"Tentatively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down at the watch on her wrist and, seeing that the time had slipped by more quickly than she imagined, proceeded to gather up her gloves. "I think it's time I went back to Villa Mon Reve, now," she said tentatively, fearing a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Tentatively, I diverged from this subject towards other and wider fields. Impressions of Guernsey, which drew from him his address, at the St. Peter's Port Hotel. The horrors of the sea passage from Weymouth, which extorted a comment on ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... said Odo, "be one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have heard, you are of a studious habit. Though I suppose," he tentatively added, "the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... the quick sidewise leap from the car, and stood hesitating a little, as one will do before a strange house, for he was not quite sure as to his bearings, he saw a white blur as of feminine apparel in the front doorway. He advanced tentatively up the little path between two rows of flowering ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... confident, recruiting and battling everywhere, penetrating and fascinating the whole of society " [M. Guizot, Madame la comtesse de Rumford]. Rousseau never took his place in this circle; in this society he marched in front like a pioneer of new times, attacking tentatively all that he encountered on his way. "Nobody was ever at one and the same time more factious and more dictatorial," is the clever dictum of M. Saint ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you didn't doze at all,' he said tentatively, 'while you were sitting up waiting for ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... man as it finds them, and do what it can with them. It cannot ignore them. Slowly, civilizations, to some degree rational, have come into being. In so far as they are rational, they are justified. Keeping all this in view we may say, tentatively: ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... sleeping in the shade. He kept his hand on her silver collar as she advanced, fearing that Toni's queer mixture of garments might upset her canine mind; but Olga apparently took her master's friends on trust, and presently strolled over to Toni and laid one long paw tentatively upon ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... would be wiser to proceed tentatively and not commit ourselves for more than six weeks to start with. It is just conceivable that the treatment might stimulate extravagance instead of economy. Financial thrombosis is not unknown as one of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... and the doctor, Bobby could see, had been made as uneasy as himself by the change in the Panamanian. The doctor cleared his throat. His voice broke the silence tentatively: ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... between Thomery and the Princess; that between this beautiful and wealthy young widow and the millionaire sugar refiner, the flirtation was rapidly developing into something much warmer and more lasting. So far, the final stage had evidently not been reached; nevertheless, Thomery had suggested, tentatively, that he would like to give a grand ball when he took possession of the new house which he was having built for himself in the park Monceau!... And had he not been so extremely anxious to secure a partner for the cotillion which he meant to lead!... Then Madame de Vibray had suggested ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... until it clingingly accented the long, graceful curve from her hip to her feet. All this was so unlike her usual fastidiousness and repose that he was struck by it. With her eyes on the glowing embers of the hearth, and tentatively advancing her toe to its warmth and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... present the constructive results of the modern historical and literary study of the Bible, not dogmatically but tentatively, so that the reader and student may be in a position to judge for himself regarding the conclusions that are held by a large number of Biblical scholars and to ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... Mr Purchas is bad, sir," observed Tom, tentatively, when Miss Trevor had vanished down the companion ladder. "Hope it ain't ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... gladly have amputated their legs, if the ministers had so decreed, and they apologized to the world every time an unforseen circumstance uncovered a portion of these offensive legs. In fact, they denied the existence of "said members," and alluded to them tentatively and with modest hesitation, ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... over to the door and tried it tentatively—no inside doorknob, of course, this wasn't a hotel. He looked through the bars—nothing but corridor and the cell on the other side. Should he call? For an instant the fantastic idea of crying "Waiter!" or "Please send up my breakfast!" tugged ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Gildow-street, abutting upon Marsh-lane, in this town. It was established in the Wesleyan Methodist interest, and one of its chief supporters was Mr. T. C. Hincksman, a gentleman still living, who has for a long period been a warm friend of the general cause of Methodism. Although begun tentatively, the school soon progressed; in time there was a good attendance at it; ultimately it was considered too small; and the result was a removal to more convenient premises—to a room connected with the mill of the late Mr. John Furness, in Markland-street: But the little old building ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... your Excellency, that you wish me to pray silently for you when the faithful are gathered together?' he said tentatively. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that Caesar might be tempted, and that if they could bring him to consent he would lose the people's hearts. They had already made him Dictator for life; they voted next that he really should be King, and, not formally perhaps, but tentatively, they offered him the crown. He was sounded as to whether he would accept it. He understood the snare, and refused. What was to be done next? He would soon be gone to the East. Rome and its hollow adulations would lie behind him, and their one opportunity would be gone also. They ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just loved. Perhaps you'd like to play that best, too, 'cause you are sick, too?" she said tentatively. ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... propositions tentatively he heard the thud of footsteps descending the stairs from the dance hall, and governed by an uncontrollable impulse he leaped for concealment behind a pile of building material that was stacked handily upon the sidewalk almost at his elbow. He might possibly have driven himself to face a ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the nature of the porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... four weeks went by unflawed by a single absence from the field of duty; but, when the fifth Wednesday came, Penrod held sore debate within himself before he finally rose. In fact, after rising, and while actually engaged with his toilet, he tentatively emitted the series of little moans that was his wonted preliminary to a quiet holiday at home; and the sound was heard (as intended) by Mr. Schofield, who was passing Penrod's door on his way ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... way and easing it back without releasing it. Then he called to mind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavy end first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end to the bow-string. Then he pulled the string tentatively, and let it go. The arrow, all unguided, shot straight up into the air, turned over, fell sharply, and buried its head in a bit of soft ground. Grom felt that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the Assembly of March 1643, obtained a law which provided that the Rappahannock River region should remain "unseated," though grants might be tentatively claimed in the area, until the Governor, Council, and Burgesses, that is, the Grand Assembly, should authorize settlement there. The Governor was attempting to regulate the expansion of the colony so that the twin goals of security for the English ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... McCutcheon smoked, gazing into space with the blank expression of the strenuous man who has learned to utilize his momentary respites; while, stretched along the cushions of the carriage, his face hidden, his eyes wide open and attentive, lay the young Russian, his fingers tentatively caressing the treasure in the pocket ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Raphael, under the patronage of wealthy dilettanti and in the service of a worldly and splendor-loving Church, delighted in his knowledge and his skill; he worshiped art, and his end was beauty. The genius of Giotto is a first shoot, vigorous and alive, breaking ground hardily, and tentatively pushing into freer air. The genius of Raphael is the full-blown flower and final fruit, complete, mature. The step ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... of this development of Sylvia Wheeler's character interested me so much that I wrote to her that evening, tentatively sympathizing with her determination not to be frightened away from her own place. The whole thing was a curious misapprehension on my part; but Sylvia's reply (explaining that it was her particular place of worship she refused to leave, and that she was staying "with his Reverence's sister"), though ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... announced, "we'll ride on home an' pass ther word along thet matters stands es they stud in old Caleb's day an' time." He paused then, noting the weariness on the face of Jim Rowlett, added tentatively: "All of us, thet is ter say, save Old Jim. He's sorely tuckered out, an' I reckon ef ye invited him ter stay ther night with ye, Mr. Thornton, hit would ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Star-Streak, and all the Wandl ships, were again clustered on the Earth side of the Moon; they were hovering perhaps twenty thousand miles above its surface. Grantline's force was a hundred thousand miles off, toward Earth. One of the Wandl ships came tentatively forward, and Grantline sent one of the ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... adventure as had been planned. Steve at last told Wink that he would speak to the others about him that evening, but that Wink was not to get his hopes up, and Wink took himself off whistling cheerfully and quite satisfied. But when Steve tentatively broached the matter of including one more member in the person of Wink Wheeler, Joe staggered him by announcing that he had promised Harry Corwin to intercede ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sugar and tasted it tentatively, her head on one side. Gustavo hung upon her expression in an agony of apprehension; one would have thought it a matter for public mourning if the lemonade were not mixed exactly right. But apparently it was right—she nodded and smiled—and Gustavo's ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... and shall continue to think—until your spiritual mystery turns up—that a man who sends a note recommending a crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral tastes. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... The dog snapped tentatively. Thorn flattened still harder against the wall, with discovery and death hovering very closely about him. Then the beast's ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... collected fruits and seed-vessels, had studied animalculae through the microscope, and modelled fungi in plasticine. Stencilling, illuminating, painting, and marqueterie each had a brief turn, and were superseded by raffia-plaiting and poker-work. Miss Beasley suggested tentatively that it might be better to concentrate on a single subject, but Miss Gibbs, who loved arguments about education, was well prepared to defend her ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... adjust them tentatively, with various hypotheses as to the precise manner in which they thus went together. Meantime they have figured plausibly as representative of Attic sculpture at the end of its first period, still immature indeed, but with a just claim to take breath, so to speak, having ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Such were the words uttered with a somewhat different intonation, which last month, in speaking of Mr O'Connell's crusade against the peace of Ireland, we used tentatively, almost doubtfully, but still in the spirit of hope, in reference to the crisis then apparently impending, that the agitation might prolong itself by transmigrating into some other shape, for that case we allowed. But in any result, foremost amongst the auguries of hope ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... as our dramatic piece de resistance, the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet? Happy thought! Why not indeed? And now tentatively ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... assailed her: was it only a month ago she had stood in this room in the moonlight, waiting to go and meet Ishmael in the field? Her fingers shook a little as she took a few blossoms of creamy-yellow toadflax he had picked for her out of their vase and laid them tentatively against her gown. They harmonised to perfection, but Blanche, after a moment's hesitation, flung ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... place, in tentatively committing himself to the conclusion we are criticising, it seems to us that Sir Oliver Lodge loses sight of the very essence of his own contention: his conclusion, in effect, contradicts his premises. Syllogistically, and, of course, very bluntly stated, his argument ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... identity has hitherto been the only one which it was possible to apply to comets, and in the case before us it may fairly be said to have broken down. We may, then, tentatively, and with much hesitation, try a physical test, though scarcely yet, properly speaking, available. We have seen that the comets of 1843 and 1880 were strikingly alike in general appearance, though the absence of a formed nucleus in the latter, and its inferior brilliancy, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money, we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But," she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... an idea o' proposin' that you and me just took a look around that holler whar you thought you saw suthin'!" said Collinson tentatively. ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the trapper tentatively raised his hand and touched the bare arm of Maren where it shone brown beneath the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... since this parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the ravelled edges of the other. By the time the plateau was reached and the hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature. Sorrow—as well as the Napoleonic Patch—still sat very squarely beside her; but the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was no longer omnipresent. Interest again ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... without right or reason, by force of some secret magnetism that was not even physical. Her wide mouth was open in a rather vacant, childish smile, and she was looking up towards the gallery as though she were expecting something. "Hallo, everyone!" she said tentatively, gaily. They stared back at her, stolid and antagonistic, defying her. She began to laugh then, as she laughed every night at the same moment, spontaneously, shrilly, helplessly, until suddenly she had them. It was like a whirlwind. It spared no one. They were like dead leaves dancing ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... another couple in Hemming Hesperides ( the garden of the Hesperides) Heywood, Thomas, his play of The Captives; lines at the end of his Royal King and Loyal Subject identical with the Address To the Reader at the end of H. Shirley's Martyd Souldier; the play of Dick of Devonshire tentatively assigned to him; the MS. play Calisto composed of scenes from his Golden Age and Silver Age Hocas pocas Holland's Leaguer Horace, quoted (In the lines "Now die your pleasures, and the dayes you pray Your rimes and loves and jests will ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... gone to Farraday at his office, complete all but three chapters, of which she enclosed an outline. With it she sent a purely formal note, asking, in the event of the book being accepted, what terms the Company could offer her, and whether she could be paid partly in advance. She put the request tentatively, knowing nothing of the method of paying for serials. In another week she had a typewritten reply from Farraday, saying that the serial had been most favorably reported, that the Company would buy it for fifteen hundred dollars, with a guarantee to begin serialization within the year, on receipt ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... and thought I had gone ahead too rapidly, or, had not roused sufficient interest; not waiting for the psychological moment, but seeking to handle the sensitive mechanism of a sentient creature too roughly. Yet—surely this could not be so, for, after all, I was but tentatively trying, and, indeed it was open to me "to try"—even if without confidence! I then said: "How much is two and five?" doing so without illustrating the question with my fingers, and the dog rapped seven! I felt a warm thrill of delight, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... She pleaded tentatively, however, that she could not go the following afternoon, for the simple reason that she expected a visit from Carrissima, whose arrival ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... whispered. Churchill coughed tentatively. The two voices drew nearer. To confuse the sentries, should they be listening, the one officer talked nonsense, laughed loudly, and quoted Latin phrases, while the other, in a low and distinct voice, said: "I ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... the skyline, two hundred yards away, grey figures were appearing—not in battalions, but tentatively, in twos and threes. Next moment a storm of rapid rifle fire broke from the trench. The grey figures turned and ran. Some disappeared over the horizon, others dropped flat, others simply curled up ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... he felt intuitively that the eyes of the Girl were on him as well as on the other principal to this silent but no less ominous conflict going on, and such being the case it was obviously impossible for him to withdraw from the position he had taken. As a sort of compromise, therefore, he said, tentatively: ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... with scant respect for the upholstery, and examined the damaged drapery. Descending, he tugged tentatively at the other curtain, first with his right hand, then with his left; then with both. The fabric gave a little at the last test. Jones ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... during which he had been afraid Powder River would be swept beyond the point of the sand spit. Now he cringed at the thought of venturing into that flood again. He postponed the hazard, trying two or three starting-places tentatively before he selected one at the extreme upper ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... reason, he did not wish to be observed. I could see nothing of him except his hand, but I had an unpleasant feeling that he had been peering at me through the carving in the screen, and that he still was doing so. I moved my feet noisily on the floor and said tentatively, 'I beg your pardon.' ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... extraordinary will," said the doctor, glancing at him quickly. He added, tentatively: "She asked two questions that were ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Atlantic seaboard and the eastern coast of South America, as well as lines from the west coast of the United States to South America. China, Japan, and the Philippines. The profits on foreign mails are perhaps a sufficient measure of the expenditures which might first be tentatively applied to this method of inducing American capital to undertake the establishment of American lines of steamships in those directions in which we now feel it most important that we should have means ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... door of the front bedroom was closed as if on a mystery. He knocked and opened it tentatively, like a man who respected mysteries. The voice had left off singing, and was saying something. It was a voice he knew, but not ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... authority on biology, psychology or philosophy. I have simply been a student giving the subject such attention as I could during a fairly busy life. No doubt some of the scientific conclusions stated are still debatable and may finally be rejected. The scientific mind holds opinions tentatively and is always ready to reexamine, modify or discard as new evidence ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... to speak here, there, and everywhere which kept pouring in upon him certain ones he definitely accepted because of the money-raising opportunities either direct or indirect which they offered; others of less promise he tentatively accepted to fall back upon in case the more desirable ones for any reason miscarried. Chautauqua engagements he considered only where they provided an opportunity for direct appeal for contributions for the work, or at least the chance to distribute printed matter. Chautauqua bureaus offering ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... progeny, therefore, without the narrow concentration of the sympathies about the home, and he found it in a multiple marriage in which every member of the governing class was considered to be married to all the others. But the detailed operation of this system he put tentatively and very obscurely. His suggestions have the experimental inconsistency of an enquiring man. He left many things altogether open, and it is unfair to him to adopt Aristotle's forensic method and deal with his discussion as though ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... subject which, treated by a master of oratory, would have palled on the audience after ten or fifteen minutes; and at the end of fifteen minutes this speaker had only just got past the haddocks and was feeling his way tentatively through the shrimps. "The Rosary" had been sung and there was an uneasy doubt as to whether it was not going to be sung again after the interval—the latest rumour being that the second of the rival lady singers had proved adamant to all appeals and intended to fight the thing out on the ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... me for speaking again, but I am on the membership committee and I am anxious to draw out anything that may be of use. Why could not some plan be devised by the secretary or by this committee and sent out tentatively in the way of suggestion and perhaps some other suggestions will be made to add to it. Perhaps also in addition to this local community plan that I suggested, there might be formed, all of it within the Northern Association, a subsidiary ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... it should understand that the best thing it could do to forward this prosperous tendency of things was to do nothing; for this is a lesson which has not yet been learned by any legislature in the world. For several years they had been tinkering, at first modestly and tentatively, at a scheme of internal improvements which should not cost too much money. In 1835 they began to grant charters for railroads, which remained in embryo, as the stock was never taken. Surveys for other railroads were also proposed, to cross the State in different directions; ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... side, staring breathlessly down into the water. The creature in the vat moved its hands tentatively, it opened its mouth and closed it. Then it stirred with purpose, turned and climbed up over the side of the vat, dripping like a weird creature from ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... was devoted to the problematical Prince Charming whose mission it would be to keep me young, then I asked tentatively:— ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... real significance of the symptoms of Influenza should make it sufficiently apparent that its cause is fundamental, widespread and deeply rooted in the organism—a menace not to be lightly and tentatively treated with impunity. That the disease is not one that may be met—with any prospect of success—with febrifuges, drugs, serums and specifics—to say nothing of whisky and the like futilities, to use no harsher term, such as ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... remained smilingly aloof and silent, at intervals, tentatively, uncertain whether or not she exactly cared for it, she tasted the iced contents of the tall, frosty glass and watched him where he sat loosely at ease flicking at sun-moats with the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... a visitor," she said, looking tentatively at Lorry—she hated visitors, for she had to sit up. "Do you ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Tentatively, she pushed her chair back from the table and arose. She had to brush close by the other table to get to the bar. As she did, the dark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed her around the ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay
... I've no doubt you'd be off to Urbana by first train; but this young man has some sense in his head" (here Cranston began to finger his own skull tentatively), "and in losing his freedom hasn't entirely parted ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... They talked on many subjects—tentatively, and as sounding novel depths—in a way that occasioned one of them, at all events, very great surprise. Indeed, it seemed to him afterwards that, for a silent and observant man, he had been led into quite unwonted, but none the less very enjoyable, ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... assumption, so often made with respect to corporeal structures, that there is some innate tendency towards continued development in mind and body. But development of all kinds depends on many concurrent favourable circumstances. Natural selection acts only tentatively. Individuals and races may have acquired certain indisputable advantages, and yet have perished from failing in other characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... repulse, or its diversion elsewhere, would also be suitable to the appropriate effect desired, though not in the same degree. Each such visualized accomplishment, suitable to the appropriate effect desired, may properly be considered as a tentatively ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... faced us was the identification of the forms seen on focusing the sight on gases.[2] We could only proceed tentatively. Thus, a very common form in the air had a sort of dumb-bell shape (see Plate I); we examined this, comparing our rough sketches, and counted its atoms; these, divided by 18—the number of ultimate atoms in hydrogen—gave us 23.22 as atomic ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... tentatively, "have you made up your mind about to-morrow; is it to be Kew, or Cookham and Henley?" But to his surprise the question seemed to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... after him Dryden and the eighteenth century, regarding poetry generally as a thing apart, followed the latter sort; but when the Romantic Revival brought poetry back to ordinary human life there reappeared, tentatively, of course, a simpler blank verse in Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, and Wordsworth. A clear example is the opening ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... good boy, and I know you will keep your word." She hesitated a moment, smilingly and tentatively, and then held out a bright half-dollar. Leonidas backed from the fence. "I'd rather not," ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... so deluded as to think you cannot explain that" cried the girl. "How foolish! You are not a servant, never were, and I am sure never will be one. And I know you have n't sneaked in as a yellow newspaper reporter, or magazine writer," tentatively. "You ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Artillery Institution at Woolwich, was also separately published under the title of "The Future of England." The two former, being addressed to working-men, laborers, and traders, discuss economic problems, and set forth tentatively their author's antagonized political ethics, with which, in drawing this essay to a close, we now venture ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... always puts an onion in the tin with a joint," I said tentatively, for I was not very hopeful. I know that there is always some insuperable objection to ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... springtime. All over the country, as August wanes, sparkling comediennes burst into bloom, the sap stirs in the veins of tramp cyclists, and last year's contortionists, waking from their summer sleep, tie themselves tentatively into knots. What I mean is, this is the beginning of the new season, and everybody's ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... the principal needs and grievances of society, so that men worthy of the name of statesmen may realise that such labours are of real utility. So far, positive philosophy has worked timidly and tentatively, and has not been bold and broad and general enough to cope with intellectual anarchy in social questions; but it is necessary now that it play a more dominant part in life, and lead society out of the turmoil in which it ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one of the chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... moreover, were required to assume more and more of the responsibility of the housework, while their mother extracted from the Marshall five acres an ever increasing largesse of succulent food. Sylvia's seances with old Reinhardt and the piano were becoming serious affairs: for it was now tentatively decided that she was to earn her living by teaching music. There were many expeditions on foot with their mother, for Mrs. Marshall had become, little by little, chief nurse and adviser to all the families of the neighborhood; and on her errands of service one of her daughters was needed to ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... to her whenever he could take an opportunity. The valley became the world for him, and the world beyond the mountains where men lived in sunlight seemed no more than a fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very tentatively and timidly he spoke to her ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... back toward the cabin, feeling old and uncertain, not quite knowing what to do with himself. Old Tom was over by the lean-to, sniffing and pawing tentatively at the fresh earth where Ed had filled in the hole. As Ed came up, he came over to rub ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... was purely white, its outlines blurred by the slant-driving snow. There was not a living creature to be seen, and my dog, a little sharp-nosed black beast, shivered as he looked about, with wide eyes and quick-set ears, for a friendly sight, and held one paw tentatively in the air, as if he ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Michael Angelo, and Albert Durer worked by mathematical processes, and their testimony would probably give results more exact than that of Montaigne or Shakespeare; but, to save trouble, one might tentatively carry back the same ratio of acceleration, or retardation, to the year 1400, with the help of Columbus and Gutenberg, so taking a uniform rate during the whole four centuries (1400-1800), and leaving to statisticians the task ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... details of the experiment, which is now being planned for a workshop and school concerned with the production of play materials, I am hoping that educators and industrial managers may readily make the application to other lines of industry. The plan is tentatively confined to a two years' course. It may be found that two years is too long a time to confine the pupils to the work and the problems of the shop. It may be found in the first year that the pupils will be interested in following some of the problems not in relation to their work ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... without inflicting some form of chastisement; and that beneath this ever active surface movement Fielding's genius was slowly maturing in that new continent of literature the borders of which he had already crossed seven years before. In the pages of Joseph Andrews, he had, as we know, tentatively explored that continent feeling his way along the unknown paths of this long neglected world of human nature; bringing back with him one immortal figure, that living embodiment of simple piety and scholarship, of charity and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... the coolies, these last, and the other two were of course Leithgow and Friday. But had they survived the outrush of air? Carse felt in his left glove for the suit's gravity control lever; found it and tentatively moved it. His acceleration slowly increased. He brought the lever part-way back. Then, into the microphone encased inside the ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... justice, the same refinement and fastidiousness. The morose young poet had developed into a model monarch. The old Neronians were perplexed, irritated too; they had expected other things. Domitian was merely feeling the way; the hand that held the sceptre was not quite sure of its strength, and, tentatively almost, this Prince of Virtue began to scrutinize the morals of Rome. For the first time he noticed that the cocottes took their airing in litters. But litters were not for them! That abuse he put a stop to at once. A senator manifested an interest in ballet-girls; ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... a gurgling cry of joyful discovery, but it was followed almost instantly by silence. The black-garbed, unsmiling woman did not invite approach, and the boy fell back at his first step. He hesitated, then spoke, tentatively, "I's—here." ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to anticipate the European of the future; only in their simulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong to the "fatherlands"—they only rested from themselves when they became "patriots." I think ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... His hand went tentatively to his chin, absently caressing his lean cheeks as he remembered that day. Late in the afternoon he had found a rabbit caught fast in a snare which he had set deep in the thicket, and the little animal had squealed in terror, just as rabbits always squeal, when he ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on the glowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flame rose and flickered. Instantly Harrigan laid small bits of wood criss-cross on the pile of tinder. The flame licked at them tentatively, recoiled, rose again and caught hold. The fire ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... violet lights lay over the earth; a thrush, awakened by the sweetness of the twilight from his long summer moping, whistled timidly, tentatively; then the silvery, evanescent notes floated away, away, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... which they were written; but that is precisely what he did not do. Instead, he enlarged and rearranged the work ten different times, mixing up his worst and his best verses, so that it is now very difficult to trace his development as a poet. We may, however, tentatively arrange his work in three divisions: his early shouting to attract attention (as summarized in the line "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world"), his war poems, and his later verse written after he had learned something of the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... so tentatively, so gingerly offered in manner, if not in words, that Cornelia was not quite sure it had been given. She involuntarily searched her memory for something better before she spoke; for the first time in her life she was about to invent a previous engagement, when Charmian suddenly turned ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... other hand, there is doubt as to whether the parliamentary majority really represents the country upon the matters at issue, the ministers are warranted in requesting the sovereign to dissolve Parliament and to order a general election. In such a situation the ministry continues tentatively in office. If at the elections there is returned a majority disposed to support the ministers, the cabinet is given a new lease of life. If, on the other hand, the new parliamentary majority is adverse, no course is open to the ministry save to retire. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... severely necrotic leaves on them. Careful examination revealed many fruiting bodies of one or more fungi in these necrotic areas. Each tree was, therefore, scored for the presence of this disease, which has been tentatively identified by Paul L. Lentz, of this Bureau, as being caused by Labrella coryli. The data on leaf scorch, winter injury, and the fungus disease ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... the item, resolving to add it to my list of curious Americanisms. Already I had begun a narrative of my adventures in this wild land, a thing I had tentatively entitled, "Alone in ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... at breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announced that I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New York City, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort. I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedingly disgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity, that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessary for me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather had left ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... cheerfully but tentatively, to his wife when they were alone again, "she seems a nice girl, after all; and a good deal of pluck and character, by Jove! to push on in that broken buggy rather than linger or come in a ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... the school-house trail. Miss Satterly raised both hands with a very feminine gesture and patted her hair tentatively, tucking in a stray lock here ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... quaintly expressive of an importance about which its owner was undecided, imposed above a fullish waistcoat a chin which was now tending toward the slopes of middle age. The eyes were mild and vaguely speculative, the lips full and loosely formed, and when they smiled they began tentatively in a tremulous lift showing only the two upper front teeth—the smile of a woman rather than of a man. This smile—when it made, as it so often had to make, its appearance in public—was curiously suggestive of interrogation. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... them on the table; he wondered when she would see them. She lingered tentatively on the threshold, with the air of leaving his explanation on his hands. She was not the kind of woman who could be counted on to fortify an excuse by ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... the case of a single person, nor did he make reprisals. But on the other hand he drifted into all the most obscene and lawless and bloodthirsty practices. [Some of them never before known in Rome, took root and grew like ancestral institutions. Others, taken up tentatively from one time [Footnote: Reading [Greek: allote] (Bekker, Dindorf) in place of [Greek: alla te].] to another by various individuals] flourished for the three years and nine months and four days during which he ruled (to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... know when you see him—there are many ways, some of which are very effectual." Spurling played with the butt of his revolver as he said these words, and looked at Granger tentatively, then looked aside. "For instance, the winter is breaking up and he might fall through the ice; or while he is staying here several of his dogs might die; or, at the least, you can tell him that you have not seen me and persuade him that he has ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... a desire to lead the subject back to the case of men who disappeared, turned in the deck-chair where he was sitting enjoying a light breeze which had sprung up after dark, and said tentatively: 'I can't quite understand, you know, a man disappearing altogether and leaving no ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... a fix, Carl," said Ruiz, meaning that he had tentatively fixed a position of intercept. "Correct our elevation; ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... is one of the most important of his life. He had married Minna Planer, who is said to have been a very pretty woman and quite incapable of understanding her husband and his artistic aspirations; and he began, slowly and tentatively, to shape a course through life for himself. He continued to gain experience in the production of other composers' operas; he studied incessantly, and at last he hit upon the idea of writing a grand opera in the Meyerbeer style, and going to Paris with ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... with anger in his eyes. Then something else replaced the anger. No, he thought, Charlie couldn't do everything she could do. She was beautiful. Her half-nude body summoned desire in him. Tentatively, ready to withdraw his hand at the first indication of protest, he touched her bare shoulder. She made no response. She merely stood there, waiting for some kind ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited. It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round. It was ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... or most ancient words are not obsolete, as father, mother, etc. A word is obsolete which has quite gone out of reputable use; a word is archaic which is falling out of reputable use, or, on the other hand, having been obsolete, is taken up tentatively by writers or speakers of influence, so that it may perhaps regain its position as a living word; a word is rare if there are few present instances of its ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of the octopi swam into the chamber. Its great eyes centered icily on Keith Wells, standing at the head of his cowering men; and its mighty tentacles waved slowly, gracefully, as if the creature stood in doubt. One of them tentatively reached out and hovered over their heads, moving uncertainly back and forth. Then, like a monstrous water snake, the tentacle poised, flicked out and plucked a man from ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... rooms. He opened his eyes and looked. The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence. Then he heard a low knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw that the door handle was being tentatively turned. He ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... his motley followers disappeared in the dusk than Smith unslung his basket-pack, fished out a big electric torch, flashed it tentatively, and then, reslinging the pack and taking his rifle in his left hand, he set off at an easy ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... rapidly in pendulous drippings. He now and again mopped his red face, usually so bloodless, with his big bandanna handkerchief, while all the zephyrs were fanning the flying tresses of Spring at the window, and the soft, sweet, delicately attuned vernal chorus of the marshes were tentatively running over sotto voce their allotted melodies for the season. Oh, it was a fine night outside, and why should a moth, soft-winged and cream-tinted and silken-textured, come whisking in from the dark, as silently as a spirit, to ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... with Estates as a whole instead of with single holdings. This process, till then applied tentatively in the congested districts of the West, became the general method throughout Ireland, and was assisted by the provision of working capital for carrying out necessary amalgamations and ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... was supported by steel tubes at its edges and in its exact center. He tentatively put one foot in the middle over the support and gradually shifted his weight to it. The metal complained creakily, but held, and he slowly trod the exact center line to Earth. The stewardess' back was turned toward him as he walked off across ...
— The Stutterer • R.R. Merliss
... brave man," said the dripping leader of the attack, as he stood upright and touched his damaged shoulder gently and tentatively. "Now quick to the carriage with him. You have not managed this well, my friends, not at ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the ladder to swim away beyond my ken—mysterious as he came. But, for the moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively: ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... season when the Lobel shop tentatively experimented with costume dramas—the Prisoner of Chillon wearing the conventional black and white in alternating stripes of a Georgia chain gang and doing the old Sing Sing lock step and retiring for the night to his donjon cell with a set of shiny and rather ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb |
