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More "Tension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as I should have termed it, now two leagues behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange throbbing in one ear, and a sensation as if air passed through it into my throat. It seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep in my ear, swelled, and burst there. The indescribable tension of my brain seemed all at once to give way; there was an odd humming in my head, and a sort of vibration through every nerve of my body, such as I have experienced in a limb that has been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I uttered a cry ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of mind was contrasted with the savant's coldness of soul, and he was adduced as an instance that the gifts of God are absolutely free. All this created a deep division of feeling in the college. The mystics worked themselves up to such a pitch of mental tension that several of them died, but this only increased the frenzy of the others. M. Gosselin had too much tact to offer them a direct opposition, but for all that, there were two distinct parties in the college, the mystics acting under the ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... general sense of tension and anxiety betrayed his presence somewhere in the great dreary house, and the master yet forbore to descend for the early meal, he would rejoice the heart of his little daughter by having her brought to his room to make ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... knees of the chief bent still lower, the head of the tomahawk was a little raised, the blade of the knife was seen glittering from its sheath, and the but of Mark's musket had receded to the utmost tension of his sinews, when a shriek and a yell, different from any before heard that day, sounded near. At the same moment, the blows of both the combatants were suspended, though by the agency of very different degrees of force. Mark felt the arms of one cast around his limbs, with a power sufficient ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... little old regular lobby fee and my expense money. And the power hasn't been developed by the infernal, dear, protected people, has it?" he sneered. "If the Consolidated folks had been let alone and given their franchise, we'd now be marketing over our high-tension wires two millions of horse-power in big centers two or three hundred miles from ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Milton the politician merely as a sad and ignominious interlude in the life of Milton the poet, Mr. Pattison cannot be expected to entertain the idea that the poem is in any sense the work of the politician. Yet we cannot help thinking that the tension and elevation which Milton's nature had undergone in the mighty struggle, together with the heroic dedication of his faculties to the most serious objects, must have had not a little to do both with the final choice of his subject and with the tone of his poem. "The great Puritan ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and the powerful engine came in. Braking his wheels hard, to hold the plane on the ground, he advanced the throttle as much as he dared, and sent a high-tension current surging through the wires the professor had connected with his ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich
... confine the patient in bed, but permit him to go around and take all necessary exercise. We adjust an ingeniously devised and perfectly fitting appliance or apparatus, by which a gentle extension of the limb is maintained, thereby relieving the tension of the muscles, and preventing the friction and wearing of the inflamed surfaces of the joint, which, without the use of our new and improved appliance, are a source of constant irritation. The appliances required in the successful treatment ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... escape them. He was so frankly nervous and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that the boys were well hidden, and before he climbed down the ladder he piled bundle after bundle upon them, as if preferring that they should be smothered rather than discovered ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... of the birds took their departure from the coast,—the dull routine of the place went on as usual, rendered even duller by the absence of the "witch" element of discord,—a circumstance that had kept the superstitious villagers, more or less on a lively tension of religious and resentful excitement—and by-and-by, the rightful minister of Bosekop came back to his duties and released the Reverend Charles Dyceworthy, who straightway returned to his loving flock in Yorkshire. It was difficult to ascertain whether the aged Lovisa was satisfied ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... the first few weeks I went with a rush, the joy of the new life within buoyed me up. I felt as though I was walking on air. I did not feel any strain of the upward tread. But soon I began to feel the tension of the daily struggle, the weary march. There were obstacles in that way that impeded my progress. My circumstances were against me, and the influences surrounding me had a tendency ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... assorts and counts the various colors and shapes of tablets to be used is positively to invite loss of interest on the children's part, and to produce in the teacher a hurry and worry and nervous tension which will ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... standing right facing me, her eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her body motionless. In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy symbol she sought to oppose my entrance. At sight of me, her whole frame relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair. Some mighty tension had given way. Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air, made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had placed before the ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... and sat down. She was horribly overstrained and wanted to cry, but she began to laugh, and for some minutes could not stop. She must get relief from the tension and, after all, in a sense, the thing ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... family at this unaccountably unsocial behavior, their curiosity as to where he had been, their suspense as to what he did when alone so long in his bedroom, reached a tension ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... an extraordinary state of tension, had at length become relaxed in as extraordinary a degree—continued to struggle with a sort of imbecility, the growth of superstitious terror, when the shocking tidings were brought from Holland, which fulfilled ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... moved—relieved after a tension which he had not noticed until it was broken. It was time for him to go. The two old men were recalled to the fact of his presence. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Greatness to appoint A B Architect of the City of Rome. Let him read the books of the ancients; but he will find more in this City than in his books. Statues of men, showing the muscles swelling with effort, the nerves in tension, the whole man looking as if he had grown rather than been cast in metal. Statues of horses, full of fire, with the curved nostril, with rounded tightly-knit limbs, with ears laid back—you would think the creature longed for the race, though you know that the metal moves not. This art of statuary ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... strain of long days and nights of anguish had reached the limit of her endurance, and her nerves, too, long under tension, suddenly rebelled. She sank helplessly upon the floor, sobs racking her body from head to foot. She did not know how long she lay there, but when she raised her head it was already growing dark in the room, like the shadows that were stealing about her heart. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... to lessen this tension. "The judge has promised to grant you a hearing soon. Mr. Rawlins thinks it only a case for Justice Court, anyway." She rose. "But let me see Mrs. Throop for a few minutes ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... crying present needs of the Indians are more day schools situated in the midst of their settlements, more effective instruction in the industries pursued on their own farms, and a more liberal tension of the field-matron service, which means the education of the Indian women in the arts of home making. Until the mothers are well started in the right direction we cannot reasonably expect much from the children who are soon to form an integral ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... along as before. I had rested the horses by a walk, and to a casual observer they would have seemed to be none the worse for their fling at running away. But on closer scrutiny they would again have revealed the unmistakable signs of nervous tension. Their ears moved jerkily on the slightest provocation. Still, the road was good and clear, and I ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... to look as if the Atlantis would win the battle. She was now fearfully close to the shore, but her bow had been turned into the very eye of the sea, and one could almost feel the tension of her steel muscles as she seemed to spring to the encounter. The billows that split themselves in quick succession on her sharp stem burst into shooting geysers three hundred ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... mind being surrounded by enemies. He knows with satisfaction that in the very heart of the empire certain annexed provinces constantly protest against the violence which has been done to them. The ego cannot work without opposition. The German needs enemies to keep himself in that state of tension and of struggle which is the condition of vigor. He willingly applies to himself what the Lord God said of man in general in ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... nerve strung to its highest tension they waited, crouching, Jerry tingling and quivering with the intensity of his excitement, Cameron quiet, cool, as if assured of ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... been herein noted that the Convention of 1829-30 settled nothing. A compromise had been effected which relieved somewhat the tension that existed over the matter of representation. The constitutional provision that gave to the Assembly the power, after 1841 and thereafter at intervals of not less than ten years, and under prescribed conditions, to make re-apportionments of representation had never been availed of. In view of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... still mild as he uttered the exclamation, but before Goodwin could repeat himself he had moved. As if some spring in him had been released from tension, the mild and prim Mr. Fant whirled on his heel, and a fist took Goodwin on the edge of the jaw and sent him gasping and clucking on to his back; while, with the precision of a movement rehearsed and practiced, Mr. Fant's booted foot swung forward and kicked him ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... irony of the argument, and their laugh did much to do away with the constraint, the tension of their mood. More gayly she ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 dealt a blow to Israel's economy. Higher world oil prices added an estimated $300 million to the oil import bill that year and helped keep annual inflation at 18%. Regional tension and the continuing Palestinian uprising (intifadah) have contributed to a sharp drop in tourism - a key foreign exchange earner - to the lowest level since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The influx of Jewish immigrants ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... in as great tension at that moment as he, but more anxious not to show it. "Why do you call me that?" she replied, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... symptoms carefully and make an autopsy—I am sure it is a new poison we have liberated!" If the vast majority of men shrink from and evade irksome labor with their muscles—even though life and comfort depend upon it—a still vaster majority shirk the disciplined toil and tension of the mind, which, if it have real purpose, makes little of the only rewards that spur men ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... for a long while; the numbness became painful; the tension a dull endurance. Fatigue came, too; she rested her head wearily on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. But the tall clocks ticking slowly became unendurable—and the odour ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... expansion. The compensator is very simple and not at all likely to get out of order. On new wire, when I fix my compensator, I usually have an adjusting screw on the lead to lever. This I remove when the wire has been stretched to its full tension. I have everything removed from lever, so there can be no meddling or altering. When once the wire is stretched so that no slack remains between lever and trigger, no ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... strung for shooting. It is needless to remark that the bowstring is about 2 or 3 centimeters shorter than the stock, which in the moment of stringing must be bent to enable the upper extremity of the string to reach the upper notch and thereby acquire a sufficient tension to ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... there was the silent tension of expectation in the air and then I realised with a shock that the train did not show any signs of slackening speed. It was, if anything, going faster. I snatched frantically at the cord and pulled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... grasped at a branch and been hoisted bodily from the canoe, now came limping to the disconsolate group, and had stumbled with lighted pipe in teeth across the powder that had been spread out to dry, when a terrific yell of warning brought him to his senses, and relieved the tension. MacKenzie spread out a treat for the men and sent them to gather bark for a fresh canoe. Other adventures on Bad River need not be given. This one was typical. The record was but two miles a day; and now there was no turning ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... as usual, in practicing the piano, walking in the inclosure of St. James's Park opposite our house, and reading in "Blunt's Scripture Characters" (a book in which I was then deeply interested) the chapters relating to St. Peter and Jacob. I do not know whether the nervous tension which I must have been enduring strengthened the impression made upon me by what I read, but I remember being quite absorbed by it, which I think was curious, because certainly such subjects of meditation were hardly allied to the painful undertaking so immediately pressing upon me. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... heroic Belgium. What a Godspeed we gave to the few sons of Gaul who, in those early days, left us to fight the good fight! How sourly we looked upon Plooie continuing his peaceful rounds. Whence arose the rumor, I cannot say, but it was noised about just at that time of wrath and tension that Plooie was born in Liege. Liege, that city of fire and slaughter and heroism, upon which the eyes and hopes of the world were turned in wonder and admiration. Somebody had seen the entry on the marriage register! ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... leaning on a sarcophagus, in one of those fits of abstraction which had of late come upon her; but on hearing the sound, and seeing Silvio's violent onslaught, she seemed to fall into a positive fury of passion. Her eyes blazed, and her mouth took a hard, cruel tension which was new to me. Instinctively she stepped towards Silvio as if to interfere in the attack. But I too had stepped forward; and as she caught my eye a strange spasm came upon her, and she stopped. Its intensity made me hold my breath; and I put up my hand to clear my eyes. When I had done this, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... of the jocosity that partially relieved the tension is the following portion of the Congressional Record ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... passive, and draw off all tension from your nerves. Just you relax your mind and your body will follow suit. A few deep slow breaths ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... well, stood the man to whom in ardent youth she had plighted her undisciplined heart. The thought maddened her. And as she struggled to choke back this overwhelming rush of feeling, her husband's unwelcome entrance broke the tension of a scene the strain of which was ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the physical loneliness of the colonists. Each soul must fight its own unaided, unending battle. In that moral solitude, as in the physical solitude of the settlers upon the far northwestern prairies of a later epoch, many a mind snapped. Unnatural tension was succeeded by unnatural crimes. But for the stronger intellects New England Calvinism became a potent spiritual gymnastic, where, as in the Swedish system of bodily training, one lifts imaginary and ever-increasing weights with imaginary and ever-increasing effort, flexor and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... high-tension atmosphere of the sensationalized Patriot the relaxing quality of humor. Under the ingenuous and acquisitive Sheffer, whose twins achieved immediate popularity, it developed along other lines. Sheffer—who knew what makes business men laugh—pinned his simple faith to three main subjects, convulsive ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... upon a people believing themselves born for freedom and independence. This hatred, then, is a feeling purely political, and there is political machinery by which it is kept in a state of perpetual tension. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... rule. The first effect of cooling the surface of our planet must have been to solidify it, and thus to form a film or crust over it. That crust would shrink as the cooling process went on; in consequence of the shrinking, wrinkles and folds would arise upon it, and here and there, where the tension was too great, cracks and fissures would be produced. In proportion as the surface cooled, the masses within would be affected by the change of temperature outside of them, and would consolidate internally also, the crust ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... tension of his nerves was unendurable. Five minutes more of anguish, and he sprang up like ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... that he could not say anything more to comfort Big Bob, tried to relieve the tension by drawing the other's attention to ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... news Donna Angela unconsciously steeled herself against her natural impulse to break down. She has a strong will, and the result is what you see. The strain of resisting was so great that it deadened her to all sensation in a few hours. If she could fall ill, the tension would relax; in my opinion it will do so when her physical strength is worn out by starvation and lack of sleep, but a simple specific malady, like the whooping-cough or the measles, would be better for her. If ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... her fingers, but neither did she cease from weeping. Her grief seemed to be something more than that resulting from the tension of strong ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... that landing, just that one second the vibration told him the ship was alive and air-borne, and the next a dead quiet testified that they had landed. Shann, his sore body stiff with tension, waited for the next move on the part ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... talk flagged, and Buntingford began to fidget. Slowly Lady Georgina rose from her seat, and again extinguished the flame under the silver kettle. Would she go, or would she not go? Cynthia dropped some stitches in the tension of the moment. Then Buntingford got up to open the door for Georgina, who, without deigning to make any conventional excuse for ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... packed in a manner to give the required elevation. A cricket ball or jam tin bomb was placed in the pouch and the rubbers were then strained by means of a crank handle winding up a wire attached to the pouch with a trip hook. When the required tension was obtained one man lit the fuse and retired to cover. The other, the expert, allowing the fuse to burn for a certain time—to suit the range, pulled the string which released the trip. If all went well the bomb sailed over towards the Turk. Sometimes, however, the trip would fail, or ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... noticed a certain tension in his relations with Lord Alfred Douglas. One day he told me frankly that Lord Alfred Douglas had come into a fortune of L15,000 or L20,000, "and," he added, "of course he's always able to get money. He'll marry an American millionairess or ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... "The tension of the strange situation lasted for some minutes. I had no clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... interest of each of her new novels are still as potent as were her earliest productions. The leading characters are carried through a series of exciting adventures, all of which are narrated and drawn out with such ingenuity that the reader's attention is kept on a tension of interest from the opening page to the close of the volume. This is the great secret of Mrs. Stephens' success—her readers cannot get out of her influence. She does not fatigue them with the subtleties of metaphysics or philosophy. She gives ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... the Staff, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, a hard and ready man who for fifteen years had been scouring the Nile. All his war service had been in Egypt, where recently he had not only smashed the dervishes and secured the Soudan, but by his diplomatic tact in the Fashoda affair had relaxed the tension of a dangerous international situation. He belonged to the Royal Engineers, who are, like the Army Service Corps, a semi-combatant body engaged in technical duties that do not offer much opportunity ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... decade the foreign policy of Germany showed the same chief characteristic that was noticeable in that of the other countries—high tension. One is almost tempted to compare this period of Europe's history to the hours immediately preceding a violent electrical storm. The diplomatic atmosphere was surcharged with electricity, and long before the storm really broke the growl of distant thunder could ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... dog crouched for a spring, and Jet, every muscle strained to its utmost tension, stood ready ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... roof. Would her indignation hold out under the insinuating smile with which the artful rascal awaited her words? It gave every evidence of doing so, for her eye flashed threateningly and her whole body showed the tension of extreme feeling as she came hastily forward, and pausing just beyond the reach of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Ruth laughed and the tension was broken. But there was still a little feeling of restraint, and after a few minutes Parmalee ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... arms encircled her with a close and quivering tension. He kissed her, and in that kiss for the first time she felt the ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... crowd could scarcely be restrained within the limits of order. A change was noticeable also in the demeanor of proponent and his counsel. For the two days preceding they had appeared as though under some tension or suspense; now they seemed to exhibit almost an indifference to the proceedings, as though the outcome of the contest were already a settled fact, while a marked gravity ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... this extreme tension of forces was an absolute which could easily be ascertained, still we must admit that the human mind would hardly submit itself to this kind of logical chimera. There would be in many cases an unnecessary waste of power, which would be in opposition to other principles ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... propitious moment, rushed to the central house and seized the levers. He turned on the currents from the piles no longer neutralized by the electric tension of the surrounding atmosphere. In a moment the screws had regained their normal speed and checked the descent; and the "Albatross" remained at her slight elevation while her propellers drove her swiftly out of reach of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... at Elsmere under his straight black brows imperiously. The youth felt the nervous tension in the elder man's voice and manner, was startled by a confidence never before bestowed upon him, close as that unequal bond between them had been growing during the six months of his Oxford life, and plucking up courage hurled at him a number of frank, young expostulations, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and the hum of a high tension alternator filled the laboratory. The Russian quivered for a moment and then lay still. Major Martin nodded and Dr. Bird stepped to the side of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... is the passage way outside, and, as Fanny came out with her ears ringing with the strange jargon that everywhere met her, she was at once relaxed from the tension of sights and sounds she had just been