbed, and the girl tranquilly oblivious. The old face searching with keen eyes the young noted with troubled frown the frequent smile, the intervals of listless dreaming, the sudden starts, as by ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... Miss Wakeman's exaggeratedly tender "Good-by, dear Billy!" ringing in his ears, to provoke irrepressible smiles. The pulse of a free life, where men lived instead of vegetating, was in his veins. His footstep gave forth a ringing sound from the pavement; he felt himself stalwart, alert, his brain rejoicing in its sense of power. It was even with no sense of guilt that he heard the church clocks striking twelve as he reached the house where his wife had been awaiting ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... children in the principles of Safety; for they will be the future industrial workers and the representatives of public opinion; their interest must be aroused to practice and preach "Safety First" everywhere. Children can be taught to become alert to their own safety, and can influence their parents to a deeper ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... head slightly to one side, had been regarding Hector McKaye with alert curiosity mingled with furtive apprehension. As he glanced at her now, she remembered her manners and dropped him a courtesy—an electric, half-defiant jerk that reminded The Laird of a similar greeting customarily extended ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Hamilton taken in charge by certain mystical kinsmen. Evidently he was well cared for, as he grew into a handsome, strong lad—small, to be sure, but finely formed. Where he learned to read, write and cipher we know not; he seems to have had one of those active, alert minds that can acquire ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... that these regional groups can be of particular value in working with the experiment stations and legislatures to promote the interests of the Association. The state associations should be on the alert to build on the interests of conservation departments as related to wildlife preserves and sportsmen's clubs and other agencies which put the growing of nut trees in proper perspective. I am not at all in favor of securing ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the generals would sit in a ring upon the floor playing hunt the slipper. Musical chairs made the two hours between bed and dinner the time of the day they all looked forward to: the steady trot with every nerve alert, the ear listening for the sudden stoppage of the music, the eye seeking with artfulness the likeliest chair, the volcanic ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... stationed in Lebanon since 1976 in an ostensible peacekeeping role - were withdrawn in April 2005. During the July-August 2006 conflict between Israel and Hizballah, Syria placed its military forces on alert but did not intervene directly on ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Cowley, and Gray. His dramatic productions were of a higher order than Davenant's. They have found a place in Dodsley's and the several subsequent collections of early dramas, not conceded to the plays of the latter. Masque-making, however, was not in his line. His invention was not sufficiently alert, his dialogue not sufficiently lively, for a species of poetry which it was the principal duty of the Laureate to furnish. Besides, it is highly probable, his sympathies with rebellious Puritanism were already so far developed as to make him an object of aversion to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... He realised that his attention was wandering. For a time all his senses were very alert. The uproar of the Falls was very confusing, and it mixed in all sorts of sounds, like feet walking, like voices talking, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... as they sit. Their eyes are full of tears. Presently one looks up, listening, then another, then another. They are all alert.] ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... in the lines of Preston's figure impossible to describe, stiff and motionless though he was; something which prepared one for a lax and careless movement when he moved. Perhaps this was fancy and only arose from my knowledge of the fact; but with the other no such fancy was possible. Still, but alert; motionless, but full of vigour; I expected what came; firm, quick, and easy action, as soon as he should cease ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the dearest friend he had in this world—was the younger son, George, afterwards the well-known chemist and Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh. No two men could be less alike—George Wilson with a bright, alert, nimble mind; Cairns with an intellect massive like his bodily frame, and characterised chiefly by strength and momentum; and yet the two fitted into each other, and when they really got to know each other it might truly be said of them that the ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... keenly alert to their work. "Quick work." Platoons march. The camp at Agua Dulce. On a ticklish mission. On the trail of the hidden rifles. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... keen of vision at long distance and close at hand, and ever were they in motion, swiftly turned sidewise this way and that, peering far ahead or looking backward to note what enemies of the wood might be upon the trail. So, swiftly along the glade and ever alert, went the father and mother of Ab, carrying the strong child ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... them the waste food, and they have installed themselves as our protectors, whether out of a feeling of gratitude or in hope of favours to come I cannot tell, but probably from a mixture of wise motives. They are alert, savage beasts, of a hopelessly mixed breed, but no wild boar will come rooting near the camp now, nor will any thief, however light-footed, yield to the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Hotel had accorded her but scant interest. She had, it was true, accepted doubtfully the pen he had offered. She had not been sufficiently prompted in relation to the ways of caravansaries; but her mind had been alert and receptive. Almost at once she had comprehended that she was expected to write down her name and address, which she did, in slanting cobwebby lettering, perhaps a trifle laboriously. Ruth Enschede, Hartford, Conn. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... toddled after the chaplain, his toe having given him an alert hint to quit the dining-table, though he saw every feature in the poor woman's face swoln with desire to procure information concerning the ways and customs of the place, passed on the other side of the way, regardless of her agony ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... again the curious stifled cry which had seemed to ring in his ears the night he arrived. He was constantly on the alert for it, both by night and day, while he was confined to his room and later when he was able to get out on to the verandah. But there was no repetition of it, until at last he had perforce to accept the doctor's view and regard it, as well as the other ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... it. It would afford her an immediate income, and it would give her the opportunity which she craved for giving public expression to her ideas and fixing attention on herself. There was room for more than one Mrs. Earle in Benham, for Benham was growing and wide-awake and on the alert for originality of any kind—especially in the way of reportorial and journalistic cleverness. Selma had no intention of becoming a second Mrs. Earle. That is, she promised herself to follow, but not to follow blindly; to imitate judiciously, but ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... with an alert, bright glance. She was a little creature, and something still girlish lingered in her straight, slender figure and the poise of her head. "Old Lady Lamson" was over eighty, and she dressed with due deference to custom; but everything ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... trouble appeared in Russia, but the government was on the alert and took strong means of suppression. Nicholas I, the man with the iron will, had sent an average number of 9,000 persons annually to Siberia; this number under Alexander the Liberator increased to from 16,000 to 20,000. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... hackney coach, bribed the coachman to drive very fast to Mr. Manessa—found Manessa and Jacob going to bed sleepy—but at sight of me Jacob was alert in an instant, and joyfully ready to go with me immediately ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... listening for some rustle, some stealthy creeping step to guide my next blow, I thrust away my pistol and changing my staff to my right hand, drew forth the broad-bladed sailor's knife I carried, and so waited mighty eager and alert, but heard only the far-off booming of the wind. Then a floorboard creaked faintly to my left, and turning short, I whirled my staff, felt it strike home and heard a fierce cry and the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... my friend's name had an extraordinary effect upon the little man. The look of anger passed in an instant from his face. His features became tense and alert. ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by many odds. And—and, Master Lindley, wait in your lodgings until you hear from me. Wait there unless it nears ten o'clock. If you've not heard from me by then, you'll find me there, where Lord Farquhart is to be sentenced, and—and be on the alert for any signal that may be made to you by anyone, and—and——" He had buckled Lindley's sword about his waist, he had wrapped himself in Lindley's coat, and still he hesitated. Suddenly he dashed his hand across his eyes. "Ah, I've no ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... speak, and I catch a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pillars and its white pigeons fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands—now worn and wrinkled, but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man—as they ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... as it was discovered that both lieutenants were keenly alert to their duties, greater speed was shown in assembling the men. Five minutes later all the soldiers had turned out, ready. Some of the men in Hal's platoon began ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... place. I've seen it before." He squinted, his eyes growing accustomed to the dark. Suddenly he became alert. "This is—" ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... at his approach with a boyish, alert movement, and lifted her eyes to his. He likened them half-unconsciously to the purple-blue of hare-bells, in the ardent light of the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... because it is especially noteworthy or exceptional, but because it illustrates the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in unfavorable circumstances, which are quite as characteristic of the modern war correspondent as are his courage and his alert readiness for ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... didn't know anything to say; so it was awkward, for she kept looking at me; but Seppi was alert and ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... them as containing your sweetest hope; your most thrilling joy? Can you submit to the thought that you should be torpid in your endeavors to disperse them, while the rest of Christendom is awake and alert? Shall you hang back in heartless indifference, when princes come down from their thrones, to bless the cottage of the poor with the gospel of peace; and imperial sovereigns are gathering their fairest honors from spreading abroad the oracles of the Lord your God. Is it possible that you ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... boy risen From caves of music where the water spins Wet sand into the shapes of flowing flowers; David with limbs all bright with the sun's tones, And ruddy locks curling with youth and light, His body all alert on steady loins, Clean spun of flesh that knew the winter snows, And mellow pools of summer, and the dews Dropping among the crocuses of dawn. His sandle-straps bound ankles as a girl's, And fluttering to his knees the sheepskin hung, ...
