"Alertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carries a bell loosely in one hand, so that it will ring with every step. If desired, this bell may be hung around the neck on a string or ribbon. The blindfolded players try to catch the one with the bell, who will have to use considerable alertness to keep out of the way. Whoever catches the bellman changes places ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... hands, a good seat in the saddle, and to implicitly obey a trainer's instructions. No initiative is required. But it is absolutely essential that a boy should own all these adjuncts and many others—quickness of perception, unlimited daring, and alertness to make a jockey. No truer summing up of the necessary qualifications is there than the old and famous "Father Bill" ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... and temples; her eyes were soft and brown beneath delicately pencilled brows, and matched the pure oval of her face. But the languorous air of Southern skies was wholly wanting in the sweet sympathy of her glance, and in a certain alertness about the poise ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... the revolver remained in his right hand. From downstairs they could hear the music of violins, the rattle of glasses, the hum of voices and laughter. Madame frowned slightly as she marked the young Englishman's alertness. She was used to victims, ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... them were Canadian born, the prairie, as a rule, swiftly sets its stamp upon the newcomer. There was also something in the way they held themselves and put their feet down that suggested health and vigour, and, in the case of most of them, a certain alertness and decision of character. Some hailed from English cities, a few from those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but there was a similarity between them which the cut and tightness of their store clothing did not altogether account for. They lived well if ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... seen families of daughters, handsome, strong females, rising each day to their indoor work with cheerful alertness,—one to sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly labor; and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery, discussed ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... me with a strange, cold indifference, so unlike her real self, while her attitude was one of constant attention and strained alertness. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... toward the spot where themselves are engaged, they may be warned of the fact in time to make good their escape. Accordingly, light and active scouts are selected to follow the constable about. From their youthful alertness and activity, the boys of the mizzen-top are generally chosen for ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... dawn, and when the sea was yet full of darkness, I was greatly startled to hear a prodigious splash amid the weed, mayhaps at a distance of some hundred yards from the boat. Then, as I stood full of alertness, and knowing not what the next moment might bring forth, there came to me across the immense waste of weed, a long, mournful cry, and then again the silence. Yet, though I kept very quiet, there came no further sound, and I was about to re-seat myself, when, afar off in that strange wilderness, ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... been the ground of my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now annoyed with me for having lost so many days. He bundled me off— we would at least not lose another. I've always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable example of the journalistic instinct. Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a visible urgency, and no enlightenment could possibly have reached him. It was a pure case of profession flair—he ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... at her, smiling, but he still drove with the air of one who intends to continue in his present occupation. The black colts were going at a spanking trot, making nothing of the decided upward trend of the road. Their shining coats gleamed in the sun; alertness and power showed in every line of them. They were alive from the tips of their forward-pointing satin ears to the ends of their handsome uncropped tails, and they felt ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... longer a solitude wherein he could indulge in all his moods. The fiery parabolic path the cast-out stump traced in the air was seen from another veranda at a distant of some twenty yards. It was noted as a symptom of importance by an observer with his faculties greedy for signs, and in a state of alertness tense enough almost ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... would become distinct. Dropping from the ledge, he stepped to his saddle. Dex evidently heard him, for he twitched back one ear, but maintained his attitude of keen interest in an invisible something—a something that had drawn him from drowsy inanition to a quietly tense statue of alertness. The ash gray of the farther wall, now visible, slowly changed to a faint rose tint that deepened ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... a merry voice, 'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... by this time; in that moment while he stood in the rain, counting out the money from his mother's purse for the driver, and telling the man of a short cut across the dunes, the emotion of a moment before cooled into grim alertness to meet the emergency: there must be no scene. To avoid the possibility of such a thing, he must get Elizabeth out of the room at once. As he slipped the bolt on the front door and hurried back to the living room, he said a single short word between his teeth. But he was not angry; ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... size and strength that are most necessary in war; but quickness, alertness, and watchfulness. You know that, already, the leaders have found that nothing can persuade the men to keep guard, or to carry out outpost duty. If we do this, even if we do nothing else, we shall be serving the ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... been described to me, my first sight of him fitted my own ideas. He was tall and spare; his weather-beaten face seemed set like a dark mask; only his eyes moved, and they had a quivering alertness and a brilliancy that made them hard to look into. He wore a wide sombrero, a blue flannel shirt with a double row of big buttons, overalls, top-boots with very high heels, and long spurs. A heavy revolver swung at his hip, and if I had not already known that Jim Williams had fought Indians ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... all his alertness and powers were returning. He was not one ever to give up hope, and a single glance was enough to tell him the whole situation. A half dozen warriors stood about him, eight or ten more were returning, evidently from a chase, and one bore a ghastly trophy at his belt. Then three had escaped! ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Barberry Ape, so called from feeding exclusively on Barberries; the Chimpanzee—an African corruption of Jump-and-see, the name given to the animal by his first European discoverers in compliment to his alertness; the Baboon, a melancholy brute that, as you may observe from his visage, always has the blues; to say nothing of a legion of Red Monkeys, which ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... mandarin of Cochin China. It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of intellect." ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... into the little conspiracy against the extension of Mr. Grayson's knowledge, even Churchill, under the whip and spur of Harley's will, promising a sullen silence. The case itself presented aspects that stirred these men, calling as it did for an alertness of mind and delicacy of handling that appealed to their sense of responsibility; hence it aroused their interest, which in turn begat ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... near the edge of the cliff. Glowing with health and excitement, Gladys Shirley was at the wheel herself. In spite of the tenseness of the situation, I could not help stopping to admire the change in the graceful, girlish figure of the night before, which was now all lithe energy and alertness in her eager devotion to carrying out the minutest detail of Kennedy's plan to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... delicious waltz. De Savignac now sat with his chin sunk heavily in his hands, drinking in the melody with its spirited accompaniment as the cymballist's flexible hammers flew over the resonant strings, the violins following the master in the red coat, with that keen alertness with which all real gipsies play. I realized now, what the playing of a gipsy meant to him. By the end of the waltz ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... holes and began another tour of inspection of the State House. He considered that the parlous situation in state affairs demanded full dress. During the evening he had been going on his rounds at half-hour intervals. On each trip he had been much pleased by the strict, martial discipline and alertness displayed by his guardsmen. The alertness was especially noticeable; every soldier was tautly at 'tention when the boss warrior hove in sight. General Totten was portly and came down hard on his heels with an elderly man's slumping ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... ability. Experience detached from active power is no longer faculty of doing, but mere memory of what has been done; and principles accordingly subside into precedents, intuitions into arguments, and alertness of will into calculation of risks. The highest quality of mind, the quality which stamps it as an immortal essence, namely, that power, the fused compound of all other powers, which sends its eagle glance over a whole field of particulars, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... give them George Washington." As he spoke, Barnes concealed a yawn, followed immediately afterwards by a look of greater alertness, caused by the discovery that a girl sitting not far from the doorway in the crowd outside was ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presence of evil. The example of Christ when thus treated is in danger of being misinterpreted. The Christ of the cross was passive so far as physical force was concerned; but he was never more intensely active in the higher ranges of his faculties—in self-control and in alertness to the finer whisperings of the spirit. The Christ's non-resistance to the physical might of evil is not to be interpreted as acquiescence on the part of the Divine toward the ravages of evil, but, rather, as the divine method of thwarting evil by allowing it to reveal itself. No amount ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... It was stationed in the center of the army on the field, and on the two sides of it were bodies of cavalry and foot soldiers, more lightly armed than the soldiers of the phalanx, who could accordingly move with more alertness and speed, and carry their action readily wherever it might be called for. Those troops on the sides were called the wings. Alexander himself was accustomed to command one wing and Parmenio the other, while the phalanx crept ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... But miserable works have been defended by the constancy of the garrison. Weather-beaten ships have been brought safe to port by the spirit and alertness of the crew. But it is here that we shall eminently fail. The day that, by their consent, the seat of Regicide has its place among the thrones of Europe, there is no longer a motive for zeal in their favor; it will at best be cold, unimpassioned, dejected, melancholy duty. The glory will seem ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... alighted on Wetzel it became riveted there. The hunter's attitude struck him as singular. Wetzel had his face half turned toward the boys romping near him and he leaned carelessly against a white oak tree. But a close observer would have seen, as Alfred did, that there was a certain alertness in that rigid and motionless figure. Wetzel's eyes were fixed on the western end of the island. Almost involuntarily Alfred's eyes sought the same direction. The western end of the island ran out into a long low point covered ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... little and surveyed him admiringly, with a gratified sense of proprietorship. The cheeks of him were tanned to a healthy brown, his eyes clear and shining. The offending flesh had fallen away on the strenuous paths of the Klappan. He radiated boundless vitality, strength, alertness, that perfect co-ordination of mind and body that is bred of faring resourcefully along rude ways. Few of his type trod the streets of Granville. It was a product solely of the outer places. And for the time being the old, vivid emotion surged strong within ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mustache. He belonged to the demobilized subaltern type and had the weary, drawn expression of over-strained nerves that so many young faces had at that time. He was dressed in a smartly fitting suit of striped navy-blue flannel and carried himself with the plucky alertness of a highly bred fox-terrier. He had a clean and gallant bearing which it was difficult to reconcile with the ungenerosity of his last remark. In a neat, unforceful way he would have been handsome, had it not been for a badly healed scar ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... form was set off by a prominent nose, a keen eye and a sandy beard. There was nothing ferocious in his appearance but when in the saddle he was not a man whom one would care to meet single-handed. There was that about him which gave evidence of alertness and courage ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... all too good to be true; that her surroundings might any moment fade; that her gay clothes would disappear, and that she would again find herself, heartsick and weary, in her comfortless little combined room at Mrs Bilkins's. At the same time, her natural alertness took in everything going on ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... time I would resolutely insist upon attention—every moment of slumber being a positive wandering from the course; but no, the outer self that demands a nap will not be denied by the inner nobler self that commands alertness. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Her fierce alertness fled. She leaned a little toward him, droopingly, a poor, feeble, timid child in need of some strong man to shield her from ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... her from her trance—a heavy footstep, mayhap, in the street below, the distant roll of a drum, or only the clash of steel saucepans in Aunt Marie's kitchen. But suddenly Jeanne was alert, and with her alertness came ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... with an absent air that was unlike his usual alertness. The girls, watching the ponies come in, noticed nothing, and presently ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... himself fascinated in watching the eager alertness of her observation. He longed to know just what was passing back of those bright eyes; he tried to draw out some expression, but Jerry had turned to him an appealing look that said more plainly than words that she simply couldn't tell how ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... peninsula jutting out into the lake, he built another post, Fort St. Charles. It must have seemed imposing to the natives. On walls one hundred feet square were four bastions and a watchtower; evidence of the perennial need of alertness and strength in the Indian country. There were a chapel, houses for the commandant and the priest, a powder-magazine, a storehouse, and other buildings. La Verendrye cleared some land and planted wheat, and was thus the pioneer in the mighty wheat production of the West. Fish and game ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... first time since leaving St. Louis, it became necessary to abandon conciliatory friendliness, and to offset the native insolence with sternness. There were no fights, for the Indians were too low-born to possess fighting courage; but the necessity for constant alertness was even more ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... gentility. The Cauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as he amused himself making verses through the interminable burden of the service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain superior animation of face and alertness of body; but even Dandie slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so many sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day following day - of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... requires a particular alertness, if not devotion to these phenomena, to appreciate the wide-spread, but late and unexpected glory of the Scarlet Oaks. I do not speak here of the small trees and shrubs, which are commonly observed, and which are now withered, but of the large trees. Most go in and shut their doors, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... have heard, with his Troops at New York. The People in this Colony & the Jerseys are in Motion and if the New England Militia joyn our Army with their usual Alertness & Spirit, I have no doubt but the Enemy will meet with a warm Reception. A few days may probably bring on Event which will give a ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... with a violent start, his feet swung to the floor, his body hunched as if to spring, his glance wildly alive. Then it fell on her and the fierce alertness died out; his face softened into a smile, almost sheepish, and he rubbed his hand ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... is; you've told it to me lots of times," Cub replied with eager alertness. "You know, dad, I always remembered what you told me, and I didn't forget that advice of yours about fire-arms. It is, 'always handle an unloaded gun as if you know it's loaded.' I promise you, dad, I'll not forget it ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... from the pen of Mrs. Stowe, who had observed him with reluctant admiration from the gallery of the Senate. "This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad, thick-set, every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head, thick black hair, heavy black brows, and a keen face. His figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation that constantly pervades it. As it is it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... injunctions followed this seeker of new trails into the car, and the passengers glanced up to find that she was a bright, happy-looking girl in her teens. She carried a sheaf of roses on one arm, and some new magazines under the other. One noticed first the alertness of the face under the stylish hat with its bronze quills, and then the girlish simplicity of dress and manner which showed at a glance that she was a thorough little gentlewoman. Her mother, who followed, gave the same impression; gray-gowned, gray-gloved, bearing a parting gift of sweet ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... through space when the sunlight plays on their glossy feathers as the course of the flock is changed. With the rush of a wind of small measure but immense velocity, the flock descends earthwards, among and over the trees, perfecting itself by trials of endurance and intricate alertness. The birds return during the first week in August, in small and silent companies, to reoccupy favourite resorts in common. The nutmeg pigeons are also of exact habit, the time for their return generally coinciding with that of the starlings. This year ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... discovery awaited the time when the wire-edge of novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals, without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by the fear of making a mistake—forgetting something, like the juice of a half orange at ten o'clock in the morning, the omission of which might have—who ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... his feet instantly. A man of steel springs and volcanic energy, his alertness waged constant war against his years. "The people!" he shouted. "What of them? What do they know? There is talk of a Republic. Think of that! Could folly go farther? A Republic in the Balkans, with Russia growling at one door, Austria picking the lock of another, and the Turk squatting before ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... these futilities with inward impatience, waiting for his own opportunity, and when the host rose he sprang to his feet with an alertness he rarely showed. He managed to catch Lord Merivale before Sir Isaac bore him off for the final interview. He had only a few words to say, but he wanted to get ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from under his old ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... digestion; the loins should be short—that is, the space should be short between the last rib and the point of the hip; the head and neck should be well molded, without superfluous or useless tissue; this gives a clear-cut throat. The ears, eyes, and face should have an expression of alertness and good breeding. The muscular development should be good; the shoulders, forearms, croup, and thighs must have the appearance of strength. The withers are sharp, which means that they are not loaded with useless, superfluous tissue; the legs ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... officers. And the officers played fair. Loyalty to Mary Cahill was a tradition at Fort Crockett, which it was the duty of each succeeding regiment to sustain. Moreover, her father, a dark, sinister man, alive only to money- making, was known to handle a revolver with the alertness of a ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... battles he had fought, and the victories he had gained. His companions, who evidently had an affection for him, and who knew his prowess, had no supposition that I could withstand him for five minutes: though the hopes of those who were the most eager for the sport had been a little raised, by the alertness with which I rose, after being at first knocked down, and the skill with which I then stood on ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... animals of the woods. Their grace, poise, agility, and alertness make them a lovely and inspiring sight. To see them feed undisturbed is wonderful; such mincing steps, such dainty nibbling is a lesson in culture. With wide, lustrous eyes, mobile ears ever listening, with moist, sensitive nostrils testing every ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... His mind is fully occupied; his fancy eternally on the wing. Formerly he had travelled much, but without any pleasure in movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;—for its scenery? Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;—to see the Pyramids? Stuff! the climate on the Nile is so good for the mucous membrane! Set him down ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... carried him back to the cabin, and with the quick alertness of a man accustomed to every emergency of his profession the doctor stripped off his two coats while Philip looked at the face of the man whom they had placed in his bunk. His own experience had acquainted him with violence and bloodshed, ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a menaced eye. A certain order should spring on to his lips without thinking; a certain sign should get itself made, so to speak, without reflection. But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me. I had to make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the conditions of the moment. I felt that I was appearing an irresolute commander to those people who were watching me ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his senses resumed their normal alertness, and the ripple of running water regaled his ears. He tore through the jungle in that direction and burst out upon the river bank. Looking up and down stream, he stifled an exclamation of surprise; ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... shoulders sat a phenomenally fair head—the hair short, crisp, and curly, in colour like faded tow—and who, in smilingly respectful silence, gazed into the room out of small, light-blue eyes, brimful of alertness and intelligence, waiting ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Dakota. His eyes glinted with a cold humor, though they were still regarding Duncan with an alertness which the other could ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... compunction in his face as I met his gaze. He must have read an expression that appalled him in those dilated eyes of mine that confronted his, for, as I sprang toward him, he bounded backward and escaped through the door of Mrs. Clayton's chamber, which he shot after him with undignified alertness. I stood smiling, and strangely cold, leaning against the mantel-shelf, while my heart beat as though, it would have leaped from my throat, and I could feel the pallor of my face ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... to the visitor and Alice, although the former carefully avoided the shutting out of the hostess from the conversation, in which she was incapable of taking a brilliant part. Jim, in the host's place, sat dumb and still, except for his alertness in anticipating his guest's little wants. Guthrie Carey, on her other hand, was equally silent. Neither of the two men heard what she talked about for listening to the mere ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of the whole man, of the quick eyes and mouth, the flexible hands and energetic movements. Even the straight, stubbly hair, its owner's passing torment, standing up round the high open brow, seemed to help the general impression of alertness and vigour. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... impressed me in my young days as being the abler. His public career closed early, but he had time to show he could be vigorous and finely eloquent. I remember him most vividly as I saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, a function which he discharged with extraordinary felicity. He had an alertness, as he stood lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from his strain of Huguenot blood. His wit was excelling, his learning comprehensive and well in hand. He was no more weighed down by his erudition than was David by his sling. Encomium, challenge, repartee,—all were quick and happy, and from ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... stays the more one admires that extraordinary quality of "go"—a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at home, and all are much ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... say, the vulpine intellect, with its knowingness, its alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry business. We have had one such Statesman in England; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in the course of fifteen hundred ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... I settled myself at my desk and laboured the whole forenoon. Got on to page seventy-two, so there cannot be more than twenty pages wanted. Mr. Drummond Hay, who has an alertness in making business out of nothing, came to call once more about Mons Meg. He is a good-humoured gentlemanlike man, but I would Meg were in his belly or he in hers. William Laidlaw also called, whom I asked to dinner. At four o'clock arrives Mr. Cadell, with his horn charged with good ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... new responsibility was on the young pastor of Saint Marks. The newcomers had no such alertness and resourcefulness as his own people. They were helpless in the face of new experiences. Soon they became a worry and an enigma to the town authorities; but especially and inevitably they turned to the churches of their own color, of which Delafield could boast but two, a Methodist ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... speaking the truth; for, although I had pretty well satisfied myself before I lay down, that the weather was improving and that therefore I had little or no cause for immediate apprehension, a sailor quickly acquires the trick of maintaining a certain alertness, even in the midst of his slumbers, since he knows that the weather is his most formidable and treacherous enemy, against which he has always to be on his guard; and this faculty of alertness is of course especially active when, as in my own case, he has only himself to depend upon. Consequently ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... invention how at once to elude my mothers vigilance, and procure myself the satisfaction of my impetuous curiosity and longings for this mighty and untasted pleasure. At length, however, a singular chance did at once the work of a long course of alertness. One day that we had dined at an acquaintance over the way, together with a gentlewoman-lodger that occupied the first floor of our house, there started an indispensable necessity for my mother's going down to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... outlet in all sorts of odd ways. The German sympathizer who would not ordinarily think of objecting to the display of an English portrait, and in fact would probably not think of examining it closely enough to know whether it was English or Austrian, has now become alert. His alertness makes him open to educative influences, but it may also show itself in such ways as that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... the Wisdom of Life," and he put to it, by way of motto, Chamfort's saying, "Happiness is no easy matter; 'tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of the world should be ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... vigour and interest in the fight, we may wish that the shabbiness and the pettiness of the daily lives of some of them had faded away from memory, and left us nothing to think of in connection with their names but the alertness, courage, tenacity, self-sacrifice, and faith with which they defended the cause of human emancipation and progress. Happily the mutual hate of the Christian factions, to which liberty owes at least as much as charity ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... high poise of the head when listening intently to music or