in by seeing two country people rush together just ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... now how her body is the object of desire, she learns to feel her power, and all this works backward on her sexual irritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudian psychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the American neurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all neurasthenic ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... lousiness was part and parcel of my make-up. I was so accustomed to it, however, that it had long ceased to cause me more than a passing thought; there were too many other things to think about during that session. But once relieved from the tension of the daily struggle to save life, as well as take it, the desire to become normal, decent, cleanly human beings took possession of every man of us, and we wallowed in the bath until we could once more look other respectable citizens in ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... pedestal of simple design, which bears the terse legend, "Erected by the World's Columbian Exposition, A. D. 1893," stands the noble figure of the Noah of our nation. The open doublet discloses the massive proportions of a more than well-knit man. The left hand, pressed to the bosom, indicates the tension of his feelings, and the outstretched hand but further intensifies the dawning and gradually o'erwhelming sense of the future, the possibilities of his grand discovery. One of the noblest conceptions in bronze upon this continent is ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... Men less learned and with lesser power of reason and thoughtfulness than he, have moved audiences to frenzy and have carried them at will; but Jefferson, without this peculiar gift, certainly possessed a sufficiency of this power, which the broad culture of the scholar and the steadfast tension of the thinker can give to any man. His addresses and writings are pregnant with profound aphorisms, and through his great genius transient questions were often transformed into eternal truths. His arguments were ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... protective, maternal. She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap; yet there was still a certain tension in her expression, an intensity as of inward excitement ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... infinite leisure which is a fine art when it is not born of genuine abstraction, and none could decide whether he was aware of the unfriendly proximity of Big Medicine. Weary was just on the point of saying something to relieve the tension, when Miguel blew the ash gently from his ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... in this section could be placed in other sections. Many have been. They represent the vigor, vitality, energy, and daring characteristic of our frontiers. To quote Harvey Fergusson's phrase, the adventures of mettle have always had "a tension that would ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... confirmation of this fact, saying that the waters of the Mulde, swollen by the rain, had prevented his arriving until a few moments ago, Kohlhaas came to his senses. A sudden, terrible downpour of rain, sweeping across the pavement of the courtyard and extinguishing the torches, relaxed the tension of the unhappy man's grief; doffing his hat curtly to the abbess, he wheeled his horse, dug in his spurs, calling "Follow me, my brothers; the Squire is in Wittenberg," and left ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... mind had been thrown back upon itself. He had not been permitted to confer with his friends, except under such restrictions as made converse intolerable. He had been kept in such a state of nervous tension that he had had no appetite, and had eaten scarcely any food. His sleep had been broken by mental discomfort, and he had sometimes lain the whole night through without a minute's unconsciousness. What wonder that his flesh had sunk away from his bones, and ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade, the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to, break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... discover it is first requisite that an "undoing process" shall precede the "upbuilding process." Stiffness of joint, or tension of muscles, whether recognized or not, must first be done away with before "the body can be molded to the expression of high thought." For this purpose the "decomposing," "relaxing" or "devitalizing" motions are given. The old gymnast doubled ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a bird amidst the struggling icebergs, which her prow sent to the right-about; the brig's hull shivered under the action of the screw, and the manometer indicated a prodigious tension of steam, for it whistled with ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail from a fence in the neighbourhood was placed between each pair of cars and made fast by means of the packing yarn from the cylinders. This arrangement improved the order of things, and it was found to answer the purpose ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... his age and his authority, the tension caused by the struggle that was imminent between the Priest and the Prophet, overawed the assembly. There was a deep silence, like the calm before ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... certain tension in the pause which followed. Would she tell us or not? I almost felt Atherley's rebound of satisfaction as well as my own at the sound of her voice. It was uncertain and faint at first, but by degrees grew firm again, as timidity was ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... hour elapsed I felt weak and ill. The moment I relaxed the tension and will-power which I had maintained so long, strong reaction set in. Apparently I had about reached the limits of endurance. I felt as if I were growing old and feeble by minutes as one might by years. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... application demanded, produce effects on the growing brain, which, in a vast number of cases, can be only disastrous. Even in girls of from fourteen to eighteen, such as crowd the normal school in Philadelphia, this sort of tension and this variety of study occasion an amount of ill-health which is sadly familiar ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... Boys watched the departing redmen until their forms had been hidden from sight by one of the numerous projecting cliffs. Then the tension was somewhat relieved and Fred turned to Zeke and said, "What do you think those ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... the old State Churches and push forward to a more enduring faith; and the priest as well as the despot has for a moment resumed his sway—though not his uncontested sway—over our weariness and our fears. The moral sentiment, after high tension, has undergone a corresponding relaxation. All liberal measures are for the time at a discount. The Bill for the Abolition of Church-Rates, once carried in the House of Commons by large majorities, is now lost. The nominal leaders of the Liberal party themselves have let their principles fall into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... repeated without variation during the whole lifetime of the individual, there is probably little if any consciousness. It is an essential prerequisite of consciousness that there should be a period of delay or tension between the receipt of an impression and the determination of the consequent movement. Diminish this period of delay and you diminish the vividness of consciousness. A familiar example will make this clear. When you are learning to play a new piece of music ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... faintly at moments in the still air, borne upward as from infinite depths; but her voice would never sound again for him: he knew it now—never again for him. And yet he paced the floor, listening. The pain in his heart grew duller at intervals, benumbed by the tension; but it always returned, ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... again. I don't say that you would, but it is possible, indeed it seems to me to be probable. It may be that the sudden shock when you jumped into the water, acting upon your nerves when in a state of extreme tension, may have set them right, and that bullet graze along the top of the skull may have aided the effect of the shock. Men frequently lose their nerve after a heavy fall from a horse, or a sudden attack by a tiger, or any other unexpected shock. It may ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... unnoticed, but the tension he felt did not slacken, because there was another they could not avoid. Nobody, however, called to them, and he felt easier as they drew away from the row of shadowy tents. Then, moving very cautiously, they reached the thick willow bluff, where ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... as the three in that picture before the door stood keyed to such tension as the human intelligence seldom is called upon to withstand. Macdonald stood with one foot on the low threshold, the door swinging half open at his back. He was bareheaded, his rough, fair hair in wisps on temples and forehead. ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... lighting up her face, and she slid out her beautiful hand to him. The general took it and pressed it mechanically, his lips twitching slightly. He pressed it far harder than he meant, for his feelings were at tension. She winced slightly, and involuntarily thrust out her other hand, as if to relieve his pressure. As she did so the blanket fell away from her head and shoulders. Lambert, with excellent intuition, caught it, and threw it across his arm. Then, quickly, and without embarrassment, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stand without a word to Tom, Roger, or Astro. The three cadets looked at each other, feeling the tension in the air suddenly relax. Strong was busy talking to someone on the portable intercom and had missed the ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... hibernating through the long winters just as bears and other wild animals do. Some scientist studied these peasants and found that during these periods of the "long sleep" respiration and digestion practically ceased, and that the heart was at so low tension as to defy detection by ordinary ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... in the old fashion. He also wore amazingly tight black trousers, strapped closely over his well-blacked boots. To tell the truth, these nether garments, though of great natural resistance, had lived so long at a high tension, so to say, that they were no longer equally tight at all points, and there were, undoubtedly, certain perceptible spots on them; but, on the whole, the general effect of the doctor's appearance was fashionable, in the fashion of several years earlier and judged by the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... to Jennka and kissed her on the forehead. And never afterwards could Volodya Chaplinsky, who had been watching this scene with a painful tension, forget those warm and beautiful rays, which at this moment kindled in the green, long, Egyptian ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and Kennedy did not attempt to relieve the tension even by small talk as he wrapped the forearms of each of us with cloths steeped in a solution of salt. Upon these cloths he placed little plates of German silver to which were attached wires which led back of a screen. At last he was ready ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... strained to its utmost tension, listening for the least movement on the part of the maddened woman which might indicate she was about to stab ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... together at the end of the common table. Philip had already drunk much more than he was accustomed to, but the only result appeared to be some slight slackening of the tension in which he had been living. His eyes flashed, and his tongue became more nimble. He insisted upon ordering wine. He had had no opportunity yet of repaying many courtesies. They drank his health, forced him into the place of honour by the side of Honeybrook, veteran of the club, and ate their meal ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... closely hedged on either side by tall trees, whose spreading branches seemed to her like protecting arms. There she could walk slower, and breathe more free, and for the first time for many days her mind relaxed its tension. ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... The tension became greater and greater. There is no reason to doubt that both Howe {75} and Johnston tried to play the game. But their temperaments and their associates were different, and they grew more and more mistrustful ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... another silence, in which Hicks continued to thumb the knife in a manner that kept Wallie at a tension, then he said with a suavity which somehow was more ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... and on again. And now, somehow, he thought he caught in one of the letters a new ring, a pensive gravity, a deeper tension, which were like ciphers or signals to tell him of some change in her. For a moment he was shaken. Manhood, human sympathy, surged up in him. The flush of a new sensation ran through his veins like fire. The first instinct of fatherhood came to him, a thrilling, uplifting feeling. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the weaving is begun, and ten inches at the end of the rug to make a fringe for both first and second rugs. Sometimes the warp is set in groups of three, with a corresponding interval between, and this—if the tension is firm and the rags soft—gives a sort of honeycomb ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... the background of the ceaseless anxiety that consumed her night and day had worn Chris's nerves to a very thin edge, and now that relief had come at last in the form of the letter she held in her hand she was almost too spent to feel it. The tension had endured for so long that it seemed impossible that it could have relaxed all in a moment. She had received a roll of banknotes from her brother two days before, but that had in a fashion but added to her fever of unrest. Now that she knew ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... John's face indicates an amazing determination and alertness. It is told of certain remarkable men—De Lesseps amongst the number—that they had the faculty of sleeping for several days and nights and then remaining wide awake and at full tension for an equally long period of time. We may confidently predict that John has this faculty. He is not likely to slumber again till his work is done, and done thoroughly. Michael's expression, I regret to note, is not quite so pleasing as John's. It gives "furiously ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... about underground, in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. Jean-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that since the Anglo-Saxon peoples have had representative institutions they have sought some system under which the people as a whole could exercise a veto on the legislative vagaries of their "deputies" or "select men." The people, in moments of tension, have yearned for the right to veto the work of their representatives when such work is obviously based upon the decision of a minority. The only substantial result of that yearning in Great Britain up till now has been ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... exclaimed Mr. Force, with sudden irascibility. His nerves WERE at a high tension, there was no denying that. "Nothing whatever to do with the bank, sir. What the dev—what could have put such a thought into your ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... he had not dared to dream. His theory, which he had proved in his whole life, was that nothing is beyond the grasp of a man who is master of himself and his emotions. But even his iron nerves felt the tension of excitement, as luncheon drew to an end, and he knew in half an hour, when most of the company were safely disposed of, he should again find his way ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... feeling, and her altered behaviour, especially towards himself, which led him to the belief that he unconsciously had wounded her, or in some other way that he was the cause of her displeasure; and never had he felt more than now what a high value he set upon her, nor how much he loved her. This tension of mind, and his anxiety to approach Louise, and bring back a friendly understanding between them, occasioned various little scenes, which ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... would it look like? Even a scream somewhere would have relieved her, and snapped the tension of the listening stillness that lay on her like a shocking nightmare. This lobby with its well-known doors—the banister on which her fingers rested—the well of the staircase up which she stared with dilated eyes—all ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... The rigid tension of her arms and hands as they lay on the coverlet told of her effort for composure, and he noticed for the first time that beautiful as the latter still were in shape and colour, one of the nails was broken, ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... said Ann, but the tension of her voice broke on a sob. "If you don't mind—I'll stay here." She looked up at her in a way which remotely suggested the look of that little dog the day before, "Katie, I don't mean you. When I say things like that—I don't mean you. I mean—I suppose ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... spot which I cleared of its coarser stone, propped up one end with the seat, and crept beneath. I would now test the virtues of my craft as a roof, and I found she was without flaw, though she was pretty narrow. The tension of her timber was such that the rain upon her bottom made ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... not conscious of weariness. He had made immense exertions, but his system was keyed so high by excitement that the tension held firmly yet a little longer. The night had come on heavy and dark. Behind him he could hear the fitful sounds of the Northern and Southern cavalry still skirmishing with each other. Before him he saw dimly the Southern regiments, retreating in ragged lines. It was almost more than he could ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... forward, with his hands clinched in rage, he seemed to cling to one of the arms of the chair, for fear of yielding to a burst of terrific fury. At this moment, the amber mouthpiece of his pipe rolled, by chance, under one of his feet; the violent tension, which contracted all the muscles of the young Indian, was so powerful, and notwithstanding his youth and his light figure, he was endowed with such vigor, that with one abrupt stamp he powdered to dust the piece of amber, in spite of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of earning a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver gives the individual thus armed. When a person is really full of information, and does not abuse it to crush conversation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... all sides,—threatened even by the Commander of the Army of the Potomac,—it is not surprising, in view of the apparently irreconcilable attitude of the loyal Border-State men to gradual and compensated Emancipation, that the tension of President Lincoln's mind began to feel a measure of relief in contemplating Military Emancipation in the teeth of ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... going "dead" as it were. A model dairy should have a small fountain in some convenient position, with a jet constantly playing. The state of the atmosphere has the most powerful effect upon the contents of the dairy, especially during times of electrical tension. ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... almost painful at last, and the tension grew to such an extent that I felt at last that I must run out and tell Esau I had misjudged him, as I had been misjudged, when Mr Raydon stopped ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... further French advances in Upper Alsace and the recapture of Mlhausen make Parisians cheerful. The death of the Pope during the present tension is scarcely noticed. All thoughts and expectations are centered on Belgium, where the great battle ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... attraction, the thinner the film will be. The water that rises in a capillary glass tube when placed in water does so by virtue of the attraction between water and glass. Frequently, the force that makes capillary water possible is called surface tension. ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... cheek, and kiss it too—and that makes a tremendous difference in the tone and tension of his feelings. Unlike the lover, the husband does not think, feel, and speak in perpetual hyperboles. He does not use expressions like "beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical," or ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... expansion of the Greek world that followed the political extinction of Greece Proper, there came a relaxation of this tension. Feeling grew humaner; social and family life reassumed their real importance; and gradually there grew up a thing till then unknown in the world, and one the history of which yet remains to be written, the romantic spirit. Pastoral poetry, with its passionate sense of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... still unfinished, Mr. Bennett again presents the process of the generations, but he has given us a more intense dramatic interest, he has singled out a few persons for more significant characterisation; he has focussed his picture better, concentrated the interest, and produced emotional tension. The reason why Pickwick retains its place as the first of Dickens' novels is that it is almost the only book he wrote which had a really satisfactory hero—an individual character. Clayhanger has two such persons—Edwin, and Darius ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... supervision and inspection and cares of a business nature all combined to make a burden which would have broken down a nature less determined and self-centred, and a body less inured to physical endurance and sustained nervous tension. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... of June the tension became so great, that I could see the time had arrived when it would be necessary to do something; and, one night, I determined to mention the matter. Accordingly, after dinner, I persuaded Evie to come into the garden, with the intention to speak firmly in my mind. There, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... his friend rode on ahead, following some of the cowboys who had been summoned to tear away the dam. Now that the excitement was over Dave felt a little reaction, which generally follows high tension. As Dave looked at the young man riding beside him he could not help contrasting their ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... together. It could not go on, this tension. Either she must yield to his unspoken desire, or he would sit up and cry off the bargain. And she knew that sleep was a necessity to him. Common-sense told her that he was totally unfit for further hardship ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... met, and it was patent to me that underlying all this conversation was something beyond my ken. What it was that Harley suspected I could not imagine, nor what it was that Colonel Menendez desired to conceal; but tension was in the very air. The Spaniard was on the defensive, and Paul ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... General Beauregard, commanding the Charleston forces, sent to Major Anderson a summons to surrender. It was rejected; and the circle of forts opened fire and Sumter fired back. The roar of those guns flashed by telegraph over the country. In every town and hamlet men watched and waited with a tension which cannot be described. All the accumulated feeling of months and years flashed into a lightning stroke of emotion. All day Friday and Saturday, April 12, 13, men watched the bulletins, and talked in brief phrases, and were conscious of a passion surging through ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... every one waited anxiously to hear a decisive note in the war news, and continued to hope for the best. Lord Methuen having done his part, all eyes were now turned towards the Natal force and Sir Redvers Buller, in expectation of relief. In England the tension was becoming painful; in the Cape it was causing colourless loyalty to become tinged with doubt; in the besieged towns it was bringing patience to the snapping-point. In effect, the whole nation was standing with bated ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... so. Often wrong, occasionally right, he possessed in perfection the unhappy art of doing the right thing in the wrong way. Restless and irascible, passing from self-confidence to gloom, he would find relief for nerve tension in a peevishness which was the last quality one in his difficult position should have shown. An autocratic official amid little rough, dissatisfied communities of hard-headed pioneers was a king ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... came a vague feeling akin to hope that possibly the story was false—that after all there was no rival, no divorce. At all events, she should know for a certainty by going to Davenport; and with every nerve stretched to its utmost tension, Ethie arose from her bed and packed her trunk quietly and quickly, and then going to the office, surprised the clerk with the announcement that she wished to leave on the ten-o'clock train. She had received news ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... same time that a sense of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardor of my feelings; but this also had undergone ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... the back of the dress circle people were beginning to circulate, relieved from the tension of examining the ballet. Julian was instantly swallowed up in a noisy crowd, hot, flushed, loud-voiced, bright-eyed. Masses of excited young men lounged to and fro, smoking cigarettes, and making fervent remarks upon the gaily dressed women, who glided ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... class of a dozen or more pupils to wait while the kindergartner assorts and counts the various colors and shapes of tablets to be used is positively to invite loss of interest on the children's part, and to produce in the teacher a hurry and worry and nervous tension which ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and draw off all tension from your nerves. Just you relax your mind and your body will follow suit. A few deep slow breaths will ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... cleverer than she had supposed he could be. The sense of her having quickened his cleverness and been repaid by it or by his gratitude—it came to the same thing—in a way she appreciated was not assertive and jealous: it was lost for the present in the general happy break of the long tension. So nothing passed between them in their progress to the house; there was no sound in the park but the pleasant rustle of summer—it seemed an applausive murmur—and the swift roll ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a feeling of tension, a sudden stiffening of demeanour once the anchor was down. It was not so much expressed as shown by repression. There was a soberness of purpose in the most trifling details of their duties, as if a crisis ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... spectacle of himself arrayed a la Ferrieres, gravely promenading the wharf as a last gorgeous appeal to the affections of Rosey, rose before his fancy, he gave way to a fit of genuine laughter. The nervous tension of the past few hours relaxed; he laughed until the tears came into his eyes; he was still laughing when the door of the cabin was suddenly opened and Rosey appeared cold and distant ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... to his heart. But he saw too that Dolly's colour had left her cheeks, though at first they were rosy enough; and in the lines of her face generally and the quiver of her lip he could see that the nervous tension was somewhat too much. He must lead off ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... required action; both words may be applied either to undertaking or to doing. Gradual (L. gradus, a step) signifies advancing by steps, and refers to slow but regular and sure progression. Slack refers to action that seems to indicate a lack of tension, as of muscle or of will, sluggish to action that seems as if reluctant ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... smile had died out in Hamil's face; he sat very still, interested, disturbed, and then wondering when his eyes caught the restless manoeuvres of the little hands, constantly in motion, interlacing, eloquent of the tension of self-suppression. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... sat still with signs of tension in his face, and it was clear that he was racking his befogged brain. The few weeks of abstinence and healthful toil had made a change in him, but one cannot in that space of time get rid of the results of years of indulgence; and under stress of excitement the man became ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... fearful tension that the dread of wakening him had put upon her faculties gave way at last, and the poor girl buried her face in her hands, and sank down, sobbing convulsively: "Oh, God, oh, God, what can I do, how can I bear it?" She gazed about her wildly, exclaiming, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... Bet ran into the house and slammed the door to her own room. Joy had wept after the storm, and thus relaxed her nerve tension but Bet had not had any such relief. As a result of the strain she found herself irritated by Joy's nonsense and got out of the way to ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... seemed that it had been for hours—she had felt a gradual lessening of the tension. Within the last few hours she had heard voices near her; had divined that persons were near her. But she had not been certain. That is, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... uneasily in his chair. His face was inscrutable. The silent moment cried out for speech—for anything to relieve the tension. Through Ralph's letters Evelina's eyes seemed to be upon him, ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... and patience to wait for thirteen solid hours without making any motion other than an occasional flexing of muscles, but he managed that long before the instrument case that he held waggled a meter needle at him. The one tension-relieving factor was the low gravity; the problem of sleeping on a bed of nails is caused by the likelihood of the sleeper accidentally throwing himself off the bed. The probability of puncture or discomfort from the ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... hard, brawny mass is formed which softens towards the centre. If nothing is done the softened area increases in size, the skin over it becomes thinned, loses its vitality (mortifies) and a small "slough'' is formed. When the slough gives way the pus escapes and, tension being relieved, pain ceases. A local necrosis or death of tissue takes place at that part of the inflammatory swelling farthest from the healthy circulation. When the attack of septic inflammation is very acute, death of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the accumulated tension of a week of inactivity behind these men, and the effect of Bannon's words was galvanic. Already low fires were burning under the boilers, and now the coal was piled on, the draughts roared, the smoke, thick enough to cut, came billowing ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... to vary the construction of the telephone shown in Fig. 8, and I sought, by changing the size and tension of the membrane, the diameter and thickness of the steel spring, the size and power of the magnet, and the coils of insulated wire around their poles, to discover empirically the exact effect of each element of the combination, and thus to deduce a more perfect ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who proved himself able to crush faction; the peasants were won by a champion of the Revolution ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... came the whole mass in his hands. The friction against the sharp edges of the rock over which they had been stretched with a strong tension had worn them through. His first emotion was one of intense thankfulness that they had fallen while he was on the ledge instead of midway in his ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of this extraordinary episode has never been made public. The practical result was that after a period of extreme tension between China and Japan which was expected to lead to war, that political genius, the late Prince Ito, managed to calm things down and arrange workable modus vivendi. Yuan Shih-kai, who had gone to Tientsin to report in person to Li Hung ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... large glossy leaves of the taller trees, or the feathery, fan-shaped fronds of palms. For a time the fresh breeze blows, but flags under the increasing power of the sun, and finally dies away, the heat and electric tension of the atmosphere ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... will make probable my next Position, That the parts of the Glass are under a kind of tension or flexure, out of which they indeavour to extricate and free themselves, and thereby all the parts draw towards the Center or middle, and would, if the outward parts would give way, as they do when the outward parts cool leisurely (as in baking of Glasses) contract the bulk of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... The attack on the little shop that they had helped to avert was only one of many, although there was no real rioting in London. Such scenes were simply the result of excitement, and no great harm was done anywhere. But the tension of which such attacks were the result was everywhere. For the next three days there was very little for anyone to do. Everyone was waiting. France and Germany were at war; the news came that the Germans had invaded Luxembourg, and were crossing the ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... see his lips moving in the instancy of his unuttered supplication. His inward communing was so intense that the agony of prayer seemed to shake his frail body. Ralph could see him knit his hands behind his back in a strong tension of nerves. Yet it seemed a right and natural thing for Ralph to be immersed in his own concerns, and to turn away with the light tribute of a sigh to finish his love-letter—for, after all (say they), love is only a refined form ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the jocosity that partially relieved the tension is the following portion of the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the possibilities, sure that she had found something at last. Instantly the blood crept warmly over her body. Her nervous tension relaxed. She walked out into the busy street and discovered a new atmosphere. Behold, the throng was moving with a lightsome step. She noticed that men and women were smiling. Scraps of conversation and notes of laughter floated to her. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the room seemed to grow more oppressive, the silence to deepen, and with it the terrible tension of her mind increased. Suddenly she started to her feet. The logs burning in the grate had fallen together with a crash, sending a rush of ruddy flame and an innumerable army of hurrying sparks up ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... lawyer scribbled away as though for his life, while the rest of us waited in a wretched hushed state of tension. In the room itself there was no sound save the scratching of the pen and the laboured breathing of the old man; but in the next house we could hear someone playing a waltz. Somehow it did not seem to me incongruous, for it was ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... sides of the House stood up, one cheering, the other hooting, in opposite ranks. For a moment it seemed as if the affair would come to blows, till Mr. Will Crooks, with a genial inspiration, uplifted his voice in song: "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" The tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups—we Irishmen necessarily among the Tories. In the movement I saw Willie Redmond go up to one of the fiercest among the Ulstermen, whose face was dark with passion. Colloquy began: "Isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... strain of anxiety was universal and heart-rending. So much depended upon swelling the figures. The tension would have been relieved if our faces were all set towards extinction, and the speedy evacuation of this unsatisfactory globe. The writer met recently, in the Colorado desert of Arizona, a forlorn census-taker who had ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to say it has no constructive design—as some critics have said. It is merely to say that it is original. There are no weak parts in the book, no places where the author has stopped to take his breath and wipe his brow. The tension is never relaxed. This is one of the two qualities without which a novel cannot be first class and great. The other is the quality of sound, harmonious design. Both qualities are exceedingly rare, and I do ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... of which the first would be direct and vigorous in nature—a summons to attention—cast in sonata-form, with a wealth of material organically treated, and requiring from the listener concentrated attention. The second movement was generally much simpler in form, affording relief after the tension of the preceding movement—its themes of a lyric nature, often with great depth of emotion, sometimes even of tragic import. The third movement, Minuet or Scherzo, would portray the light, humorous ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... in great alarm that something must be done concerning the Navigation Acts or a breach would be inevitable. [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 288.] And the General Court saw reason in this emergency to increase the tension by reviving the obnoxious oath of fidelity to the country, [Footnote: Mass. Rec. v. 154.]—the substitute for the oath of allegiance,—and thus gave Randolph a new and potent weapon. In the spring [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 316, 317; Chalmers's Annals, p. 439.] the law ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... The cord was sufficient in length, and he contrived finally to make his way on to the top of the ridge before him. He then turned round and looked scaredly at Crean and myself. I think all of us felt the tension of the moment, but we wasted no time in commencing the passage. The method of procedure was this. The sledge rested on the narrow bridge which was indeed so shaped that the crest only admitted of the runners resting ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... moment I had forgotten the six years that lay between us. Now I saw them, all of them, printed plain on her face. Juli had been a pretty girl. Six years had fined her face into beauty, but there was tension in the set of her shoulders, and her gray eyes ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... that time the tension was almost unbearable. My nerves were going, and there was no reason for it. I kept telling myself that. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, and I had a sense of approaching trouble. I caught Maggie watching me, too, and on the seventh I find in my journal the ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... picking bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted, feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear the strain of friendship if it can. Heriot had promised to walk half-way with me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... community of the fifteenth century. But at any time such a village would be liable to a raid of Asiatics or Africans or such-like air-pirates, demanding petrol and alcohol or provisions. The price of its order was an almost intolerable watchfulness and tension. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... designed to resist both tension and compression and is an excellent joint for all purposes. The joint is brought together by using folding wedges as shown in ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... The political tension grew more and more acute. When would Simla or Whitehall break the prolonged silence? The publication of the Mesopotamian Report only added fuel to the flames, as it was easy to read into it a condemnation of Indian administration only less sweeping, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... talking, seated by the table, on which her arms rested. She, too, had a look of nervous tension, and ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... numerous subtle signs, which might have been lost upon anyone but myself, that Holmes was on a hot scent. As impassive as ever to the casual observer, there were none the less a subdued eagerness and suggestion of tension in his brightened eyes and brisker manner which assured me that the game was afoot. After his habit he said nothing, and after mine I asked no questions. Sufficient for me to share the sport and lend my humble help to the capture without distracting that intent brain with needless interruption. ...
— The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and historians read their choicest productions, and artists exhibited their masterpieces. The extraordinary honors accorded to the victors stimulated the contestants to the utmost, and strung to the highest tension every power of body and mind. To this fact we owe some of the grandest productions of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... instruments, the wild litter on the floor, the rapt attention of the men scanning the news, their abrupt movements and speed when they had to cross the room, still with their gaze fixed, their expression that of those who dreaded something worse to happen; the suggestion of tension, as though the Last Trump were expected at any moment, filled me with vague alarm. The only place where that incipient panic is not usual is the front line, because there the enemy is within hail, and is known to be another unlucky fool. But I allayed my anxiety. I leaned ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom: for a long time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... passed out of the door, he heard her still at the piano. She was playing for her own pleasure now—just to relieve the tension of her feelings by letting them flow out on the rhythmic current of music. It was her favourite piece, that magical humoreske by Dvorak, which is like an April day, full of smiles and tears, pleading and laughter. ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... then turned sharply and went over toward the window. A choking, stifling sensation made breathing difficult, and, the tension of the past few hours relaxed, he felt as one on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment he might topple over. It was too cold to open the window, but he must have air. Going to the couch, he took ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... spare neither time nor labor, but exert himself beyond his natural energies, seeking to enter into the character of each actor, studying them one after the other, limb for limb, hand for hand, finger for finger, noting each inflection of joint, or tension of sinew, searching for dramatic truth internally in himself, and in all external nature, shunning affectation and exaggeration, and striving after pathos, and purity of feeling, with patient endeavor ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... I wanted to relieve the singular tension by finding words, if only inner words,—when, out of the stillness, out of the silence, out of the shadows—something happened. Some faculty of judgment, some attitude in which I normally clothed myself, were abruptly stripped away. I was left bare and sensitive. I could ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... story relations between the United States and the established government of Mexico were at such high tension that a hostility had sprung up between the troops fronting each other along the Rio Grande, and in consequence their officers no longer crossed the boundary, even when off duty. It created a flurry of suppressed excitement, therefore, when Luis Longorio, the autocrat of the ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... by contestant was nearly at an end, the eager impatience of the waiting crowd could scarcely be restrained within the limits of order. A change was noticeable also in the demeanor of proponent and his counsel. For the two days preceding they had appeared as though under some tension or suspense; now they seemed to exhibit almost an indifference to the proceedings, as though the outcome of the contest were already a settled fact, while a marked gravity accompanied ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... the birth into the new world, youth, exist in the music of Ornstein with all the sharpness of shock because of an imagination of a wonderful forcefulness. There is no indirectness in Ornstein, no vagueness. His tension is always of the fullest, the stiffest. What he feels, what he hears, he sets down, irrespective of all the canons and rules and procedures. Harmony with him is something different than it is with any other composer. Piano colors of a violence and garishness ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... made the grand tour at least twenty times, he placed himself with a book at the little round window, to watch for her approach. There, very still, he sat, not reading a word, continually moistening his dry lips and sighing, to relieve the tension of his heart. At last he saw her coming. She was walking close to the railings of the houses, looking neither to right nor left. She had on a lawn frock, and a hat of the palest coffee-coloured straw, with a narrow black velvet ribbon. She crossed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... three men were waiting in Average Jones' inner office. Average Jones sat at his desk sedulously polishing his left-hand fore-knuckle with the tennis callous of his right palm. Bertram lounged gracefully in the big chair. Mr. Robinson fidgeted. There was an atmosphere of tension in the room. At three-forty there came a tap-tapping across the floor of the outer room, and a knock at the door brought them all to their feet. Average Jones threw the door open, took the man who stood outside by the arm, ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... at last, signaling the release of the port watch from the deck and the tension of the officer's presence. The forecastle received them, the stronghold of their brief and limited leisure. The unkempt, weather-stained men, to whom the shifting seas were the sole arena of their lives, sat about on chests and on the edges of the lower bunks, at their breakfast, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... concerts, and temperance, peace, and prison-reform conventions within my reach. I had never lived in such an enthusiastically literary and reform latitude before, and my mental powers were kept at the highest tension. We went to Chelsea, for the summer, and boarded with the Baptist minister, the Rev. John Wesley Olmstead, afterward editor of The Watchman and Reflector. He had married my cousin, Mary Livingston, one of the most lovely, unselfish characters I ever knew. There I had the opportunity of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... knife dropped from my hand, and penetrating the floor, quivered upright at my feet, while every member of my body trembled in unison with it! I raised my hands with my fingers spread out to the utmost tension. My mouth fell open, and my eyes felt as if they were straining to leap from my head. It was Laura—the loved, adored Laura—my Laura! My friends heard me repeat the name, and marked with surprise and concern my inexplicably ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... manner to give the required elevation. A cricket ball or jam tin bomb was placed in the pouch and the rubbers were then strained by means of a crank handle winding up a wire attached to the pouch with a trip hook. When the required tension was obtained one man lit the fuse and retired to cover. The other, the expert, allowing the fuse to burn for a certain time—to suit the range, pulled the string which released the trip. If all went well the bomb sailed over towards the Turk. Sometimes, however, the trip would fail, or the rubbers ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... a stateliness and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant, and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the principals changed his posture with ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... to fancy that we had not worked enough on the soldier, that he would forget the dispute, and that we ought to pique his vanity more keenly. From that day we began to live a different life, a life of nervous tension, such as we had never known before. We spent whole days in arguing together; we all grew, as it were, sharper; and got to talk more and better. It seemed to us that we were playing some sort of game with the devil, and the stake on our ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... had been burning. In about ten minutes the whole vanished; but in less than a quarter of an hour the phenomena were repeated exactly as described, and were followed by a dark night and torrents of rain. It was a very unusual instance of what is known as electric glow; that is, electricity without tension. ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon it and twists it. And sometimes the ants drop the capsules to their companions below, corresponding with the curious account given by AElian of the way the spikelets of corn are thrown down "to the people below." In this labour they display ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... idea that they could carry on the same game in England. The anticipated failure of his plans did not divert them from their intention. Wise in their own conceit, they imagined they could avoid his faults, carry on their schemes forever, and stretch the cord of credit to its extremest tension without causing it to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Her voice contained both tension and relief. "They are all good men, basically—and kind men," she said. "And they believe us. That's the important thing, you know. Their belief in us— Just as you did that first day we met. We've ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... |messenger, refused to take any cards in to Bryan. He| |said he did not know whether his chief actually | |intended attending the meeting. | | | |"He is very busy, and I cannot disturb him," Eddie | |stated. | | | |At the White House a distinct air of tension was | |manifested. All inquiries as to what Secretary Bryan| |was going to do were ignored. | | | |Finally, about 12 o'clock, Secretary Bryan left his | |office and came across the street. His face was | |flushed and his features hard set. He ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... I felt weak and ill. The moment I relaxed the tension and will-power which I had maintained so long, strong reaction set in. Apparently I had about reached the limits of endurance. I felt as if I were growing old and feeble by minutes as one might by years. ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... heard the story of Henrietta Sloane, and, as we waited, I told him. Some of the tension was relaxing. He tried, in his argumentative German way, to drag me into a discussion as to the foreordination of a death that resulted from an accidental ringing of a bell. But my ears were alert for the voices near by, and soon ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little song, its tender appeal to the mother-chords that somehow vibrate in all human hearts, reached the deep places in the honest hearts of her listeners and for some moments they stood silent about her. It was with an obvious effort that Dick released the tension by crying out, "Partners for four-hand reel." Instantly the company resolved itself into groups of four and ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... the public service, Nelson had the strongest personal motives for bringing matters to an issue. The prolonged suspense and the anxiety were exhausting him, the steady tension even of the normal conditions fretted him beyond endurance; but when a crisis became accentuated by an appearance that the enemy had eluded him, his feelings of distress, acting upon an enfeebled organization, and a nervous temperament so sensitive that he started ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... is demanded, and is furnished by relaxation of the muscle fibres which allows the calibre to increase, and with this the blood flow becomes greater in amount. Each part of the body regulates its supply of blood, the regulation being effected by means of nerves which control the tension of the muscle fibres. The circulation may be compared with an irrigation system in which the water supply of each particular field is regulated not by the engineer, but by an automatic device connected with the growing crop and responding to ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... he forgot to smoke. He had looked into the Blackwater before, but never when there were any logs in the pot. Moreover, on this particular morning, he was overwrought with weariness. For a little short of three days he had been at the utmost tension of body, brain, and nerve, in hot but wary pursuit of a desperado whom it was his duty, as deputy-sheriff of his county, to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The high tension of war was relieved by amusing episodes, from day to day. In the evening of the arrival at Rheims, Bismarck humored himself trying various brands of champagne. Word was brought that the day before a squadron of Prussian hussars had been fired on from a leading hotel. Bismarck ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... later, in the main lounge, Navy and BuSci personnel were mingling as they had never done before. Whatever had caused this relaxation of tension—the friendship of captain and director? The position in which they all were? Or what?—they all began to get acquainted ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... being cast out of the camp as an impostor and hunted to death as a false prophet: a fate which more than once nearly overtook him. Indeed, as he aged and his nerves lost their elasticity under the tension, he became obsessed with the fixed idea that God had renounced him and that some horror would overtake him should he attempt to cross the Jordan and enter the "Promised Land." Defeated at Hormah, he dared not face another such check and, therefore, dawdled away his time in the wilderness ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... threatening her with what he would do when he got loose, which he said he was sure to do sooner or later. At such times she cocked both triggers of the gun, prepared to meet him with leaden death if he should burst loose, herself trembling and palpitating and dizzy from the tension and shock. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... — N. strength; power &c 157; energy &c 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c adj.; lustihood^, stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... during this campaign, was incapacitated by a habit of which, at times, he had been the victim. There is, rather, evidence that he was prostrated by too much abstemiousness, when a reasonable use of stimulants might have kept his nervous system at its normal tension. It was certainly not the use of alcohol, during this time, which lay at the root of ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... as victor. Yet mingling with this new-found joy came the thought of the dark shadow hanging over her father's life. How could she be happy when he was in trouble? For his sake she had kept the brave spirit and presented only the bright sunny face, and cheery words of hope. The tension for weeks, nay months, had been a severe strain—and now this sudden joy! It unnerved her. Words would not come to Stephen's passionate pleading, but in their stead tears stole down her cheeks, while her form trembled ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... rose. For two full moments she could not breathe. The act started off briskly, and little by little her tension relaxed. She laid her hand on Jarvis's knee and it was stiff with nervous concentration. The first genuine laugh came to both of them like manna ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... dying down. Pompey, who had been desperately ill in the spring, had regained his strength. He had been exasperated by the savage attacks of Curio. Sensational stories of the movements of Caesar's troops in the North were whispered in the forum, and increased the tension. In the autumn, for instance, Caesar had occasion to pay a visit to the towns in northern Italy to thank them for their support of Mark Antony, his candidate for the tribunate, and the wild rumor flew to Rome that he had advanced four legions to Placentia,[137] that his march on the city ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... communicate with each other in various ways. The chief method is by speech. Voice is sound vibration produced by the vocal cords, these being two ligaments in the larynx. The vocal cords in man are actuated by the air from the lungs. The size and tension of the vocal cords and the volume and the velocity of the air from the lungs control the tones of the voice. The more tightly the vocal cords be drawn, other things being equal, the higher will be the pitch of the sound; ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... may be useful. Supposing the break set to a given difference of tension, Q-P, and that in consequence of any cause the coefficient of friction increases 20 per cent., the difference of tensions for an ordinary value of the coefficient of friction would increase from 1.5 P to 2 P in Fig. 2, and from 1.5 P to 1.67 P in Fig. 3. That ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... spring upon her, like the wild creature she seemed. But presently a change came over the Cuban girl. A veil gathered over the glowing eyes; her hands unclenched themselves, opened softly; her whole frame seemed to relax its tension, and in another moment she dropped on her couch ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... the same principle holds good if considered from the aetherial atomic standpoint. For if we take a line of force, composed as it is of aetherial vortex atoms, and suppose them to be rotating, we know that by that rotation there will be a tension due to that rotation, and Maxwell has shown this tension is due to magnetism, as in his standard work he says: "This magnetic force is the effect of the Centrifugal ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milk and brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were in a state of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as though hypnotised, and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while the widow knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she could knit very ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... improve this Hint, suspends different Weights by Strings of the same Bigness, and found in like manner that the Sounds answered to the Weights. This being discover'd, he finds out those Numbers which produc'd Sounds that were Consonants: As, that two Strings of the same Substance and Tension, the one being double the Length, of the other, give that Interval which is called Diapason, or an Eighth; the same was also effected from two Strings of the same Length and Size, the one having four times the Tension of the other. By these Steps, from ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... often rendered him secretly uneasy when they were among people together. He had been conscious of a lurking dissatisfaction in her, a scarcely repressed impatience. He did not know exactly what was the matter. But he felt the alert tension of the woman who is not satisfied with her position in a society. It had reacted upon him. He had felt as if he were closely connected with it, though he had not quite ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... chief of his bodyguard toward him, murmured certain instructions in his ear. Meanwhile Dick, concentrating his thoughts upon Sekosini, mentally commanded him at once to present himself before the king in the Great Place. A quarter of an hour of somewhat painful tension followed, during which no word was spoken by any one of those who were hemmed in by the circle of armed guards, and then the chief witch doctor was seen approaching. He entered the circle of the guards, through a gap which was opened ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... of tension had for months existed between Austria-Hungary and Russia which was only prevented from developing into war by the moderation of the Powers.... Europe will feel grateful to the English Minister of Foreign Affairs for the extraordinary ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... it now, and it may be years before exact information on the subject is available. What I have written is no more than a statement of what passed in one quarter of our city, and a gathering together of the rumour and tension which for nearly two weeks had to serve the Dublin people in lieu of news. It had to serve many Dublin people ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... bed ceased once, and there was a most intense silence, with only the sound of the blood beating in my head. Yet, immediately afterward, I heard again the slurring of the bedclothes being dragged off the bed. In the midst of my nervous tension I remembered the camera, and reached 'round for it; but without looking away from the bed. And then, you know, all in a moment, the whole of the bed coverings were torn off with extraordinary violence, and I ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... new form of Tpler's mercury-pump (Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 1881, vol. xii.). Even when potash is used a small amount of moisture always collects in the bends of the fall tube; this is readily removed by a Bunsen burner; the tension of the vapor being greatly increased, it passes far down the fall-tube in large bubbles and is condensed. Without this precaution I have found it impossible to obtain a vacuum higher than 1/25,000,000; in point of fact the bends should ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... a switch, and the hum of a high tension alternator filled the laboratory. The Russian quivered for a moment and then lay still. Major Martin nodded and Dr. Bird stepped to the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... defined than in the words of the celebrated Humboldt, who has devoted a long life to the investigation of this department of Physics. He says: "The processes of the absorption of light, the liberation of heat, and the variations in the elastic and electric tension, and in the hygrometric condition of the vast aerial ocean, are all so intimately connected together, that each individual meteorological process is modified by the action of all the others. The complicated nature of these disturbing causes, increases the difficulty of giving a full explanation ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... densely clustered as to appear nearly black (Fig. 1, c), while the upper half is of a much lighter hue and the separate granules are there easily distinguished, and, if very closely watched, show an almost imperceptible motion. The old cellulose wall shows signs of great tension, its conical extremity rounding out under the slowly increasing pressure from within. Suddenly it gives way at the apex. At the same instant, the inclosed gonidium (for it is now seen to be fully formed) acquires a rotary ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... up the paper. It contains but a few lines of writing. Having read it, she holds out her hand for the pen. PEEKIN puts it in her hand. With a firm hand she signs, folds the paper, and returns it to him. She remains standing by the table. With the removal of the tension there comes a rustle, a ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... and I were chilled. The fine tension of the spiritual chords relaxed, and gave forth heavier music. Susan failing to ascend to us, we came down to her. She now made haste to atone for her long silence by talking freely of the pretty new church, and the people she saw out Sunday; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... them. He was so frankly nervous and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that the boys were well hidden, and before he climbed down the ladder he piled bundle after bundle upon them, as if preferring that they should be smothered rather than discovered ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... his colleagues at the beginning that he should make a speech, and he spent several hours in his room at the hotel in the preparation of an oratorical avalanche. It became generally known that Dan was going to out-do himself, and the expectation of the community was at its highest tension. The little old court-house was crowded. The ladies were out in full force. Voorhees came in a little late, glowing with the excitement of the occasion. It had been arranged that Davis was to open, Lincoln was to follow, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... my reasons for thinking so;" and the young woman in uttering these words was seized with a fit of sardonic laughter which came near convulsion, so shaken were her nerves by the terrible tension. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... effected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a state of perfect asphyxia, apply a ligature to the left ankle, drawing it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy, and await ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... name of the country with which we were at variance matters nothing as regards the course of events I am to relate. Though most readers will recognise it at once when I say that the war, had it come to that, would have been a naval war of great magnitude; and that during the time of tension swift but quiet preparations were going forward at all naval depots, and movements and dispositions of our fleet were arranged that extended to the remotest parts of ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... kindred and the fruits of labor travel to and fro: over the salt, tumbling waves. But also go mutual criticism and complaint. "Each man," says Goethe, "is led and misled after a fashion peculiar to himself." So with those mass persons called countries. Tension would come about, tension would relax, tension would return and increase between Mother England and Daughter America. In all these colonies, in the year with which this narrative closes, there were living children and young persons who would see the cord ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... Day, between the exhausting strain of high-tension work and the zeal of the young reformer, her beautiful life and brilliant fire were burned out. The committee for the prevention of tuberculosis added her case to their statistics, and the League girls bore ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... could see that in the way she looked from her husband to him, scenting something not on the surface. He was just beginning to fear the dinner was going to be miserable for them all, when Miss McCormick broke the tension by ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... of May he raised the question of fetching away the "Lizzie," as Sir I. Hamilton's troops used to call her, lest evil should befall this, the most powerful ship in commission at the time. Lord Fisher has referred to this matter in his book Memories. He speaks of great tension between Lord K. and himself over the business, and he mentions an interview at the Admiralty at which, according to him, Lord K. got up from the table and left when he (Lord Fisher) announced that he ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... of transition not the less necessary although it is certainly disastrous and tends to produce an unwholesome tension between the sexes so long as men and women do not receive equal payment for equal work. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," as a working man in Blackburn lately put it, "but when the thing of beauty takes to doing the work for 16s. a week that you have been paid 22s. for, you do not feel ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... diminution of volume and proportional loss of gravitational potential by the weight. But this change will by no means be brought about instantaneously. When a little of the vapour is condensed, this portion parts with latent heat of vaporisation, increasing the tension of the remainder, or raising its point of saturation, so that before the weight descends any further, this heat has to escape ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... to her native climate seconded the effects of inward revolutions. The cool airs of the north had exasperated nerves too susceptible for their tension. Those of the south restored her to a more soft and indolent state. Energy gave place to feeling, turbulence ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Casey out through the door of the jail. The crowd gathered its breath for a frantic cheer. The relief from tension must have been great, but Coleman, bareheaded, raised his hand and, in instant obedience to the gesture, the cheer was stifled. The leaders then entered the carriage, which immediately ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... restraint got on her nerves. She could not eat, though she made a pretence of it. When he had eaten his soup with the same careful deliberation, a little color came into his face. She observed this, and her tension relaxed. ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... out. Gray set the atmosphere motors idling. The dome slid open, showing the flicker of the auroras, where areas of intense heat and cold set up atmospheric tension by rapid fluctuation of adjoining ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... Sardinia,” full a third are noted as insalubrious. The disorder has the same character as malaria, but is far more virulent. Captain Smyth thus describes the symptoms: “The patient is first attacked by a headache and painful tension of the epigastric region, with alternate sensations of heat and chilliness; a fever ensues, the exacerbations of which are extremely severe, and are followed by a mournful debility, more or less injurious even to those accustomed to it, but usually fatal to strangers.” We have conversed with ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... several hours to make the device as here shown, so that the tension of the C-shaped piece would hold the point to one side. The temperature of the atmosphere was about 65, as nearly as the Professor could judge, but when the C-shaped piece was held in the palm of the hand, the pointer moved to the lower edge of the base piece, ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... of the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of Twelfth Night is burdened with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this musical tension at its height. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... next decade the foreign policy of Germany showed the same chief characteristic that was noticeable in that of the other countries—high tension. One is almost tempted to compare this period of Europe's history to the hours immediately preceding a violent electrical storm. The diplomatic atmosphere was surcharged with electricity, and long before the storm ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... in consequence partly of the disposition of the articular surfaces of the vertebrae, and largely of the elastic tension of some of the fibrous bands, or ligaments, which connect these vertebrae together, the spinal column, as a whole, has an elegant S-like curvature, being convex forwards in the neck, concave in the back, convex in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... thought of our brother in connection with a remark once made by Rufus Choate. Mr. Choate was an over-worked man, and in his later years, the tension under which he was laboring was quite apparent. He was met by a friend on the street one morning who reminded him of his careworn appearance. Said his friend, "Your labors are too unremitting, and what is worse, you are endangering your constitution." "Ah!" said Mr. ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... remedies the contraction which often succeeds broken limbs, and produces permanent lameness. Two long straps of plaister were glued from above the knee to the ankle, and were then fixed to a wooden bar, with a screw and handle, so that the tension could be regulated at pleasure. The medical men, in remarking upon this, observed that in England we were very slow to adopt any American ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... together almost without motion, bending down until their heads nearly touched the ground, their cracking joints seeming to stretch by the effort, and the muscles of their limbs standing out from the flesh, strung into amazing tension. ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... on "Action at a Distance," says: "These Lines of Force must not be regarded as mere mathematical abstractions. They are the directions in which the medium is exerting tension like that of a rope, or rather like that of our own muscles." I therefore premise, that both these statements will find a literal fulfilment in the conception of the Aether advanced and ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... qualities are spirits, which, being also aerial tensions, give a form and figure to every part of matter to which they adhere. These things they cannot rationally say, supposing the air to be such as they affirm it. For if it is a habit and tension, it will assimilate every body to itself, so that it shall be black and soft. But if by the mixture with these things it receives forms contrary to those it has, it will be in some sort the matter, and not the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... The maintained tension on a belt bears a close relation to its delay periods. 2. The speed of a buzz planer determines its liability to shoot out pieces of wood to the injury of its operator, ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... earth, fancies a wiser choice in heaven. But of progressive souls, all loves and friendships are momentary. Do you love me? means, Do you see the same truth? If you do, we are happy with the same happiness; but presently one of us passes into the perception of new truth;—we are divorced, and no tension in nature can hold us to each other. I know how delicious is this cup of love,—I existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child's clinging to his toy; an attempt to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber; to keep the picture-alphabet ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Custers opened her eyes; and her first look was at Dr. Harrison. But whether the relaxed mental tension let the bodily weakness appear, or whether the tide was at that point where it ebbs most rapidly, her words were spoken with some trouble—yet spoken as if both to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... was unfaithful to himself. The machinery of his superb mind had been running at highest speed for ten months. It needed a rest—oil on the heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the high tension. He would have given just such care to an automobile, or an engine, or any inanimate mechanism. He would have given much ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... over, his shoulders between his knees, shivering and awkward, holding a slight tension on the rope with one hand while with the other he hacked and gouged holes for his heels ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... with the old. Therefore for this Indiction we desire your Greatness to appoint A B Architect of the City of Rome. Let him read the books of the ancients; but he will find more in this City than in his books. Statues of men, showing the muscles swelling with effort, the nerves in tension, the whole man looking as if he had grown rather than been cast in metal. Statues of horses, full of fire, with the curved nostril, with rounded tightly-knit limbs, with ears laid back—you would think the creature longed for the race, though you know that the metal ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
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