"Tension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excellent make. Made of forged steel, and breech-loaders, they ought consequently to be able to bear a considerable charge, and also have an enormous range. In fact, as regards practical effect, the transit described by the ball ought to be as extended as possible, and this tension could only be obtained under the condition that the projectile should be impelled with a very ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... would send it faster. We did not like to fool along this way, an eighth up and an eighth, or a quarter down, and all uncertainty and tension. Besides, we needed our accruing profits to meet our heavily increased expenses which were by no means easy to dispose of with our normal income, improved though it was with ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... raised the question of fetching away the "Lizzie," as Sir I. Hamilton's troops used to call her, lest evil should befall this, the most powerful ship in commission at the time. Lord Fisher has referred to this matter in his book Memories. He speaks of great tension between Lord K. and himself over the business, and he mentions an interview at the Admiralty at which, according to him, Lord K. got up from the table and left when he (Lord Fisher) announced that he would resign unless the battleship was ordered out ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the story," he persisted, "to cause so much tension? I felt it in the air, Roger. It was in the looks of those about me, in Una's face. She was troubled. I had ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... the old order at least, always waiting upon great events, has found in the high-tide flotations of masterful heroes to fortune themes most flatteringly responsive to its own high tension. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... 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
... The tension is more up than ever. A boy who has just come in with a poisoned heel (broken-hearted because he is out of it, while his battalion moves up) says, "You'll be having them ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... 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
... The tension, general excitement and pressure in business circles were such that President Grant decided to release some of the Government's gold, even though the reserve be diminished. In some mysterious way a hint ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... 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
... The tension, his suspense, increased until he thought it must burst out the windows. Between the shudders and the kissing he kept wondering when.... It was Savina, at the speaking-tube, who commanded their return. They left the Park for Fifth Avenue, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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 |