— Preludes 1921-1922 • John Drinkwater
... carita. They accompanied this demand by the corrupted cry of "nix munjay"—nothing to eat,—which they enforced by most expressive gestures, extending their mouths, and exhibiting rows of ravenous-looking teeth. The caleche drivers, too, were on the alert, and respectfully taking off their turbans, proffered their services to convey the Signore to Floriana. Delme declined their offers, and, passing a draw-bridge which divides Valletta from the country, made his way through an embrasure, and ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... cafe on the boulevards on a public festival and observing his neighbours and the passers-by: their imperturbable good humour; their easy manners; their simple enjoyments; their quick intelligence, alert gait and expressive gestures; the wonderful skill of the women in dress. The glittering halls of pleasure that appeal to so many visitors, the Bohemian cafes of the outer boulevards, the Folies Bergeres, the Moulins Rouges, the Bals Bulliers, with their meretricious ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... us up again; but the wind continuing light, the California set hers, and it was soon evident that she was walking away from us. Our captain then hailed and said that he should keep off to his course; adding, "She isn't the Alert now. If I had her in your trim she would have been out of sight by this time." This was good-naturedly answered from the California, and she braced sharp up, and stood close upon the wind up the coast; while we squared away our yards, and stood before the wind to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... houses, and turning to his right, scampered down in the direction of the town. The shouts and firing had spread an alarm in the Carlist camp, the soldiers were turning out on all sides, and the outposts on the alert. Paco approached the latter, and saw a sentinel in a straight line ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... a third question on her lips but checked it as she met Kitty's saucy eye. Kitty, known as "Little Miss Why," was always on the alert to bequeath the name to a successor. But Sarah saw none of the by-play ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... turned on the author, a man of doubtful reputation, always on the alert for any occasion ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... all wondered, the boy was in command of the situation. Everything seemed so reasonable, that all were prompt and alert to serve him. ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Harlaem, Leyden, Alkmar, Hoorn, and other towns. Symptoms of gambling now became, for the first time, apparent. The stockjobbers, ever on the alert for a new speculation, dealt largely in tulips, making use of all the means they so well knew how to employ, to cause fluctuations in prices. At first, as in all these gambling mania, confidence was at its height, and everybody gained. The tulip-jobbers speculated in the rise and fall of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... he stood with clenched fists and heaving breast; then, with grim eagerness, with every sense supernaturally alert, with nerves tense, quick eyes and ready muscles, he went forward on ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Alert, kindly, cordial, Mark greeted me and taking a seat, fixed his keen blue, kindly eyes upon me. "I'm glad to see you," he said, and I believed he meant it. He went on, "This is the psychological moment for us both. I am looking ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of his guards were in his house with him. Three were outside." Jimmy had been leaning weakly against the instrument as if for support. Now he came out of it. He was the alert ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... those who observed this absence from the crowd in the ante-rooms. In the midst of so much intrigue and continual striving for power, designing men, on the one hand, were ever on the alert for what they imagined would prove willing instruments; and on the other, the Prince's councillors kept a watchful eye on the dispositions of every one of the least consequence; so that, although but twenty-five, Felix was already ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... ago, a more definite fear came to me," he continued in his low, pained voice. "It happens that I have known Mr. Marcy here for years; we were friends in college, though we had lost track of one another till his business brought him here. A few small circumstances—my suspicion was already on the alert—made me guess that Mr. Marcy was about to give Doctor West a bribe for having awarded the filter contract to his company. I got Mr. Marcy alone—taxed him with ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... being shrewd and alert, had escaped the conflagration. She had taken alarm early, having seen a fire in the woods once before and conceived an appreciation of its powers. Instead of flying straight before it, and being inevitably overtaken, she ran at once ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... whom the slave ushered in a few minutes later was old, spare and bent, but he was alert and restless. His eyes were brilliant and over them arched eyebrows that were almost white. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... young man utter a similar phrase and in such an accent. The image returned to him, by way of contrast, of Dorsenne, alert and foppish, the dandy of literature, so gayly a scoffer and a sophist, to whom antique and venerable Rome was only a city of pleasure, a cosmopolis more paradoxical than Florence, Nice, Biarritz, St. Moritz, than such and such other cities of international winter and summer. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he broke out with a fierce oath, and strode away down the yard and into the road. On the way to his house he met Duclosse the mealman and Garotte the lime- burner. He wondered what they would do. He could see the fat, wheezy Duclosse hesitate, but the arid, alert Garotte had determination in every motion and look. They came nearer; they were about to pass; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Mother Aloysius patiently awaited the result of the examination, but he finally went to the window, and a certain unmistakable expression of countenance which can be compared only to a locking of mouth and eyes, warned her that he was alert and inflexible. With a smothered sigh she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... performance of sacrifices, duly goes through this mode of life and properly discharges all its duties, obtains blessed rewards in heaven. Upon his death, the rewards desired by him became deathless. Indeed, these wait upon him for eternity like menials ever on the alert to execute the commands of their master.[194] Always attending to the Vedas, silently reciting the mantras obtained from his preceptor, worshipping all the deities, O Yudhishthira, dutifully waiting upon and serving his preceptor with his own body smeared with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... on and as quitting time approached, he became more tense—more alert. Five minutes before the whistle, he faded back into the building and hurried to the lavatory. He went into the booth furthest from the entrance and locked the door. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Another of ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... a middle-aged, tidy woman, with that alert precision of movement which seems to come from an active, orderly mind; and as she now turned her head briskly at the sound of the parson's footstep, she showed a countenance prepossessing though not handsome,—a countenance from which a pleasant, hearty ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... yearned for the recovery of the child; and, the wish being father to the thought, he fully shared with "Cobbler" Horn himself the expectation that she would eventually return. This expectation kept him on the alert; and there is little cause to wonder that even so slight a sign as the poise of the secretary's head, or the manner in which she walked, should have induced him to think, for some passing moments, that his long-cherished desire had ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... helpless and dared not say or do anything against the English. Nor was this feeling confined to the Creoles of Vincennes; it had spread to most of the points where trading posts existed. Hamilton found this out too late to mend some of his mistakes; but he set himself on the alert and organized scouting bodies of Indians under white officers to keep him informed as to the American movements in Kentucky and along the Ohio. One of these bands brought in as captive Colonel Francis Vigo, of St. Louis, a Spaniard by birth, an American by adoption, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... a magic power in a task well done, There's a charm in solid reason, There's a mighty force in a victory won, Which an alert mind will seize on, And with giant strength that is thus acquired March on till the fields of science And the zones of thought wherein man aspired ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... it to any one; and if a man lay off and forgot to come back there was nothing to be gained by seeking him, for all the rest would quit in the meantime. Everything went, during the strike, and the packers paid. Before long Jurgis found that the custom of resting had suggested to some alert minds the possibility of registering at more than one place and earning more than one five dollars a day. When he caught a man at this he "fired" him, but it chanced to be in a quiet corner, and the man tendered him a ten-dollar bill and a wink, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of Far Lands is an interesting, wholesome presentation of something that a keen-eyed, alert traveler with the faculty of making contrasts with all classes of people in all sorts of places, in such a sympathetic way as to win their esteem and confidence, has been able to pick up as he has roamed over the face of the earth for a ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... with that which he was now facing; so, for safety's sake, and to avoid being blown ashore, he was compelled to stand off the coast a good deal farther than he had originally intended. He knew that he was in a position of some danger, and, besides being himself additionally on the alert, he posted an extra look-out, with orders to keep his eyes wide open for the first signs of light or loom of moving ship upon that black, rushing ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... overlooked where the gay world had been summoned with an accompanying blast from the public press; therefore he had gone to Rosamund with the curtest of hints; but he had remained, standing before her, checked, not condescending to irritation, but mentally alert to a new element of resistance which he had not expected—a new force, palpable, unlooked for, unclassified as yet in his schedule for his life's itinerary. That force was the cohesive power of abstract caste in the presence of a foreign irritant threatening its atomic disintegration. That ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... in the daily avocations of the Rectory, where Alick was always a very different person from what he appeared in Lady Temple's drawing-room, constantly engaged as he was by unobtrusive watchfulness over his uncle, and active and alert in this service in a manner that was a curious contrast to his ordinary sauntering ways. As to Rachel, the whole state of existence was still a happy dream. She floated on from day to day in the tranquil activity of the Rectory, without daring to look back on the past or ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... either to inaugurate or carry out. The colonial establishments of Spain were at that time hermetically sealed against all intercourse with foreign nations. Armed ships, like watch-dogs, were ever on the alert, and foreign merchantmen entered their ports only at the peril of confiscation. It was necessary for Spain to send out annually a fleet, under a convoy of ships of war, for the transportation of merchandise and supplies for the colonies, returning laden with cargoes of almost priceless value. Champlain, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... oft made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too—the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others—had flown, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the place, which stood a little apart from the others and was half-surrounded by mud walls. Into this walled-in court her camel was led and halted and jerkingly it accomplished its collapsing descent, and Arlee found herself on her feet again, quite breathless, but very alert. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... and other facts of their appearance, and curiously questioned whether this were the best that a great material civilization could come to; it looked a little dull. The men's faces were shrewd and alert, and yet they looked dull; the women's were pretty and knowing, and yet dull. It was, probably, the holiday expression of the vast, prosperous commercial class, with unlimited money, and no ideals that money ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the nature of dogs and men, the watchdog was never more numerous nor more alert than today. He was never in better voice, and having nothing whatever to do, he does it to the highest artistic perfection. At least one justification remains. Civilization has not done away with the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... time, the Captain could not but observe that Mrs Bokum kept her eyes steadily on the bridegroom, and that whenever they came near a court or other narrow turning which appeared favourable for flight, she was on the alert to cut him off if he attempted escape. The other lady, too, as well as her husband, the short gentleman with the tall hat, were plainly on guard, according to a preconcerted plan; and the wretched man was so secured by Mrs MacStinger, that any effort ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... to wait. Only a few minutes elapsed before the door flew open and Richford came out so gently that Beatrice had barely time to step into a friendly doorway. Her senses were quick and alert now in the face of this unknown danger, and the girl did not fail to note the pale face and agitated features of the man who had so grievously harmed her. Evidently Richford had been drinking no more, but certainly he had had some great shock, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... possession of his chart was the one stimulant that helped Ann to endure this long day of inactivity. It was like a small thimbleful of wine to one who longed for a generous draught; there was nothing else to do but to wait, alert for all chances that might help her. Evening closed in; the sisters were left alone. Christa returned indolently to lounging upon the bed and reading her novel. If Ann had had less strength, she would have paced the floor ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... a good deal more than we do," says he. "How much is not done by us! or what if we had been taken sick?" And then, with a stab of satire, he describes contemporary mankind in a phrase: "All the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties." It is not likely that the public will be much affected by Thoreau, when they blink the direct injunctions of the religion they profess; and yet, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ships at Abydos, which had nevertheless been warned by their approaching friends to be on the alert to prevent their sailing out, at dawn they sighted the fleet of Mindarus, which immediately gave chase. All had not time to get away; the greater number however escaped to Imbros and Lemnos, while four of the hindmost were overtaken off Elaeus. One of these was stranded opposite to the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... threatened revolt in the mountains were also passing; some of them stopped at the house of Mr. Plummer, in Boise, and upon the trail of one of these telegrams, a forcible one, came a thin-faced and quiet but alert man, Mr. Henry Crayon, who in his way was a power in both the financial and political worlds. Mr. Crayon was perhaps the most trusted of the lieutenants of the Honorable Clinton Goodnight, and the two had held a long conference before his departure for the West, agreeing at the end of it that ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... eyebrows, and the smile that flitted across his face, he might have suspected that the other entertained serious doubts concerning the wisdom of depending wholly on his continuing to be on the alert during that coming period when the rest of them would give ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the drowsy, and to excite the torpid. The instant he found each man on the alert, he resumed his orders, with a calmness that gave a direction to the powers of all, but still with an energy that he well knew was called for by the occasion. The enormous sheets of duck, which had looked like so ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... their size, be able to get the story, and be the biggest little people in the kindergarten by showing what they could do with it. Again there was an undefined problem thrown at them, as it were—an element of wonder. They did not know just what was coming and they were mentally alert, waiting, on the lookout. The way for the story was open.—This is what you want, for no matter how perfect a gem of folk-lore you tell, it will fall heedless if the children do ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... found a use for everything. She told many a good story about Miss Crawley's illness in after days—stories which made the lady blush through her artificial carnations. During the illness she was never out of temper; always alert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear conscience; and could take that refreshment at almost any minute's warning. And so you saw very few traces of fatigue in her appearance. Her face might be a trifle paler, and the circles round her eyes a little blacker than usual; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hero stalked ahead, stroking his luxuriant whiskers ever and anon, we pursued him at an interval so great that not the most alert citizen of Little Arcady could have suspected this sinister undercurrent to ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... in themselves so very much. What is far more serious is that the criteria of efficiency would become blunted, and the clear aims of management would be confused in fog. It is essential that every manager should be on the alert to eliminate waste and to improve efficiency, that he should be always trying to secure the best results; but how can he do this if he has no simple means of measuring what results are good and what are bad? The measure which he has at present is that of price, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... he would not move the Admiralty to work a submarine or two up the Straits at once so as to prevent reinforcements and supplies coming down by sea from Constantinople. By now the Turks must be on the alert and it was commonsense to suppose they would be sending some sort of help to their Forts. However things might pan out we could not be going wrong if we made the Marmora unhealthy for the Turkish ships. Lord K. thereupon made the remark that if we could get one submarine into ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... gallants! onward speed ye, Flower and bulwark of the Gael; Like your flag-silks be ye ruddy, Rosy-red, and do not quail. Fearless, artless, hawk-eyed, courteous, As your princely strain beseems, In your hands, alert for conflict, While the Spanish weapon gleams.— Sweet the flapping of the bratach,[143] Humming music to the gale; Stately steps the youthful gaisgeach,[144] Proud the banner staff to bear. A slashing weapon on his thigh, He tends his charge ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... hear. He was thinking, now, his thin face set in a frown, the upper teeth biting hard over the under lip and drawing up the pointed beard. While he thought, he watched the man extended on the chair, watched him like an alert cat, to extract from him some hint as to what he should do. This absorption seemed to ignore completely the other occupants of the room, of whom he was the central, commanding figure. The head nurse held the lamp ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... past. And it will be achieved, to the signal detriment of British interests, both commercial and political, unless all the energies and watchfulness of the distinguished statesmen who preside at the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade be not unceasingly on the alert. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... never sent to the public schools, but had a governess, yet Mortimer Conklin, who was always alert for the call, could not understand why the people never summoned him to any office of honour or trust. He kept his brass signboard polished, went to his office punctually every morning at ten o'clock, and returned home to dinner at five, and made clients wait ten ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... was a brief silence, during which all stood alert. Then, Tato, still half suspended against the cliff, said in a ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... conditions at important points. At such times bankers having money on deposit at those points are apt to become influenced by the drift of sentiment and to draw down their balances. Here, again, operators in exchange, keenly on the alert for such chances, will very likely begin to sell the exchange market short and often succeed in breaking it to a degree entirely unwarranted ...
— Elements of Foreign Exchange - A Foreign Exchange Primer • Franklin Escher
... Yet he still lay along the pinon limb, every sense on the alert. He was not sure that it was not a trick to draw him out. He already was too good a woodsman to be caught napping ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... kept a steady watch over all. His argus-eye was ever on the alert lest, despite his vigilance, the Catholic priest should be smuggled into ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy, arm in arm, came through the front door—with eyes indeed, a little misty, but with lips cheerfully smiling—every vestige of constraint fled. Genevieve, once more in her pretty linen frock, was again the alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook, who was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor Pepito, ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... handsome, high-bred face, clever, a bit weak,—and tears were wet on his cheeks. He glanced about as if fearing to be seen as he wiped them away, and at the moment there was a light bustle, low voices down the hall. The young man sprang to his feet and stood alert as a step came toward him. He caught a sharp breath as another man, iron-gray, professional, stood in ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... keen. He was neatly dressed, with the quiet precision which seems as a rule to characterise the travelling American. He was apparently of a little less than middle-age, clean-shaven, broad-shouldered, with every appearance of physical strength. He seemed like a man on wires, a man on the alert, likely ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Old Jack Rabbit hopped before him, Then sat up, to watch him pass, Dusky horned-toads scurried nimbly Through the withered buffalo grass. Here and there the buzzing rattler Whirred a warning, head alert, Then retreated from the snapping, Stinging strokes of Billy's quirt. Day by day the wild breeze flying, With'ring in its scorching heat, Hummed a tune to labored beating ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... invalidism, following the death of Mr. Purnell, two years before. The town called them Easterners because their home was as far East as Michigan, but they had never been city dwellers, as Dorothy's fresh complexion and lithe, alert figure bore witness. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... only a rather heavy breathing. At one Mrs. Dane came to relieve her. Lilian was on the alert quite early and her ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... idea. We'll use that for an advertisement," cried the ever alert showman, slapping his thighs. "Emperor, the performing elephant of the Great Sparling Combined Shows, jailed for assault. Fine, fine! How'll that look in the newspapers? Why, men, it will fill the tent when we get to the next stand, whether ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... any further an outburst of song interrupted his words as the whole band broke into an Anarchist war-whoop. This over, my attention was arrested by the groans of a dark young man of extraordinarily alert physiognomy who had shed his boots and was gazing dolefully at his wounded feet. "What would I not give," he exclaimed, "to be back in prison in Lugano! Oh for the rest and comfort of those good old times!" He was utterly worn out, poor ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Yet I'm thinking of the great danger you'd be running. At this moment Terrero's spies must be plentiful in Rio Janeiro. Why, even every steamer that leaves New York for Brazil may carry his men aboard, alert, watchful and deadly. You don't know what a man like Terrero is like. ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... feet alert and ready, and two or three pieces were shot off, but no foe appeared, and no reply was made ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... missing from the group. Her arms were thrown about a tanned, alert little woman. What she was saying the girls could not hear, ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... intellectual passion. Sitting behind her, he watched her with perplexed admiration, shading his eyes with his hand. In her dinner dress she looked even younger than in street clothes, and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency, she seemed to him strangely alert and vibrating, as if in her, too, there were something never altogether at rest. He felt that he knew pretty much what she demanded in people and what she demanded from life, and he wondered how she squared Bartley. After ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... some blankets in which they rolled themselves and then lay down before the fire, which their host kept alive with fuel all through the night. Trot wakened several times and found the Mountain Ear always alert and listening intently for the slightest sound. But the little girl could hear no sound at all except the ...
— The Scarecrow of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... countenances of the Sengalese, with eyes of fire, and thick, bluish blubber lips; some showing the good-nature and sedentary obesity of the middle-class man suddenly converted into a warrior; others sinewy, alert, with the aggressive profile of men born to fight, and experienced in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails, like a spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert senses of a deer, or a moose, or a fox, or a wolf? Not outward eyes, but inward. We open another eye whenever we see beyond the first general features or outlines of things—whenever we grasp the special details and characteristic markings that this mask covers. Science confers new powers of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... eventually to T'an Ch'un's quarters, where she discovered the courtyard in perfect stillness. Not a soul was about beyond several maids, matrons and close attendants of the inner rooms, who stood outside the windows on the alert to obey any calls. P'ing Erh stepped into the hall. The two cousins and their sister-in-law were all three engaged in discussing some domestic affairs. They were talking about the feast, to which they had been invited during the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... declares she cannot think of retaining the wife of Matthew Loyd in the character of a servant; and she foresees, that on such an occasion the woman will expect some gratification for her past services. As for Clinker, exclusive of other considerations, he is so trusty, brave, affectionate, and alert, and I owe him such personal obligations, that he merits more than all the indulgence that can possibly be ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... excited my imagination. It was beyond my comprehension why he should at one moment charge me sternly to continue my journey, and then, in almost the same breath, invite me most cordially to seek the shelter of his hut. On all these points I was keenly on the alert for an explanation. Yet I endeavoured to conceal my feelings, and to assume the air of a man who finds everything quite natural about him, and who is much too absorbed in his own personal wants to have a thought to spare ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this afternoon," she remarked carelessly. He was sitting so that the light fell sidewise on his face. She noted how alert it became, but he ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... although profound for three or four hours was subsequently restless. The mind, when agitated, watches for the body, and wakes it at the time when it should be on the alert. Newton woke up: it was not yet daylight, and all was hushed. He turned round, intending to get up immediately; yet, yielding to the impulse of wearied nature, he again slumbered. Once he thought that he heard a footstep, roused himself, and listened; but ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... herself an hour later in a huge light room, with a floor like a dance hall and much strange paraphernalia against the walls. Little of it she was able to identify, though she took it all in with alert and eager eyes. This was the chiefest part of his life, so she must not even seem to slight it. The Indian clubs and dumb-bells—but they were easy. And the roped-off square at one ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... larger towns, he sought by choice the loneliest paths that looped its quiet hills; such as passed the time of day with him were few and for the most part peasants, a dull, dour lot, taciturn to a degree that pleased him well. So that he soon forgot to be forever alert for the crack of an ambushed pistol or the pattering footfalls of an assassin ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... finding that the white men were on the alert, the blacks withdrew some distance, where their spears and arrows were not so effective. Our friends, including Andy Foger, and the German, kept up a hot fire whenever a skulking black form could ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... continually growing excitement that he saw nothing clearly except the central group of objects: that is to say, a narrow bed, whose burden was screened from him by its foot, a table, an empty chair, the gas-globe luminous against a dark-green blind, and Hilda in black, alert and erect beneath the down-flowing light. The rest of the chamber seemed to stretch obscurely away into no confines. Not for several seconds did he even notice the fire. This confusing excitement was not caused by anything external such ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... insects had subdued their irritating din, as is their wont toward the dawn; the watch-fire had smouldered down to a heap of grey, feathery, faintly-glowing ashes; the two sentinels at the entrance of the bush-path had ceased their alert pacing to and fro, and, having grounded their muskets, were now drooping wearily upon them with their hands crossed over the top of the barrels; whilst the Malay who had been detailed to watch the prisoners, having some half a dozen ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... weather and small rain. I think I am warranted from experience in saying constantly, for in twenty-three instances that have occurred since I first made the observation it has invariably obtained; and the knowledge has been of vast service to me, as I have got out of the Channel when other men as alert, and in faster ships, but unapprised of this circumstance, have not only been driven back, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... until he was lost in the echoing caverns of imagination, and was wont to emerge from these absent fits suddenly with the air of a diver who comes to the surface with a great treasure. He came to life at this moment, his eyes wide open, his manner alert; "Eh, it will be a fulfilment o' the prophecy o' Jeremiah, 'Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.' Eh, eh, out o' the north—the north—it would perhaps be meaning the Oa," he ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... morning. He had served my mass, and said his own in my little oratory; and he came down to breakfast, clean, alert, happy. I asked him how ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... him with a limp tongue lolling out between the ragged palings which stood him for teeth. In the middle of the Piazza was a fountain, and above the fountain a tall stone crucifix. Our friend mounted the steps of the cross in the alert way he had (like a little bird, the story says), and the wolf, after lapping apologetically in the basin, followed him up three steps at a time. Then with one arm round the shaft to steady himself, he made ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... with Yorkshire, as has been done, for Ireland once had a separate Parliament, and the Union was a matter of agreement, the outcome of which was that Mr. Childers's Commission found she was taxed three millions more than she should have been. The colonies are on the alert, with all the rather irritable uppishness of youth on the verge of manhood, and their younger generations are sure to take full advantage of any tactless conduct of the British Government. Such was Froude's view, and nothing has happened since his death to shake its inherent probability. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... make all that she can out of her husband. So I did my best first of all to straighten up John's appearance. I shifted the style of collar he was wearing to a tighter kind that I liked better, and I brushed his hair straight backward instead of forward, which gave him a much more alert look. Mother said that John needed waking up, and so we did all we could to wake him up. Mother came over to stay with me a good deal, and in the evenings we generally had a little music or ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... understands, but one who understands quickly. On the other hand, one who learns the same things, but who takes a longer time in so doing, say two years instead of one, is slow. Of a "quick" child, the people say that "nothing escapes him"; his attention is always on the alert, and he is ready to receive every kind of stimulus: as a sensitive scale will show the slightest variation in weight, so the sensitive brain will respond to the slightest appeal. It is Equally rapid in its associative processes: "He understands in a flash" ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... was evidently on the alert—would arouse him should danger be near, again fell asleep. He did not awake Harry and Reggy, who slept on, notwithstanding Bruce's barking and his conversation with Bendigo. The black roused ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... at once the swain recollected the snake, which was as slender, and supple, and quick, and sparkling as the girl who lay there on the hill-side, and wept and made fun at the same time and looked oddly alert ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... head. It seemed natural to her to do whatever might be wanted, and to act upon her own responsibility. Her self-confidence reached the heroic point. She knew that she was right, and she knew moreover that in this whole matter she alone was right. Therefore the necessity of keeping up, of keeping alert and vigilant, of holding in her hand the threads of all these varied complications was not disagreeable to her, though she fully felt its importance—nay, almost exaggerated it in her own mind if that could be. She felt the dangerous character of the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... had decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of being in disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came up to bed. The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely alert, no less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for and my fear ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... her husband, not quite understanding what Serge meant, but her mind was on the alert, and in an alarmed tone, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... over promoted the cause of liberty. Most frequently it has served as a pretext for reaction, or a red signal. In this instance—as afterwards in 1848—overt acts of violence made the powers of despotism more alert, and conduced with the half-hearted action of their adversaries to the suppression of the rising of 1820-21. Byron's sympathy with the movement seems to have been stimulated by his new associations. Theresa's brother, Count Pietro, an enthusiastic young soldier, having ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... sect? you ask me; I must be A member sure of some fraternity: Why no; I've taken no man's shilling; none Of all your fathers owns me for his son; Just where the weather drives me, I invite Myself to take up quarters for the night. Now, all alert, I cope with life's rough main, A loyal follower in true virtue's train: Anon, to Aristippus' camp I flit, And say, the world's for me, not ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... Violet was directly facing her now. Her eyes shone so fiercely, so unnaturally, bright that a queer little sensation of doubt pricked Olga for the first time, setting every nerve and every muscle on the alert for she knew not what. "You do know, Allegro! And so do I!" The full voice took a deeper note, it throbbed the words. "Do you think I haven't watched you, seen what was going on? Do you think it has all been ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods, and, much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow, and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming, mystified and attracted me, I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horse-hair and deer-hide snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The water-fowl, too—the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others—had flown, sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... at breakfast on the first of November, waiting for the postman, while the unconscious Mr. Gribble went on with his meal. The double-knocks down the road came nearer and nearer, and Mr. Gribble, wiping his mouth, sat upright with an air of alert and pleased interest. Rapid steps came to the front door, and ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... their former prosperity; but the progress of resettlement was slow and painful. Fortifications were built, old and young trained for soldiers, watch and ward kept night and day, scouts ranged the surrounding forests, and all were constantly on the alert. All hunting or fishing, all labor in forest or field, all journeying, was at the imminent risk of life or liberty. From the nearest swamp or thicket, from behind some fence, stump, or clump of brake, at any moment might appear ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... mid-winter, Andros was informed of the fears entertained at Court of a movement of the Prince of Orange, he issued a proclamation, commanding His Majesty's subjects in New England, and especially all officers, civil and military, to be on the alert, should any foreign fleet approach, to resist such landing or invasion as might be attempted. Not causelessly, even if unjustly, the Governor's object was understood to be to hold New England for King James, if possible, should the parent-country ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... functions are struck at the same time with impunity. In order to achieve maximum results, the attacks will need to be evaluated quickly in order to define previously unknown elements of the system or how the enemy perceives the impact on his system. Finally, the attacker must be alert as to the interaction of the functions as the effects of these Deep Strikes begin to take hold. In order to achieve desired levels of Shock and Awe, the attacker must know the current and projected effects of his strikes against elements of the enemy's residual system. ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... vagrant faculty, it had all the merits claimed for it. I certainly never hunted any game better worth my powder; and to a young man with rare holidays and long working hours, its value was enhanced by the fact that one might bring it down at any turn, if only one kept one's eye alert and one's hand on ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... the wondrous deep, And well do the billows their secrets keep, And sound should those savage old sailors sleep, If sleep they may after such a life; Where every dark passion, alert and aleap, Made ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... services—see him drawing his cart in Belgium, rounding up the sheep into the fold on the Yorkshire fells, tending the cattle by the highway, warning off the night prowler from the lonely homestead, always alert, always obedient, always the friend of man, be he never so friendless.... Shall we go for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... went in with them, and soon the same shouts which had been heard without were heard also within. The general, however, was on the alert, and as soon as the shouts arose inside the gens d'armes entered the church and arrested those who had caused the disturbance. The crowds tried to rescue them on their way to prison, but the general appeared ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the poor fisher folk who worked the southern fringe areas. What else could you expect from such types, who had never even learned to read in a thousand cycles. Nevertheless, as he patrolled the sunken rocks, he was alert, scanning the water on all sides constantly for the great shape he sought, his skin alert for the first strange vibration. By neglecting the broken bottom, brown with laminaria and kelp, he missed the great, mottled tentacle which plucked him off his torpedo ...
— Join Our Gang? • Sterling E. Lanier
... whose nervous twitches alone told of the surgings of hope and fear within. Katy was resting in a big chair near by, her wistful eyes fixed on Amy's little figure seen in the dim distance, her ears alert for ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... the stirrup, and he swung it idly. His left hand, in which he held the reins, rested lightly on the horn of his saddle, and his right gripped the cantle at his back. He hummed a ditty of the desert, but his gaze, keen and alert, continually sought the open stretches of trail above him, and at regular intervals flashed back along the ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... crimson: pupil deep blue-black. Tail slightly rounded. Remarkably strong canines, from which peculiarity it has obtained its native name of TAA, as it bites severely when taken, if the fisher be not on the alert. It is good to eat, but is not common. Caught by the hook ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... living up to Tess. Sometimes Missy couldn't help wishing that her chum were not quite so alert. Being all the while on the jump, mentally and physically, left you somewhat breathless and dizzy; then, too, it didn't leave you time to sample certain quieter yet thrilling enjoyments that came right to hand. For example, now and then, Missy secretly longed to spend a leisurely hour ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... deal with the most prosaic details of national income and expenditure, his eloquence rose to an unusual height and power. At the same time, he was a most vigilant guardian of the public purse, and he was incessantly on the alert to prevent the national wealth, which his finance had done so much to increase, from being squandered on unnecessary and unprofitable objects. This jealousy of foolish expenditure combined with his love of peace to make him very chary ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... room until her face had regained its natural look, but her door was always ajar, and Jane fancied she liked to hear Rebecca's quick, light step. Her mind was perfectly clear now, and, save that she could not move, she was most of the time quite free from pain, and alert in every nerve to all that was going on within or without the house. "Were the windfall apples being picked up for sauce; were the potatoes thick in the hills; was the corn tosselin' out; were they cuttin' the upper field; were ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... course of thought further, had not there occurred an incident which brought the conversation to a close. Looking up, the two saw approaching them across the lawn, evidently coming from the little railway station, and doubtless descended from this very train, the alert, quick-stepping figure of a man evidently a stranger to the place. Jim and Sarah Ann Bowles stepped to one side as he approached and lifted his hat with a ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... General, said to Mr. Brooks, rather mournfully, "It is about the worst thing I have seen since I have been down here." In further illustration of Hooker's confidence in himself, Mr. Brooks says: "One night, Hooker and I being alone in his hut, the General standing with his back to the fireplace, alert, handsome, full of courage and confidence, said laughingly, 'The President says you know about that letter he wrote me on taking command.' I acknowledged that the President had read it to me. The General seemed to think that the advice was well-meant, but unnecessary. Then he added, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... was ready, armed against fate, alert, watchful to ward off all that might harm or distress his eldest son. Peter spoke of their exodus from London, their sojourn in the country, told them anecdotes of big deals, and was, in his big, burly, shrewd way, amusing and less ruthlessly tactless than usual. He had long ago given up all ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... warning, in cases of emergency. The Puma of our northern forests, although by no means so terrible a foe as the Leopard, is still a blood-thirsty creature, and while he shuns the gaze of man with the utmost fear, he is nevertheless constantly on the alert to spring upon him unawares, either in an unguarded moment or during sleep. A hungry Puma, who excites suspicion by his stealthy prowling and ominous growl, may easily be led to his destruction at the muzzle of a gun, baited as we ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... they see you with her, they look knowing, and you see, to your horror, that the girl is blushing. Evidently she is under fire too. Still, you keep it up. She makes a better comrade than any of the men. You feel that you are out of mischief when you are with her. She keeps you alert. You never are bored, but really you are not as fond of her as you were of your college chum even. She treats you a trifle, just a trifle, differently from all the other men. This goes to your head. You begin ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... sat about the long tables had kindly eyes. The stamp of a clean life of effort was upon them, and there was a certain lithe gracefulness in the unconscious poses of the straight-limbed men. There was no sign of limp slovenliness about them. Even in their relaxation they were intent and alert, and, as she watched them, Laura realized something of their restless activity and daring optimism. They believe in anything that is good enough in that country, and are in consequence cheerfully ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... plate-glass into which a man might well have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... curious to know whether Alvin and Mike had noticed anything of the by-play. The Irish lad for the time devoted himself to satisfying his vigorous hunger and cared for naught else. The same was to be said of the Captain. Chester remained on the alert. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... know what the lure must be when a busy man, an active man, an alert man, a man saturated with the nervous spirit of American commercial life, sits down in one of the seats overlooking the Lake, or spreads out his full length upon the grass, or on the beds of Sierran moss, which ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... London club-room. It is an early hour and the dons of the gay metropolis have not yet put in an appearance. The handsomely-furnished rooms are almost silent while the endless array of porters and waiters are on the alert, and cooks are busy in getting up the various epicurean compounds for which they are noted and to which the gay votaries of these resorts are ever ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... the Christ), as the Hermit is called. Here, indeed, is an up-to-date hermit, not an antique troglodyte. Lean and lathy, he is, but not hungry-looking; quick of eye and gesture; quick of step, too. He seems always on the alert, as if surrounded continually with spirits. He is young, withal, or keeps so, at least, through the grace and ministration of Allah and the Virgin. His long unkempt hair and beard are innocent of a single white line. And his health? "Through my five and twenty years of seclusion," ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... love, suffering continual frustration from the evaporation of emotional interest that defies their own needs; the many types of efficient workers, alert, hard, self-satisfied, not wholly cynical, yet with a touch of something that borders on cynicism, submitting almost with a secret repugnance to the mysterious but supreme bond which holds the sexes miserably together; and the ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... nocturnal habitues had slunk away, and the day's trade had not yet begun. Higgins, drawn and haggard beneath his drunken flush, was babbling incessantly; Locke, as usual, sat facing the entrance, his eyes watchful, his countenance alert. In spite of the fact that he had constantly plied his companion with liquor in the hope of stilling his tongue, Higgins seemed incapable of silence, and kept breaking forth into loud, garbled recitals of the scene at Padden's, which caused the Missourian to shiver with apprehension. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator. But at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared. Graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... that Claire's body could be nagged into going on any longer. Her muscles were relaxed, her nerves frayed. But the moment the Gomez started, she discovered that magic change which every long-distance motorist knows. Instantly she was alert, seemingly able to drive forever. The pilot's instinct ruled her; gave her tireless eyes and sturdy hands. Surely she had never been weary; never would be, so long as it was hers to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... clerks across the way had thought of something humorous and was leaning forward to tell his vis-a-vis. It had been so vital that he had laid his pen down to tell it. He was talking with half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his head: his white pique tie had slipped away from a bright brass ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... her attributes were so generous, her manner unconquerably gracious, her movements indolently active, her face so candid that you must swear her every thought lived always in the open. Yet, with it all, she was a wild thing, alert, suspicious of the lasso, nosing it in every man's hand, more curious about it than about aught else in the world; her quivering delight was to see it cast for her, her game to elude it; so mettlesome was she that she loved it to be cast fair that she might escape as it was closing round ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... calm and simple. A note he makes in one of his diaries amusingly illustrates the simple side of his character. He is dining with the Emperor, when the Emperor, catching the Prince's eye, which we may be sure was on the alert to gather up any of the royal beams that might come his way, raises his glass in sign of amity. "I felt so overcome," notes the Prince, "that I almost ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... feat that required a steady nerve, a quick eye, and alert action, for the ice was constantly rising and falling upon the swell. Now and again there were gaps of several yards, where the ice had been ground into pieces so small that none would have borne his weight. He ran rapidly over these gaps, touching the ice as lightly as possible and not ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... her corner of the chesterfield and took up her knitting. He sat down, too, by her, all at once alert, surveying the flying movements of her dear hands; hands as tender and white ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... the two men paused at the door of the inner room, that the first wore a military fatigue-cap, and his alert carriage as he threw open his cape-coat indicated the bearing of an American army officer. He was of medium height, and his features and eyes implied that the storms and winds of the plains and mountains were familiar friends. This was Park Stanley, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... chair; the dog, who had manifested a readiness to respond to the name of Sailor, leaped up and rushed to the bulwarks, where he reared himself upon his hind legs, emitting a succession of deep, alert barks; and the crew forward shambled over to the port ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... great relief to Margaret to carry her perplexities to Aunt Faith and talk them over. Mrs. Cheriton's mind and sympathies were as quick and alert as if she were still a young woman, instead of being near the rounding of the completed century. She listened with kindly interest, and her wise and tender words cleared away many of the cobwebs of anxiety ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... (whether by design or accident cannot be stated) had sped continually in the direction of New Boston, and was dashing down toward that point. The pioneers were on the alert, and the instant they could distinguish pursuers from pursued, they opened on the former, with the result of tumbling several from the backs of their steeds. This so disorganized the hot pursuit that ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... necks, where the no more than grateful coolness of the wafer gave my senses a delicious refreshment from the sultriness of the season, and made more alive, more happy in myself, and, in course, more alert, and open to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Kennedy, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of The Ladies' Home Journal, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it. She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times, under a picture of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription—a wood-pulp ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... listening to the dark sea, in its gentlest mood, caressing the beach: the wind flowed past them steadily, like a soft current, stirring the long fronds into purring contact. A sharp challenge from an alert native sentry rang clear, followed by the crunching sound of a heavy iron gate opening and closing with grating finality. The hourly call was sounded by a guard, who, unseen by them, paced the main entrance to the inclosure: "All's Well." It sounded six times from ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... crowded, requested the proprietors to close. This they did without demur, realizing that at a time of such peculiar danger, when no one knew what had happened, what was happening, or where the next outbreak might come, it was necessary for everybody to be on the alert. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and fine, and encouraged thereby, every man was keenly on the alert to try and sight one of the Spaniard's halting-places; but it was long before such an opening was found, and then when it was hailed with delight as their resting-place at the end of that day's work, it was forced upon them that they had never ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... began to take notice, to record and to classify the facts of nature. We may count this the second visible step in his great progress. Never again shall we find him in a childish attitude of idle wonder. Always is his brain alert, striving to understand, self-conscious of its own power ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... will not keep him waiting longer than I can avoid:" and muttering a resumption of his last sentence, on went the lawyer's indefatigable pen; and away flew the merry little Busy Bee, bounding off with her droll, tripping, elastic, short-stepped run, which suited so well with her little alert figure, and her dress, a small plain black velvet bonnet, a tight black velvet "jacket," as she called it, and a brown silk dress, with narrow yellow stripes (chosen chiefly in joke, because it was the colour of a bee), ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... slim girlish figure of long soft curves, never seen it in a face of dewy freshness that could melt to the tenderest pity. She was like flint, and yet she could give herself with a passionate tenderness to those she loved. He had seen animals guard their young with that same alert eager abandon. His conviction was that she would gladly die for her father if it were necessary. As he looked at her with hard unchanging eyes, his blood quickened to a fierce joy in her it had known ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... as to what such a movement as this portends. The judges who have shown themselves able and willing effectively to check the dishonest activity of the very rich man who works iniquity by the mismanagement of corporations, who have shown themselves alert to do justice to the wageworker, and sympathetic with the needs of the mass of our people, so that the dweller in the tenement houses, the man who practices a dangerous trade, the man who is crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel that their needs are understood ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... perfect.'' And then as if to emphasize it all, with the exception that proves the rule, he detailed one slight case where he thought my father was at fault,—-a detail so slight that I now forget what it is. In reading the Log kept by the discharged mate, Amerzeen, on the return trip in the Alert, I find that every incident there recorded, from running aground at the start at San Diego Harbor, through the perilous icebergs round the Horn, the St. Elmo's fire, the scurvy of the crew and the small matters ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... accordingly they 116 keep a large fire all night to deter the lions and other wild beasts from approaching. About two hours after midnight, my grey horse, who was an old campaigner, neighed and awoke us; this gave the alarm, and my people were presently on the alert, and perceived two men approaching our tents, crawling naked along the ground, which was of the same colour with their bodies. We did not wish to take them, fearing that the people of the Douar would espouse the cause of their countrymen, but my ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... feeding of the horses as if he were in his own stable on the Rappahannock. It takes all sorts of men to make a world, but I thought at the time that for this business the steel nerves of the Borderer were worth many quicker brains and more alert spirits. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... in their places, alert in poised expectation, the attention of the whole field concentrating upon the central figure of the pitcher at whom the young girl also looked. A slim, straight statue he stood during a full moment, then slowly raised his arms above his head in a gesture of supple grace and ease. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... this woodland world; the strange and lovely flowers we saw; the curious people we met, black and white, and the varieties of dialect which caught our ear; the details of our charming gypsy life, ashore and afloat, during which we were conscious of the red blood tingling through our veins, and, alert to the whisperings of Nature, were careless of the workaday world, so far away,—simply ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... every day afterward, from four to six, in the black silk, the mantilla, and the white straw. When Aunt Eliza went she was so on the alert for the Uxbridge family carriage that she could have had little enjoyment of the ride. Rocks never were a passion with her, she said, nor promontories, chasms, or sand. She came to Newport to be washed with salt-water; when she had washed ...
