"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rescued a woman from danger Or death, does not seem to her wholly a stranger When next she encounters him; yet both essayed To be formal and proper; and each of them made The effort a failure. The jar of a train At times holds a mesmeric spell for the brain And a tense excitation for nerves; and the shriek Of the engine compels one to lean near to speak Or to list to his neighbor. Formality flies With the smoke of the train and floats off to the skies. Roger led his companion ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth had bent with sudden color, fell to bustling about with a queer lump in his throat and talking ambiguously of Aunt Ellen's Christmas orders, painfully conscious that the girl's dark face had grown pitifully white and tense and that Roger's wan little face was glowing. And when the fire was damped by the Doctor himself, and his Christmas guests hustled into dazed, protesting readiness, the Doctor deftly muffled the thin little fellow in blankets and gently carried him ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... to look forever sideways, his staring eyes assumed a hideous fixity. He was dead, dead in the act of losing his only, his last illusion. In seeking a shelter in his son's heart he had found a tomb more hollow than those which men dig for their dead. His hair, too, had risen with horror and his tense gaze seemed still to speak. It was a father rising in wrath from his sepulchre to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... young men from agricultural colleges eager to try scientific methods of farming and older men from Europe prepared to use the methods they had found good for generations; raucous land agents and quiet racketeers alert for some way of making easy money from the tense, anxious, excited throng. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... these parts. You will readily imagine why we are here. The excitements and distractions of city life for the last few months were too much for us, and there are some things that can only be enjoyed apart from the world. Here, we subside gradually and gracefully from that high and tense delirium from which I at least made my aerials, always coming back, however, to young JULIAN; who, by the way, is another occasion for country life, as I have great faith in first impressions, and I wish his to be bright and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... the old gardener 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 baying ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... opcodes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that HLLs are sissy, and uses a debugger to edit his code because full-screen editors are for wimps. Real Programmers aren't satisfied with code that hasn't been {bum}med into a state of {tense}ness just short of rupture. Real Programmers never use comments or write documentation: "If it was hard to write", says the Real Programmer, "it should be hard to understand." Real Programmers can make machines do things that were never in their spec sheets; in fact, they are seldom really ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... whispered in a strange, tense voice, "you are mad. You do not know what you ask. Virginia is not for such as you. Tell me that she does not know of your feelings toward her. Tell me that she does not reciprocate your love. Tell me the truth, man." Professor Maxon seized von Horn roughly ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... perfect and imperfect tenses in the conjugation of the Latin verb. Perfect verbs express that an action takes place a single time, and therefore is entirely completed and past; from their very nature it results, that they have no imperfect tense, and their conjugation must be in general incomplete. Imperfect verbs express that the same action continues. Both have in most cases the same radical syllable, and may be formed with a certain degree of freedom; thus ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... risen from his seat, and for the briefest possible space the three men stood thus, facing each other, as if uncertain how to act. Then the tense silence of the dining-room was broken by the loud ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... should be, Pevroque qui no quiru, of which qui means house, and Pevroque qui, house of Pedro. The verb was, does not now exist in it apart, but in expression it appears, or nearly so, in the substantive qui, which is put in the imperfect by the termination of that tense, ru being added, as, quiru, was house; no quiru, was my house. The same is otherwise said: Pevroque qui no guaguaru, the house of Pedro was mine; the guagua, if alone, signifies, ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith
... tense moment. Slapping his hands to warm them, Barney adjusted cartridges and swept the circle with an imaginary volley. What if the machine-gun jammed? There could be but one result. The torch would not long hold the beasts off. Besides, the ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... was—I did somehow state the fact, Did, with no matter what imperfect words, One way or other give to understand That woman, soul and body were her slave Would she but take, but try them—any test Of will, and some poor test of power beside: So did the strings within my brain grow tense And capable of ... hang similitudes! She answered kindly but beyond appeal. 'No sort of hope for me, who came too late. She was another's. Love went—mine to her, Hers just as loyally to some one else.' ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... as she met the look of her father, which rested on her with penetrating power—as she read the rising anger of his soul in the tense swollen veins of his brow, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... years ago, (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
... outward chance, so many an anxious heart told itself, favoured the oft-victorious giant; but then,—and here came reason for a true Hellene,—"the gods could not suffer so fair a man to meet defeat." The noonday sun beat down fiercely. The tense stillness was now and then broken by the bawling of a swarthy hawker thrusting himself amid the spectators with cups and a jar of sour wine. There was a long rest. The trainers came forward again and dusted the two remaining champions with sand that they ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... light symmetrical sides; the supple, well-rounded loins; the fleshy buttocks; the somewhat sunken flanks; (53) the hips, well rounded, plump at every part, but with a proper interval above; the long and solid thighs, on the outside tense and not too flabby on the inside; the long, stout lower legs or shanks; the fore-feet, exceedingly pliant, thin, and straight; the hind-feet firm and broad; front and hind alike totally regardless of rough ground; the hind-legs far longer ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... make you see this plainly? He uses the present tense, as if the scene were happening now—"is bounding", "loses his footing", ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... anybody, he does not announce his identity, taking it for granted that the tones of his voice are sufficiently well known to reveal it. It has been noted, moreover, that he commences all his conversations over the wire with the pronoun "I," while the verb "command," either in the past or in the present tense, almost invariably follows. This is quite sufficient to show who ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... falls chill; The whippoorwill Pipes lonesomely behind the Hill: The dusk grows dense, The silence tense; ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... with boundless astonishment. Their faces under their fur-caps had a tense, cruel look, their brows were ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of the most important agents of the Underground Railroad and a leader of fugitive slaves. She ran away in 1849 and went to Boston in 1854, where she was welcomed into the homes of the leading abolitionists and where every one listened with tense interest to her strange stories. She was absolutely illiterate, with no knowledge of geography, and yet year after year she penetrated the slave states and personally led North over three hundred ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... looking for you. To Popov's, Afrmov's, then I guessed you'd be here. (Crosses to him. Sees revolver, turns, faces him quickly, concealing it with her body, stands very tense and taut, looking at him.) Oh, you fool! You hideous ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... your light!" said Paul, suddenly. His voice was tense. "Keep still a moment! See if you can hear ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... up, drawing her thin figure, as tense as a cord, to its full height, and beneath the flowered blue dressing-gown her shoulder blades showed sharply under their fragile covering of flesh. Her hair, which she had not undone since the first shock of Harry's illness, hung in straight folds on either ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... 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
... a tense moment. In the flash of a second, he could not determine the character of the dog. His knife gleamed in his hand. To delay was dangerous. The beast might, in a twinkle, be ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... English songs, whereof 'tis dearest, now, And most adorable; Caedmon, in the morn A-calling angels with the cow-herd's call That late brought up the cattle; Emerson, Most wise, that yet, in finding Wisdom, lost Thy Self, sometimes; tense Keats, with angels' nerves Where men's were better; Tennyson, largest voice Since Milton, yet some register of wit Wanting; — all, all, I pardon, ere 'tis asked, Your more or less, your little mole that marks You brother and your kinship seals ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... off behind a tree, so close that the novelist leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling brain about ten times as ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... rushed through Quin's mind, only to be impatiently discarded. He sat tense and still, with his clenched hands rammed in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the black square of the window. Sometimes dim objects flew past, and now and then sharp, vivid lights stabbed the darkness. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... passive towards the white sensations while we are active towards the black and red ones; we shall not measure the white; not sweep our glance along it as we do along the red and the black. And as ceteris paribus our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions, and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession. He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... she watched him from the corner of her eye. Burke could not help but wonder at the tense interest in his presence, but dismissed the thought as he entered the room, and beheld the president ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... stood boring a hole with the toe of his boot down through the soft grass sod, while he seemed to study the cobbler's handiwork. After a few moments of tense silence, he ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as motionless as ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... shorn of its splendours! I did not follow the counsels of friends of Jamadagni's son, of the celestial rishi Narada, and of island-born Krishna, while they offered me counsel. In the midst of the assembly, Krishna told me what was for my good, saying, "A truce (tense) to hostilities, O king! Let thy son take the whole kingdom! Give but five villages to the Pandavas!" Fool that I was, for not following that advice, I am now obliged to repent so poignantly! I did not listen to the righteous ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... all. The tense muscles relaxed. His head fell back limp on MacRae's arm, and the rest of the message went with the game old Dutchman across the big divide. We laid him down gently, folded his arms on his breast, and for a moment held our peace in tribute ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... enemy had divided and fled. For a few moments there was a strange, tense silence. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... been the reliquary of his dreams—he never doubted, so accurately did it fit the description given by a mountain preacher; and to be actually facing it in the material form filled him with a nameless fascination. Sitting rigid, in an attitude bent forward, his tense stare directed on its partly open door, he suggested a Marathon runner crouched for the start of that great trial; and somewhere in his subconsciousness a voice whispered that this day, this hour, marked the beginning ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... had watched the broker's actions with amazement, suddenly grew rigid as a statue. His square jaw snapped with a determined click, and one hand slipped stealthily into his hip pocket. No one spoke. The tense silence was ominous ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... it indicates a court in which candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quae erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia meant are those of the album iudicum who had been selected to try cases of ambitus, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... upward a small metal bar, b, through the upper part of which a string to the animal ran freely except when it was clamped by the spring, s. This string, which was attached to the subject's leg by means of a light elastic band, after passing through the bar ran over a wheel, w, and hung tense by reason of a five-gram weight attached to the end. Until everything was in readiness for an experiment the string was left free to move through the bar so that movement of the animal was not hindered, but the instant before the ready-signal ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... said I. "We will skip hntal and proceed to the second conjugation. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian—the verb siriel. Here is the present tense: siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. Come on, Belle, and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... warrior picked up a stone and handed it to the dandy with an expressive gesture. Instead of obeying he shook his head despairingly, and an ominous growl came from the assemblage. Again Donald looked at Christie, whose face was now tense and drawn, as though he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... this verse, as frequently elsewhere, the syllable ya is introduced merely to complete the metre. Ordinarily it is the sign of the imperfect tense, and has other meanings (see the Vocabulary), but in many instances does not ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... different people, rough outlines of objects, omens in embryo, symbols of trifles, which told her that she would be victorious. She wanted to see these things and she compelled herself to discover them. Under her tense gaze the porcelain became alive with the visions of her insomnia; her disappointments, her hatreds, the faces she detested, arose gradually from the magic plate and the designs drawn thereon by chance. By her side the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... they were passing through the corridor Gladishev was struck by the strange, silent, tense bustle in the drawing room; the trampling of feet and some ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... stiff collar Lord Saint Sinnes looks down at her—with something of the deep intuition which makes him the finest steeplechaser in England. Perhaps he notes the quiver of the lip, the sinews drawn tense about her throat. Such silent signals of distress are his business. Certainly he notes the little shiver of abject fear which passes through the girl's slight form as they pass out of the room together. Their departure is noted by several ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... When the realization dawned on me that sooner or later I would feel the strike of one of these silver tigers a keen, tingling thrill of excitement quivered over me. The primitive man asserted himself; the instinctive lust to conquer and to kill seized me, and I leaned forward, tense and strained with suspended ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... broke upon the tense moment with cheerful insistence, and Miss Annabel herself appeared at the turn of the walk, waving a slip of paper. She saw ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... apt to teach more and leave a less pleasant impression. She was young enough to have been girlish, but she was not girlish in the least. Her tall, lithe, well-knit figure was braced against the door-post with a tense sort of strength; her handsome face was just at this time as dark and hard in expression as if she had been a woman with years of bitter life behind her; her handsome brows were knit, her lips were set; from head to foot she looked ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... closely overhead and nothing happened. Three more followed and still no bombs fell, and then the tense incident was closed by the calling out of the order of the march and, in squads of four, the battalion wheeled into the road and marched back ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... me that Sri Yukteswar was merely testing the depth of Sasi's faith in the divine healing power. I was not surprised a tense hour later when Master turned a sympathetic ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... In tense silence each Senator rose and gave his verdict "guilty" or "not guilty". And when the votes were counted it was found that the President was declared guilty. There were forty-eight Senators, and to convict the President it was necessary ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... his brother quite put him in the shade. He carried with him the scars of his babyhood's perilous adventures, and the terror of that unremembered night of fire. He was desperately shy and sensitive; awkward in company; reserved, timid, retiring, silent. Within the nature so pent up were tense feelings; you would say ungovernable, only that he always did govern them. He went unnoticed; Drusus was the pet of all; under such conditions how much harmony as a rule exists between two brothers? But Tiberius loved Drusus with his whole heart; his thoughts knew ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of great distress followed. Everything else was forgotten in the tense waiting. There were moments of half consciousness when Malcom's only words were "All right, mother." It seemed as if even in that second of plunging to save the child he yet thought of his mother, and realized how she would feel his danger. But happily, as time wore on, the jarred brain recovered ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... in her room, a few tears came to soften her seared vision; but her mood was too tense to be eased by weeping. Her whole being was centred in the longing to know what her husband thought. Their short exchange of words had, after all, told her nothing. She had guessed a faint resentment at ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... country. Bribery, a crime capital among the Pagans, is already a peccadillo among us. All officers are learning it. And, if I should say, Judges will find the way to it, some will say, there needs not the future tense in the case." "Every thing is betrayed, and that we, on the top of our house, may complete all, our very religion, with all the Churches, is at last betrayed—the treachery carried on with lies, and fallacious representations, and finished by the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... speaking of his own tongue, "look at this teffle of a language! It has no present tense to its verbs: the people they are always looking forward to a melancholy future or looking back to a melancholy past. In the name of Kott, hef we not got ourselves to live? This day we live in is better than any day that wass before or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... strange emotions in my breast. I heard Swank gasp and Whinney's face was white and drawn, his favorite expression when deeply moved. She stood close to her husband, half-twined about him with the grace and strength of an eva-eva vine while her kindling eyes burned questioningly, her lithe body tense and protective. "He is to be christened," said Baahaabaa, with a magnificent gesture ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... they had lied—they had all lied! Burr had never courted Dorothy Fair. She believed, with her whole heart and soul, that he loved her and her alone. And, indeed, she was at that time, at that minute, right and not deceived; for Burr Gordon was one of those who can encompass love in one tense only, and that the present; and they who love only in the present, hampered by no memories and no dreams, yield out love's sweetness fully. All Burr Gordon's soul was in his kisses and his fond eyes, and her own crept out to meet ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the tense line cutting the water like a tide-rip behind him, and the light bamboo bowed to breaking. What happened thereafter I cannot tell. California swore and prayed, and Portland shouted advice, and I did all three for what appeared ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... spectacular which more readily appeals to the Mexican. The bull-fight, with its accompaniments of showy dress, tense excitement, and elements of danger and bloodshed, is his favourite amusement. Military parades and political functions enter largely into the distractions of polite life, as indeed is the case throughout Spanish-America generally. Military titles are ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Martha. She stood just inside of the door with her eyes wide, glancing back and forth. She took one slow step forward, then another. Then she quickened. She moved through the room looking, then putting out a slow, hesitant hand to touch very gently. Tense, as if she were waiting for the warning not to touch, Martha finally caressed the ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... was filled with 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
... extreme end of the tiller, stood firmly posed and a little leaning forward, his body rigid, his face set in resolute lines, his eyes fixedly bent upon the course ahead; behind him the others, elately poised in readiness to swing their whole weight with his on the instant that his tense energy in repose flashed into energy in action as the critical turn was made—the whole group, raised above us on the high quarter-deck, in relief against the deep blue sky. Amy, or another of the Southern sculptors, will be moved some day, I hope, to ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... he could, went on with his perusal of the Bulletin. To deny that he was somewhat tense over the coming interview would be foolish. Never had a quarter of an hour dragged so slowly, but he waited it out, with five minutes more on top of it, and then he telephoned to Brown to know if Stone was still there. He was relieved to find that ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... come to him," Laura resumed, with the complacency of one who saw a goodly portion of the festival she was enjoying still before her. "I was going to say, Mr. Pericles had poor Mr. Pole in his power; has him, would be the correcter tense. And Wilfrid, as you may have heard, had really grossly insulted him, even to the extent of maltreating him—a poor foreigner—rich foreigner, if you like! but not capable of standing against a strong young man in wrath. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... THEN turning southward: indubitable march of that cunning Enemy; rapidly proceeding, his 40,000 and he, along those elevated upland countries, watershed of the Black Sea and the Baltic, bleakly illumined by the April sun; a march into the mists of the future tense, which do not yet clear themselves to Daun. Seeing the march turn southward at Troppau, a light breaks on Daun: "Ha! coming round upon Bohemia from the east, then?" That is Daun's opinion, for some time yet; and he immediately ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the child's tense little face with its long, Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... at the head of the stairs, came a sound that stiffened him to a tense wariness. A key was being turned in the lock of the street door below. He moved back into the deeper shadows as the door ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... hot houses, furnished with meagre necessities; reeking stables, barnyards and vegetable gardens. She knew less of the woods than the average city girl; but there was a soothing wind, a sweet perfume, a calming silence that quieted her tense mood and enabled her to think clearly; so the review went on over years of work and petty economies, amounting to one grand aggregate that gave to each of seven sons house, stock, and land at twenty-one; and to each of nine ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his arm-chair and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... ... ruined ... got to run for it. Couldn't stand gaol at my age. It ain't pretty, I know, but I'm fifty-nine, Lyveden, fifty-nine." The tense utterance broke into a whimper. "An'—an' that's too old for prison, Lyveden, an' they wouldn't give me a chance. The lawyers 'd make it out bad. You can gamble with others' money as long as you win, Lyveden, but you mustn't lose ... mustn't ever ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... to Mrs. Emery that her whole life had been devoted to learning what to do and what not to do for Lydia. As the time of action drew nearer she nerved herself for the campaign with a finely confident feeling that she knew every inch of the ground. Her expectancy grew more and more tense as her eagerness rose. During the long year that Lydia was in Europe, receiving a final gloss, even higher than that imparted by the expensive and exclusive girls' school where she had spent the years between fourteen and eighteen, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of such a thing," muttered Nucky. He continued to stare at Frank, his pale boy's face tense with conflicting hope and fear. The guide picked up his blanket, ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching her about the waist and holding on hand and foot—yes, by my feet; I could hold on by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel in my tense grip the pull of the hair as her skin and her muscles moved beneath ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... peeped out. We saw men moving in one direction, and from the mutterings we vaguely caught the rumor that some terrible crime had been committed. I put on my coat and hat. My friend did all in his power to dissuade me from venturing out, but it was impossible for me to remain in the house under such tense excitement. My nerves would not have stood it. Perhaps what bravery I exercised in going out was due to the fact that I felt sure my identity as a colored man had not yet become ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... at Hermione, as she spoke in her slow, dispassionate, and yet strangely tense voice. A curious thrill went over the younger woman. Some strange, dark, convulsive power was in ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... room seemed to be holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by table and disappeared ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... "Tense. They're waiting to see what is going to happen on Five. So am I, for that matter." His eyes were curious. "You decided ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Catholic. His mother was an American Catholic, rather strict and narrow. His brothers and sisters, of whom there were four, were, as I learned later, astonishingly virile and interesting Americans of a rather wild, unsettled type. They were all, in so far as I could judge from chance meetings, agnostic, tense, quick-moving—so vital that they weighed on one a little, as very intense temperaments are apt to do. One of the brothers, K——, who seemed to seek me out ever so often for Peter's sake, was so intense, nervous, rapid-talking, rapid-living, that he frightened me a little. He loved noisy, garish ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive with a new preoccupation, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. But later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why?—I, to ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... a tense moment of silence; but the doctor was used to such moments, and could usually determine during the silence, whether the confidence should be allowed or avoided. He turned and looked steadily at the ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... bright state of being awake, which he had experienced that one time at the height of his youth, in those days after Gotama's sermon, after the separation from Govinda, that tense expectation, that proud state of standing alone without teachings and without teachers, that supple willingness to listen to the divine voice in his own heart, had slowly become a memory, had been fleeting; distant and quiet, the holy source murmured, which used to be near, which ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... changed with the passing of the sunlight—grew tense, electric, almost, one would have said, expectant; and Owen realized that the moment for ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... sudden string Rang, 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 ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... At once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked only ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... They followed, tense with awe. And there, between earth and sun, its myriad towers and spires refracting a weird radiance, hovered that vast ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... gender and case of which are changed, as "tristios 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," and "neque dubium haberetur" ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... and his nerves grew tense. The silence was suddenly broken, not rudely but stealthily as a thief breaks it, or as one who knows that crime is best accomplished in the night; a key was being fumbled into the lock. Sabatier would open quickly, knowing the key and the lock, besides, Sabatier had never come at this hour. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... at London town, and now sat demurely by her father the Earl of Huntingdon. If Rob had been grimly resolved to win the arrow before, the sight of her sweet face multiplied his determination an hundredfold. He felt his muscles tightening into bands of steel, tense and true. Yet withal his heart would throb, making him quake in a ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... her a good-looking young woman about seventeen years of age, rather pale and considerably emaciated, very nervous and hysterical, and suffering with severe pain in the left breast, which was swollen to nearly double the natural size, hot, tense, pulsating, and extremely tender to the touch. Occasionally she would experience paroxysms in which she apparently suffered extremely, being sometimes semi-conscious, and scarcely breathing for hours. We suspected the cause of these peculiar manifestations at the ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the minutes were approved. The regular business of the meeting forthwith began, and the atmosphere, which had been a little tense, relaxed. As if to show his ease and familiarity with an unusual situation, Mr. Mowry cut off a large piece of tobacco, crossed his hands behind his head, and lifted his right leg on the top of the small oak desk which ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... right." And any one seeing the old man would surely have thought that he had himself fought against the infidels, such fire shot from his eyes, and so tense became his muscles. "It was in the Fourth Crusade that Venice played ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... steadily for two tense seconds. Then he saw Gibson turn from him to the girl as if he was ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... come to life. She heard his voice, low and tense, dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body, Marty! It ain't ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... weepin' fer a spell, honey," he announced with a tense authority which sought to recall her to herself. "I'm obleeged ter take flight right speedily now, an' afore I goes thar's things ter be studied out ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the tense moments that followed, the Subaltern owned to himself that as a driver he was not much good. The German artillery had got their range to a yard, and it was very trying to have to stand up in the open and spend precious seconds ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... showed a perfectly unreasoning terror of the water. In vain did Sahwah dive off the tower and come up safe and sound; in vain did Hinpoha demonstrate how impossible it was to sink if you relaxed. Gladys doubled up in a tense knot and grew sick with fear, regardless of Nyoda's supporting hand. Finally Nyoda took her farther up the beach, away from the other girls. "Now, Gladys," she said reassuringly, "do you believe, down deep in your heart, that I would let go of you ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... 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