conversation. Even then he had that expressive wave o' the hand, which in later years was as full of various meanings as the Ecco of an Italian. A swift alertness pervaded him, noticeable as much in the rapid change of expression, in the deepening and illuming colours of his singularly expressive eyes, and in his sensitive mouth, with the upper lip ever so swift to curve or droop in response to the most fluctuant emotion, as in his greyhound-like apprehension, ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... L. Stidger is one of the most thoroughly alive men in the ministry today. He sees quickly, reacts instantaneously, and knows how to bring others to a like alertness of mental and spiritual seizure. If it be said of him that he is impressionistic it must be remembered that the impressions are made on a mind of sound purpose and communicated to others for the sake of the truth behind ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... definiteness,— in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast. He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,—the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he husbands himself,—what prudence, what economy, always spending up, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... clear when I had looked at him still I never left without sending him under the arch in order to increase his alertness. It was a relief to know that so many persons who went by wore tall hats, a safeguard against their seeing anything, for if they approached the shadow of the tall hat reached out beyond the shadow of the parapet, and was enough to alarm him before they ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... into the sewing-room in the rather vague way that had come to her recently, quite unlike her usual brisk alertness. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... really think of us behind that quiet alertness of yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I—understood you a little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of course you are certain that all ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the desperate fellow had seized the handle of the stiletto with both hands in a determined effort to withdraw it and die. I had had no time to order my faculties to the movement of a muscle, when Entrefort, with incredible alertness and swiftness, had Arnold's wrists. Slowly ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... requires, among other things, mental alertness, accuracy of statement, adequate vocabulary, facility of expression, and an agreeable voice, and these qualities are most essential for effective public speaking. Everyone, therefore, who aspires to speaking before an audience of hundreds or thousands, will find his best ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... bad an answer for an Englishman, in a country where speaking is fencing; the race being little famous for dialectical alertness: but was it artful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... slowly, for indeed all his motions were leisurely and one could not help wondering at the stories of his exploits, the tales of his hair-trigger alertness. Perhaps these half legendary deeds sent the thrill of uneasiness through Vic Gregg; perhaps it was owing to the singular hazel eyes, with little splotches of red in them; very mild eyes, but one could imagine anything about them. Otherwise ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... something, even, very different from supplying a few hundreds of young men with a trade. Industrial training is this larger undertaking, namely, to train hundreds of thousands of young people in habits of industry, in alertness of mind, and in strength of will that shall enable them to turn to the nearest opportunity for gaining the self-respect that comes with being of use to ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... had been dancing not with a woman, but with an ignis fatuus. Other whispers averred, that while she played with her young companions in the labyrinth and mazes of the castle gardens at hide-and-seek, or similar games of activity, she became animated with the same supernatural alertness which was supposed to inspire her in the dance. She appeared amongst her companions, and vanished from them with a degree of rapidity which was inconceivable; and hedges, treillage, or such like obstructions, were surmounted by her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... they did! Shirkers! They were all like that, except when they were ridiculous half-men like Gaga. What was she to do? What could she do? Her brain became very clear and active. It was working with painful alertness, so rapidly that she often did not reach the end of one channel before she was embarked upon another. Toby was hopeless. She must act by herself. And what could ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... intelligence of a trained army is centred in the officers; in the Boer army there was much practical military sense and alertness of mind distributed throughout the ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... neither hesitation nor precipitancy was displayed by the British General. He threw his valuable life away, indeed, by exposing his person unnecessarily in a trifling skirmish; but who will blame a soldier for excess of courage, or a leader for excess of alertness? Like other able men, he was unwilling to trust to the report of his subalterns, when it was in his power to ascertain what he sought to know by personal observation; and, like other brave men, he would not be deterred from prosecuting ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... thought and limb, worshiped his chum, whose alertness and resource humbled him, though he was much the better scholar in all routine work. He read more than Harold, but Harold seized upon the facts and transmitted them instantly into something vivid and dramatic. He assumed all leadership in the hunting, and upon Jack fell all the drudgery. He always ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... upon his immemorial hunting grounds was only a secondary evil; the greater evil was the white man's family, bespeaking the increase of the dreaded palefaces. The Indian peril trained the pioneers to alertness, shaped them as warriors and hunters, suggested the fashion of their dress, knit their families into clans and the clans into a tribe wherein all were of one spirit in the protection of each and all and a unit of hate against ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... awake. It is impossible to say what woke me, but it was no gradual process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleep to absolute alertness in a single instant. I had evidently slept for an hour and more, for the night had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and a pallid half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... after sunup, the herd of fifteen hundred steers was moving northward toward Midway. Kid Wolf and his four riders had them well under control, and had it not been for a certain alertness in their bearing, one would have thought it ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... or two they sat motionless, listening intently, Buck's face a curious mixture of alertness and surprise. Up to this moment he had taken the whole business rather casually, with small expectation that anything would come of it, but the sound of that shot changed everything. Something was happening, then, after all—something sinister, perhaps, and certainly not far away. ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... from an alertness that was not free from suspicion to a fervid statement of the political situation, into which the element of his personal feelings had risen more and more to the surface. So naturally did he appear to take the mention of Miss Wycliffe that Leigh had not realised ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... almost in the rapidly rising water, stood the old missionary, his scant grey hair blowing across his eyes that seemed to look out into eternity—amid stream Tom, paddling with the desperation of death, his head turning every second with the alertness of an animal to gauge the ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... energy and movement of three tall men. How M. Paul did work! How he issued directions, and, at the same time, set his own shoulder to the wheel! Half-a-dozen assistants were at his beck to remove the pianos, &c.; no matter, he must add to their strength his own. The redundancy of his alertness was half-vexing, half-ludicrous: in my mind I both disapproved and derided most of this fuss. Yet, in the midst of prejudice and annoyance, I could not, while watching, avoid perceiving a certain not disagreeable naivete in all he did ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the outcome of Caliban's speech. Dolores herself stood motionless for a full minute after the hunchback ceased his defiance, and under her lowered, heavily lashed eyelids the dark eyes seemed to slumber; only in her lips was any trace of the alertness that governed her brain, and those scarlet petals, which seemed to have been plucked from a love flower in the garden of passion, slowly, almost imperceptibly parted, until the dazzling teeth gleamed through in a smile that none might yet determine whether soft ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... you favor libertarian government," he said. "In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable encroachments ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... that there was something tense and nervous in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and his own nerves began ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... does determines which organs shall claim more than their share of blood and energy. The man who sets type develops keenness of vision and manual dexterity. The stoker develops the muscles of his arms and back, the engineer alertness of eye and ear. All sorts of devices have been invented to aid this specialization of particular organs, as well as to correct their imperfections: the magnifying glass, the telescope, the microscope, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... oh, yes," cried Fritz, rubbing his eyes and yawning; but, Eric, pulling away his blankets, soon made him bestir himself, when his brother jumped up with his usual alertness—first running down to the beach and imitating the penguins in having a dip in the sea, to wash the cobwebs out of his head, as he laughingly said on his return to their little domicile, when proceeding ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... traces of a rare beauty outlived; her eyes were of a deep yet glittering black, and as they flashed from the table to the faces of her guests, seemed never to wink or change for an instant their look of intense alertness. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a latent awkwardness in a man, the saddle mirrors it; and if there lie in him anywhere dormant an unsuspected alertness, it wakes in the saddle to action. Her companion had hardly found his stirrups before Kate perceived a change. His body sprung molded from the cantle, his careless shoulders came to attention, and as the pony curvetted riotously, the rider's head, rising like a monitor straight from his ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... little while they were all seated, and now, at last, it seemed to the barkeeper as if the air of the room had been freed of its tension. No longer did he experience a sense of alertness, a feeling that something out of the ordinary was going to happen, and it was with immense relief that he heard the Girl take up her ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... 6, 1904, he reached Washington, where the contrast of atmosphere astonished him, for he had never before seen his country think as a world-power. No doubt, Japanese diplomacy had much to do with this alertness, but the immense superiority of Japanese diplomacy should have been more evident in Europe than in America, and in any case, could not account for the total disappearance of Russian diplomacy. A ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... infantry, cavalry, and aeroplane attacks had utterly failed in their object of dislodging our center or shaking its position, each one being frustrated by the resourceful, cool alertness of our commanding general and the splendid heroism and stoicism of our troops. But the strain of the continuous fighting for nearly the whole day without respite of any kind, or chance for food or rest, in the end told on the power ...
— Four Weeks in the Trenches - The War Story of a Violinist • Fritz Kreisler
... which, in full confidence of its firearms and the alertness of its patrols, can venture to go into cantonments, and thus save its horses from bivouacking, will very soon assert its superiority over an enemy which seeks for safety by remaining constantly under arms, and thus dissipates its ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Joe, throwing up his head with renewed alertness. He squinted a little while into the southwest. "Bust my hub if it ain't a cloud! Comin' up, too—comin' right along. Say, do you reckon that rain-crow feller brought that cloud ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... the alertness peculiar to those who work on the night-shifts of restaurants, dumped a tray down on the table with a clatter. The Duchess woke up. Babe took her eyes off the ceiling. The Southern girl ceased to look at the sunshine. Already, ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... colored races, less civilized tribes, vegetarians, and others, we are tending toward the conclusion that the percentage of appendicitis in a given community is simply the percentage of its recognition,—in other words, of the intelligence and alertness, first of its physicians, and then of its laity. As an illustration, my friend Dr. Bloodgood kindly had the statistics of the surgical patients treated in the great Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... children by force have a very slender claim upon them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy who had such disgust for his father's trade, and hired him to work in his garden and run errands. The intelligence and alertness of the lad made him look like good ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... or not; but it gave me pleasure to see the little one sleeping in her cradle, during the short night full of alarm, when I felt the weariness of living, the dull sadness of seeing my companions dying, one by one, leaving the caravan; the enervation of the perpetual state of alertness, always attacking or being attacked, for weeks and months. I, with the gentle instincts of a civilized man, was forced to order the beheading of spies and traitors, the binding of women in chains and the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... us banish the notion that the history of the Convention is only the history of the guillotine. No chamber in the whole annals of governing assemblies ever displayed so much alertness, energy, and capacity, in the face of difficulties that might well have crushed them. Besides their efforts, justly held incomparable, to hurl back the enemy from the frontiers, they at once in the spirit of Condorcet's speech, made at so strange a season, set vigorously ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... he wrote that. The Penguin Person is not a wit, there is no barb to his shafts of fun, no uneasiness from his preternatural cleverness, for he is not preternaturally clever. You never feel unable to cope with him, you never feel your mind keyed to an unusual alertness to follow him; you feel, indeed, a sense of comforting superiority, for, after all, you do take the world so much more seriously than he! And yet he is not stupid; he is bright, alert, "kindly," to be sure, but delightfully humorous, deliciously droll. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... special sentiment. Sometimes the union established is intermittent; sometimes it crowns the end of life and dissolves it altogether; sometimes it remains, while it lasts, monogamous; sometimes the sexual and social alertness is constant in the male, only periodic in the female. Sometimes the group established for procreation endures throughout the seasons, and from year to year; sometimes the males herd together, as if normally they preferred their ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... varying degrees of influence in the several areas. In the older settlements where the planters had relaxed into easy-going comfort, the fear of revolt was keenest; in the newer districts the settlers were more confident in their own alertness. Again, where prosperity was declining the planters were fairly sure to favor anything calculated to raise the prices of slaves which they might wish in future to sell, while on the other hand the people in districts of rising industry were tempted ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... he had just come, freshly galvanized, from some electric source of exuberant energy. His clothing escaped the extremes of fashion by the narrowest margin of good taste, and his mustache ends bristled up toward the laughing wrinkles about his wide-awake eyes like exclamation points of alertness. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... face. All the eager alertness of only a moment earlier had been wiped away. Thorvald was no longer the man he had known, but in some frightening way a husk, holding a quite different personality. The younger Terran answered his fear with an attack from the old days of rough in-fighting in the Dumps of ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... irresistible. The head bends slightly forward, with a darting, eager movement, yet with a fine, lithe grace. The keen, bright eyes glance a little askance, with a want of free confidence. There are a slim smoothness, a silent alertness, in the general impression—a nervous, susceptible intentness, united with undeniable beauty, that recall the deadly nightshade among flowers and Keats's "Lamia" among poems. The portrait would fully interpret the poem, She looked the lovely Lamia ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... closing over a full, pale forehead, and her shapely head was balanced upon a fair, round neck. There was an alertness in her erect ear, and open nostril, and pointed brows which indicated keen perception and comprehension; yet even more than this generic quickness, without which she could not have been French, the gentleness of ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... have "shook her cocoon," Jack said, his economy of language scarcely making up for the little difference in "shook" and "shaken." Certainly she managed to climb from one boat to another with remarkable alertness, while Bess, Belle and Cora acted like up-to-date society maidens, only they acted a little in advance of the "date" ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... much alive"—(highly accumulated vital energy, always ready to discharge, is the secret of all personal magnetism)—and the alertness, the presence of mind, the acute and immediate perception of everything going on during rehearsal or performance, the dominancy and impressiveness of his minutest gesture, the absolute self-possession and repose even in working up the most exciting climaxes ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... He hadn't spoken or touched food since that tragic hour under the reefs two nights before. Without a glance in our direction, he made for the side and stepped ashore. There was a bright light behind him; his form stood out plainly. It had lost the lines of vigor and alertness; it was the figure of a different and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... ungraciously. He had no knowledge of things mechanical, and no liking for them. His tastes ran to athletics, and by careful cultivation of his body he had made himself the physical equal, or nearly so, of Mart Judson, whose strength and alertness were ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... wolves facing me seemed to have been asleep in the sun when I disturbed them. I realized the danger and was alarmed, of course, but my faculties were under control, were stimulated, indeed, to unusual alertness, and I kept a bold front and faced them without flinching. Their expression was one of mingled surprise and anger, together with the apparent determination to sell their lives as dearly as possible. I gave them all the attention ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... directly toward the howling spectators, but his marvelous speed and alertness were on the wane; while on the other hand his foremost pursuer, who had taken part in hundreds of similar events, had every confidence in his own endurance. Each leap brought him nearer, fiercer and more determined. The ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... allow of a more effective thrust of the sharp, upturned point of its murderous horn, was upon his antagonist, and I caught my breath sharply, fully expecting to see the man impaled, or at least tossed high in the air. But instead I beheld as splendid an exhibition of courage and alertness as I think I have ever witnessed, for the man, firmly standing his ground to the very last fraction of a second, sprang nimbly to one side at the precise moment when, as it seemed, the point of the horn was about ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Otis continued to give himself heart and soul to the cause he had so patriotically and zealously espoused. Even when his malady showed itself, there were brief returns of useful activity and old-time mental alertness, only, however, to be followed by sad relapses into the eclipse-period of his powers. At periods of respite from his ailment, Otis took part fitfully in his duties as member of the Massachusetts Legislature, of which body he had been Speaker, and did what he could to further the work of legislation. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to form first in line for action and then in column for marching, without ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... darted down the companion-way into the cabin, and quickly returned to the deck bearing in his arms the swooning form of his adored Haydee. Ali followed him. The Nubian seemed to have entirely recovered from his fear, and manifested both alertness ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... sergeant's face underwent an extraordinary change. It filled with wonder, and then a grim alertness sprang to life all over him. He dropped his hand to his holster, and whipped out a big regulation 455 revolver, blue and sombre. The boys formed behind as under cover of a tower of strength, and the spy ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... Company and its affiliated societies."