— Lemorne Versus Huell • Elizabeth Drew Stoddard
... and Jane, to Fred and Frank, To Theodore and Mary, To Willie and to Reginald, To Louis, Sue and Gary; To sturdy boys and merry girls, And all the dear young people Who live in towns, or live on farms, Or dwell near spire or steeple; To boys who work, and boys who play, Eager, alert and ready, To girls who meet each happy day With faces sweet and steady; To dearest comrades, one and all, To Harry, Florrie, Kate, To children small, and children tall, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... speed, and the thread is wound evenly upon it. The operator must watch for broken threads, retie them, replace the empty bobbins by full ones and see that the empty ones are gathered up uninjured. She—the operator is usually a girl or woman—must be alert and active, and ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... to make my compliments to General Franchet d'Esperay. He was a splendid person—as alert as a steel lance. He demanded ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... you draw a salary for?" He was immediately on the alert, but her eyes were candid and unsuspicious. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... absence of his master, applied himself diligently to study, but he was unable to do his task. This much troubled him; and the devil, ever on the alert, met him in the likeness of a man, and said, "My son, what has ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... went on a trot to the residential part of the town. That same despatch had gone thundering down the whole valley. Johnstown heard the news and so did Conemaugh. No one believed it. It was what they called "a chestnut." But the cry had put the people a little on the alert. One hour after the despatch came the first warning note of the disaster. Mr. Nunamaker tells me that it took really more than that time for the head of the leaping cataract to travel the twenty-three miles. If that is so the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... was not reproaching herself for the engagement, she affected the abject humility of a slave whom he had bought for his pleasure. Perhaps she was amusing herself with a new emotion, perhaps she wanted to keep him alert and suspended, perhaps she enjoyed the vision of herself torn between the two men who wanted her more than anything in the world. . ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... art, a member of the body of which it is your present thought to become; for, be assured, there will be suffering, which will dog your progress; aye, and the greater your talent, so much more will be jealousy of it, from those, at least, so on the alert to decry that which they cannot create; so much more will be contumely; so much more will be innuendoes which can not be met openly, as they certainly will not be in the slimy words and manner of utterance of bitter heartlessness, that is to say, if you be made of that stuff which presents ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... consideration to the conductor. While the train rumbled away in the distance, he stood in the shadow of a large pine tree by the track and looked about to get his bearings. Suddenly he heard not far from him the faint, weird cry of an owl. Instantly he was on the alert; for there was something familiar in the melancholy sound. It took him back to a night in Tarrytown, when he had cast a woman into the cemetery, and he remembered that she had said she lived in Ithaca. Superstition sent him deeper into the shadow for a moment; but he recovered himself and, shaking ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... preceded, followed, and flanked by destroyers; at night every glimmer of light eclipsed, the ships speeding ahead in perfect blackness, each inch of the sea swept by watchful eyes to discover the telltale ripple of a periscope or the trail of a torpedo, gun crews on the alert, depth bombs ready. Nor was the crossing anything like a vacation yachting cruise for the doughboys transported, packed as they were like sardines two and three decks below the waterline, brought up in shifts to catch a brief taste of fresh air, assailed at once by homesickness, seasickness, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... perpendicular walls, and make of it a maddened torrent wilder than the rapids of Niagara. All honor, then, to Powell and his comrades who braved not alone the actual dangers thus described, but stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... one of his cousins were in the room, but his aunt, who was quite on the alert, soon got them out of it, and Frank and ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... of the Regency days. At any rate, after a hard morning's work on her new book she felt that her mind needed cooling, and found that the rush of air against her face effected this satisfactorily. The greater the rush, the quicker the cooling. However, as the alert inhabitants of Manhattan Island, a hardy race trained from infancy to dodge taxicabs and ambulance wagons, had always removed themselves from her path with their usual agility, she had never yet had ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... previous evening a rumor had circulated that the British general had stormed Ciudad Rodrigo, and might therefore be already hastening in his seven-league boots, toward Badajoz. The French were consequently more than ever on the alert, and keen eyes watched with sharpened eagerness for indications of sympathy or correspondence between the citizens and the advancing army. I jumped up as soon as the sergeant-major had disappeared, and was about to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... from him of Finisterra," replied Antonio. "This is a young Senorito, lately arrived from Madrid. He is not even a Gallegan. He is a mighty liberal, and it is owing chiefly to his orders that we have lately been so much on the alert. It is said that the Carlists are meditating a descent on these parts of Galicia. Let them only come to Finisterra, we are liberals there to a man, and the old valiente is ready to play the same part as in the time of the French. But, as I was telling you before, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... when his alert ear caught a sound from without, close at hand. He only crowded a little further back into the corner, that the light from the broken-in entrance, providing it was discovered and crushed, should not ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... attentive to the study of the Vedas, that are devoted to the service of their preceptors, that are observant of penances and excellent vows, that are firm in truth, that never utter anything that smacks of disobedience or enmity to their preceptors, that are always alert, and ever ready in service of seniors and preceptors,—they repair, O great Rishi, to such regions, they that are pure (of mind and body), that are endued with cleansed souls, that are of restrained ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bitterness; Austen Chamberlain with a minority following was fighting Walter Long to lead the Tories and on this troublesome sea Sir Max Aitken's barque bobbed up and down with the skipper's eyes keenly alert. He saw the possibilities in Bonar Law. When Chamberlain and Long created a deadlock, Beaverbrook advocated Bonar Law as leader of the Tory Party. To make his voice heard more distinctly he purchased the Daily Express and backed his candidate with a powerful but (then) not very profitable newspaper. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... aware of a faint, strange sound. It was a sound he had been endeavoring subconsciously to place during the period of his musing; he had almost identified it as his heart-beats. Now, alert and listening, he placed it. It was a tapping on the other side of the wall he leaned against, a light tap-tap-tap. It ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... is as ingeniously complicated as ever, the suspense as skilfully maintained; the characters seem to us as real as those in "Evelina," or "Cecilia," or in the "Diary" itself; the alternate pathos and satire of the book keep our attention ever on the alert. That it failed to win the suffrages of the public was certainly due to no demerit in the work. Many causes may have conspired against it. The public taste had long been debauched by novels of that nightmare school in which Mrs ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... the rhinoceros, with a scarcely perceptible movement, began to edge stealthily round in an apparent endeavour to work himself into position on his enemy's broadside. The elephant, however, was fully on the alert, and followed his adversary's movement with a corresponding turn of his own body, keeping the rhinoceros still full in front of him. The movements of the two animals gradually quickened, but it ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... this effect on the brilliant future in reserve for him, David by the help of his check-string kept himself on the alert to seize the time of earliest dawn for his rising and departure. His brothers, of course, were early risers, but he should anticipate them by at least an hour and a half, and the little room which he had to himself as only an occasional visitor, had its window over ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... informed by urgent telegrams. I am in hopes that Jelaladin's report will turn out to be greatly exaggerated, if not untrue. As, however, his intelligence is sure to spread and cause a certain amount of excitement, warn General Massy and Mr. Christie (the Political Officer in Kuram) to be on the alert.'] ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... to be played up in the first line of the introduction. It would be impossible to enumerate all the unexpected things that might happen during a fire. It is this element of unexpected possibilities that makes the reporting of fires interesting, and an alert reporter is ever on the lookout for a new and unusual development in the fire to be used as the feature of his story. Here are the leads of a few fire stories clipped from the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... echo wildly ringing Through our country far and wide! Thousands leaving home and springing Into the resistless tide. Now our nation's roused from sleeping, All alert and wide awake. O, there's no such thing as keeping Folks asleep when gold's the stake! Old Oregon We'll look not on; Ho, for mines of wealth untold! We'll take our way, Without delay, In search of gold—of glittering gold! Here we go, amid the ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... is my fate. I seek not to shun it. I have walked into odium with every sense alert, fully conscious of every ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... into Chagford alone. The cottage shadows fell velvety black in a shining silence; their thatches were streaked, their slates meshed with silver; their whitewashed walls looked strangely awake and alert and surrounded the woman with a sort of blind, hushed stare. One solitary patch of light peered like a weary eye from that side of the street which lay in shadow, and Chris, passing through the unbolted cottage door, walked up the narrow passage ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... from common culprits, and to give this poor external evidence of his rank, with a hope that it might tell, to a certain extent at least, upon the feeling of the jury. When placed in the dock, a general buzz and bustle agitated the whole court His friends became alert, and whispered to each other with much earnestness, and a vast number of them bowed to him, and shook hands with him, and advised him to be cool, and keep up his spirits. His appearance, however, was any thing but firm; his ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... or so later, Joe surmised from the Frenchman's actions that they were approaching their destination. He seemed on the alert, and was constantly peering into the darkness ahead as though he expected to see something at any moment. Joe looked very hard, ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... far as it went, but the interest was affected by the young man's not being Chad. Strether wondered at first if he were perhaps Chad altered, and then saw that this was asking too much of alteration. The young man was light bright and alert—with an air too pleasant to have been arrived at by patching. Strether had conceived Chad as patched, but not beyond recognition. He was in presence, he felt, of amendments enough as they stood; it was a ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... perplexed admiration, shading his eyes with his hand. In her dinner dress she looked even younger than in street clothes, and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency, she seemed to him strangely alert and vibrating, as if in her, too, there were something never altogether at rest. He felt that he knew pretty much what she demanded in people and what she demanded from life, and he wondered how she squared Bartley. ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... influence a possible buyer of your best capabilities. You are continually within sight and hearing of people whose impressions of you might affect your chances to succeed in life. Therefore always be alert to grasp every ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... stopping place, were like the insects, always insolent, intrusive and gave her little rest. The cynicism prevailing among the convicts and their overseers was such that every woman, especially the young women, had to be on the alert. Maslova was particularly subject to these attacks because of her attractive looks and her well-known past. This condition of constant dread and struggle was very burdensome to her. The firm repulse ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... getting liberty by being ill and going south VIA the sickbed. It is not the old free-born bird that gets thus to freedom; but I know not what manacled and hide-bound spirit, incapable of pleasure, the clay of a man. Go south! Why, I saw more beauty with my eyes healthfully alert to see in two wet windy February afternoons in Scotland than I can see in my beautiful olive gardens and grey hills in a whole week in my low and lost estate, as the Shorter Catechism puts it somewhere. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... right-hand man was "Stump," the collie, so named because he had no tail worth mentioning, but otherwise in full possession of his faculties. Stump was newly broken to his official duties and authority sat heavily on him. Keenly alert, he flew hither and thither, first after one straying member of the herd, then another, barking an early morning roll-call as he went. Two other male Brobdingnags came from some sequestered spot in the landscape and joined ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... vividness of my summers in the Adirondacks with Emerson. The last sight I had of him was when, on his voyage to Egypt, he came to see me at my home in London, aged and showing the decay of age, but as alert and interrogative as ever with his insatiate intellectual activity. And as I look back from the distance of years to the days when we questioned together, he rises above all his contemporaries as ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... stated, have built their nests and are rearing their young at the very point of the Tower Bridge bascules. The S.P.C.A., always alert, is presumably moving in the matter with a view to the bridge being closed until the little family is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... the alert, darting out of its hiding place, and slipping noiselessly up the stairs as quietly as the shadow it imitated; pausing to listen with anxious mien, stepping as a cloud might have stepped with no creak of stairway or sound ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... very strange about the crowd. Everyone was looking towards the market-place, and everyone's face was upturned as if they were watching a flight of birds. The square was empty, and no one attempted to advance further into it; nay, most stood in an alert attitude, as if prepared to run the other way. Yet all remained spellbound, looking up, with their heads turned towards the market-place, over which watched the minster church. There was no shouting, nor laughter, nor chatter; only the agitated murmur ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... gone from Harvard's attack, the Crimson made but a scant yard in two downs; then the little Broadhurst threw a long forward pass. The play was well screened; but an alert son of Yale, keenly on the job, managed to intercept the ball. He was ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... evening. King Edward was awake all night with anxiety, expecting every moment that Philip would come suddenly upon him. He rose at midnight, and ordered the trumpets to sound in order to arouse the men. The officers were all on the alert, the young prince among them. All was movement and bustle in the camp. As soon as the day dawned they commenced their march, Gobin leading the way. He was well guarded. They were all ready to cut him to pieces if he should fail to lead them to the ford which he had promised. But he found the ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Roanoke river. During the long dark nights the Valley City did not anchor, for it was rumored that the Confederate ram Albemarle might come down any night, and especially a very dark night under the cover of the darkness, so that the Valley City must be constantly on the alert. If the Albemarle did make her appearance at the mouth of the Roanoke river, the Valley City was to fire one gun as a signal to the fleet, which was anchored six miles farther down the Albemarle Sound, and then steam ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... was a stand-up fight between the man of facts and the man of letters. Smedley was solid and imperturbable; he stood firm on his facts, and defended himself with figures. Tyson, a master of literary strategy, was alert and ubiquitous. Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued him with genial irony. When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured him on with some artful feint; when ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... edge of the river's brink, seeking a place to cross. My mind was wondrously alert. At my right the dawn was lighting the sky. Behind me and at my left, I could hear the well-known sounds of a moving army—an army which had been my pride and now must be my enemy. How often had I followed the red flag! How I had raised my ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... them a military direction, for he had the air and franchise of an old French soldier. The plot had been betrayed; some were already arrested, and some had taken refuge in flight. The town was tranquil, but the guards were strengthened, and the popular party was actively on the alert. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sight-seeing had become for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers—as to most other travellers at times—to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish the duty of alert observation, forget what was passing around them, and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who had been ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... a fair informant, seldom offering more information than was asked for and clearly enjoying the business of making a white man work for every scrap of information. He was also given to dropping subtle hints and waiting with stolid indifference to see if I had been alert. He did not deny his shamanistic practices but was less than willing to discuss them ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... history but it may be fondly spoken by parents, sisters, brothers, schoolmates, friends. In a thousand gracious ways she can make the hours, days and years good and golden for her own precious self and for all who know her. She must be thoughtful and intelligently alert to the opportunities lying all about her ready to be fashioned into shining deeds. She must know that she is a precious craft on the sea of life and that she must not be permitted to drift from the harbor of youth and of home without a ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... guards in the posts are to be continued as large as at any time, & be very vigilant & alert. All the Regts are to lie on their arms this night & be ready to turn out at the shortest notice, as it is not improbable we may be speedily attacked. Gen. Wadsworth to send an adjutant to Head Quarters tomorrow ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... to the woman who rides might be made the text for a long sermon; but long sermons are never popular; therefore, it may be better to state briefly that he must always be on the alert to assist his fair companion in every way in his power—he must be clever enough to repair any slight damage to her machine which may occur en route, he must assist her in mounting and dismounting, pick her up if she has a tumble, and ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... long while I lay there, full in the heat of the fire, half dozing, then sleeping, then suddenly alert, only to look about me to see the Countess with eyes closed, motionless in her arm-chair, only to hear the muffled thunder of ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... down their weapons and disperse. The disarmament proceeded quietly till one of the company-leaders refused to part with a bombard, the new invention, of which he was very proud. A trumpeter, seeing the man hesitate, sounded a warning, and the containing troops stood on the alert. Readiness led to action. Suddenly they fell on the helpless horde, for whom there was no safety but in flight. A thousand were massacred before Nassau and his confederates could ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... immediately after it she was taken as a treat to see the Borghese Gardens by her uncle and aunt! It behooved her not to be tired by more sightseeing, since her betrothed would arrive when they returned for tea, and would expect her to be bright and on the alert to please him, Aunt Caroline felt. As for Stella, as that moment approached it seemed to her that the end of ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... river watched them idly, waiting where he was, puffing slowly at his pipe, until they drew almost level with him. Then he stiffened suddenly, and an alert ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... grips of his guns. And Bedloe saw that Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right, with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense. And he remembered the lighting quickness ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... enough for everything to be still before him, and he possessed the poor man's alert imagination; the great world and the romance of life were the motives that drew him through the void, that peculiar music of life which is never silent, but murmurs to the reckless and the careful alike. Of the world he knew well enough that it was something incomprehensibly vast—something ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of the green leaf, which must put forth in the spring, bringing bud and flower and fruit after it. Yet, I repeat, Sarah Burns was unconscious, actually and absolutely unconscious. Do not suppose she cared specially about Hiram Meeker. She did not. Her nature only was on the alert, not she. Hiram, all things considered, was the most agreeable man she had met, and why should she not be attracted by him—to an extent? I say attracted: I do not mean anything else. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he has within himself and about him for self-development and improvement. A child's vocabulary increases rapidly through new experiences. A mature person can create new surroundings. He can deliberately widen his horizon either by reading or association. The child is mentally alert. A man can keep himself intellectually alert. A child delights in his use of his powers of expression. A man can easily make his intercourse a source of delight to himself and to all with whom he comes in contact. A child's imagination is kept stimulated ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... under the Emir Fakreddin, were on the alert; and while a bell, that had remained in the great mosque of Damietta ever since John de Brienne seized the city in 1217, tolled loudly to warn the inhabitants of the danger, the Moslem warriors got under arms, and with cavalry and infantry occupied the whole of that part ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... cascade of exquisite turquoise blue, melting away at the sides into iridescent opal. Sometimes a great cloud of steam from the pit below passes across the mouth of the crucible, and then the torrent of molten steel takes on all the colours of the rainbow, and the great shed, with its alert, swiftly moving figures, is suffused with ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... hands we have fallen. How keen he is, how alert, how well prepared! By Jove, if he does not kill any one, and spares the property of those who are so terrified, he will be in high favor. I talk with the tradesmen and farmers. They care for nothing but their lands, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... broken English was set to music for me, and the very silences were eloquent of thrill. Early I discovered that I had not appreciated fully her mental powers, on account of a habit she had of falling into a shy silence when several were present. She had a nimble wit, an alert fancy, and a zest for life as earnest as it was refreshing. A score of times that day she was out of the shabby chaise to pick the wild flowers or to chat with the children by the wayside. The memory of her warm friendliness to me stands out the more clear contrasted with the ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the sheet across the room he half turned in his chair, so that the yellow light fell across his face. Fidget, the pup, always alert for action, was on her feet in a moment, eager to lead the way to the door and whatever adventure might lie outside. But Grant did not leave his chair, and, finding all her tail-waving of no avail, she presently settled down again by the stove, ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... only about two hundred yards now intervened between the vessel and the rocky shore. He proceeded to lash a spar across the two water barrels, which he emptied and bunged up, and then stood ready to jump overboard with them, when the vessel struck. I also was on the alert with my coil of rope, following the vessel as she drifted slowly along the shore, till she neared a spur of cliff, which runs out near the watch-house, close to the homestead, and here she came in full contact with a mass ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... the core of a question, and drove his points well home. And yet he did not seem to be in the field best adapted for his peculiar gifts. He was too judicial, too reluctant to put a good face upon a bad cause, not enough of a rhetorician, and not sufficiently alert in changing front, or able to handle topics with the lightness of touch suitable to the peculiar tastes of a parliamentary Committee. Thus, though he invariably commanded respect, he failed to show the ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... imperative need of a strong ally if his mercantile attack on England were to have even a chance of success. With Austria he had employed all the diplomatic arts of Talleyrand and Andreossy to no avail: the Polish campaign had made Francis alert, that of Russia was reviving the bellicose spirit of the Austrian army. Negotiation with Frederick William had failed because based on the concept of a new Prussia eastward of the Elbe, a menace alike to Russia and Austria, and a ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Every sense alert the three young soldiers proceeded slowly. Soon they came to the spot where the passage led off to the left. Jacques peered cautiously around the corner and quickly drew back ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... but I never knew him to kick about it before. We're a fair field for missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us—at least, some of us are." He glanced up as Carroll came back from out of the lighted room with an alert, brisk step. His manner ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... or more, When suddenly I looked up at a star, And then, a thought I could not fail to heed, From the soul's awful region unexplored, Rushed, crying, 'Back! Go back!' And back I went, As hastily as if it were a thing Of life or death. I did not stop to pull The door-bell, but sprang up alert and still To the piazza of the open window, Drew back a blind inaudibly, looked in, And through the waving muslin curtain, saw— Well, she was seated in a young man's lap, Her ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... was a moderate-sized man, indeed almost small, (reminded me of old Booth, the great actor, and my favorite of those and preceding days,) well advanced in years, but alert, with mild blue or gray eyes, and good presence and voice. Soon as he open'd his mouth I ceas'd to pay any attention to church or audience, or pictures or lights and shades; a far more potent charm entirely sway'd me. In the course of the sermon, (there was no sign ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... one problem—closely affecting Oliver's disappearance. The other had nothing to do with Oliver's disappearance—nevertheless, it interested Richard Copplestone. He was a young man of quick perception and accurate observation, and his alert eyes had seen that the Squire of Scarhaven occupied a position suggestive of power and wealth. The house which stood beneath the old Keep was one of size and importance, the sort of place which could only be kept up by a rich man—Copplestone's ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... the same instant Beaumaroy's right hand shot out from his pocket towards the sideboard, as though to snatch up something from it. Then he drew the hand as swiftly back again; but his eyes watched Mary's with an alert and suspicious gaze. That was for a second only; then his face resumed its amused and nonchalant expression. But the movement of the hand and the look of the eyes had not escaped Mary's attention; her voice betrayed ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... fore. It is they who have carried on the banner of idealism which Germany herself uplifted when she was a small people or a group of small peoples. It is they who have really had prosperous, healthy, independent, and alert populations. How much more interesting, we may say, would Europe be under the variety of such a regime than under the monotonous bureaucracy and officialism of any Great Power! And to some such scheme we must adhere. It would mean, of ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... small stature and unimpressive appearance, he was somewhat lame from birth, a fact which was used as an argument against his succession, an oracle having warned Sparta against a "lame reign.'' He was a successful leader in guerilla warfare, alert and quick, yet cautious—a man, moreover, whose personal bravery was unquestioned. As a statesman he won himself both enthusiastic adherents and bitter enemies, but of his patriotism there can be no doubt. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that, According to Isidore (Etym. x), a man is said to be solicitous through being shrewd (solers) and alert (citus), in so far as a man through a certain shrewdness of mind is on the alert to do whatever has to be done. Now this belongs to prudence, whose chief act is a command about what has been already counselled ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... rousing greater desire in such as Clare and Tommy. Not one opportunity of appropriation presented itself, else it would have gone ill with Tommy, now that the eyes and ears of his guardian were on the alert. For Clare thought of him now as a little thievish pup, for whose conduct, manners, and education he ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... steal a couple of cigars?" echoed Garrison, keenly alert to the vital significance of this new evidence. "Did he take ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... until well after noon, but as usual his awakening was instantaneous, that is, all his faculties were keenly alert at once. He glanced down the valley and saw the buffalo and deer feeding, and the great chorus of birds was going on. The shiftless one, leaning against his bank of leaves, his rifle on his knee, was regarding the valley with ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and anxiety, working many plans in his mind, while devising by what means or contrivances he could conduct his soldiers who were accustomed to a cold climate through a country parched up with heat; or how he could catch an enemy always on the alert and appearing when least expected, and who relied more on surprises and ambuscades than ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... was rushing through the drawing-room. At the French windows she caught sight of him, walking up and down in his usual quick, alert manner, now smelling flowers, now staring up into the trees, now scrutinizing the upper windows of the house. She drew back, waited until she had got her breath and had composed her features. Then, with the long ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... librettos, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable articles. I wish I knew what to say about the man himself, his unwearying goodness, his loyalty, his scrupulousness, his good humor, his originality, his continual common sense, and his intellect, alert to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... ground, and not realizing the danger of delay in such a case. But if you had brought the document to me, you would have found me by far your best customer. You would have convinced me quite as effectually as you have done now that you are a very alert young woman, and I certainly would have been willing to give you four or five times as much as the Graphite will be able ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... reaction, of eager vigorous young minds, where the instructor is the agency of interpretation and the inspiration! To conduct such an exercise with from thirty to fifty bright college students and keep them on the alert is no lazy man's task. It requires brains and skill, whereas anybody can do the other thing! President Foster is correct in saying, "There should be fewer lectures ... the easiest of ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... mingling that day with the crowd of other guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... under the Sherman Act to restrain the great packers from continuing their alleged combination. A temporary injunction was granted. The slow machinery of chancery bade fair to work out a decree, but long before it was on record, alert spirits among the packing firms evolved a new plan not obnoxious to decrees, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... is one thing common to all the newly arrived in France, be they Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Knights of Columbus workers, Red Cross men, or just the common garden variety of "investigators," and that is that for about two weeks they are alert to hear the bloodiest, most drippy, and desolate-with-danger stories that they can hear, for the high and holy purpose of writing back home to their favorite paper, or to their wives or sweethearts, of how near they were to getting killed; of how the bombs fell just a few minutes ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... nervous spider monkeys of the tangled tree branches alongshore—all these he watched quietly as the boat forged on. And the sinister Francisco, watching him in turn, and the paddlers throwing occasional glances his way, came to regard him as the only alert member of ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... abandon all attempts to go to sleep without seeing Mamma, and had decided to kiss her at all costs, even with the certainty of being in disgrace with her for long afterwards, when she herself came up to bed. The tranquillity which followed my anguish made me extremely alert, no less than my sense of expectation, my thirst for ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... had always been drawn to Stepan, from a couple of terms at Oxford before the Russian was sent down for a mad freak, and did not return. He was such a mixture of idealism and brutal commonsense, a brain so alert and the warm heart of a generous child—capable of every frenzy and of every sacrifice. They had planned great things for their afterlives before the one joined his regiment, and learned discipline, and the other wandered over many lands—and as they sat there in the Cafe de Paris, the ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... when the veteran chambermaid was awakened by the sound of crackling wood and the smell of stifling smoke. To spring out of bed was the work of a moment, the aged limbs obedient to her call; then all her faculties alert, she thrust her hand into a hidden recess of the mattress, and clutching a bulky package from its depths, made her way out into the corridor, where the smoke was still thicker, on down the stairs from the servants' dormitory to the floor below. Staggering to the manager's ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... to Reginald, To Louis, Sue and Gary; To sturdy boys and merry girls, And all the dear young people Who live in towns, or live on farms, Or dwell near spire or steeple; To boys who work, and boys who play, Eager, alert and ready, To girls who meet each happy day With faces sweet and steady; To dearest comrades, one and all, To Harry, Florrie, Kate, To children small, and children tall, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... roar his orders in every direction. His object was to put the yacht around so that he could get out of the course of the Dunkery Beacon and pass her in the opposite direction to which she was going, but nobody on board seemed to be sufficiently alive to the threatening situation, or to be alert enough to do what was ordered at the very instant of command; and Burke, excited to the highest pitch, began to swear after a fashion entirely unknown to the two ladies and the members of the Synod. His cursing and swearing was of such a cyclonic and all-pervading character ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... They are, in spite of their clumsy build, as quick and active as polo ponies, and are the only beasts I know of capable of leaping into full speed ahead from a recumbent position. In thorn scrub they are the worst, for there, no matter how alert the traveller may hold himself, he is likely to come around a bush smack on one. And a dozen times a day the throat-stopping, abrupt crash and smash to right or left brings him up all standing, his heart racing, the blood pounding through his veins. It is jumpy work, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... sure that the weedy-looking man with the alert face was really pursuing me. When I went faster, he went faster too; when I gave him a chance to pass me, he kept close at my heels, and appeared to be keenly watching the style of my ankle-action. I gathered ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... sudden he was awake, his eyes staring into the dark, his whole body nervously, acutely, on the alert. He had heard a cry—of a nightjar—but so strange and eerie that it made him hold ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... his awful thirst, so Sharon tries To purchase happiness that age denies; Obtains the shadow, but the substance goes, And hugs the thorn, but cannot keep the rose; For Dead Sea fruits bids prodigally, eats, And then, with tardy reformation—cheats. Alert his faculties as three score years And four score vices will permit, he nears— Dicing with Death—the finish of the game, And curses still his candle's wasting flame, The narrow circle of whose feeble glow Dims and diminishes at every throw. Moments his losses, pleasures ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... an hour later in a huge light room, with a floor like a dance hall and much strange paraphernalia against the walls. Little of it she was able to identify, though she took it all in with alert and eager eyes. This was the chiefest part of his life, so she must not even seem to slight it. The Indian clubs and dumb-bells—but they were easy. And the roped-off square at one end. That was ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... on my feet in a moment, and looking towards the French coast, I saw a lugger about two miles off, running down to us. All hands were on the alert, and every preparation was made to ensure the success of our enterprise. We hauled our wind, and steered a course so as to intercept her, without, if possible, exciting the suspicion of the smugglers till we were alongside. As the sea was perfectly smooth and the wind light, we should ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... big department store in New England there was a girl a few years back with an alert mind, an assertive personality, and a tremendous fund of energy. She was in the habit of giving constructive suggestions to the heads of the departments in which she worked, and because of her youth and manner, they resented it. "I took her into my office," the manager ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... spectres with a grim purpose in view, and as the officer of the division strode back and forth, alert and watchful, they followed his movements with their eyes, eager for the word that would set them in action. They were not veterans, and their experience in war could have been measured by days, but they were honestly ready to fight and to ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... companion's astonishment. Mrs. Smith had completely collapsed into her seat, folded her arms, and closed her eyes. "Laws a massy!" she exclaimed. "What next? Old Tom, drunken Tom, swearin' an' ravin' Tom Brent's boy a preacher!" Then suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up very erect and alert as she broke forth, "Sally Martin, what air you a-tellin' me? It ain't possible. It 's ag'in' nature. A panther's cub ain't a-goin' to be a lamb. It 's downright wicked, ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Museum of the American Society for Scientific Research. In a room of the biological department there, the precious fragment of golden quartz lies guarded. A microscope is over it, and there is never a moment of the day or night without an alert, keen-eyed ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... lay in a pandemonium of noise. After a while they would become used to it as do the workers in a stampmill, but that night it deafened them, kept them awake and alert, fearful, with the tremendous cannonading. The bite of the frost made the timbers of the Karluk creak and its thrust continually worked among the stranded masses with groaning thunders and shrill grindings, while the surf ever boomed on ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... taking exercise is before dinner, for the body is then more vigorous and alert, and the mind more cheerful, and better disposed to enjoy the pleasure of a ride or walk. Exercise after a full meal disturbs digestion, and causes painful sensations in the stomach and bowels, ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... was instantly alive, and Woods was wakened. A faint click went away on the night breeze, and a moment later three jets of flame carried warning to the up-creeping foe that the whites were both alive and on the alert. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... a sort of gladiatorial freedom. But the Hellenic sculptor would have found the head suited to his use as well as the torso and limbs, for it was a head well shaped and well carried, dominated by eyes alert with ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... evils, none of which are of hysterical character. I am not here concerned so much with the exact nature of these troubles as I am with the avoidable errors in the management of sick childhood. If I can make the mother more thoughtfully alert, less disposed to terror and exaggeration, less liable to be led by her emotions, I shall have fulfilled my purpose without such discussion as is out of ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... of ringing followed this application to the thumbscrew arrangement on the door, for the colonel had taken the bell away long ago. But there resulted a clucking, which brought the colonel to the portal frowning and alert, warming in the expectation of having somebody whom he ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... his holidays was Leonard Everard, now a tall, handsome boy. He was one of those boys who develop young, and who seem never to have any of that gawky stage so noticeable in the youth of men made in a large pattern. He was always well-poised, trim-set, alert; fleet of foot, and springy all over. In games he was facile princeps, seeming to make his effort always in the right way and without exertion, as if by an instinct of physical masterdom. His universal success in such matters helped ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... motorboat nosed its way into the harbor, several others dashed forward, with guns bared and alert figures standing ready for action. It was not until Lord Hastings had been satisfactorily identified that the warlike ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... guard against surprises, we are all warned to pay especial attention to the beat of the drum; always halting when they hear the long roll beat, and marching at the beat of the long march. We are more on the alert regarding the enemy now. We have our advanced pickets doubled, and two sentries at every post. The men on the advanced pickets are constantly under arms, with fixed bayonets, all through the night, and relieved ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the detective resumed at once his brisk voice and alert manner. He seemed to dismiss Servettaz's admission from his mind. Ricardo had the impression of a man tying up an important document which for the moment he has done with, and putting it away ticketed in some pigeon-hole in his desk. "Let us ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... He preferred cigars, a habit he'd acquired from the days when he'd filched them from his father's cigar case, but his mental picture of the fearless and alert young FBI agent didn't include a cigar. Somehow, remembering his father as neither fearless nor, exactly, alert—anyway, not the way the movies and the TV screens liked to picture the words—he had the impression that cigars looked out of ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... was formed from the younger domestics of the place, fifty in number, the officers being sons of the boyars or lords. But these were required by the alert boy to pass through all the grades of the service, which he also did himself, serving successively as private, sergeant, lieutenant, and captain, and finally as colonel of the regiment which grew from this youthful company. Peter called ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... new experience in her meeting with the members of the firm to which she had consigned her sheep, and others with whom her business brought her in contact about the crowded Exchange. These prosperous, clean-cut men, alert, incisive of speech and thought, were an unfamiliar type. Their undisguised approbation, their respect, their eagerness to be kind brought a new sensation to Kate, who had grown up and lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. There were moments when the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... evils which these nations have inflicted on us would ever have taken place.[10] Even as it was, when the Saracens threatened the West, the Popes were the chief agents in organising resistance, and giving spirit and animation to the defenders of Europe. Their alert vision saw that to crush for ever that formidable enemy, it was not enough to defend ourselves against his assaults; we must attack him at home. The Crusades, vulgarly treated as the wars of a blind and superstitious piety, were in truth wars of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... provide by law for the trial and punishment as pirates of Spanish subjects who, escaping the vigilance of their Government, shall be found guilty of privateering against the United States. I do not apprehend serious danger from these privateers. Our Navy will be constantly on the alert to protect our commerce. Besides, in case prizes should be made of American vessels, the utmost vigilance will be exerted by our blockading squadron to prevent the captors from taking them into Mexican ports, and it is not apprehended that any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... concentrated water-power energy and grandeur, the fall being about 400 feet, the walls 2700. Never for a moment does it relax its assault, and the voyager on its restless, relentless tide, especially at high water, is kept on the alert. The waters indeed come rushing down with fearful impetuosity, recalling to Powell the poem of Southey, on the Lodore he knew, hence the name. The beginning of the gorge is at the foot of Brown's Park through what is called the Gate of Lodore, an abrupt gash in the Uinta Mountains ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and as regular in his habits as any old-clothes man in Monmouth Street. He kept all the cockpitonians on the qui vive, and as every recommendation went through him to the admiral it was but good policy for the mids to be on the alert. As all the lieutenants were constantly changing, those promoted making room for others, I shall not describe their characters, except noticing that the generality of them were good officers and gentlemen. A month after I joined we were ordered to sail, and on going out of ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... with the expression of positive anger, the name of Gallia escaped his lips, as though he were dreaming that his claim to the discovery of the comet was being contested or denied; but although his attendant was on the alert to gather all he could, he was able to catch nothing in the incoherent sentences that served to throw any real light upon the problem that they were all eager ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... room, I entered upon the staircase, in the wake of my companion. Though the two men at cards did not look up as I passed them, I noticed that they were alert and ready for any signal I might choose to give them. But I was not ready to give one yet. I must see danger before I summoned help, and there was no token ...
— The Staircase At The Hearts Delight - 1894 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... monasteries and palaces, on both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic, have cast new light upon the fascinating theme. Both Christian and non-Christian Japanese of to-day, in their travels in the Philippines, China, Formosa, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Italy, being keenly alert for memorials of their countrymen, have met with interesting trovers. The descendants of the Japanese martyrs and confessors now recognize their own ancestors, in the picture galleries of Italian nobles, and in Christian churches ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... could see two or three Federal cruisers lying anchored off the outer bar, just out of reach of the guns of shore-batteries. It was a service of no little danger for the blue-jackets. The enemy were ever on the alert to break the blockade by destroying the ships with torpedoes. Iron-clad rams were built on the banks of the rivers, and sent down to sink and destroy the vessels whose watchfulness meant starvation to the Confederacy. The "Albemarle" and the "Merrimac" were notable instances ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... as though fascinated. The change in Mr. Moss was amazing. His reckless air of enjoyment had departed. He was still smoking, but he was all alert, like a cat ready to spring. Mr. Parker, too, was interested. I saw him whisper something in Mr. Moss' ear and I felt a cold foreboding of what was ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eating. Does that astonish you? For my part, I am astonished that we do not see it. Not far from my estate this spring some moujiks were working on a railway embankment. You know what a peasant's food is,—bread, kvass,* onions. With this frugal nourishment he lives, he is alert, he makes light work in the fields. But on the railway this bill of fare becomes cacha and a pound of meat. Only he restores this meat by sixteen hours of labor pushing ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... may be very true; but the affair of Andre has made us on the alert. When treason reaches the grade of general officers, Captain Wharton, it behooves the friends of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Thompson from being run over by the big touring car had not shaken Jane's nerve in the least. It had shaken Tommy's only briefly. Tommy, supple and alert, had leaped from the road just in time to avoid being run down by the car. A second's delay on her part would undoubtedly have proved serious if ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... taken the lute and raised his eyes. In the hall conversation had stopped, and people were as still as if petrified. Terpnos and Diodorus, who had to accompany Caesar, were on the alert, looking now at each other and now at his lips, waiting for the first tones of ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... wagons. I have seen two thousand of them halted for the night in a single park, and such trains on the march six to ten miles long were not unusual. It will readily be seen that to have them within easy reach, and prevent their falling into the hands of an alert enemy, was a tremendous problem in all movements ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... answer readily. He was too busy thanking God for the great gift of perfect understanding. Moreover, he had a perforated lung and a heart whose duties had suddenly been increased a thousand-fold, if it was to hold inviolate this sacred joy of possession which thrilled him now. He was alert and conscious, despite the shock of his wound, and the reserve strength in his six feet of splendid manhood was coming to his aid. When he could trust ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... together. Mark had walked alone that day, and had lain upon the turf of the down, fighting against a weariness that seemed to be poisoning the very springs of life within him. But Roland had been brisk and alert, coming and going upon some secret and busy errand, with a fragment of a song upon his lips, like a man preparing to set off for a far country, who is glad to be gone. In the evening, after they had dined, Roland had let his fancy rove ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a strange-looking procession that trudged into barracks. Twenty beautiful, spirited horses, six hangdog-looking thieves, with a single exhausted horse in the rear, on which was mounted an alert, keen-eyed and very hungry young soldier who wore a scarlet tunic and buffalo-head buttons. The next day Corporal Black had another stripe on his sleeve." [The foregoing story is an actual occurrence. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... beyond the walls of her prison. She may have a father, a mother, a dear brother, or a sister, who, if they knew one-sixteenth part of her wrongs and sufferings, would fly at once to see her and sympathize with her in her anguish. But the Jesuit confessor attached to the prison is ever on the alert. Those ladies who appear the most unhappy, and unreconciled to their prison, are compelled to attend the confessional every day; and thus the artful Jesuit, by a thousand cross questions, is made to understand ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... while the two chess-players were absorbed in their game and the other two kept watch and ward. Then, towards midnight, while Fion was alert and wakeful, he saw Chluas sink his chin on his breast, overcome by an unnatural sleep. Thrice Chluas strove to rouse himself, but thrice he sank into ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... House of Mammon his priesthood stands alert By mysteries attended, by dusk and splendors girt, Knowing, for faiths departed, his own shall still endure, And they be found his chosen, untroubled, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... than she is permitted; and the terrible strain of twelve hours' work, every day except Sunday, for the past six months, where every faculty, from hand and foot to body, eye and brain, must be alert and alive to watch and piece the never-ceasing breaking of the threads, had already begun to undermine the half-formed ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... a generation of naturalists, and he might have been a mere naturalist among them. There are traces enough in his work of that alert sense of outward things, which, in the pictures of that period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the hillsides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering reeds. But this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... melted down displeasure and threatened to betray all the policy depending on it; for in the main never a bit of ill heart had Colin, though doubtlessly he had in him, deeply established, a trim of rebellion against education that seemed ever on the alert, and which repulsed even its portended approach with a vigour resembling the electric energy of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... one. This staggered him. It was as if his wife had dissolved into thin air. True, she might have eluded him by slipping out into the hall by means of door two at the moment he entered door one; and alert to this possibility, he hastened back into the hall to look for her. But she was nowhere visible, nor had she been observed leaving the building by the man stationed at entrance A. But there was ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... gradually to raise the strength of the garrison from 800 to 4000 men, one-fourth of whom are always European soldiers—and though no attack in force has lately been made by the Arabs, the necessity of being constantly on the alert against their covert approaches, renders the duties of the garrison harassing to the last degree. Though a considerable trade now exists with the African coast, scarcely any commercial intercourse has yet been established with the interior of Arabia, (notwithstanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... in its thoroughness, for a well-played game gives the right balance to the activities: drill is more specialised, and has specialisation for its end: a game calls on the whole of an individual: he must be alert mentally and physically; and at the same time the sense of fairness cannot be too strongly insisted on; no game can be tolerated as part of education where there is looseness in this direction, from the skittles of the nursery class to the cricket and hockey of the seventh ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... relationship to the things for which he has cause to be thankful. If in our daily life the phrase 'the goodness of God' is to have a deepening and cumulative significance, it must be informed and vitalized continually by an alert and responsive recognition of the forms in which that goodness is ever freshly manifested to us. Whilst the roots of the tree of praise lie deep beneath the surface, and wind their thousand ways into dim places where memory itself cannot ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... to the interest of society to have the relationship orderly and permanent," continued his partner. "That is why the state is so alert with regard to divorce proceedings and vigilant to prevent fraud or collusion. You may say that the state is always a party to every matrimonial action—even if it is not actually interpleaded—and that such proceedings are triangular and minus many of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Rosa's alert ear caught the hurried murmur which succeeded, and was muffled, so to speak, by her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... her to hear it from lips which may more successfully offer counsel afterward. A certain confidence in her own charms gives a sensibly reared young woman a poise and self-possession which is to be desired. A touch of feminine vanity renders a woman more anxious to please, and more alert to keep ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... was Al-Iskandar (he of Macedon) and he had a number of men who used to relate to him imaginary stories and provoke him to laughter: he, however, designed not therein merely to please himself, but that he might thereby become the more cautious and alert. After him the Kings in like fashion made use of the book entitled 'Hazar Afsan.' It containeth a thousand nights, but less than two hundred night- stories, for a single history often occupied several nights. I have seen it complete sundry ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... reached the landing at the top of the stairway, he stopped to look about the place with curious, alert interest, noting with quick glances every object in the immediate vicinity of the hut, as if fixing them in his mind. Satisfied at last by the thoroughness of his inspection, he went toward the house, but his step on the board walk made no sound. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... nature, a simple, frank character, clear judgment, upright intentions, penetrating intelligence, and profound good sense. The Talmudic maxim might be applied to him: "Study demands a mind as serene as a sky without clouds." His was a questioning spirit, ever alert. He had the special gift of viewing the outer world intelligently and fixing his attention upon the particular object or the particular circumstance that might throw light upon a fact or a text. For instance, although he did not know Arabic, he remembered certain ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... she will create, monotony, stupidity, antagonisms cannot come. Her foresight will provide occupations and amusements; her loving and alert diplomacy will fend off disputes. Unconsciously, every member of her family will be as clay in her hands. More anxiously than any statesman will she meditate on the wisdom of each measure, the bearing of each word. The least possible governing which ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Dick and Joe plunged into a forest of gum-trees, their eyes alert on all sides, and their fingers on the trigger. There was no foreseeing what they might encounter. Without being a rifleman, Joe could handle ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
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