"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... delicious sleepiness that still lingered in all her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs that could reach a deer's ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... a tense moment. Every one of the adventurers felt it, and all but Tom grasped their weapons with tighter grips. They were ready to spring out as soon as a landing was made. Tom managed the machinery in the dark, for he knew every wheel, gear and ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... meeting was held. The situation was a tense one. Not one of the burghers present doubted the outcome. Yet General de la Rey exhorted them to remain cool and calm. He urged them to await the turn of events in Europe. After his address a "strange and unusual silence" was observed, says the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... illustrated in the case of the arm. Extend the arm and clench the fist; then contract all the muscles of the arm, about as the athlete does to display his muscular development. You will notice that the arm becomes stiff and tense. ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned in ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... his face went white. He compressed his lips with an effort and choked back the words. Leverage, leaning forward in tense eagerness—knowing the verbal trap that Carroll had been ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... Chester held himself tense—ready to spring upon the man the moment he should come within reach. Just inside the door the man paused and again sought to determine the ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... is bound to fulfil what he has vowed, as long as he is able lawfully to do so; thus if a man has vowed to observe continence, he is bound, even after contracting marriage by words in the present tense, to fulfil his vow so long as the marriage is not consummated, because he can fulfil the vow by entering religion. Therefore if a person may lawfully pass from one religious order to another, he will ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... With Mimi's assistance she put on his coat, the hilt of the dagger thrusting forward the row of medals on his breast. Marie went out into the street and flitted up and down like a big gray moth, her gray little face tense with rapture. Her devotion to Gisela had been fanatical from the first but now she begged what invisible power her wild little mind still recognized to be permitted to ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... incident, bounding with physical energy, dramatic in coloring, and modern in every phrase. He has a message delivered with vigor, inspired with tense passion. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... papers that a large shipment of heavy cannon had left America for Russia," he said with dry humor, "in transit for us—for if they're consigned to the Russians, we'll have them sooner or later, I hope;" adding, with his habitual tense earnestness, "the Americans are something more than shrewd, hard-headed business men. Have they ever vividly pictured to themselves a German soldier smashed by an American shell, or bored through the heart by an American bullet? The grim realism of the battlefield—that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Big Waller. He "caught" that gigantic Yankee in every conceivable action and attitude. He photographed him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... southeastward came the sound of a shot. Downey straightened, and for the space of minutes stood tense as a pointer. The sound was not repeated—and swiftly the officer of the Mounted sped ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... the Captain closely. Anderson turned abruptly away from them all and stood, feet apart, head down, hands behind his back, and stared out of the forward viewports. In the tense silence they could hear his knuckles crack. At length he said quietly, "That isn't what we came ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... or at least the parts that we could see, became tense and rigid. A soft hiss went round the circle, and once again the wriggling movement started. But this time the six went forward instead of backward. They broke out of the circular formation, and ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum monumentorum veterum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; murder grins in the withdrawn lip, the white, red-set teeth, the slavering crunch of the jaw: but nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... operator must direct his efforts primarily to the relaxation of the tense muscles, secondarily to the strengthening of the opponent groups, this last being of special importance where actual contraction has taken place. He should make frequent attempts by stretching the rigid groups to overcome the spasm, ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... more accurate understanding of the Bible is its translation from the past to the present tense. It has been studied as history, as the record of a remote past whose truth it has been well-nigh impossible to verify. It should be studied as a record of the present, the present experience of the individual ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... course, fluttered to and fro an instant, then neared a woman, who sat listlessly by herself, her arms resting upon those of her chair and her eyes, dark and sad, fastened upon the far horizon. There was a tense quiet in her attitude that seemed to cover something ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... eyes while the doctor counted his pulse. During the ensuing silence it struck Esther that both women were more worried than was necessary. The Frenchwoman in particular watched with an air of tense apprehension. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... quite possible that she was led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very first class—the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-minded Erfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil—a type again, as he was evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. She was a devotee of Rousseau, and she undoubtedly had the egregious Bomston before her. But, though ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Indians—were they Indians?—swung themselves lightly aboard the vessels, and went swiftly and silently to work. Up from the hold came case after case of tea, which were seized and broken open by the hatchets, the sound of their breaking being clearly audible in the tense stillness; and the black contents were showered into the waters. Minute after minute, hour after hour went by, and still the wild figures worked, and still the multitude looked on, forgetful of the cold, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... slender hand up to his lips, his head turned toward the door, an expression of tense expectancy in every line of ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... (I am speaking of the 25th of March, A. D. 1839, in the present tense,) I succeeded in persuading my father to gratify my predilection for the sea, by putting me on board of the Gentile, under the particular care of Captain Smith, to try one voyage—so I became the ship's cousin. Contrary to the predictions ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... his voice deepening and his face growing more tense, "then we were sent to Verdun. That was the hottest place of all. It was at the top of the big German drive. The whole sea rushed and fell on us—big guns, little guns, poison-gas, hand-grenades, liquid fire, bayonets, knives, and trench-clubs. Fort after fort went down. The ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... erstwhile light-hearted schoolgirl and youthful mistress of her uncle's house had been subjected to dynamic influences. The ordeal through which she had passed, unscathed bodily but seared in spirit, had left her strung to a tense pitch. Relaxation had not come—as yet. She only knew that she resented to the uttermost the Brazilians' malevolent fury. Hers was a nature that could not endure unfairness. It was unfair of David Verity to ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... last, Gurdon advanced till he was close to the window. He could hear no more now, for the same tense silence had fallen over the place once more. Gurdon pressed close to the window; he felt something yield beneath his feet, and the next moment he had plunged headlong into the darkness of something that suggested an underground cellar. ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... scene,—the noise being almost indescribable, and the ship, for all the forward half of her, being an absolute 'slaughter-house.' Though we had only twenty-five killed and twenty-eight wounded (some of whom afterwards died) on that day, yet numbers were torn into fragments, (men with their muscles tense, subjected to violent concussion, seem as brittle as glass,) causing the deck and its surroundings to present ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... valley and plains. Umapine stood there the embodiment and glorification of Indian manners, costume, and tradition, a vivid picture of Indian life and story. The waymarks of such a life are, always tense with interest: they are more so as he points them out himself. We will let him tell his ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... best things that Hugh's professional life had brought him was a friendship with his father; their relations had been increasingly tense all through the undergraduate days; if Hugh had not been of a superficially timorous temperament, disliking intensely the atmosphere of displeasure, disapproval, or misunderstanding, among those with whom he lived, there would probably have been sharp collisions. His father did not realise that ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Harriet Prescott Spofford, is a work of unique quality, being really a poem in the guise of a prose novel. The thought is tense and sublimated, and the style glowing, musical and polished. There is abundant invention in the story, and nothing of common-place and indolent imitation which in the case of ordinary raconteurs contributes so largely to swell the bulk of ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the desire faded; and even during the day, indoors, he shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded—the long hours, lying there tense, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of running as her hold-up man had done, he turned to meet the oncoming champion. Alexander grappled with him and there was a stout tussle. It seemed ages to Antoinette, who was watching the struggle with tense, strained eyes, before Alexander proved his redoubtability by throwing her ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... tightly into the cape in a way that converted that traditionally graceful garment into a kind of armour, disappeared up the street. When she was out of sight, and not until then, Judith slammed the door shut, laughing her tense, excited laugh again. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... Her tense, flushed mind recorded automatically, and with acute vividness, every detail of the room; the pattern of the gray French wall-paper, with the watered stripe, and of the hot, velvet upholstery, buff on a crimson ground; the architecture of the stained walnut sideboard and ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... that chair!" she commanded, her low tones tense. "There are men in the office looking this way. I'll marry you when the Flagg drive is down, with you at the head of it, doing your duty. You may think that over ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... when Colonel Roosevelt prepared to open fire on a cow elephant, accompanied by a calf, at a range of thirty yards, in a district where the highest tree was within reach of an elephant's trunk, the situation was one fraught with tense uncertainty. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... his feet—his fists clenched,] God blarst it! [He sinks slowly back in his chair again, the knuckles showing white on his clenched hands, his face tense with the effort to suppress ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... the din. His plans were vague and unformed. He had one picture of some commanding position from which he could address the multitudes, another of meeting Ostrog face to face. He was full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, his ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... seemed a matter of some concern to the German emperor. Health trips of more than one statesman in or about the same locality are looked upon with much suspicion and promptly investigated; more so when there is any extra political tension. At that time—it was in 1910—the air was tense, Germany was in the dark, unable ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... loneliness of her life found expression in the eager voice, in the yearning eyes. As he stared at her, half-stupefied, he imagined she was holding out her arms to him in pleading. But it was not this erect form, slight and tense, that reached forth as if to clasp him to her heart; it was a memory of his youth, a memory that in some oddmanner blurred his perception of the living presence. From the fragile body of Fran, something ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... abruptly. He could hear tense voices shouting that the Wolves were out of it. He came to a stop in ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... she retorted, in a tense voice. "I've no doubt she's as slipshod—as easy-going, I should say, as her father. The idea of her not waiting for advice from her relatives before she took such a step and came to a strange land uninvited; ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... primordio," for "tristiores primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incertas" for "amore an odio incertum" (XIII. 9), and "conquerentium irritum laborem," for "conquerente irritum laborem" (XV. 17). The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens concordes agunt spernuntur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords agunt, spernitur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habere" for "nationes promptum habaret," ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Hath threatened me, I have been close pursued, And yet my spirit quailed not, and by boldness I have escaped captivity. But what Is this which now constricts my breath? What means This overpowering tremor, or this quivering Of tense desire? No, this is fear. All day I have waited for this secret meeting, pondered On all that I should say to her, how best I might enmesh Marina's haughty mind, Calling her queen of Moscow. But the hour Has come—and I remember naught, I cannot Recall the speeches I have ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... of utter silence following Tunis Latham's last words. Then the girl's whisper, tense, yet ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... The dropsy of the cavity of the abdomen is known by a tense swelling of the belly; which does not sound on being struck like the tympany; and in which a fluctuation can be readily perceived by applying one hand expanded on one side, and striking the tumour ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... and I again awaited the cry of our feathered friends, but our waiting, like that of so many others, was in vain. The wild ducks are a thing of the past. Where have they gone? No one knows, no one has ever seen them. And in the tense hush of the Autumn nights, above the distant rumble of the cannon rose only the plaintive cry of stray dogs ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... expedition. Though the Dutch authorities evidently have stamped out headhunting on the Kayan River, and have even destroyed the heads that were hanging in the houses, smashing them throwing them into the river, the Kayan still speaks of the custom in the present tense. Even one or two of my companions were credited with having ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and unblinkingly ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for the moment, ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... a tense whisper, to her sleeping nephew—"Chris, what on airth is this here hitched ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... am ready," said Grace softly. Then she knocked imperatively upon the door. There was a tense moment of waiting, then the door was opened by Kathleen West herself. Her sharp face looked still sharper as she eyed her visitors ...
— Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... this declaration was broken by a sharp cry coming from Mary in the garden. "Martha! Lazarus! Father Joseph!" and her voice was tense ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... satisfied with their conduct. My wanderings and freaks do not count; I was a Bohemian, with the tastes of a Romany and the curiosity of a philosopher; I went into the most abominable company because it amused me and I had only myself to please, and I saw what a fearfully tense grip the monster, Drink, has taken of this nation; and let me say that you cannot understand that one little bit, if you are content to knock about with a policeman and squint at signboards. Well, I want to know how these legislators can go to ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... chimneys, the rattle of the thunder and the pelting of the rain. It was a time to quicken the steadiest pulse, and when the crucial moment came, when a pebble suddenly rang against the pane with a sound that the tense waiting magnified into a shivering crash, Hollyer leapt from the ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... that shadowless chamber could altogether rob of its vitality. He spoke simply and good-humouredly, without any attempt at rhetoric, relying chiefly upon a crescendo of telling facts that gradually, as he proceeded, roused the House to that tense stillness that comes to it when ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... arm's length of the newsvendor. I threw down coins to the value of 2s. 8d., grabbed his paper and vanished before he could voice a protest. I scrambled back to my car. Here the paper was snatched from me to be read aloud to the expectant crowd thirsting for news. There was a tense silence as the reader ran through the items until he gravely announced the latest intelligence—Russia and Germany had declared war. The news was official. For a second a profound silence reigned. Then there broke out a further outburst of wild, maniacal cheering, above which, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... man's fame. The Revue des Deux Mondes was now open to him, and henceforth, with a few exceptions, whatever he wrote appeared in that periodical. He made his entry with the drama of Andrea del Sarto, which is rife with tense and tragic situations and deeply-moving scenes. The affairs of the family turned out much better than had been expected, but Alfred de Musset continued to work with application and ardor. His fine critical faculty kept his vagaries within ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... was sufficiently familiar with the 'Human Comedy' to venture quotation from it. Nor was this predecessor Cooper, whom Balzac admired and even imitated, altho Leatherstocking in tracking his redskin enemies revealed the tense observation and the faculty of deduction with which Poe was to endow his Dupin. The only predecessor with a good claim to be considered a progenitor is Voltaire, in whose 'Zadig' we can find the method which Poe was to apply ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... have caught the atmosphere and the spirit of the play. His performance, indeed, was very wonderful from the moment when he offers Death a thousand boons if only the dread summons may be delayed, to that final tense scene, when, stripped of his outer robe, he says his closing prayers, hesitates for a moment to turn back, though the dread angel is there by his side, and then follows the beckoning hand of Good Deeds, a figure splendidly ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... I can see myself that your mind is in a tense, excited, nervous condition from work; you must lie fallow, my ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... on the other side, makes tense the ligaments, first at one side and then at the other, by drawing the finger to the opposite side, and cuts them. The tendons being cut, the finger is detached. The vessels being tied, one point of suture is put in on the dorsal aspect, and the fingers on each side tied together at ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... was, forgot that he was bound, so tense were the moments and so eagerly did he watch the base of the hill. When a long time—at least, Dick thought it so—had passed, a murmur came from the village below. The men were but scouts and had gone away, and no white army was ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... some mope and weep, And wish their frugal sires would keep Their only sons at home;— Some tease their future tense, and plan The full-grown doings of the man, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... instincts where the herds of ponies ran. It was easy to catch and halter any one she chose; no forest beast went in fear of her who had the wild-wood savour in her hair—but it meant more contriving and another stretch for her tense brain. For herself, she hardly dared stay at all. Prosper's breast under a dagger! If she had stayed she would not have slept. The fever and the fever only kept her up; for a slim and tender girl she went through incredible fatigues. But while the fever lasted so did she, alert, wise, discreet, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... catching the air with her pale lips. At moments her face would writhe and her mouth twitch with a dreadful spasm of pain and she would raise her hands as though she wanted to tear apart her throat to get more air. Her white and fever-coated tongue slipped spasmodically from her mouth and so tense did her body become in the struggle with death that the veins stood out like black whip cords on; ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... sitting on the hummocky sparse grass under an ancient olive-tree, looking seawards. She wore a blue frock without any collar, and her face and long, round neck were very sunburnt. Her face had hardened in the last four months, and there was a tense look about her upper lip, yet an artist would have preferred her face as it now was to what it was before she had become engaged. For now the nervous strain she was living under had told on her more material beauties, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... How we should rejoice to see the curved sabres of our comrades rising against the clear sky to slash down upon the leather schapskas of our foe! We waited for the word that was to let loose the pent-up energy of all those tense muscles. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... action as, I eat, I love, I work. Passive verbs, denote suffering, they are only the participle passive of an active verb with a tense of the neuter verb to be before it; as, I ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... and sprang inward, and the waterish air Hissed, and the moist plumes of the songless reeds Moved as a wave which the wind moves no more. But the boar heaved half out of ooze and slime, His tense flank trembling round the barbed wound, Hateful; and fiery with invasive eyes And bristling with intolerable hair Plunged, and the hounds clung, and green flowers and white Reddened and broke all round them where they came. And charging ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... sky-line. Once, far over there to the left, a gun was fired, the flame splitting the night asunder, and against the distant reflection a black figure rose up between, only to be instantly snuffed out again. Hamlin put down his uplifted foot, and waited, in tense, motionless silence, but nothing happened, except the echo ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... themselves tense, and went straight towards the gate. The women made way for them, but barely sufficient, as if grudging to yield ground. The sisters passed in silence through the stone gateway and up the steps, on the red carpet, a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... see the change which had come over the looks and actions of the company at the mention and appearance of the violin. The faces that had shown indifference and the look of languid weariness freshened and became tense in all their lines; and on their heads again animation sat crowned. Those who were seated jumped to their feet. The conversationalists broke their circle and swung suddenly into line. Eyes sparkled. Little happy screams and miniature war-whoops from the boisterous ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... back-stairs. She was leaning over the banisters and had called once for one of the maids, when she ceased abruptly, and stood still for several moments with her head tilted back and her body tense with surprise. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... For a tense minute Alice Greggory held herself erect; then, with a complete change of manner and voice, she released her mother's hand, dropped into her own chair ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... every nerve was drawn tense and the question of life and death hung on the passing of a breath, Colonel Briggs leaned backward and elevating his chin in the way that had become familiar, emitted one of his resounding laughs. Then he abruptly snapped his jaws together like the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... seek cannot be born of fear alone: it must be rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples, for, without justice the world can know only a tense and unstable truce. There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak. But the law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... time, had I not previously removed three of the tubers and cut off several long rhizomes. When, on the thirty-fifth day, the earth in the pot was turned out, it appeared as dry as the dust on a road. All the tubers had their surfaces much wrinkled, instead of being smooth and tense. They had all shrunk, but I cannot say accurately how much; for as they were at first symmetrically oval, I measured only their length and thickness; but they contracted in a transverse line much more in one direction than in another, so as to become greatly ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... For a tense moment Ned gazed through the glasses at the strange vessels. At length he lowered the binoculars and turned toward his companions. With a shake of his head and a quick indrawing of breath, ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her. My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,—they would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,—if I loved. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... seeming in the very air, a change from the pleasant commonplace to the tense and unexpected. It was always so in these strange meetings with the people of Lost Valley, it seemed, as if he was never to find his way among them, the sane and quiet ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... fashion. Faces turned ashen pale and screams resounded through the spacious mansion. Helter-skelter, in every direction, fled the terrified masqueraders. The Moslem thought that his last hour on earth had come. Then Brant's arm fell; his tense features relaxed, and he had become once more the genial 'Captain of the Mohawks.' According to his own declaration, which may or may not have been exactly true, he only intended a playful contribution to the pleasures of the evening. The Turk was calmed, and the frightened company came ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... be obliged to be civil to the young man, of course. There was no reason indeed that he should be otherwise than civil—only that lurking terror in his mind, that this was the man his wife had loved. Had loved? is there any past tense to that verb? ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... listened in tense silence. Now he started forward, his hand on his sword, but his arms were caught by two of Lord Grimsby's men. "You will admit, my Lord Farquhart, that the matter demands explanation," said the councillor, dryly. "How came you by the jewels and rose? ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... made a delicious spectacle on the spotless deck. She nearly laughed with delight as she acknowledged Mr. Prohack's grave salute and shook hands with him, but when Charlie said: "Anything urgent?" she grew grave and tense, becoming the faithful, urgent, confidential employe in ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Severus. The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame, that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced, tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... purr that seems to be peculiar to luxurious limousines, Mrs. Carew's car rolled down Commonwealth Avenue and out upon Arlington Street to Charles. Inside sat a shining-eyed little girl and a white-faced, tense woman. Outside, to give directions to the plainly disapproving chauffeur, sat Jerry Murphy, inordinately proud ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... the past tense, not because he has fallen, my young friend, but Elihu was unfortunate enough to receive a severe wound in the leg some months after Ticonderoga, and he is now recuperating at his own home here near the Common. 'Tis ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the very doors of the Berger House in silence. But at the foot of the stairs that led to the parlor floor he stopped, and looked into Emma McChesney's face. His own was rather white and tense. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... should make my fortune in a melodrama of stage asides. And then, on the morning of my birthday, the solemn ceremonial of revelation, I would come in to breakfast, to find a parcel lying by my plate. At first I would not see it. In a tense and unnatural silence Joan minor would follow me with her eyes while I opened the window a few inches, closed it again, stroked the cat and generally behaved as though sitting down at table was the last thing I intended. Then, when I did take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... turned to shout to Johnny who was driving big-eyed, his lips pursed with the tense purpose that held him to his work. "Turn back and land at the rancho. We'll never make Los Angeles with those damned buzzards after us. I'll have to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... along, O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying, And wakes in every breast its song ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... a free, and, in some tense, a confidential dialogue. Her manner towards me had entirely changed; for, while it maintained the modesty and retenue of her sex and station, it displayed much of that frankness which was the natural ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but the imperative rattle of Joel's cane on the desk quickly induced ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of the people it represented—all the greater indeed in that opportunity of expression had been denied to the old Legislative Council. It was the acid test to which the sincerity and the whole value of the reforms were put. The atmosphere of the Assembly was never again so tense as when the crucial debate was opened by one of the ablest of the younger members of the Moderate party, Mr. Jamnadas Dwarkadas, from Bombay, on the administration of martial law in the Punjab in 1919. He asked the Government (1) ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... silence. It was old Sergeant Wilson speaking. No one could tell when he had begun. He stood slightly crouched, with his hands on the edge of the table. His face was absolutely blank and expressionless, while his eyes were fixed on the officer with a tense, glassy stare. His voice was cold and monotonous, without rise or fall, halt or intonation, and seemed to be more the wail of the spirit rising from somewhere deep within him than the voice of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... representatives of the three service secretaries and was carefully reviewed by the President's civil rights advisers, who wanted the draft shown to the President "because of his particular interest in Civil Rights matters."[20-50] With their request in mind, and because of what he considered "the tense situation now existent in the South," Runge urged the secretary to send the President the memorandum. Before doing so McNamara asked his general counsel, Cyrus R. Vance, to discuss the draft with the under secretaries of the services and Assistant Attorney General Nicholas ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... stood up for the opening words of the service. He felt himself strangely affected by the gentleness of her face and the slender beauty of her form. When she knelt down he could not take his eyes off her. There came over him an inexplicable softening, a relaxation of the tense excitement of the morning. He thought of her kneeling there in the faded shabby church Sunday after Sunday for years and years, when he was working at hot pressure far away. He knew just how her eyes would look calmly, trustfully ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... point that there occurred one of those little incidents so dear to the comic draughtsman, but less popular with "us." A moaning howl, a rushing hissing sound, a moment of tense and awful silence, a devastating crash, and the E.G.A. officers' bath-house, "erected at enormous trouble and expense" by a handful of T.U. men and myself the day before, soared heavenwards with an acre or two of the surrounding ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... like no other he had ever seen for charm, of a quick impulsive gait! He followed that figure through scene after scene; he saw primroses in its hand, and the pale spring blue above it; he recalled it standing tense and still with blanched cheek and fixed appealing eye, while all round the June woods murmured in the breeze; he surrounded it in imagination with the pomp and circumstance of the stage, and realised it as a centre of emotion to thousands. And then from ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
