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More "Tension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impression is one of thankfulness to have reached the end of a long and fatiguing performance, a legitimate eagerness to quit the administrative harness and ceremonial costumes, to unbuckle sashes, to loosen stand-up collars and neckbands, to slacken the tension of facial muscles, which had been subject to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy. The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand and the column of inert mortality ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of these happenings kept the men entertained, but it also kept them keyed up to high tension. For a while they did not notice this themselves. But when they attempted to go back to their interrupted work, they found it hard to concentrate upon it. Frank Merrill had given up trying to make them patrol the beach. Unaided, day and night ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Slangenburg. The duke was very angry, and bitter recriminations ensued. In the end Slangenburg was removed from his command; and the appointment of Ouwerkerk, as field-marshal of the Dutch forces, relieved the tension, though the deputies were still present at headquarters, much to Marlborough's annoyance. The campaign resulted in the capture of Bonn, Huy and Limburg, but there ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... then east, west, north, and south those aeroplanes would go swarming over a world that had disarmed itself, to proclaim Ferdinand Charles, the new Caesar, the Master, Lord of the Earth. It was a magnificent plan. But the tension of this waiting for news of the success of the first ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... of transition not the less necessary although it is certainly disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between the sexes so long as men and women do not receive equal payment for equal work. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in Blackburn lately put it, "but when the thing of beauty takes to doing the work for 16s. a week that ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... before my eyes discern you. For even before you draw near me, I feel a peculiar trembling of the heart, and the breath is stifled in my bosom; then I always know that you are coming, and that your presence will relieve this peculiar tension of my being. When you are not by me I think of you, and when I sleep I dream of you. Tell me, sire, you who know every thing, tell me, know you now ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... little donkeys munching eagerly at a crop of rosy-headed thistles. They—the human beings—looked at each other; Tarrant burst into extravagant laughter, and Nancy joined him. Neither's mirth was spontaneous; Nancy's had a note of nervous tension, a ring of something ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... function of the last branch of research that they could discover. It was a time of labor for them, and they worked almost constantly, stopping occasionally for a game of some sort to relax the nervous tension. ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... balanced that the dense clump of humanity stands absolutely motionless. In the centre is an inextricable chaos where shoulders heave and heads rise and fall. At the edges are a fringe of legs—legs in an extreme state of tension— ever pawing for a firmer foothold, and apparently completely independent of the rest of their owners, whose heads and bodies have bored their way Into the melee. The pressure in there is tremendous, yet neither side ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scale between one of the bow nocks and the end of the string, the unexpected phenomenon is demonstrated that there is greater tension on a string when the bow is braced but not drawn up. A fifty-six pound bow registers a sixty-four pound tension on the string. As the arrow is drawn up the tension decreases gradually until twenty- six inches are drawn, when it registers ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... called a duck-board. Underneath this duck-board ran a continual stream of water. A man would go along the trench in a hurry, make a misstep on one end of the duck-board and down he would go in mud and freezing water to the waist. In these cold, wet garments he must stay all night. The tension was ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... are not of iron; eyes and hands weary; the brain and the nerves feel strain; and it is of the essence of defence that it exhausts quicker than does offence. {p.045} It lacks intrinsically the moral tension that sustains; when the forward impulse is removed, the evil spirit of backwardness finds room to enter. As hours pass, this difference in moral conditions affects those which are external—saps ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... as it had been on the previous day, but I could see that she was striving hard to be natural. For myself, I did not speak. I felt nervous, even irritable, in my love for her. Gradually, however, her presence soothed me, slackened the tension of my system, and I was able to find a faint pleasure in the beauty of the September afternoon, and of the girl by my side, in the smooth movement of the carriage, and the general gaiety and color of the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... middle-aged, wearing a velvet coat. He walked up to the counter with a peculiar side-wise step, and without noticing anybody in the shop picked up the violin, and was at once absorbed in it. He dusted it tenderly with his handkerchief, changed the tension of the strings, and held it up to his ear lingeringly as though hearing something. Then putting the end of it up in position he reached for the bow, while the murmur ran through the ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... Everyone stared. In the tension nobody yet laughed, although Tilda, throwing a glance toward the chimney-corner, saw the shepherd's jaw relax in a grin. Her head yet swam. She felt a spell upon her that must be ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... work of a group of officers and men in our Navy who hated England enough to strike her below the belt. With the British ship sunk, sir, and with none to suspect but the Americans, there is no telling to what heights British passion might rise. The British are feeling the tension of the ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... with every nerve strained to its utmost tension, listening for the least movement on the part of the maddened woman which might indicate she was about to stab me ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... from the parent deep. O First and Last, O glorious all in all, In vain my faltering human tongue would seek To shape the vesture of the boundless thought, Summing all causes in one burning word; Give me the spirit's living tongue of fire, Whose only voice is in an attitude Of keenest tension, bent back on itself With a strong upward force; even as thy bow Of bended colour stands against the north, And, in an attitude to spring to heaven, Lays hold ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... infinite leisure which is a fine art when it is not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide whether he was aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine. Weary was just on the point of saying something to relieve the tension, when Miguel blew the ash gently from his cigarette ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... and three rubber bands wrapped around the box as indicated. This box is then enclosed in the next larger box, the guide being allowed to project between the box and the cover, and the necessary tension is secured by three rubber bands around the box as before. In like manner ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... which carried him so blithely along the crest of the social wave and scowled gloomily at his cards which persisted in favoring his opponents. Crosby Downs, whose waistband had again reached its fullest tension, sought the tall grasses of the smoking-room and refused to be dislodged. Without the shadows of her hat and veil Mrs. Renshaw showed her age to a day, and that didn't improve her temper. Beatrice Coddington had an attack of the megrims and remained ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... in dread expectancy of what they would next say, fancying each instant something more wonderful still would happen. At last, Hiram broke the silence, which had become well-nigh unbearable from a sort of nervous tension, that made me feel creepy and ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... recorded of this disease that particularized any other starting-point than the swelling, tension, active or passive congestion that takes place in the integument of the penis. By this it must not be understood that the initial disease or inflammatory action that produces the gangrene must necessarily have its seat in the integument, but that it is ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... was that Essad Pasha, the Albanian chief who had, more than any other, assisted to form an independent Albania, fell out with Prince William and was arrested. A state of tension between him and Prince William had increased as evidence of Essad Pasha's complicity in a revolutionary movement became known. A letter written by Essad Pasha fell into Prince William's hands, in which Essad Pasha ordered his agents to persuade people to obey only ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... it is known that vaso-motor paralysis is not of itself sufficient to induce haemorrhage, unless the tension of the blood-current be coincidently raised. See ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... by Wolff and are often associated with his name. They should be cut oval or spindle-shaped, to facilitate the approximation of the edges of the resulting wound. The graft should be cut to the exact size of the surface it is to cover; Gillies believes that tension of the graft favours its taking. These grafts may be placed either on a fresh raw surface or on healthy granulations. It is sometimes an advantage to stitch them in position, especially on the face. The dressing and the after-treatment are the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... heavy-jawed sheriff into unwise speech. And inattentive Anastacio had a shrewd surmise at Pringle's design. He knew nothing of the fight at the Gadsden House, but he sensed an unexplained tension—and he knew ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... sooner or later, the world will respond to genuineness in action. The world knows the value of genuineness, and it yields to that force wherever it is felt. "The world is all gates," says Emerson, "all opportunities, strings of tension waiting ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... 6 to 7 millions. If its whole population at this time was equal to that of the present day, we should have to assume accordingly a mass of slaves amounting to 13 or 14 millions. It needs however no such fallacious calculations to render the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent; this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile insurrections, and by the appeal which from the beginning of the revolutions was at the close of every outbreak addressed ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... as best she could on both war fronts the unceasingly increasing forces of the Allies. She had attained the maximum of tension and had secured a minimum of results. She had thus landed herself in a difficulty which will henceforward go on increasing and which is made clear when the wastage which her army ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... minutes the whole vanished; but in less than a quarter of an hour the phenomena were repeated exactly as described, and were followed by a dark night and torrents of rain. It was a very unusual instance of what is known as electric glow; that is, electricity without tension. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... let himself in by his latch-key at his own house-door about half-past eight, it was no wonder that he wrung out his coat and trousers so that he should not soak his Persian rugs. But from him, as from the charged skies, some tension had passed; this tempest which had so cooled the air and restored the equilibrium of its forces had smoothed the frowning creases of his brow, and when the servant hurried up at the sound of the banged front-door, he found his master soaked indeed, ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... the drilling of Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers and the newly-enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time of lull before the storm, and they were not to get many more good dinners or peaceful nights in bed for a long siege to come. They did not show outwardly the tension of strung nerves that waited, as the whole world waited, for the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills to the south. Nor did it occur to them that there was anything heroic or dramatic in their ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... are still competent after the administration of physostigmine. Besides the sphincter pupillae, the fibres of the ciliary muscle are stimulated. There is consequently spasm of accommodation, so that clear vision of distant objects becomes impossible. The intra-ocular tension is markedly lowered. This action, at first sight somewhat obscure, is due to the extreme pupillary contraction which removes the mass of the iris from pressing upon the spaces of Fontana, through which the intraocular fluids normally make a very slow escape from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... began to be alarmed about the igloo. For some time the heavy snow blocks we had heaved up on to the canvas roof kept it weighted down. But it seemed that they were being gradually moved off by the hurricane. The tension became well-nigh unendurable: the waiting in all that welter of noise was maddening. Minute after minute, hour after hour—those snow blocks were off now anyway, and the roof was smashed up and down—no canvas ever made could ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... off the field on the shoulders of a crowd that was hoarse with shouting triumph and weeping tears of joy. And on that triumphal way Jason swerved his eyes from Marjorie and Mavis swerved hers from Gray. There was no sleep for Jason that night, but the next night the fierce tension of mind and muscle relaxed and he slept long and hard; and Sunday morning found him out in the warm sunlight of the autumn fields, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... were wide apart and attached by straps to the horse's collar. All the tension came through the shafts, and these were strengthened by ropes that extended to the ends of the forward axle. Harnesses had a shabby, 'fixed up' appearance, with a good deal of rope in their composition. Why they did not go to pieces or crumble to nothing, like the deacon's One Horse ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... was unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest—oil on the heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much greater care to ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... reclining-chair watching my face with eager, earnest eyes, divining every wish and foreseeing all my needs. She served me with such an enthusiasm of devotion that in my morbid state, with every nerve strained to its highest tension, I suffered merely in looking at her. But Dr. Sharpe himself had begged me to let her stay with me, because she fretted so when away from me. I had but one wish in life, it seemed to me—to get back to Belfield. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... only to select his own stroke and make it. But if the bull is jealous and sly, it requires the most careful management to kill him. The disposition of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of the red flag. This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nerves of the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd was aroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreat at the moment of decision. All at once the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... prepared to accept the material basis which Burke finds for the ideas of the imagination. [Footnote: Burke traces our ideas of the sublime to the sense of physical pain; our ideas of the beautiful to that of physical pleasure; identifying the former with a contraction or tension, and the latter with a relaxation of the muscles. Against this theory two main objections may be urged: (1) As, on Burke's own showing, the objects of the imagination, at least as far as poetry is concerned, are, and must be, presented ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of holding his place for several hours, with his senses at a high tension, was not an inviting one, for he did not expect the savages to make their attempt before midnight; all such people aiming to surprise their enemies when ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... chilled. The fine tension of the spiritual chords relaxed, and gave forth heavier music. Susan failing to ascend to us, we came down to her. She now made haste to atone for her long silence by talking freely of the pretty new church, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the cover for a feast. With that particular dexterity of country girls, she made three trips to carry two plates, and puffed like a porpoise at her work, while the look of frightened amazement showed upon her face that every fibre of her intelligence was under unaccustomed tension. Before the fire, and upon the range, three or four stew-pans were bubbling. A plump chicken was turning on the spit, or, rather, the spit and its victim were turned by a bright-looking boy of about a dozen years, who with one hand turned the handle ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had the advantage, from the captivity of Babylon up to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation during this long period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his destiny ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Arnold relax ever so slowly, leaning back, the tension going away as he uncoiled in the chair; but the young man's face wasn't so much relieved as it ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... signs of tension in his face, and it was clear that he was racking his befogged brain. The few weeks of abstinence and healthful toil had made a change in him, but one cannot in that space of time get rid of the results ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... obtained, which may be summarized as follows: The electrical condition of the peak of Teneriffe was found to be the same as in every other part of the world. The potential was moderately positive, from 100 to 150 volts, at 5 ft. 5 in. from the ground, even at considerable altitudes; but the tension rose to 549 volts on the summit of the peak, 12,200 ft., and to 247 volts on the top of the rock of Gayga, 7,100 feet. A large number of halos were seen associated with local showers and cloud masses. The necessary ice dust appeared to be formed by rising ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features are studied. It has the sage's brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of half tension. That slim feasting smile, shaped like the long-bow, was once a big round satyr's laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moving eternally behind the forms he separates and "creates." And to those of us who are akin to him, who are temperamentally artistic, he offers freedom of a kind. The contemplation of a work of art releases the tension of the nerves. To use the language of psychology it "arrests" us, suspends the functions of our everyday surface personality, abolishes for a moment time and space, allows the "free," generally suppressed ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... narratives by telling him that this picking bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted, feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear the strain of friendship if it can. Heriot had promised to walk half-way with me to Bulsted, in spite of Lady Maria's childish fears of some attack ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... should not prepare for war; we should prepare to prevent war; and though that preparation may include battleships and conscription, those elements will quite obviously make the tension and danger greater unless there is also a better ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... bungalow lay a quarter of a mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I would have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which belied my real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret tension at this night invasion of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games and a great fluttering of furs along Fifth Avenue. It brought, also, a sense of tension to the city, and suppressed excitement. Every morning now there were invitations in Anthony's mail. Three dozen virtuous females of the first layer were proclaiming their fitness, if not their specific willingness, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... their clusters of black shadow fell like an embroidered veil over the imperfections of her dress, but what light there was shone clear on her head and throat, and the pearly moulding of her shoulder, based where her sleeve was dragged down a little by the tension of her weight upon it. All the mystery of womanhood and all its promise of life in bud and life not yet sown lay on this young girl asleep in the starshine. Lights flashed up in the house, figures were moving between the curtains: Laura had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... so bad as either of them thought. If it had been, then were marriage not only a failure, but a practical impossibility. If two men can get over the first few days in camp without a quarrel, life becomes easier, and the tension relaxes. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... the friendly shelter of Ellen's room, where the tension of nerve endured so long gave way, and sinking upon the sofa she fainted, just as down the Lexington turnpike came the man looked for so long in the earlier part of the day. She could not err, in Mr. Liston's estimation, and Alice grew calm again, and in a hurried consultation explained ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... overlooks, an' that now the Colonel draws his attention to it, he's bound to say he believes the Colonel to be right, an' that Bowlaigs should be made a free onfettered b'ar ag'in. We breathes easier at this, for the tension has been great, an' Dan himse'f is that relieved he comes a heap clost to sheddin' tears. The trial closes with the customary drinks; Bowlaigs gettin' his forty drops with the rest, on the hocks of which he signalises ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... hats are made to be worn," retorted Judy. As a rule her temper was placid enough, but Archie's defection, after she had given him her best neck-tie for the purpose of binding him to his promise, had overstrained the tension of her nerves. "Where's Abner? He ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... no further thought to the guarding of the camp. A piping hot breakfast was ready when Jackpine awakened him, and once more the exhilarating excitement of their swift race through the forests relieved him of the uncomfortable mental tension under which he began to find himself. During the whole of the day Jackpine urged the dogs almost to the limit of their endurance, and early in the afternoon assured his companion that they would reach the Wekusko ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... inanimate objects, such as beds, walls, cupboards, staircases, have a power of receiving, absorbing and retaining impressions transmitted to them through contact with human minds in extreme conditions of stress and tension. This would especially be the case with intimately personal things, such as musical instruments, or favourite chairs. Old rooms and ancient furniture might retain these impressions for centuries; and, under certain circumstances, transmit ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... understand, of course; so, not knowing how else to instruct him, I scratched back one day, laughing myself like he was, but sinking my nails right fierce into the back of his little fat neck. He relaxed the tension in his own fingers. He was hurt, for the tears started, but he never cried. He just looked puzzled and kept on laughing, being bright to see I could play the game, too. Only he saw it wasn't so good a game as he'd thought. I wonder what made me think of that, now! I don't know. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... being and facing the world in a demand for realization of it, and then finding what you coveted in the palm of your hand, as it were, you would know what is in my heart, and why expression of some kind is necessary to me just now, and why I'll explode if it is denied. It will lower the tension, if you will accept this as a matter of fact; as if you rather expected and liked it, if ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... and suspense, began slowly to drag by. His fate and the fate of the girl he loved hung in the balance, and not the least irksome feature of his position was his own utter impotence. There was nothing that he could do—no action which would take him out of himself and ease the tension of his thoughts. As day succeeded day and the silence remained unbroken, he became more and more upset. At the end of a week he was almost beside himself with worry and chagrin, so much so that he gave up attending his office altogether, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... closed a switch, and the hum of a high tension alternator filled the laboratory. The Russian quivered for a moment and then lay still. Major Martin nodded and Dr. Bird stepped to the side of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... her small brown hands clasped tightly together in her lap now. There is something nervous in the tension of them. Where, where is Margaret? For all that, she looks back at her mother-in-law with a clear and ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... act of an individual, came out of a clear sky. To the latter class distinctively belongs the great convulsion of 1914. While the standing armies of Europe were a constant reminder of possible war, and the frequent diplomatic tension between the Great Powers cast repeated war shadows over the financial markets, the American public, at least, was entirely unprepared for a world conflagration. Up to the final moment of the launching of ultimata ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... of self! His magnificent loyalty forgot the dreadful tension of his own great battle, and pictured only the tedium of waiting which it ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... we waited. The report of a pistol in the house struck us to the heart. I believe we felt sure, both of us, of what it must be. He had loved her so much! And now we were sure, that in the tension of his grief, reason had given way. When we saw them next, there were three where two had been, in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... thrust himself forward, when the tremendous volume of water struck him. McNab and the soldier felt the sudden pluck of the rope and saw the light swing across the abyss. Then the fury of the waterspout burst with a triumphant scream, the tension ceased, the light was blotted out, and when the column sank, there dangled at the end of the lariat nothing but the drenched and blackened skeleton of the she-oak bough. Amid a terrific peal of thunder, the long pent-up rain descended, and a sudden ghastly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... quite eager to show us about. In fact ever since he had hustled us out to view the scene of the robbery, his high nervous tension had given us scarcely a moment's rest. For hours he had talked radium, until I felt that he, like his metal, must have an inexhaustible emanation of words. He was one of those nervous, active little men, a born salesman, whether of ribbons ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... The tension relaxed. The men dropped more fuel on the fires, coaxing the flame brighter. A whispering comment rose ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... of the War of Secession, which had concentrated the entire effort of the navy upon our own coasts and inland waters, the policy of the government reverted, irreflectively perhaps, to the identical system of distribution in squadrons that had existed before. The prolonged tension of mind and effort during four years of overwrought activity was followed by a period of reaction, to which, as far as the administration of the navy was concerned, the term collapse would scarcely be misapplied. Of course, ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... two or three days, and then, when everything was completed to my satisfaction, and the ship was in sailing trim, I gave the Veielland her freedom. This I managed as follows: The moment the chain was at its tautest—at its greatest tension—I gave it a violent blow with a big axe, and it parted. I steered due west, taking my observations by the sun and my own shadow at morning, noon, and evening. For I had been taught to reckon the degree of latitude from the number of inches of my shadow. After a time I ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... is a dear," he tried to tell her on the way across, for in some way he suddenly felt the tension which had fallen between the two women; "only she is most awfully shy. She is one of those people who ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. 'Lively, boys, lively, now!' And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines; the men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping of the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no other solution of the political problem. All branches of the municipal administration, strained to the cracking-point by the tension of party conflict, were now isolated from the organism, abnormally developed, requiring the combining effort of a single thinker to reunite their scattered forces in one system or absorb them in himself. The indirect restraints which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a spacious, cool room, luxurious to his eyes; yet he felt no weariness, but somehow supernaturally strained up to an awful tension. ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... seconds there was the silent tension of expectation in the air and then I realised with a shock that the train did not show any signs of slackening speed. It was, if anything, going faster. I snatched frantically at the cord and pulled about half-a-furlong into the carriage. We flashed past Ealing like a rocket, and I desperately ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... now closely hugging the river valley, which was almost destitute of trees. Rapids were practically continuous and always strewn with dangerous rocks that kept us constantly on the alert and our nerves strung to the highest tension. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... and kept the boat covered with his empty elephant gun, though now that the tension was relaxed and the victory his, everything blurred before his eyes and he felt weak with the reaction. The island was only a few hundred feet away, and the men pulled to the sandy beach without hesitation, tumbled out, and shoved the boat out again. Then they fled for ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... Tuberculosis, rheumatism, insomnia are unknown to wild animals. Our bodies are sick and weak because we have denatured ourselves. Make friends of the wild animals, they will teach you how to keep well. They have not a single case of nervous prostration in all their vast forest home. Learn to relax. Drop your tension and you check confusion. Stop a few minutes sometime in the day and quiet your nerves, rest your muscles, calm your senses, sooth your thoughts, somewhere in the sunshine, or under the shade of an old apple-tree. Eat simply, slowly, nuts, dates, cereals, fruits. Drink abundantly ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... how to live our life so as to be able to generate thoughts and feelings, at all times, which shall always move us at a creative health vibration. The very next thing for anyone seeking health is to get easy in his everyday life; no one can ever be well and live with every nerve on a tension. We need to know the higher law of life that teaches us that no one put us anywhere but ourselves; that no one is to blame but ourselves for what we have or have not; we get and have in this world just what we have the power to relate with and will get free from the thing we do not like in just ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... galloping to d'Amade or Hunter-Weston. Here I was neither one thing nor the other:—neither a new fangled Commander sitting cool and semi-detached in an office; nor an old fashioned Commander taking personal direction of the show. During so long drawn out a suspense I tried to ease the tension by dictation. From the carbons I select these two paragraphs: they occur in a letter fired off to Colonel Clive Wigram at "11.25 a.m., 7th ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Luke, sleeping ill and thinking long, lay and listened for possible sounds from Maw's room. Perhaps she cried in the nights. If she only would—it would help break the tension for them all. But he never heard anything but the rain—steadily, miserably beating on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was vaguely aware of it, he had no time to consider consciously the strangely sophisticated wording of her argument. When she continued to talk in the same gentle voice, the temptation caressed his mind like a narcotic; against his will, the tension began to wash from his muscles. Driven by a kind of madness to escape the sound of her voice, he pulled the trigger. The yellow wall exploded. Concussion throbbed in his ears, deafening him—but he still heard her whisper in the depths of ...
— Impact • Irving E. Cox
... them, laughter and sneers. When their carts were sent to fetch the necessaries of life, lynch-pins were loosened; in more than one case the draught oxen were houghed; the provisions, when received, were mouldy and unwholesome. At last sickness broke out, with stories of poison; then the tension became insupportable. The Voizin chief, too proud to go to his neighbours, summoned them to him; the messenger was murdered. This assassination, of which the natives denied all knowledge, was met by prompt reprisals; three Perelle fishermen were hung on the spot where the body ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... cocaine. Coca is not to be confused with cocoa, which comes from cacao seeds and is used in making chocolate, cocoa, and cocoa butter. Cocaine is a stimulant derived from the leaves of the coca bush. Depressants (sedatives) are drugs that reduce tension and anxiety and include chloral hydrate, barbiturates (Amytal, Nembutal, Seconal, phenobarbital), benzodiazepines (Librium, Valium), methaqualone (Quaalude), glutethimide (Doriden), and others (Equanil, Placidyl, Valmid). Drugs are any chemical substances that effect a physical, mental, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... lifetime the victim of disease and pain. She read and wrote in bed, and believed that she could understand anything better when she was ill. Pain acted like a girdle, to give tension to her powers. A lady, who was with her one day during a terrible attack of nervous headache, which made Margaret totally helpless, assured me that Margaret was yet in the finest vein of humor, and kept those who were assisting her ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Laurence kept every sense on the alert, indeed even to its uttermost tension. Was this parley designed to keep him preoccupied while others stole up treacherously to strike him down from behind? To guard against this idea he stepped boldly forth from the tree-fern and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... and rattle when it started, but he was surprised at the enormous amount of noise it made, when the wheels really began to turn. It seemed to him that in the silence of the night it could be heard three or four miles. Then he realized that it was merely his own excitement and extreme tension of both mind and body. Canby was taking the train forward so gently that its sounds were drowned two hundred yards away in the swirl of ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in consequence. TENSION and ELASTICITY are two forces, mutually complementary, which life brings into play. If these two forces are lacking in the body to any considerable extent, we have sickness and infirmity and accidents of every kind. If they are lacking ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... Willard's eyes that night, with the ghost of possible defeat haunting his wakeful senses, stretched to their utmost tension ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... prominent, giving her face an expression of determination, which, while destroying its symmetry, told of a strong will, and a firmness amounting almost to obstinacy. She had the lithe grace of a panther, and though her repose was perfect, a close observer might have noticed a nervous tension in her attitude and bearing that told of a hidden force and energy ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... few moments of absolute silence, broken only by the hot shrilling of a locust in a tree hard by; then Zerubbabel Chirk, calmly unconscious of any thrill in the air, any tension of the nerves, any crisis impending, paused in his whittling, and instead of carving a whistle for Benny, cut the ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... degradation of that energy. The new form of energy produced, that is to say, may not be of a beneficial kind; it may be of a mischievous kind, a form of perversion or disease. Sexual self-denial, instead of leading to sublimation, may lead to nervous disorder when the erotic tension, failing to find a natural outlet and not sublimated to higher erotic or non-erotic ends in the real world, is transmuted into an unreal dreamland, thus undergoing what Jung terms introversion; while there are also the people already referred to, in whom immature childish ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... cling to Him with his whole being, to lose himself in the Father. Slowly the images began to give way, their assaults becoming each time more brief, less violent. His face was so transfigured in this mystic tension of the soul, that Mayda, watching him, was as one turned to stone, and forgot to look at his watch, until the features, which had been contracted in that anxious prayer, finally began to relax into a peaceful composure. Then he remembered, and removed the thermometer. The ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... cohesion crucifixion declension dimension dissension distortion divulsion expulsion impulsion insertion intention occasion propulsion recursion repulsion revulsion scansion suspicion tension version ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... formality which even your friends would laugh at," replied Grant quietly. The crowd hissed; the court turned purple. Grant Adams stood rigid, with white face and quivering muscles. His jaws knotted and his fist clenched. Yet when he spoke he held his voice down. In it was no evidence of his tension. Facing for the first few moments of his speech the little group of his friends—Dr. Nesbit, George Brotherton, Captain Morton, Nathan Perry and Amos Adams—who sat at the lawyers' table with Henry Fenn, Grant Adams plunged abruptly into ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... virulence, the dark hidden passions smoldering in his breast had at length stamped their impression on the outer man. When he first spoke his tones were more irascible, less icily imperturbable, than they had been hitherto. They seemed to tell of a secret tension he had long been laboring under; but the steady cold eyes looked out from behind the ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... of arranging gold-tooled lines is to treat them in design as if they were wires in tension, and knot and twist them together. Provided the idea is consistently adhered to throughout, such a pattern is ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... Wherever land meets sea, there levity tends to prevail over gravity. It is in maritime regions, accordingly, that the inner strata of the earth succumb most readily to those sudden changes in the gravity-levity tension wherein we have recognized ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... dilating, every nerve in her body at highest tension. Her contempt for Rowan in his abuse of her; her anger against Dempsey at his insults; her gratitude to Babcock as he stood up to defend her; her fears for the outcome, as she listened to the calm, judicial voice of the judge,—each producing a different sensation of heat and cold,—were all forgotten ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it is first requisite that an "undoing process" shall precede the "upbuilding process." Stiffness of joint, or tension of muscles, whether recognized or not, must first be done away with before "the body can be molded to the expression of high thought." For this purpose the "decomposing," "relaxing" or "devitalizing" motions are given. The old gymnast doubled up the fist and, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... political tension at the time, consequent upon one of those periodical disturbances in the Balkans, and people remarked upon the coolness between the Minister for War and certain ambassadors who were all ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... it look like? Even a scream somewhere would have relieved her, and snapped the tension of the listening stillness that lay on her like a shocking nightmare. This lobby with its well-known doors—the banister on which her fingers rested—the well of the staircase up which she stared with dilated eyes—all was familiar; and yet, somewhere in the shadows overhead ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... always the D flat that caused the downfall, though Miss Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... time that a sense of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the temperature is very low, so that when their surface is exposed to a thawing temperature the tension of the exterior and interior is very different, making them not unlike ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... the window, was waiting. The moment the door was opened, he felt Shan Tung's presence. Every nerve in his body was keyed to an uncomfortable tension. The thought that his grip on himself was weakening, and because of a Chinaman, maddened him. And he must turn. Not to face Shan Tung now would be but a postponement of the ordeal and a confession of cowardice. Forcing his hand into Conniston's little trick of twisting a mustache, he turned ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... but looked aloft. The brig was literally tearing through the water; the breeze was increasing; the sails were bulging out, every rope stretched out to its utmost tension; the studding-sails pulled and tugged as if eager to fly away. Presently there came a loud crack, and both studding-sail booms broke off close to the irons. The men attempted to get in the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Peking, all walled in together within the narrow inclosure of the legation quarter,—walled in literally, also, in the fullest sense, with soldiers from the guards of the various legations patrolling the walls and mounting guard day and night,—such a situation results in great tension and embarrassment all round. There was not one word of war talk during the dinner; it was tacitly avoided, by ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... any electrical equipment tends to create radio interference in the immediate neighborhood, particularly on large generators, neon signs, fluorescent lighting, X-ray machines, and power lines. If workmen can damage insulation on a high tension line near an enemy airfield, they will make ground-to-plane radio communications difficult and per haps impossible during long periods ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... sternly suppressed that Heldon Foyle took from a messenger the note which he knew contained Grell's advertisement. Although outwardly he was the least emotional of men, he always worked at high tension in the investigation of a case. No astronomer could discover a new comet, no scientist a new element with greater delight than that which animated the square-faced detective while he ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... "that we'll be thanked by radio." The grin was real; Correy had had action enough to make him happy for a time. The nervous tension was gone. ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... not be rendered save by actors strung up to a pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to what in Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so weighty, and at the same time to maintain the purity of outline and melodious rhythm of such characters as Isabella, demands no common ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... out, spontaneous, unaffected. It served to relieve the momentary tension which had sprung ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Aether, we also learned, was gravitative (Art. 45), but we have since learned that gravitation is itself an electrical phenomenon, in that both the centripetal and centrifugal forces are due to the repulsions and attractions or pressure and tension of this electro-magnetic Aether. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... other lands are familiar, has here a new volume of the most wonderful originality and variety, opened to him. The days are illuminated pages, crowded with pictures, the forms and hues of which he can never forget. After I returned to the zone of darkness, and recovered from the stress and tension of three weeks of daylight, I first fully appreciated the splendours of the arctic sun. My eyes were still dazzled with the pomp of colour, and the thousand miles of coast, as I reviewed them in memory, with their chaos of island-pyramids ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... children, I suppose. Though I do not shriek aloud, probably something shrieks within me. I was passing a small chapel and heard a singular voice. I don't know exactly why I went into the place, but when I sat down inside I felt the tension of the atmosphere at once. Every one looked anxious or terrified. There were pale faces and stony or wild eyes. It did not seem to be an ordinary service and voices kept breaking out with spasmodic appeals, 'Almighty God, look down on us!' 'Oh, Christ, have mercy!' 'Oh, God, save us!' ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... dissension, the inevitable question which he had answered a hundred times, and if to-day there was a new tone in the voice which spoke it, Geoffrey was not sensitive enough to notice. Few men would mark such differences in a moment of tension. ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... then, in fact, in a state of excitement and tension more critical than at any other period of her history. Side by side with Luther stood Hutten, in the forefront of the battle with Rome. The bull he published with sarcastic comments: the burning of Luther's works of devotion he denounced in Latin and German verses. Eberlin von Gunzburg, who shortly ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... artificial feeding had not as yet been devised. Among the agricultural class, even to-day, it is exceptional for mothers to fail to nurse their children, if they are provided with the ordinary comforts of life. But women who live at the higher tension of city life are frequently unsuccessful, because they are more inclined to be nervous or because they disregard, among other things, the need of fresh air, plain food, or regular habits. It is wrong to suppose that elaborate rules of conduct are necessary ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... strange in all this. It was not Holmes's nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... means relaxation; the tension in Nature and in all her creatures is lessened. The trees drop their leaves, or let go their ripened fruit. The tree itself will fall in a still, damp day, when but yesterday it withstood a gale of wind. A moist south wind penetrates even the mind and makes ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... heed. Felix walked a little way and sat down on the grass. He was deeply discouraged. These repulses, trifles in themselves, assumed an importance, because his mind had long been strung up to a high pitch of tension. A stolid man would have thought nothing of them. After a while he arose, again asking himself how should he become a leader, who had not the perseverance to enter a city in ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... charged with tension; a hush fell upon the room, the joyous light of battle in every eye, if nothing else, attesting the approach of the foe; while all present, after listening contemptuously to a series of wild and unearthly yells which announced an immediate arrival, sprang to their feet and concentrated ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... inflamed portion so as to secure rest and this is accomplished by the muscles of the abdominal wall becoming rigid, especially over the cecum. These muscles are contracted to such an extent that the right thigh is often drawn up in order to relieve the tension. ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... ferociously. His hands clenched. He almost looked for the moment as though he would strike her. But she did not flinch before him, and very slowly the tension passed. Yet his eyes shone terribly upon her as a sword-blade that is flashed in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... but pleasantly, and I should have been entirely at my ease if it had not been for that continual sense of tension upon the part of Lord Linchmere. As to our host, I found that he improved upon acquaintance. He spoke constantly with affection of his absent wife, and also of his little son, who had recently been sent to school. The house, he said, was not the same without ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... finding himself relieved of all responsibility to himself: now, responsibility to self, in the matter of labor, necessarily implies competition with others. Ordain that, beginning January 1, 1847, labor and wages are guaranteed to all: immediately an immense relaxation will succeed the extreme tension to which industry is now subjected; real value will fall rapidly below nominal value; metallic money, in spite of its effigy and stamp, will experience the fate of the assignats; the merchant will ask more and give less; and we shall find ourselves in a still lower circle ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... at the end of the common table. Philip had already drunk much more than he was accustomed to, but the only result appeared to be some slight slackening of the tension in which he had been living. His eyes flashed, and his tongue became more nimble. He insisted upon ordering wine. He had had no opportunity yet of repaying many courtesies. They drank his health, forced him into the place of honour by the side of Honeybrook, veteran of the club, and ate their ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... second election was, if possible, even greater than during the election of 1856, for the public mind had been wrought up to a high state of tension by the proceedings in the House and the numerous divisions in which the government was supported only by the casting vote of the speaker. The result of the election was so unfavourable to the Gray-Wilmot government that they at once tendered their resignations to ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... more out of a blue sky. Slowly the temperature rose, and then one day, never to be forgotten, there came a warm moistness into the atmosphere. Before night fell, the "Chinook" was pouring down from beyond the mountains, releasing the icy tension and softening ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smooth, and shiny, scarlet and swollen, and feels hot, and is often covered with small blisters. The pain is more or less intense, burning or itching occurs, and there is a sensation of great tightness or tension. On the face the swelling closes the eye and may interfere with breathing through the nose. The lips, ears, and scalp are swollen, and the person may become unrecognizable in a couple of days. Erysipelas tends to spread like a drop of oil, and the borders of the inflammatory ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... the horizon by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low clouds fled swiftly. The sea grew towering, inflated by long swells. Every bird had disappeared except a few petrels, friends of the storms. The barometer fell significantly, indicating a tremendous tension in the surrounding haze. The mixture in our stormglass decomposed under the influence of the electricity charging the air. A struggle of the elements ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... ticked off, the activity became more frenetic around him. Then the pace slowed, and he knew the appointed moment was approaching. Stillness returned to the desert, and tension was a tangible substance ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... plurality of causes? Not if we take account of the whole effect; for then we shall find it modified in each case according to the difference of the cause. In one case there will be a burnt match, in another a warm flint, in the last a changed state of electrical tension. And similar differences are found in cases of death under different conditions, as stabbing, hanging, cholera; or of shipwreck from explosion, scuttling, tempest. Hence a Coroner's Court expects to find, by examining ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... thin, meagre, and fidgety, and with some increase of muscular tone. The head is held up well, the limbs are stiff, the hands clenched, the abdomen retracted, with the outline of the recti muscles unusually prominent. If we can relax this exaggerated state of nervous tension, if we can help them to become fatter and to put on weight, the dyspepsia will disappear with ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... the maneuver several times, and Saunders once or twice answered the jumpers' warnings with a sardonic invitation to remove the post. Neither of them afterward was sure how long the horrible tension lasted, though they agreed that a very little more of it would probably have broken down their nerve; but at length a faint sound came out of the shadows down the valley. It rapidly grew louder, and when it resolved ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... where young Harry McAlister lay, very much whiter than the sheets about him, and quite as unconscious of surroundings, the blood oozing slowly through such bandages as Scott Peck's rude surgery had twisted about a gunshot-wound in his thigh, and brought to close tension by a stick thrust through the folds, turned as tight as could be borne, and strapped into place by a bit ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and the greater intensity of application demanded, produce effects on the growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowd the normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and this variety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... this point than he knew. It is not too much to say that the spiritual tension of the people reached its highest point right there. The imitation of Jesus which had begun with the volunteers in the church was working like leaven in the organization, and Henry Maxwell would even thus early in his life have been amazed if he could have measured the extent of desire on ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... introduced into the sea-water by the experimenter. These chemicals appear to act on the delicate pellicle which forms the surface of the egg-cell in much the same way as the prick of a needle acts on a frog's egg. A limited and delicately adjusted disturbance of the cohesion (or of the surface-tension) of the egg-cell seems to be all that is necessary for starting the egg-cell on its career of development. It becomes, in the light of these experiments, not so much a wonder that egg-cells should develop "on their own," but that they do not more frequently do ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... part of a rope or sail that hangs loose.—To slack, is to decrease in tension or velocity; as, "Slack the laniard of our main-stay;" ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... given to hers the precision that it lacked. There was a faint sallow tinge in the whiteness of her skin, and her eyelids drooped as if she were tired to the point of exhaustion. He noticed, too, the pathetic tension that restrained the quivering of her mouth. It was the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and read over the score of the "Meistersinger" just as easily as you or I would peruse one of the lighter novels of the day. This was one of his refuges. When his spirit was subjected to an extreme tension he relieved his soul by flying to the composers; to use his own very bad joke, when he was in need of composure he sought out the "composures." As time progressed, however, and the petty annoyances grew more numerous, the merely intellectual pleasure of the writings ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... half an hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, govern our breathing, and meditate on eternal things. Every Hindoo child is trained to this from a very early age." The good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression, and imperturbability of manner of these Orientals. I felt that my countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character. How many American children ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes forever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... they were entirely unlike other solid-fuel drives. The pasty white compound being hauled aloft was a self-setting refractory compound with which the rocket tubes would be lined, with the solid fuel filling the center. The tubes themselves were thin steel—absurdly thin—but wound with wire under tension to provide strength against bursting, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... of this extraordinary episode has never been made public. The practical result was that after a period of extreme tension between China and Japan which was expected to lead to war, that political genius, the late Prince Ito, managed to calm things down and arrange workable modus vivendi. Yuan Shih-kai, who had gone to Tientsin to report in person to Li Hung Chang, returned to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... a momentary interest,—from an instant revulsion of our moral nature: we are lost in wonder at the excess of human wickedness, and the hateful wonder, as if partaking of the infinite, now distends the faculties to their utmost tension; for who can set bounds to passion when it seizes the whole soul? It is as the soul itself, without form or limit. We may not think even of the after judgment; we become ourselves justice, and we award a hatred commensurate with ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... of July, proved a long, restful sabbath to Marian and her father, and they spent most of its hours together. The great tension and strain of the past weeks appeared to be over for a time. The magnificent Union victories had brought gladness and hopefulness to Mr. Vosburgh, and the return of her friends had relieved his daughter's mind. He now thought he saw the end clearly. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... purple evening, the smell of wood-smoke from the chimneys went to his head like a narcotic, opened the pores of his skin, and sometimes made the tears come to his eyes. Life had after all turned out well for him, and everything had a noble significance. The nervous tension in which he had lived for years now seemed incredible to him... absurd and childish, when he thought of it at all. He did not torture himself with recollections. He was ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... incapable of bearing the insult without murmuring, yet he chose to accept it with perfect resignation and submission. For a time he had fought against it. But in the church he felt seized by an invisible force. On a sudden this invisible tension seemed to dissolve like a gray mist, hovering over a lake, and began to give place to ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... magic power of tension When a master hand has control! It wins the heart's approbation And augments the receptive soul; 'Tis a rapture born in heaven To entrance our expectant ears, 'Tis angelic diapason Such as ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... to him—new glimpses into meanings yet untold. They would come to him in great bursts of emotion, like tempests that swept him away; and these things he had to wrestle with and master. It meant toil, the like of which he had never faced before, a tension of all his faculties, that would last for hours and hours, and leave him bathed ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... at night, the party reached Kingcombe, it was resolved that the Harpers should remain there until morning. Agatha, worn out with bodily fatigue and the great tension of her mind during so many hours, laid her head down on her pillow, closed her aching eyes, and never opened them till near upon broad noon. Then she found breakfast was long over in the early house of the Dugdales, ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Daddy bravely, as the moment's tension passed, 'my original idea was simply to treat Bourcelles as an epitome, a miniature, so to speak, of the big world, while showing how Nature sweetened and kept it pure as by a kind of alchemy. But that idea has grown. I have the feeling ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... definiteness of thought,—she yielded without a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had found it in the tension ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... white as marble; and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the inspiring god. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the colour returned, the pulse beat: ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one another too well not to be perfectly frank. How much of last night was just—what shall I say—nervous tension? Supposing some other girl had been ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... herein noted that the Convention of 1829-30 settled nothing. A compromise had been effected which relieved somewhat the tension that existed over the matter of representation. The constitutional provision that gave to the Assembly the power, after 1841 and thereafter at intervals of not less than ten years, and under prescribed conditions, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Paine was assigned to the command of what was called the "reserve brigade" of a division under Phelps. The brigade was composed of the 4th Wisconsin, 21st Indiana, and 14th Maine, with Brown's battery attached to the Indiana regiment. But this was not to last, for the tension that had long existed between Phelps and the department commander, on the subject of the treatment of the negroes, as well as on the question of arming and employing them, finally resulted in Phelps's resignation on the 21st of August. On the 13th of September he was succeeded by Brigadier-General ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... in a year or two he will have caught the pulse-beat. He will vibrate to the city's rhythms; and if he only succeeds in his avocation, whatever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry and the tension, he will keep the pace as well as any of us, and get as much out of himself in any week as he ever did in ten ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... us and—stopped. The tension on our nerves was near the breaking point, and I doubt if any of us breathed for the few moments he held us covered by his glass; and then he lowered it and we could see him shout a command to the warriors who had passed from our sight behind the ridge. He did not wait for them to join him, however, ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affected by a very small range in the waves that exist in the ether. Beyond the visible spectrum of common light are vibrations which have long been known as heat or as photographically active. Crookes in a vacuous bulb produced soft light from high tension electricity. Lenard found that rays from a Crookes' tube passed through substances opaque to common light. Roentgen extended these experiments and used the rays photographically, taking pictures of the bones of the hand through living flesh, and so ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... farmer and other producers of raw materials can give the manufacturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer. Then with transportation as a messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system built on service. If we live in smaller communities where the tension of living is not so high, and where the products of the fields and gardens can be had without the interference of so many profiteers, there will be ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... a tension as the days went by and he saw the great green snake swelling with the coming of warmer weather. Inch by inch the water crept up the sides of "Old Turtle-back," the huge glazed rock that rose defiantly, splitting the current in the middle. A few hot suns would melt ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... smaller foliage contrasting with the large glossy leaves of the taller trees, or the feathery, fan-shaped fronds of palms. For a time the fresh breeze blows, but flags under the increasing power of the sun, and finally dies away, the heat and electric tension of the atmosphere becoming ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... vogue. From them, says a critic, he learned "lightness of touch, brevity, conciseness, directness, the use of little traits as a means of giving insight into character, different ways of keeping the interest at the proper point of tension, and a thousand little devices for clearing the stage of superfluous figures or making needed ones appear at the crucial moment." Among his tricks of style, if we may call them so, are inversion and elision; by the one he puts the emphasis just where he wishes, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... been a 'scare' for a good many years," he replied seriously. "People seem inclined to forget that behind the shadow all the time there is the substance. I happen to know that there is a great deal of tension just ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all the boys who gave the Hendricks boys most homage was little Johnnie Barclay. There was no dread in his hero-worship. He had no father to go to the war. But the other children and all the women were under a great cloud of foreboding, and for them the time was one of tension and hoping against hope that the ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Conference (or rather Ambassadorial Reunion) in London had done, in 1912 and 1913, on the Balkan States and Turkey. What the united six powers at that time undertook toward the Balkan States was now to be done by four—discordant—powers upon two others who are in a state of highest political tension. To this proposal Germany replied that the apparatus of an Ambassadorial Conference does not work quickly or effectually enough for the emergency of the moment, or to be able to ease the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... always hard, and for ardent temperaments almost impossible, to hold the mind balanced in a state of suspense, yielding overmuch neither to hope nor to fear, under circumstances like these. As a relief to the torture which such a state of tension ends in causing, the mind at length, if it cannot abandon itself to hope, embraces even despair. About five o'clock Miss Morton was startled by an exceeding bitter cry. Grace was sitting upon the sofa. "Oh, Miss Morton!" ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... its magic, as usual. All six feudists relaxed. I could feel the social tension dissolve. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... last point of safety. Let it be effected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a state of perfect asphyxia, apply a ligature to the left ankle, drawing it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy, and ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... have cried as a child cries, with the snapping of the tension, when he answered: "It was only that terrible last scene, darling. I've seen you die in other parts. But it never affected me like this. Perhaps it's because you didn't belong to me in those days. Or is it that you were more realistic in your acting ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... the composition, then sang it, and soon grew into such enthusiasm as to draw from Beethoven the expression, "No? then we will not burn it, old fellow." Whether it was the reaction of disgust, which so often comes to genius after the tension of work, or whether his ideal of its lovely theme was so high as to make all effort seem inadequate, the world came very near losing what it could not afford to ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... the negative; there was no change. But his face was ashy-white, and he remained seated, overwhelmed by his powerlessness. Thereupon she also, despite the tension of her whole being, sank upon a chair on the other ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... inhabitants, far from welcoming these fierce-looking fighters as brother-Slavs and friends, were only too anxious to have them take their departure, having about as much in common with them, in appearance, manners and speech, as a New Englander has with an Apache Indian. So great was the tension existing in Klagenfurt that a commission had been sent by the Peace Conference to study the question on the spot, its members communicating with the Supreme Council in Paris by means of American couriers, slim young fellows in ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... finished his list. The tension relaxed. Some of the Jews settled back into their former apathy; others gathered in excited groups, pulling their beards and scratching their heads; still others walked up and down the paths, restless, like so ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... day, or during most of it, at least, Rosa and O'Reilly sat hand in hand, oblivious of hunger and fatigue, impatient for the coming of night, keyed to the highest tension. Now they would rejoice hysterically, assuring each other of their good fortune, again they would grow sick with the fear of disappointment. Time after time they stepped out of the hut and stared apprehensively ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... contact with such noble natures as Frau von Wolzogen, Koerner, Dalberg; in later years with his wife; with the Duke of Weimar, the Prince of Augustenburg, and lastly with Goethe. There was at that time a powerful tension in the minds of men, and particularly of the higher classes, which led them to do things which at other times men only aspire to do. The impulses of a most exalted morality—a morality which is so apt ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... Music expresses and causes tension, strain, yearning, through its inner, its "absolute" nature. But it does more; it satisfies these yearnings. It not only creates an expectation to satisfy it, but the expectation itself is of a poignant, emotional, personal ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... consisted in plunging his blade between the ribs of the Arapaho! At the stab, the Indian gave utterance to his wild death-shout. In the same instant his head coggled over upon his shoulder, his body relaxed its muscular tension, and hung limp over the raw-hide rope. A snig of the red blade severed the thong; and the Indian's body sliding down from the withers of the horse, fell with a dull dead sound upon ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... freely handled,—each with his foot planted in front of him, to guard against the onset of his adversary,—each with an arm upraised, at the end of which appeared six inches of sharp, glittering steel,— each with muscles braced to their toughest tension, and eyes glaring forth the fires of a mutual hatred,—a hostility to end only in death,— such became ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... fact of labor and its demands in our cities is the need and demand for recreation. The reaction from the monotony of factory life, with its exacting, fatiguing tension of machine-tending, and the crowdedness of the tenement home, sends the laboring multitudes into the streets at night seeking diversion and amusement. This is pre-eminently true of the young, who find commercialism waiting at night to "extract from them their petty wages by pandering to their love ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... players were able to go at their practice without being ridiculed. Already an improvement had been noticeable. But rivalry was so keen for places, and the coach's choice so deep a mystery, that the contestants played under too great a tension, and school-boys could ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... at once a feeling of excitement or tension in this army, at least among the young officers with whom he associated most. They felt that a storm of some kind was gathering, either in front or on their flank. McClellan's army was now on the transports, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have made special observations that should be confirmed and amplified before their significance can be established. Whitwell[30] thinks that in addition to a diminished activity of the heart there exists a pathological tension. Ziehen says that he also has frequently seen angiospastic pulse-curves in exhaustion stupor or acute dementia, but that other pulse pictures may be seen as well. Any such studies should be correlated rigorously with the clinical states before they can have any meaning. Wetzel[31] tested ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... vagary of a mind at great tension, his senses became particularly acute for a single moment. He saw the silver-pierced vault of the sky, smelled the fragrance of the plains borne on the gentle wind, and heard the rustle of the dappled cottonwoods and the ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... reached the extreme limit of tension. "This at least," she returned; "that we shall not be placed again in the humiliating position of finding ourselves less up on our own ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... their minds, and with the outlaws who had attempted their lives out of the way, the boys tumbled into their bunks on the Fortuna and slept the clock around. Their nerves had been at high tension for some days and they welcomed the opportunity to rest and ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... not hold out against such a tension,—such a bursting and wrenching and tossing,—and it ended by Colin declaring that upon the whole he would prefer making the journey upon ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... is nothing after all like the plaudits of a multitude looking on and mightily concerned. This was now noticeable. The eyes of all the rowers enlarged; their teeth set hard; the arteries of the neck swelled; and even in their tension the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... association of oil pools with anticlinal areas is explained on the assumption that anticlines on the whole are areas of maximum differential movement, resulting in oil distillation, and that they are ordinarily accompanied by tension joints or faults, affording the conditions for oil migration. Data are insufficient, however, to indicate the extent to which the anticlinal areas are really areas of maximum shearing. As regards the exact nature of the process, it is not clear to ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... his remembrance will be the wonderful scene in "The Return of the Druses," where the Prefect, drawing a breath of relief, is almost simultaneously assassinated; and that where Anael, with every nerve at tension in her fierce religious resolve, with a poignant, life-surrendering cry, hails Djabal as Hakeem—as Divine—and therewith falls dead at his feet. Nor will he forget that where, in the "Blot on the 'Scutcheon," Mildred, with a dry sob in ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... We noted the fact with dull joy. It meant more light, more time, more dirt in the dump. So it came about that, from ten hours of toil, we went to twelve, to fourteen; then, latterly, to sixteen, and the tension of it was wearing us down to ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... sip. "It stayed with you, did it?" And the light of triumph, flushing for an instant his rugged features, showed when it waned how pale and drawn they were by the feverish tension ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... life is formed in the understanding and form in feeling does life win a form and form win life, and only thus does beauty arise. By beauty the sensuous man is led up to reason, the one-sided tension of special force is strung to harmony, and man ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... nature is like Lucien's, a nature which Jacques Collin had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden transitions from a state of absolute demoralization to one that is, so to speak, metallic,—so extreme is the tension of every vital force,—are the most startling phenomena of mental vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters of a spring; it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies ready for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it; and then the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... forwards, which by the law of inertia means that the testes are thrown still more downwards and backwards. There is no reason to suppose, as Dr. Woodland suggests, that any rupture of the mesorchium was the usual result of these strains, but a constant pull or tension was caused in the direction in which the testes actually move during development. On this theory we have to consider (1) how such strains could cause a shifting of the peritoneal attachment, (2) why the testes should be supposed to be particularly affected more than other ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham
... down from off the shoulders of her elephant, glistening fantastically with jewels in the light of crackling, resinous torches. Music was seeping up through his mind as the water seeps into a hole dug in the sand of the seashore. He could feel all through his body the tension of rhythms and phrases taking form, not quite to be seized as yet, still hovering on the borderland of consciousness. "From the girl at the cross-roads singing under her street-lamp to the patrician pulling roses to pieces from the height of her litter....All the imaginings of your desire...." ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... autumn, after the French general election. On both sides there was a desire to have friendly relations, but public feeling was extremely sensitive in both countries. The occupation of Tunis had produced a certain tension with the Foreign Office; and in France the growing Protectionist movement made it certain that if England, which from 1860 onward had enjoyed special terms in her commerce with France, was again to have a special treaty, it would not be ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained condition which had tormented her before did not only come back, but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid every minute that something would snap within her from the excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards morning Anna sank into a doze, sitting ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Burr had risen to ask that his name be withdrawn, but the chorus of his newly formed followers howled him down. Then Hartley was dropped from the race and a second ballot ordered. The excitement in the building could be felt like steam. The heat was rising and a nervous tension weighted the atmosphere. Through the clouds of tobacco smoke the records of changes sounded distinctly. The Hartley delegation that Webb had counted on divided and went two ways; the county of Albemarle passed over to Burr; the city of Richmond broke ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... of increasing gravity owing to the connivance of the American authorities and the powerlessness of the Home Government. So matters progressed until the spring of 1887, when the situation became one of extreme tension. The Conservatives were taunted with having ruined the country financially and with pursuing a "Jingo" policy certain to end in bloodshed. Reformers "stumped" the country, calling on their excited audiences ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... of sharp cries from women, the hasty shuffling of feet, and the nervous tension manifest in every one, gave proof that a panic was probably imminent. I called softly to the band, "Yankee Doodle!" and the men quickly responded by playing the good old tune from memory in the darkness, quickly following ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... penetration is not the determining factor ordinarily in deciding whether a body sinks or floats. Yet in the case of the flat body it is not altogether inappropriate to say that the water resists penetration and thus supports the body. The modern physicist explains the phenomenon as due to surface-tension of the fluid. Of course, Galileo's disquisition on the mixing of air with the floating body is utterly fanciful. His experiments were beautifully exact; his theorizing from them was, in this instance, altogether fallacious. Thus, as already intimated, his paper is admirably ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... from the lips of Obadiah Price than the old man straightened himself and stood as rigid as a gargoyle, his gaze penetrating into the darkness of the room beyond Captain Plum, his head inclined slightly, every nerve in him strained to a tension of expectancy. His companion involuntarily gripped the butt of his pistol and faced the narrow entrance through which they had come. In the moment of absolute silence that followed there came to him, faintly, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... secondary factors may cause some slight accidents with the man who shows rather fair results in the experimental test of his foresight. Finally, we must not forget that some men enter into such tests under a certain nervous tension and therefore may not show so well at the very first test as their mental equipment should allow. Hence it is decidedly desirable not to rely on the first test, but to repeat it. If those various interferences are taken into ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... regular firm features proper to the noblest Roman type. The head is thrown backward from the throat; and there is a something of menace or defiance or suffering in the suggestion of brusque movement given to the sinews of the neck. This attitude, together with the tension of the forehead and the fixed expression of pain and strain communicated by the lines of the mouth—strong muscles of the upper lip and abruptly chiselled under lip—in relation to the small eyes, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of its proportions can be more easily corrected by means of a rapid survey, because it is lawful and even necessary in it to leave undone many things which are very hard to do, and because the emotional strain is less prolonged. The most difficult thing in all art is to maintain the imaginative tension unslackened throughout a ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... not intended a typical American emphasis on the polar conditions which obtained in the compartment at this time, but Coleman had given the word this meaning. Spontaneously every body smiled, and at once the tension was relieved. But of course the satanic powers of the railway carriage could not be altogether set at naught. Of course it fell to the lot of Coke to get the seat directly in front of Coleman, and thus, face to face, they were doomed to stare at ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... eager to show us about. In fact ever since he had hustled us out to view the scene of the robbery, his high nervous tension had given us scarcely a moment's rest. For hours he had talked radium, until I felt that he, like his metal, must have an inexhaustible emanation of words. He was one of those nervous, active little men, a born salesman, whether ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... positively, as in the roving frame, by wheel gearing; each spinning bobbin is actually driven by the yarn being pulled round by the arm of the flyer and just sufficient resistance is offered by the pressure or tension of the "temper band" and weight. The temper band is simply a piece of leather or hemp twine to which is attached a weight, and the other end of the leather or twine is attached to the ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... of time, without stirring, he changed. Intensity of search gathered in his eyes, and filled them with power. He remained for a little time longer in a state of tension so extreme, so strung to an act that there might have streamed a music from him, as from the Memnon in the sands when light and heat thrill the fibres of the stone. His look was concentrated upon a point above him where, look as one might, one could have seen nothing ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... what she needed; they would be hard and amusing and keep her at some tension. She thought rather crossly that she could not sit through a meal at home and listen to Mathilde rambling on about ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... the stern gravity of his marble features, and the tension of his muscles, satisfied us that he had fully made up his mind to go through with it. Just as the pirates gained the foot of the rocks, which hid us for a moment from their view, we bent over the sea, and plunged down together head ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... morning Helen was really ill and feverish. The excitement of the previous evening had caused a tension of the brain, which justified the mother's fears. At night she became delirious, and raved incoherently about the worm-eaten traveler, the spinning-woman, and the grave-house to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... certain mental and emotional states. For example, the amount and character of thinking done while we read determines the rate of utterance; the purpose or motive of the thought and its completeness or incompleteness are indicated by an upward or downward slide of the voice; the nervous tension expresses itself in a certain key; the physical and mental energy, in a certain power or volume of the voice; and the character of the emotion is reflected in the quality. These principles of vocal expression are ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... Was it possible he knew an enemy was near? Evan could make out his head turning this way and that. The tension was hard on nerves. Though he lay as still as a snake it seemed incredible to Evan that Charley did not feel ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... love with the woman to let her name be taken in vain by a man whom, though he held his "magic" in superstitious reverence, he yet ranked lower than a dog. With his nerves strung to the highest possible state of tension, and half drunk as he was, Frank Muller was no more to be played with or irritated ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... unprintably. He made a motion to rise, but reconsidered it as he noted the tension of Pringle's ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... drawing quartz fibres, all depending on the fact that quartz when fused is so viscous that it may be drawn into threads of great length, without these threads breaking up into drops, or indeed without their showing any sign of doing so. The surface tension of the melted quartz must, however, be very considerable, as may be seen by examining the shape of a drop of the molten material, and this suffices to impress a rigidly cylindrical form upon the thread, the great viscosity apparently ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... though in play, gathers round us materials for the future, and images for the use of talent. Reverie is the Sunday of thought; and who knows which is the more important and fruitful for man, the laborious tension of the week, or the life-giving repose of the Sabbath? The flanerie so exquisitely glorified and sung by Toepffer is not only delicious, but useful. It is like a bath which gives vigor and suppleness to the whole being, to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to another, straightening them out and bringing order from confusion, and though she held herself well in hand, the tension was growing tighter, and there was danger of her losing control of herself at ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... the west and swifter than ever, we flew down with its current, no longer smooth and dark, but broken into white water over a broader bed of smooth-worn boulders, till three miles below we passed out into a quiet expansion, where the tension relaxed and with minds at ease we could draw in long, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... — N. strength; power &c 157; energy &c 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c adj.; lustihood^, stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... little sadly and his eyes wandered to the blue summer sky and the plane trees swaying in the wind below his window. "It's the reaction," he continued. "The curiosity of two years to be quenched in a single moment! The nervous tension, of ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... each moment to hear the exulting yell or crack of a rifle that should announce his discovery, Donald was thus obliged to paddle doggedly forward within a hundred yards of the shore. His suspense was well-nigh unbearable. Every nerve was strung to its utmost tension. In each new indentation of the coast he expected to see the waiting fleet of canoes, and with each fearful backward glance he wondered at not finding them ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was the tension, that as soon as the sound came for the second time the listener uttered a wild shriek of joy. It was hardly a cry. He had struggled to free himself from his icy bonds to go to his cousin's help, and awakened to the fact that he was helpless, and he had dared to despair, when ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... had come to the stile, and Ralph's heart beat stronger, and a nervous tension of expectation quivered through him, bewildering his judgment. But Winsome was very clear-headed, and though the white of her eyes was as dewy and clear as a child's, she was no simpleton. She had read many men and women in her time, for it is the same ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... among the causes of unrest one of the most serious, probably much more so than either employers or workmen are generally conscious of, is the long hours of work. Those who have had to hear questions arising out of labour disputes have noticed the state of tension produced by the weariness and strain of too prolonged and continuous work. Even in the domestic circle an overworked man is often found less amiable and more ready to find fault. A harassed manager ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... and had been blowing, how the barometer was varying, to what degree of cold the thermometer had descended; if one were still more inquisitive he could further inform himself as to the electrical tension of the atmosphere and other matters of like import. That such knowledge could be gleaned without a visit to the open air was an obvious advantage to those who were clothing themselves to face it, whilst the ability to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... words with the most fearful oaths and imprecations, and having fastened a rope to his right leg, dragged it violently until it reached the wood, and then tied it down as tightly as possible. The agony which Jesus suffered from this violent tension was indescribable; the words 'My God, my God,' escaped his lips, and the executioners increased his pain by tying his chest and arms to the cross, lest the hands should be torn from the nails. They ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Desire and fear, sadness and care, are done away. Existence is reduced to the simplest form, the most ethereal mode of being, that is, to pure self-consciousness. It is a state of harmony, without tension and without disturbance, the dominical state of the soul, perhaps the state which awaits it beyond the grave. It is happiness as the orientals understand it, the happiness of the anchorite, who neither struggles nor wishes any more, but simply adores and enjoys. It is difficult to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their bodies against each other, and yet are so well balanced that the dense clump of humanity stands absolutely motionless. In the centre is an inextricable chaos where shoulders heave and heads rise and fall. At the edges are a fringe of legs—legs in an extreme state of tension— ever pawing for a firmer foothold, and apparently completely independent of the rest of their owners, whose heads and bodies have bored their way Into the melee. The pressure in there is tremendous, yet neither side gives an inch. Just on ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... truth in every breath, in every glance of his deep eyes. A delicious languor took the place of the horrible tension that had been every faculty,—a repose so sweet and perfect, that, if reason had placed the clearest possible proofs of my husband's perfidy before me, I should simply have smiled and fallen asleep on his true ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... something in the panting breath which issues from the nostrils of a tired horse, in the tension of their muscles, and the prodigious efforts of their loins, which gives us, in a high degree, the idea of strength; but the mute resignation of these animals, when we know them to be overladen, inspires us with pity, and makes us regret the ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... of moss that lay against the smooth bark. There he stood, his blue-brown side full toward her, unconscious of her presence. Noiselessly she cocked the piece. Noiselessly she raised it to her face, and, with every nerve drawn to its tightest tension, sighted ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... read, but in reality listening with acute tension of ear to every little sound. His perceptions became so sensitive in this respect that he was incapable of measuring time, every moment had seemed so full of noises, from the beating of his heart up to the roll of the heavy carts in the distance. He wondered whether Virginie ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the relieved tension of her poor, terrified little heart found vent in two big tears which rose ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... a trip of this kind a vacation;' then with a countenance of sudden gravity he added: 'We no sooner get through one great question than another comes.' It made me think of the tension on the President's mind at that time. There was the Venezuelan question. There were suggestions of war with England, and then there was the Cuban matter with suggestions of war with Spain, and all the time the overshadowing ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... words may be applied either to undertaking or to doing. Gradual (L. gradus, a step) signifies advancing by steps, and refers to slow but regular and sure progression. Slack refers to action that seems to indicate a lack of tension, as of muscle or of will, sluggish to action that seems as ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... that he could not say anything more to comfort Big Bob, tried to relieve the tension by drawing the other's attention ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... the School of Forestry at Nancy, found by experiment that the electrical tension always existing between the upper air and soil stimulated growth. He found plants protected from the influence were less vigorous than those subject ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... eyes from the glittering daggers, she threw herself upon the divan, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and watched, with the look of a tigress, Michel, who said to her now, in a voice which trembled with the tension of his feelings: "You must know well, Marsa, that death is not the thing that can frighten a man like me! What does frighten me is that, having lost you once, I may lose you forever; to know that another will ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... there was anything much amiss. A slight restlessness, however, an eagerness for occupation and amusement, and a shade of impatience when any one opposed her, spoke of inward irritability. Now and then, too, there was a sharpness in her voice that betrayed nervous tension; but none dared to express sympathy by look or word. Once when she announced her intention of joining Bessie and Richard in their ride, and her mother asked her if she were not too tired, she ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... thoroughly—which was his shortcoming, for he tried to run the place as they thought it should be run. As for the third, he tried to run it on nerves, to do everything himself, to be everywhere at once. He didn't fail, really—he snapped like a fiddle-string. By that time working tension was relaxed and production wabbling on the down-peak. Nobody knew who was in charge, or what ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... pursued by his own thoughts like raging hounds. By this expression Shelley apparently means that he had over-boldly tried to fathom the depths of things and of mind, but, baffled and dismayed in the effort, suffered, as a man living among men, by the very tension and vividness of his thoughts, and their daring in expression. See what he says of himself, in prose, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... people whose nerves were kept at abnormal tension, reaction carried the humor of the South largely into travesty. Where the reality was ever somber, creation of the unreal found popular and acceptable form in satiric verse. Major Caskie—who ever went into battle with a smile ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... British Oil, Anderson's Pills, and Stoughton's Elixir.[78] Turlington in 1755 was selling not only his Balsam of Life, but was also vending Daffy's Elixir, Godfrey's Cordial, and Stoughton's Elixir.[79] After the tension of the Townshend Acts, it was the Bow Churchyard Warehouse which supplied a Boston apothecary with a large supply of nostrums, including all the eight patent medicines then in existence of the ten with which this discussion is primarily ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen
... trenches, in the drilling of Baraland Irregulars and Rifle Volunteers and the newly-enrolled Town Guard. This was the pleasant social time of lull before the storm, and they were not to get many more good dinners or peaceful nights in bed for a long siege to come. They did not show outwardly the tension of strung nerves that waited, as the whole world waited, for the echo of the first shot, rattling amongst the low hills to the south. Nor did it occur to them that there was anything heroic or dramatic in their quiet unaffected pose. Gathered together upon one little spot of border earth destined ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... infer that when the bar was first thought of and inserted it was simply with an idea of supporting the part over which the third and fourth strings were stretched, and that as the tension of the strings became greater in consequence of the rise in the pitch, so the bar had to be increased in strength, that is, longer and deeper. The discovery or unearthing of an old master in its original condition ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... sentence That's the man I talked with becomes in writing That is the man with whom I talked. The colloquial sentence It was a cold day but there wasn't any wind blowing is a loose string of words. Written discourse requires greater tension and more care in subordinating minor ideas: The day, though cold, was still. Contractions are proper in conversation, and in personal or informal writing. In formal writing they are not appropriate. And do not let such expressions as He doesn't, We aren't, It's proved, used in talk by ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... partly, no doubt, because of Sir Jeremy—the old man with the wrinkled hands and parchment face seemed to follow one, noiselessly, remorselessly, through every passage and into every room ... but there was also something else—that tension always noticeable in a room where people whose recent action towards some common goal is undeclared are gathered together; they were waiting for some one else ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... were not reassuring, and I determined that if I could find no means of getting down without assistance, I would call out and run all risks; but so long as I could endure the tension of the straps I would hold out, and hope for a tree or a pole. Perhaps it might rain, and my wet clothes would then become so heavy that I would descend as low as the top of ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... means of a thread passed through the portion of the tendon of the external rectus, which remains attached to the sclerotic. The risk of all these operations, in which both muscles are divided, is protrusion of the eyeball from the removal of muscular tension. ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... age on a plant of this Petunia, which had been laid horizontally, and on another plant which was left upright, both being kept in complete darkness, diverged in the same manner for 48 h., and apparently were not affected by apogeotropism; though their stems were in a state of high tension, for when freed from the sticks to which they had been tied, ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... lived the same number of years a wholly unlovely thing, suddenly awakening to the possession of entire physical beauty, might find the strain upon pure sanity greater and the balance less easy to preserve. The relief from the conscious or unconscious tension bred by the sense of imperfection, the calm surety of the fearlessness of meeting in any eye a look not lighted by pleasure, would be less normal than the knowledge that no wish need remain unfulfilled, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and at a normal time, this episode shows little that is comic. But when it happened I was in a state of high tension, and this, combined with the startling realisation that a Hun pilot had saved me and destroyed his friend, seemed irresistibly comic. I cackled with laughter and was annoyed because my pilot did not ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... mistake made by my mother was in the physical management of her children. Like many mothers whose bodies and minds are kept at the highest tension, she failed to give vital strength to her children. The most promising of these died in early childhood, "by the will of God," as we say in our blindness. One of them especially, the "little king," as he ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... mustering a shaky resolution, he set to work ransacking the tumbled papers. Happily, Zimmerman had left all in confusion. The very hopelessness of his accounts proved a relief. Working at high tension, Rudolph wrestled through disorder, mistakes, falsification; and little by little, as the sorted piles grew and his pen traveled faster, the old absorbing love of method and dispatch—the stay, the cordial flagon of troubled man—gave him strength ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... turmoil of 1896 affairs declined from bad to worse. The state of tension between the oppressed Uitlanders and the now suspicious Boers became from day to day and year to year more acute, till at last it was almost unbearable. The incompetence of the police showed that robbery, and even ...
— 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
... only seeming?—small. Charmian's attitude, too, had often rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he were closely connected with it, though he had ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the climbing, the excitement, gave animation to Rafael's explanations; face and figure showed his state of tension. She felt almost giddy: should she return to the boat and row away alone? But she was too proud thus to ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Arestino, its symmetry convulsing in matchless tortures, the bosom palpitating awfully with the pangs of that earthly hell, and the exquisitely-modeled limbs enduring all the hideous pains of dislocation, as if the fibers that held them in their sockets were drawn out to a tension at which they ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... wood of the walnut is diffuse porous, brittle, straight grained, and easily split. The wood must be cut diagonally to get sufficient tension to hold the scion in grafting. The branch grows rapidly in a short season, May 15th to July 1st in central Iowa. The upper two-thirds of the one year growth is usually light weight with pith of large diameter. The base of the one-year growth is the best for scions. Some varieties of walnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... ran more evenly, there were no more cataracts or whirlpools, and while Grace was obliged to bail hard with—so closely does burlesque follow on tragedy—one of my long boots, she could keep the leaks under. I did my best with the paddle, for I could see the tension was telling on her, and at last the great rock walls fell back on either hand, and dwarf pines and juniper climbed the less precipitous slopes, until these too opened out into a wide valley, and we slid forth safely into clear sunlight. Never had brightness and warmth so rejoiced ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... phantom of the previous night, the day denied it all, telling him it was but the coinage of his own over-wrought brain, weakened by prolonged tension of the intellect, and excited by the presence of Euphra at an hour claimed by phantoms when not yielded to sleep. This was the easiest and most natural way of disposing of the difficulty. The cloud around Euphra hid the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... through the crowd, breaking the tension. They all went mad with joy. Men shook hands with perfect strangers; women hugged each other, murmuring incoherently, and mothers gathered their little ones to them, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... fields cast by the oaks and beeches were a part of our company. The blue bloom of the distant hills was strengthening into purple. As the light was intensifying in color, the human life in the fields was relaxing its tension; the bent backs were straightening, the ploughmen were whipping their steeds toward the open road; for although it was Sunday, and a fete day, the farmer must work. The women were gathering up some of the grasses, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... tension had for months existed between Austria-Hungary and Russia which was only prevented from developing into war by the moderation of the Powers.... Europe will feel grateful to the English Minister of Foreign Affairs for the extraordinary ability and ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... almost painful at last, and the tension grew to such an extent that I felt at last that I must run out and tell Esau I had misjudged him, as I had been misjudged, when Mr Raydon stopped before me and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... of the jars depends on the voltage. If you are going to use a current of low tension, as from batteries, the jars need not be very large, but if you intend to use the electric light current of 110 voltage it will be necessary to use large jars or wooden boxes made watertight, which will hold about 6 or 7 gal. Each jar to be filled with 20 parts water to 1 part sulphuric acid. ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... sixteen, she snatched out one of their finest tablecloths, and put on many extra dishes for supper, while Uncle Robert, looking like a different man, was helping her. He was actually stirring the gravy, and getting the water, and setting up chairs. And he was under high tension, too. He was saying things of no moment, as if they were profound wisdom, and laughing hilariously at things that were scarcely worth a smile. Adam looked on, and marvelled and all the while his irritation grew. At last he saw a glance of understanding pass between them. He could ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the Courrier des Etats Unis, made a speech, as witty as it was kindly. It was a thoroughly French speech. Then came the terrible moment of introductions. Oh, what a tiring time that was! My mind was kept at a tension to catch the names. Mr. Pemb——, Madame Harth——, with the h aspirated. With great difficulty I grasped the first syllable, and the second finished in a confusion of muffled vowels and hissing consonants. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... head. For a moment he was the Arizona the sheriff had known, but his laughter was too strident, and it was easy to see that he was at a point of hysterically high tension. ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... thing for all, for it broke the unnatural tension between us, and after MacColl had assisted Huey into the pantry, where I could see him standing, listening ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... of Secession, which had concentrated the entire effort of the navy upon our own coasts and inland waters, the policy of the government reverted, irreflectively perhaps, to the identical system of distribution in squadrons that had existed before. The prolonged tension of mind and effort during four years of overwrought activity was followed by a period of reaction, to which, as far as the administration of the navy was concerned, the term collapse would scarcely be misapplied. Of course, for a few years the evil effects of this would not be observable ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... pausing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled anew. Lower and lower the doctor sank, kneeling now by the navvy's side, till his head was on a level with, and just in front of, the great hairy fist, and—there was no tension on the coat-collar. Then light ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... ashen lips trembling, but her body motionless. In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy symbol she sought to oppose my entrance. At sight of me, her whole frame relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair. Some mighty tension had given way. Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air, made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had placed before the picture ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Apollo-like form or face: short, squat, with its shoulders drawn up to its ears, and its hands delved into its breeches'-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture of brick-dust and saffron; and the texture seems that of the skin of a dead frog. There is a rigidity and tension in the features, too, which would make you fancy, if you did not see that that were not the fact, that some one from behind was pinching it with a pair of hot tongs, and that it were either afraid or ashamed to tell. Eyes are usually denominated the windows of the soul; but here you ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... short one of Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted, feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear the strain of friendship if it can. Heriot had promised to walk half-way with me to Bulsted, in spite of Lady Maria's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... right in his final conclusion, it is plain that he and Lincoln were remarkably alike in temperament; that whatever had caused the break in Lincoln's engagement was repeated in his friend's experience when the latter reached a certain degree of emotional tension; that this paralleling of Lincoln's own experience in the experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once the solitude of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward terror. Both men were ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... been on the verge of suffocation. It was evidently she who had flung up the window. Her gloved hands leaned upon the woodwork on each side of it. There was a certain constraint in her whole attitude, a tension that was subtly evident in every graceful line. Her head was slightly bent as though she intently ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... The throat is even muffled, and a "respirator" worn, so that fresh air is not allowed to get inside the lungs, while the pleura is exposed to chill at the back. The consequence of this is that vital action is so abstracted from the pleura that the tension of its small vessels is relaxed, and blood is admitted as it is not intended it ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... make probable my next Position, That the parts of the Glass are under a kind of tension or flexure, out of which they indeavour to extricate and free themselves, and thereby all the parts draw towards the Center or middle, and would, if the outward parts would give way, as they do when the outward ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... balance. At half this distance the attraction would be augmented four times; at a third of the distance, nine times; at one-fourth of the distance, sixteen times, and so on. In every case, the attraction might be measured by determining, with the spring balance, the amount of tension just sufficient to prevent D from moving towards F. Thus far we have nothing whatever to do with motion; we deal with statics, not with dynamics. We simply take into account the distance of D from F, and the pull exerted by gravity ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... boyhood of the Sons, but now they were nearly men, And the chains had been tightening upon them and tightening with every year of growth. Each year they grew, and the Food spread and great things multiplied, each year the stress and tension rose. The Food had been at first for the great mass of mankind a distant marvel, and now It was coming home to every threshold, and threatening, pressing against and distorting the whole order of life. It blocked this, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... to drag a little on both sides, and there was developed a tension just perceptible, which lasted till the arrival of ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... fallen asleep, Ashe stood for some time beside his dressing-room window, looking absently into the cloudy night, too tired even to undress. A gusty northwest wind tore down the street and beat against the windows. The unrest without increased the tension of his mind and body. Like Lady Tranmore, he had, as it were, stepped back from his life, and was looking at it—the last three years of it in particular—as a whole. What was the net result of those years? Where was he? ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in all this. It was not Holmes's nature to take an aimless holiday, and something about his pale, worn face told me that his nerves were at their highest tension. He saw the question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Anderson a summons to surrender. It was rejected; and the circle of forts opened fire and Sumter fired back. The roar of those guns flashed by telegraph over the country. In every town and hamlet men watched and waited with a tension which cannot be described. All the accumulated feeling of months and years flashed into a lightning stroke of emotion. All day Friday and Saturday, April 12, 13, men watched the bulletins, and talked in brief ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the cordial favour of the Secretary, Sir Ralph Winwood; and if the King disliked him as much as ever, no animosity was shown. In the first days of 1617, Raleigh ventured upon a daring act of intrigue. He determined to work upon the growing sympathy of the English Court with Savoy and its tension with Spain, to strike a blow against the rich enemy of the one and ally of the other, Genoa. He proposed to Scarnafissi, the Savoyard envoy in London, that James I. should be induced to allow the Guiana expedition to steal into the Mediterranean, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... also reproduced the likeness of a young girl, wonderfully beautiful. I had first experienced this mental image immediately after my first conversation with Almos. At that time I had tried hard to put it from me as merely a delusion resulting from nervous tension. But I found that after each interview with Almos, the image became clearer and more definitely fixed in my mind, until now I firmly believed in the existence of this beautiful being on Mars, and, remarkable though it seemed, I could not deny my growing affection for her. I had not mentioned this ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... added, with a glance at him which took in the dust, and the stains of salt-water on his clothes, the fatigue he sought to conceal by a rigid stillness, and the tension that was left by the dangers he had ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... soft palate is never still for a moment while we are singing or speaking, as it assumes a different degree of tension for every vowel and also for every pitch of the voice. We see, therefore, that this curtain has great influence upon the management of the voice, and we should do all we can to get it under our control. ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... does not keep pace with population growth, requiring food imports. Rwanda continues to receive substantial aid money and was approved for IMF-World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative debt relief in late 2000. Kigali's high defense expenditures have caused tension between the government and international donors and lending agencies. An energy shortage and instability in neighboring states may slow growth in 2005, while the lack of adequate transportation linkages to other countries continues ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... indicated a grave crisis, and it is reported that on one occasion the British agent ordered the army to make a demonstration before the palace, and pointed out to the young ruler the folly of forcing events which would inevitably lead to his dethronement. The tension was gradually relaxed, and compromises brought about which resulted in harmony between the khedive and the British policy of administration, and no one rejoiced more than Abbas Hilmi over the victory ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... circles in cities who hold advanced views, the labourer brings a pressure to bear upon almost every aspect of country life. That pressure is not sufficient to break in pieces the existing order of things; but it is sufficient to cause an unpleasant tension. Should it increase, much of the peculiar attraction of country life will be destroyed. Even hunting, which it would have been thought every individual son of the soil would stand up for, is not allowed to continue unchallenged. Displays of a most disagreeable ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... to that somewhat anxious interval with which frequenters of race-courses are familiar, between the finish of the race and the announcement of the "All Right!" The outgoing Headquarters are waiting for the magic words—"Relief Complete!" Until that message comes over the buzzer, the period of tension endures. The main point of difference is that the gentleman who has staked his fortune on the legs of a horse has only to wait a few minutes for the confirmation of his hopes; while a Brigadier, whose bedtime (or even breakfast-time) ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... about the Saint's grip on his spear. To get its head right through the dragon's chest—taking, as it has done, the longest possible route—and out so far on the other side, would require more vigour and tension than is suggested by the casual way in which the thumb rests on the handle. Dragons' necks and bosoms are, I take it, not only scaly without but of a sinewy consistency within that is by no means easy ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... waited humbly for the climax—which reached so high a tension that the speaker rose upon his toes to deliver it, and drew his right hand from his pocket to aid in the punctuation—when he pulled his hat down on his head and ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
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