... movement and listening for sound. The sagging and apologetic posture of puppyhood was gone from him. His overgrown feet stood squarely on the ground; his angular legs were as hard as if carven out of knotty wood; his body was tense, his ears stood up, his head was rigidly set between the bony shoulders that already gave evidence of gigantic strength to come. About him he knew was the Big Adventure. The world was no longer a world of play and of snuggling under ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... Grace. "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant later it had vanished. Grace, after triumphantly placing the last hook in its eye, began helping Elfreda find her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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 their terror. ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... Matthiette heard the querulous birds call sleepily above; the margin of night was thick with their petulant complaints; behind her was the monstrous shadow of the Chateau d'Arnaye, and past that was a sullen red, the red of contused flesh, to herald dawn. Infinity waited a-tiptoe, tense for the coming miracle, and against this vast repression, her grief dwindled into irrelevancy: the leaves whispered comfort; each tree-bole hid chuckling fauns. Matthiette laughed. Content had flooded the universe all ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... of the many cases in which the Revised Version, by accuracy of rendering the tense of a verb, gives a much more striking as well as correct reproduction of the original than the Authorised Version does. The former reads 'going out,' instead of 'gone out,' a rendering which the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... did not tell him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only from the ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... tense in that passage—"He that believeth that Jesus is come in the flesh"—not that He did come, or was come, but that He is come now. Oh! how people hate Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may be ever so devout, ever so Pharisaic, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... over the stern. I ran to his side and saw the log-line, which till then had been drawn tense over the stern railing, slacken, loop, and come up off the port quarter. Frithiof called up the speaking tube to the bridge, and the bridge answered, 'Yes, nine knots.' Then Frithiof spoke again, and the answer was, 'What do you want of the skipper?' and Frithiof ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... which Mr. Trumpp collected some particulars shows in the present tense of the substantive verb these remarkable forms:— Ei sum, Tu sis, siga se; Ima simis, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... glances crossed and fell apart, and each girl turned her back pointedly upon the other. Broken threads of conversation were picked up by the group around them, shouts of laughter came from the group surrounding Pom-pom, who was reciting a funny poem, and the tense moment passed. ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... clings to the translations, is exploded by Buttm. Lex. p. 144. Eust. and Heysch. both give [Greek: eutrepizonsan] as one of the interpretations; and that such is the right one is evident from the collateral phrase [Greek: porsynein lechos] in Od. iii. 403. [Greek: Lyphizezkas] is the perfect tense, but with the force ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... silent, but the question was forced from her, and she waited tense for his answer. Tales of ruthless Arab cruelty surged through her mind. What had been the fate of the unfortunate caravan leader? Her eyes closed ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... he knew, he might not marry her. You at least are clean, and that other man was a devil. A brave man's life is too great a price to pay for a grief that will die in a year." Alluna was speaking swiftly in her own language, her body tense, her face ablaze, and no man seeing her could ever again have called ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the "march-past" was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the Imperfect in green and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars and stripes, then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple and silver—and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty commissioned ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... was awful to her, tense and ghastly, and impersonal, like a destruction, ultimate. She felt it would kill her. She ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... imbecility on earth. We were standing by then in the middle of the room with its vivid colours on a black background, with its multitude of winged figures with pale limbs, with hair like halos or flames, all strangely tense in their strained, decorative attitudes. Dona Rita made a step towards me, and as I attempted to seize her hand she flung her arms round my neck. I felt their strength drawing me towards her and by a sort of blind and desperate effort I resisted. And all the time she was repeating ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... suggestion—something like what I had read in a poem or a novel—that had nothing to do with me personally, but it grew upon me more and more the more I saw of him, and felt the witchery of his light, indifferent manner, which I learned to see was tense with the anguish he had suffered. She had killed his youth; she had spoiled his life: if I could revive them, restore them! It came upon me like a great flash of light at last, and as soon as this thought took possession of me, I felt my whole being ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... something of the interest that was to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence, a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features, would provide Francoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition to him, at the turning ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... say that you have any human feeling left for that vagabond?" demanded Darrow. So earnest was he that his tanned face grew tense ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... moment Rawson-Clew held the bottle, staring at it in blank astonishment; so tense was his attitude that it caught the other ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... or secret agent she was, and in one or other identity she could be my friend or my powerful enemy, could aid my country powerfully if she had the whim; or damage it irreparably if she had the desire. But—yes—as I studied her that keen, tense, vital ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... of a gauze veil failed to hide the fact that Poppy's expression was distinctly malignant, her great eyes full of sombre fury, her red lips tense. Smyth backed away from her against the palings ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... was a tense one to the entire party, and John moved forward, placing himself directly in front ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... causes, we must be satisfied with the fact—he wore a wig; and, in the distraction of mental perplexity, when Monsieur Cherfeuil was essaying to get the poet out of the absent into the conditional mood, the man of verse, staring abstractedly upon the man of tense, would thrust his hand under his peruke, and rub, rub, rub his polished scalp, which all the while effused a divine ichor—(poets never perspire)—and, when he was gently reminded that his wig was a little awry towards the left ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... outgrowth of a desire for a textbook that combines simplicity with variety. To make it available for use almost at the very beginning of the Spanish course only the present tense has been employed in the first twenty-three selections and difficult constructions have been ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... shot through the listener, making every nerve and muscle tense as steel; his breath came thick and fast, and the dull, heavy throb, throb of his heart sounded loudly in his brain—so loudly that he held his breath and would have checked the pulsations if ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... eat the grass. And I just want to take the sky in my arms." As she swept across meadow and through woodland, with the eagerness of a child, greedily hastening from room to room of some inexhaustible palace, her little tense body seemed like a transparent garment fluttering round the flying feet of ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... care of its advantage. At a tense moment in that soul and nerve trying period, with Wall and State streets full of talk about General Electric's probable absorption of Westinghouse, General Electric being then at its highest price, $119 per share, the Westinghouse companies held their annual meetings and the big ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... these tense, terrible moments, he refused to let himself face the coming anguish and dismay of the morrow. It was just a blow, straight between the eyes from fate—that fate who he had foolishly thought ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... stayed at Amalek. Yet strove the sun-like king, nor rested hand Till yellow evening filled the level land. Then Judah reeled before a biting hail Of sudden arrows shot from Achor's vale, Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel, Drew the tense string, and pierced the quivering steel. There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man, The chiefs of Israel, up to Jonathan; And while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil, Ten chosen archers, red with sanguine toil, Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick, and ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of his heart, he bowed ever so slightly to the tense figure on the step and strode away ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... grade. Twice Wilbur halted Kit to try to stop the foremost of the herd behind him from pressing on too close, but the third time Kit would not halt. She was stepping as though on springs, with every muscle and sinew tense, and the distance between the steers before and the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... to the second shaft leading to the top and for the first time observed that it had grown quite silent up above. There was no longer any screaming or bursting. This silence came upon the deafening din like a paralyzing weight and filled space with a tense expectancy that flickered in all eyes. He wanted to rid himself of this oppression and crept through the crumbling shaft up to ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... muscle in her lithe young body was strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the delight of seeing ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... brought the hush of death over cabins and forts. My horse, secured in the small stockaded paddock near the fort, whinnied for me to come to him, and his call in that tense stillness set my nerves to jumping madly. Dale was now close to the warriors. Every minute I expected to see a streak of fire, or hear the crunch of an ax. Trailing my rifle and bent double, I stole after him. From the forest a deep ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... Hattie's tense expression breathed a determination which might have been interpreted do or die; to Hattie life was a battling foe to be overcome and trodden beneath a victorious heel; Hattie was an infantile St. George always on the look ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... unlocking the door, threw it open. The room was dimly illuminated by a single candle, which smoked and guttered in its socket, apparently nearly burned out. Nothing was at first to be seen of the valet. Duvall stepped forward, then turned quickly and spoke. "Shut the door, please," he said in a tense voice. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... 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, ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... shall ask of thee a thing which will put all thy friendship to the test," said Nicanor. His voice was rapid and tense, and Wardo began to look at him in surprise. "Let me go free and unhindered from here for two hours. I give my word that when that time is over I will be at any place thou shalt name, to go with thee willingly thy prisoner. If aught untoward befall, no blame shall ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... quivered with tense excitement. What did it all mean? If a chicken had sneezed the whole gathering would have been dissolved in hysterics, it was so keyed up with a sense of the impending disclosure of a deep mystery. As for Hepsey, she sat motionless, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... her foot restlessly upon the floor. The atmosphere was surcharged with expectancy, then grew tense with waiting. Alden's eyes never swerved ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... 