[473] Horace Greeley admitted the force and power of Douglas' argument, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the gifted author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was so profoundly impressed with the matchless orator that she thought it "a merciful providence that with all his alertness and adroitness, all his quick-sighted keenness, Douglas is not witty—that might have made him too irresistible a demagogue for the liberties of our laughter-loving people, to whose weakness he is altogether too well adapted now."[474] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... her friendships must be scrutinized by her natural protectors and that, altogether, there is a definite but undefined danger in the very atmosphere of the city for the girl or the young woman which demands a constant and protective alertness. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... marching steadily through the deep woods, some months later. They were boys in years, but in size, strength, alertness and knowledge of the forest far beyond their age. One, in particular, would have drawn the immediate and admiring glance of every keen-eyed frontiersman, so powerful was he, and yet so light and quick of movement. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically-shaped, combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier; with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... resembles a bubble, and gives the impression of being empty. It is in reality filled with higher mental matter, but as this is not yet brought into activity it remains colourless and transparent. As advancement continues it is gradually stirred into alertness by vibrations which reach it from the lower bodies. This comes but slowly, because the activities of man in the earlier stages of his evolution are not of a character to obtain expression in matter so fine as that of the higher mental body; but when a man reaches the stage where he is capable ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... latter, having vainly struggled with his sleepiness, has at length begun to nod. Hearing his name pronounced, he starts to his feet, takes the document, which is not yet dry, to sand it, and, desirous to show by his alertness that he has been all the time wide awake, empties over it—the contents of the inkstand! Awkward individual!—there he stands, dumfounded and aghast. His master quietly resumes his seat, procures fresh materials, and, though it is long past midnight, begins his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... man, much sunburned, nearly bald, and his hair snowy, but his eyes were beautiful, very dark, soft, and smiling, and yet their gaze peculiarly keen and steady, as if ready for any emergency, and his whole frame was full of alertness and vigour. His voice was clear and sweet, and his manner most refined and polished, indeed, his courtesy to Ethel, whenever there was a change of carriage, was so exemplary, that she understood it as the effect on a chivalrous mind, of living where a lady was a rare and precious ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... she studied him curiously. He was tall—taller even than Sir Redmond, and more slender. Sir Redmond had the straight, sturdy look of the soldier who had borne the brunt of hard marches and desperate fighting; Mr. Cameron, the lithe, unconscious grace and alertness of the man whose work demands quick movement and quicker eye and brain. His face was tanned to a clear bronze which showed the blood darkly beneath; Sir Redmond's year of peace had gone far toward lightening his complexion. Beatrice glanced briefly at him and admired his healthy color, and was ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... the senior; the senior shows consideration for him. The salute is the ancient and universal privilege of fighting men. It is a recognition of a common fellowship in a proud profession. Saluting is an expression of courtesy, alertness, and discipline. The senior is as obliged to return it as the junior is to initiate it. In fact, in the Army particularly, it is not unusual to see the senior salute first. Interservice salutes should be exchanged as punctiliously as between members ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... she carried her eighty years could not long have escaped the observation of two such earnest students of humanity as we believed ourselves to be. But the characteristic in her which at once caught my eye was her expression— a look of such keen alertness, such intense vitality, that even in the mental stagnation that accompanies night travel I wondered what, in her surroundings, could ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... suppressing "discursive thought" and concentrating the mind on a particular object—say a red flower—so that for some time nothing else is present to the mind and the image of the flower is seen and realized in all its details, is most efficacious for producing mental calm and alertness. By such simple exercises the mind learns how to rest and refresh itself. Its quickness of apprehension and its retentive power are considerably increased, for words and facts imprinted on it when by the suppression of its ordinary activities it has thus been made a tabula rasa remain ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... presence had the effect of lightening The Author's gloom. His eyes brightened, his dejection changed into alertness, and there began that subtle game of under-the-surface thrust and parry that seemed inevitable when the two met. Mr. Westmacote listened with quiet enjoyment. His dinner was to his taste, Hynds House more than came up to his expectations, Alicia was ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... garden there a spacious pavilion, apart from the house; he proposed to his friend that he should establish himself in this pavilion. Muzzio readily agreed and moved thither the same day together with his servant, a dumb Malay—dumb but not deaf, and indeed, to judge by the alertness of his expression, a very intelligent man.... His tongue had been cut out. Muzzio brought with him dozens of boxes, filled with treasures of all sorts collected by him in the course of his prolonged travels. Valeria was delighted at Muzzio's return; and he greeted her ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... pardon for the space I have given him. (He is my friend, and I love him.) The house was shaking to the storm, as he drew closer to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me, and by the added lustre of his eye, and by the alertness of it, I knew that at last he was ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... tried again to determine their position. They were too high, he concluded; they must work down a little to round the cliffs, so they took a course diagonally into the smother. Then he, too, began to lose alertness; he walked mechanically, taking the line of least resistance; his head sagged forward; he saw nothing but the hummocks before him. These grew larger; they changed to narrow ridges with fissures between. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... observers, both civil and military, is that he was a man of high professional training, admirably skilled in the science of war, capable of commanding a large army with success, but at the same time not original in plan, not fertile in resource, and lacking the energy, the alertness, the daring, the readiness to take great risks for great ends, which distinguish the military leaders of the world. For a commander of armies, in an offensive campaign, his caution was too largely developed. He possessed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine |