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 ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... floats along, O'er heart-strings tense its magic plying, And wakes in every breast its song Of ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... and face were so tense and eager that Henry stopped watching the bushes a moment or two to look at him. But Tom continued to search for his target. He missed nothing that human eye could see among those bushes, trees and rocks. He saw an eagle feather again, but it did not interest him. Then he heard the ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lamp could be seen gleaming clear and limpid, as it burned before the Madonna. Two boats, without rudders, sails, or oars, tossed by the waves, beaten by the winds, were whirling above the abyss; two men were in these two boats, their muscles tense, their breasts bare, their hair flying. They gazed haughtily on the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and sat straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeable-looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call groomed (one supposes this to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make the skin glossy), ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... significantly at the young librarian, who was leaning upon the counter in a tense, keyhole position, with his private ear turned somewhat ostentatiously towards the ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... her will to conquer that of her friend and Lena's hysteric opposition was no match for it. Little by little the tense form beneath the blankets relaxed. Her stormily drawn breath became more even. At last she slept, which gave Kate an opportunity to slip out to buy a new tube for the lamp and adjust it properly. She felt quite safe in lighting ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... all. Budaeus, who, according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—with or without the help of the ancient book—and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in the ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... through the large rings, and gather them at one end of the beam. Then fasten the ends of the cords to a rope, taking care while doing this that the curtain is down, and hanging properly, and that all the cords are drawn equally tense. There should be a stout pin or hook at the side of the curtain, to which the rope is to be fastened when the curtain is drawn up. Take notice that the cords are of different lengths and must be free from knots. The curtain should not touch ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... For a tense moment there was silence but for Anthony's loud and irregular breathing; when at last he spoke his ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... lieutenant looked down into the water over the stern, and saw that the schooner was already raising the mud in her wane. Then he went forward along the deck. His men were crouching down along by the low rail, and there was a tense quietness of expectation about them. The lieutenant looked them over as he passed them. "Johnson," he said, "do you take the lead and line and go forward and sound a bit." Then to the others: "Now, my men, the moment we run her aboard, you get aboard of her as quick as you can, do you understand? ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... to stroke his chops. His breath came heavily, shutting off his words. A hunted look leaped into his eyes as he studied the tense face of the eager young man. Could it be possible that the fears of the Reverend Mr. Means—privately made known to the Elder after the installation service—had foundation in fact? Or had the suggestion of Mr. Means lodged in the ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... all this 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 in the person of Indian Charley they had to deal with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... away from such thoughts. Nerves. That was it. He was tense. He was imagining things. They were certainly too well aware of the gravity of this situation to let ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... or an arm tossed out. What would happen on the night he found himself alone, he knew not—death, or the loss of reason. He knew what the torture would be,—the shrieks of women in deadly terror, the shrill cries of children, the low, tense curses of men, the rattle of shots, the yells of Indians, the heavy, sickening smell of blood, the still forms fallen in strange positions of ease, the livid faces distorted to grins. He had not been able to keep the ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... and approved with a strained smile, and led him, with a persistence he did not understand, to talk of other things. He went away chilled and baffled, and he had not come again. She knew that he was painting with every nerve tense and eager, in oblivion to all but his work and the face that inspired it. Elfrida, he told her, was to give him three sittings a week, of an hour each, and he complained of the scantiness of the dole. She could conjure up those hours, all too short for his delight in his model and ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... rose well above him. I held my breath, for I knew what was coming. The little fellow stood on the edge of the nest, looking down at the plunge which he dared not take. There was a sharp cry from behind, which made him alert, tense as a watch-spring. The next instant the mother-eagle had swooped, striking the nest at his feet, sending his support of twigs and himself with them out ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... have an instrument I have never seen in an identical form on the mainland. It is made like a bow, with a tense string of fibre. One end of the bow is placed against the mouth, and the string is then struck by the right hand with a small round stick, while with the left it is scraped with a piece of shell or a knife- blade. This excruciating instrument, I warn any one who may think of ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... to bed to take off the burglar alarm so that the family should not be roused if anybody tried to get in at my window. This would be after we had sat up late, he smoking the last of his innumerable cigars, and soothing his tense nerves with a mild hot Scotch, while we both talked and talked and talked, of everything in the heavens and on the earth, and the waters under the earth. After two days of this talk I would come away hollow, realizing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Wilbur released the brake and turned about for the next order, he cast his glance out upon the bay, and there, not a hundred and fifty yards away, her spotless sails tense, her cordage humming, her immaculate flanks slipping easily through the waves, the water hissing and churning under her forefoot, clean, gleaming, dainty, and aristocratic, the Ridgeways' yacht "Petrel" passed like a thing ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... speaker, her delicate brows drawn darkly, her great blue-black eyes fierce in their intensity, her whole face and attitude a challenge to the sermon. Courtland, absorbed as he was in what the speaker had to say, thrilling with the message that came to his soul welcomely, became aware of the tense little figure by his side, and, looking down, was pleased that she had forgotten her nonsense and was listening, and somehow missed the defiance in ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the past year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the way ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman |
