"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down beside the man, his voice a tense whisper in the musty cell. "I mean that right now you are practically dead. You may not know it, but you are. You walk into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... now following the man's narrative with tense interest; every moment its import grew more clear; yes, clearer than day, sharp and bright as a rocket shot up against the blackness of a ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... spirit might think of what it might have done when living. The consciousness of her disgrace, ever with her, had, in the past month or two, built up an impassable wall between her past life and her present state of existence. She no longer thought of herself in the present tense, ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... away he came upon a fresh trail that sent his neck hair rippling and bristling, It led straight toward camp and John Thornton. Buck hurried on, swiftly and stealthily, every nerve straining and tense, alert to the multitudinous details which told a story—all but the end. His nose gave him a varying description of the passage of the life on the heels of which he was travelling. He remarked the pregnant silence of the forest. The bird life ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... right, as the Canadians had held the line, and that the Germans were not going to get through. One sergeant said, "You put a lot of braces in my tunic when you talk like that, Sir." Nothing is more wonderful than the way in which men under tense anxiety will respond to the slightest note of cheer. This was the case all through the war. The slightest word or suggestion would often turn a man from a feeling of powerless dejection into one of defiant determination. These young Britishers whom I met that morning were a splendid type ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... explanation. Infrid for Unfried, discord, disturbance, any thing in opposition to Frieden or peace. The Frid-stools at Beverley, Ripon, and Hexham, still bear the old theotise stamp. Wart, or ward, may be either the past tense of werden, to be (our was), or an old form of waehren, to endure, to last: our English wear is the same word. The sense is pretty much the same in both readings alluding to Eve. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... left his lips when there came the sound of a chair being quickly pushed back, and Oliver stood beside Margaret. His eyes were flashing; his right shirt-cuff was rolled back, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers. Every muscle of his body was tense with anger. Margaret's quick instinct took in the situation at a glance. She saw Oliver's wrath and she knew ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... advanced till he was close to the window. He could hear no more now, for the same tense silence had fallen over the place once more. Gurdon pressed close to the window; he felt something yield beneath his feet, and the next moment he had plunged headlong into the darkness of something that suggested an underground cellar. Perhaps ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And the surgeon's face, alive ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 'How is this to end?' he asked himself every day. Mrs. Bentley begged him to cancel her promise, and allow her to go. But that was impossible. He could not remain alone with Emily; if he left her she would not fail to believe that he had gone after her rival. The situation had become so tense that they ended by discussing these questions almost without reserve. To make matters worse, Emily had begun visibly to lose her health. There was neither colour in her cheeks nor light in her eyes; she hardly slept at all, and had grown more than ever like a little shadow. The ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... crawled to her old vantage-ground, and descended to the right, where a gable sloped steeply. At the bottom she passed along a wide gutter, and, rounding a corner, found that she could easily drop on to a lower portion of the roof. She was in a state of tense excitement. Where was she getting to? Would anybody see her from the courtyard; and if so, how would they propose to rescue her? It would be difficult to shout down and explain that she had come through the little door ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... took no notice of the tense of which Morris made use, for the reason that it seemed natural to him that he should employ it. Their strange habit was to talk of Stella, not as we speak of one dead, but as a living individuality with whom they chanced for a while to be unable ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... back was another matter, and he was horribly afraid. Kinnaird, lying flat down, held out his hand, and in a moment or two Weston and the girl stood with the others close beneath the rock. He did not know how they got there. He was quivering all through, and the perspiration of tense effort dripped from him. While he stood there gasping, the packet of provisions, which had apparently rested for a few moments among the gravel dislodged by his efforts to climb up, rolled down the slope, and he watched it rush downward until he turned his eyes away. It was too horribly ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... have another link with the Cromwellian Wars. I remember, some forty years ago, my uncle, Sir Charles Cave, of whom I am glad to say I can speak in the present tense, told me that he was shooting on one of his farms below Lansdowne, the hill that rises above Bath. The tenant of the land was a very old farmer, and he informed my uncle that his grandmother, who lived to a great age, but whom he had just known as a boy, used to say that she remembered how, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... you mean?" demanded Bob in a tense voice. "Name somebody. I suppose the fact that Germany has murdered a lot of Americans has nothing to do with ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... suddenly straightened himself and stood tense. Something had happened. He was sure of it. That urgent summons rang in his brain like a cry for help. Some demand was about to be made upon him, a demand which he might find himself ill-equipped to meet. He was not lacking in courage. He could meet adversity ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... poem from The Princess, (page 107) note how we are influenced by the tense emotion of the attendants who speak. We do not try to imitate them; but having made the scene stand out before us, we speak as we in imagination hear them, in ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... "Her tense features showed that she was weighing the meaning of the words, and I can still see her as she suddenly drew up her small figure, and said proudly, 'Yes, I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... them point to their own date, some I have dated, and some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... French with clipped moustaches, Almond-eyed like Paris apaches. Rosy French with their faces shining From joy of living and love of dining. Silent Spaniards, merry Italians, Nobles, commoners, saints, rapscallions; Russians tense with the quest of truth That maddens manhood and saddens youth; Learned Norwegians hale and limber, Brown from the barques new in with timber. Oregon men of six feet seven With backs from Atlas and hearts from Heaven. Orleans Creoles, ready for duels, ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... who sat beside her, Everything had turned out so much better than she could have hoped for, both easier and more friendly. Eight years it lasted, then the husband died, and she mourned him with a sincere heart. She had learned to love his fine, thin-blooded nature which with a tense, egotistic, almost morbid love loved whatever belonged to it by ties of relationship or family, and cared nought for anything in all the great world outside, except for what they thought, what their opinion was—nothing else. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... in rage his lips ran out to their full width, and the tense slit showed his teeth to their roots. The gums were white. The stricture of the lips ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty jeux d'esprit. This Raffles only meant ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... preventing him. They looked into one another's eyes for a tense interval, then, as the blood began to trickle down his chin again, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... game was filled with a tense, fruitless strife. Five points to five points, and four minutes of time to play. The struggle had ceased to be a turning of tricks and test of speed. Henceforth, it was man against man, pound for pound. Suddenly, the opposing team ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... section of the Petrograd Soviet had its meeting. Feeling was tense and turbulent, Was the Government incapable of defending Petrograd? If so, let it make peace. And if incapable of making peace, let it clear out. The frame of mind of the Soldiers' section found expression in this resolution. This was already the heat-lightning ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... extraordinary physiognomies round facies faciei would have been worthy of any collection of caricatures. Moreover the illustrations of the verb amo commemorated the gentleman who was married on Sunday, killed his wife on Wednesday, and at the preter-pluperfect tense was hanged on Saturday. Other devices were scattered along the margin, and peeped out of every nook—old men's heads, dogs, hunters, knights, omnibuses; and the habit of drawing so grew upon him, that when he was going to read any book where scribbling was insufferable, ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... unemployed, to arm them, and to send them out as officials of the United States to do whatsoever was desired by the railroads. They were not under the control of the army or of responsible United States officials, and their intrusion into a situation so tense and critical as that then existing in Chicago was certain to produce trouble. And the fact is, the lawlessness that prevailed in Chicago during that strike began only after the appearance ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... drifted by. The atmosphere became tense, nerve-cracking. Phobar's eyes ached with the intensity of ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... eyes and looked ahead. Step by step he traced the marks on up the hill in the direction of the dugout, and, at last, silent speculation gave place to tense, low-spoken words. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... life. She heard his voice, low and tense, dominating the other voices in the kitchen. She could not hear a word he said, but suddenly Aunt 'Mira broke out with: "Oh! my soul and body, Marty! It ain't so—don't say ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... cuffs streaked with oil and rust, then had but one thought in his mind—to hit the target. He looked neither to right nor left but was still at the periscope. The warship was there. We were there, and one could imagine the tiny periscope just above the water. The situation was tense, even if the vessel to be fired at was not ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... that rack "is merely the past tense, and therefore past participle, [reac] or [rec], of the Anglo-Saxon verb Recan, exhalare, to reek;" and although the advocates of its being a particular description of light cloud refer to him as an authority for their reading, he treats it throughout generally as "a vapour, a steam, or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... a great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from too frequent visits; but here was one of those clear-cut, indubitable ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that sooner or later I would feel the strike of one of these silver tigers a keen, tingling thrill of excitement quivered over me. The primitive man asserted himself; the instinctive lust to conquer and to kill seized me, and I leaned forward, tense and strained with suspended ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... not having had time to dig deep trenches or to strengthen our positions as we were constantly under fire. But these Marines laid down a machine gun barrage, the first that I had ever seen. They kept up the fire all night and thus held Fritz away. It was a tense period. Hun shells were dropping all around us and frequently right among us, but the machine guns never ceased their excellent defensive work. When day broke, and the Hun ceased firing, only seventeen of these machine guns ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... cannot be described, but must be lived, so this book cannot be revealed—it must be read. Its daring situations and tense moments will thrill you. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... groan in the shadows as the soldier crumpled limply to the ground. In the silence that followed, Gaddon's tense breathing was the only sound. He looked down at the still body of the unconscious man, then he quickly turned and retraced his footsteps back the way he ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... nostrils. A long and straight moustache, turning slightly grey, did not hide the mouth, which had unusually pale lips. The ears were set very flat against the head, and were finely shaped. The chin was pointed. The general look of the whole face was tense, critical, conscious, but in the defiant rather than in the timid sense. Such an expression belongs to men who would always be aware of the thoughts and feelings of others concerning them, but who would ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to-day was in a tense and excitable condition, now heightened to fever by the two cobwebbed mysteries standing against the wall, but the imperative rattle of Joel's cane on the desk quickly induced a specious ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... days of July something peculiar and tense hung over the land, but its sources were untraceable, its form, abstract. The unadvised, ordinary people wiped the sweat from their foreheads and said it must be the heat. Kirtley would not have been expected to interpret Friedrich's surprising ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... for the more accurate understanding of the Bible is its translation from the past to the present tense. It has been studied as history, as the record of a remote past whose truth it has been well-nigh impossible to verify. It should be studied as a record of the present, the present experience of the individual ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... you fancy Will would cry baby at death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him to leave me his Diaz; ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... putting them all in the past tense, as if he had already solved them! But what was that law of magnetism he mentioned? Perhaps he would reveal his secrets to me in his ravings! I must mark every word he said; for it was clear I must solve the problem, he would not be well in time. I must brush ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... get to bed at last I was unspeakably tired; the stretching out, and the relaxing of the long-tense muscles, how luxurious, how delicious! but that was as far as I could get—sleep was out of the question for the present. The ripping and tearing and squealing of the nobility up and down the halls and corridors was pandemonium come again, and kept me broad ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... saws themselves are subsequently tightened by forcing home the keys until a certain amount of tension has been attained, this is ascertained only by the peculiar sound which emanates from the blade on being drawn considerably tight and tense. Great experience is required to accustom the ear to the correct intonation, as in general the tensile strain on the saws approximates so closely to the breaking point that one or two extra taps on the keys are quite sufficient ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... incidents to which I have in the past called attention, with no other object in view than to make my readers unwilling to retire for the night, to destroy the peace of mind of those who are good enough to purchase my literary wares, or to titillate till tense the nerve tissue of the timid who come to smile and who depart unstrung, then should I deserve the severest condemnation; but these things I do not do. I have a mission in life which I hold as sacred as my good friend Mr. Howells ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... sentences of 'Paradise Lost'; the linking of the verb to its often distant nominative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposition to the noun or pronoun which it governed, the study of variations in mood and tense, the transpositions often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence—all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and a source of unflagging delight. How I rejoiced ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... long, tense crawl of twenty yards he came on the track and sign of a big buck, perfectly fresh, and again his heart worked harder; it seemed to be pumping his neck full of blood, so he was choking. He judged it best to follow this hot trail for a time, and holding his gun ready cocked ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... advanced towards the railway line, which few could see until they were stopped by the barbed wire that fences it on each side. The necessity for cutting this was another awkward hindrance. All officers, however, had come provided for such an emergency with wire-nippers. The anxiety was painfully tense as men listened to the sharp click of these instruments, and heard the severed wires drop with a clatter that struck harp-like across the deep silence, and went vibrating along the fence towards a Boer camp where perhaps ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... walked in the jangling city Together . . . . forgetful. One by one we crossed the avenues, Rivers of light, roaring in tumult, And came to the narrow, knotted streets. Thru the tense crowd We went aloof, ecstatic, walking in wonder, Unconscious of our motion. Forever the foreign people with dark, deep-seeing eyes Passed us and passed. Lights and foreign words and foreign faces, I forgot them all; I only ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... that only a dull, slow throb came up from below, instead of the swift thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced the decks; along the port railings on each deck soldiers were clustered thickly, looking out across the grey, tossing sea to a winking light that flashed ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... aloft. Henry sat tense at the wireless, waiting to catch any possible message, and Roy and Willie scrambled cautiously down to their favorite observation post in the pines. On came the transports, riding the waves in a stately column; yet the little house seemed ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... as in some instances, leaving no interval whatever. The position of the omo-hyoid muscle will not be accounted a sure guide to the locality of the subclavian artery, since, in fact, it varies considerably as to its relationship with that vessel. The tense cords of the brachial plexus of nerves, F, Plate 8, which will be found, for the most part, ranging along the acromial border of the artery, are a much surer guide ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... their way further up the coast to their destination. On the way they encounter various characters, some good and honourable, and others very much the reverse. Finally they arrive and set to work seeking for gold. Of course there are more adventures and tense situations, as you ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... believed. The dramas were variously and pithily described as The Picture with the Punch Powerful—The Smashing Five-Reel Masterpiece—A Play of Peculiar Problems and Tense Situations—Six Gripping Reels, 7,000 Feet and Every Foot a Punch! Vida Sommers, in the scenes reproduced from these plays, had indeed a busy face. In the picture captioned "Why Did You Make My Mamma Cry?" the tiny golden-haired ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... and awe-stricken amid this manifestation of the insignificance of man, the sun blazed forth from behind a laggard cloud. The effect was theatrical. It was like throwing the limelight on the scene which marks the climax of some tense situation. Instinctively we lifted our arms ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... near the door not a sound was to be heard through the afternoon stillness. Yet in spite of the tranquillity of the day and the apparent peace of the four figures that gazed so immovably out upon the reach of blue, an electrical current of suspense was evident in the four tense forms. They were not looking at the bay, exquisite as it was in its cerulean beauty. Instead, the head of each man was turned toward the road that skirted the harbor and wound its way between the pines at the foot of the hill where ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... astonishment, and being directly in the beast's path, believed that his hour had come. This was to be the end of all his plans—to be crushed by the enormous weight of the monster which challenged his right to live. But in that tense moment when he thought that it was all over, the lithe form of Thalma reached his side and in a frenzy of terror pulled him away. But even then the sloping belly of the onrushing beast tore him from her frail hands and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... silence, with fiercely uplifted hand. Someone in Gray listens passively to the curses. The flame of the candle flickers as if blown by the wind. Thus they stand for some time in tense silence confronting each other, Man and Someone in Gray. The wailing behind the scenes grows louder and more prolonged, passing into a ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... and all eyes watched Scipio's movements as he turned Jamie over, and, supporting his dripping body in the crook of his arm, plied the flannel upon the boy's back. The moment was a tense one. Then a sigh of relief went up as the child dropped back in the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... animal." Peggy's tones were vibrant with alarm—tense as a taut violin string. "What I saw ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... he almost could have touched her, standing looking into his eyes with a wistful, searching glance, clasping and unclasping her tense fingers. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... raised her startled, frightened eyes, and for a moment her glance met Harley's; it seemed to him to be full of entreaty; the whole atmosphere of the place was to him tense, strained, and tragic; why, he did not know, but he shook himself and decided that it was only the result of weariness, the long ride, and the night in the storm. Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he willed ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... breath for a second roar his mother was present in the yard. She was passionate in defence of her cub, and rage transformed her. Her tense frame vibrated in anger; you would scarce have recognized the weary ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... fishermen could not hear the Galilean's reply, but they saw him walk down into the water, John the Baptizer leading. The people stood as though fascinated. Recalling the incident later on, Andrew and John realized that their tense concentration on the two men at the river had driven every other thought from ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... insane, but rather that any come within hailing distance of the normal. For multitudes are born of parents whose bodies were food poisoned or alcohol or drug poisoned, and whose nervous systems were tense and irritable, oversensitive, and suffering from the effect of these same toxins on the brain. Others are of manic-depressive parentage; some are possibly even of paranoic or dementia praecox lineage; while many of our finest and best ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... safe here, anyhow, and I can stand it," said Joe, brightening a little, the tense severity of his face softening. "Never mind; I can stand it, ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the Hounds called out, "I don't want any of you girls to kiss me!" and gave the relief of indignation to the hysterical emotion of the believers; the more serious of the unbelievers found escape in their helpless laughter from their tense expectation of triumph in the failure of ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... earthly paradise. Janice became convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become things of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... might. Outside the window of the little room he occupied that night in the captain's cottage he was almost certain he had heard the sound of a furtive footfall and whisperings. His blood beat in his ear-drums as he sat tense and rigid, waiting a repetition of ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... she were afraid lest he should see too much, as if somehow his seeing it would sharpen the perilous edge she stood on, would wind up to the pitch of agony her tense feeling of it all, Winny suddenly became evasive. She found her subterfuge in stark ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... felt the keen whip of the wind as they cut through the waves. They were glad to button their coats, even up to their chins. Uncle Darcy and Dan talked all the way over, but Georgina sat with her hand tightly locked in her mother's, sharing her tense expectancy, never ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... verdure proffering ambuscade, the air hung tense along the border. Traders had sent in word that Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, and Cherokees were refusing all other exchange than rifles, ammunition, knives, and hatchets. White men were shot down in their fields from ambush. Dead Indians lay among their own young corn, their scalp ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... vanity and pride in his own fighting skill. The army and the navy were quicker to discern the reality of the threat. The military machine that was to supply the small expeditionary force was working at high pressure, and the air was tense. If Germany intended to make her bid for the mastery of Europe, it was recognized that she had every reason for making it soon. 'All the heads of departments', said the chairman, at a meeting in January 1912, 'are very anxious to get on with this—Lord ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... The tense lines about the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and replaced ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... murmur compared to the whirlwind of sound that had arisen from the pit at the former struggles I had witnessed. There seemed but few blocks of the stock on the market. Yet the air was electric with the tense strain of thousands of minds eager to catch the faintest indication of the final result, and I found it more exciting than the wildest days of ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... towards him as the curtain rose for the final call, wondered a little at the tense, unyielding attitude of his tall figure. He was standing staring at the stage as if for him there was nothing else in all the world. She stifled a little sigh as she turned to put ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... of that noun, for then every preposition should equally require an appropriate case, and as well as of, to, and from, we should have a case for deatas rumah, on top of the house. So of verbs: kallo saya buli jalan, If I could walk: this may be termed the preter-imperfect tense of the subjunctive or potential mood of the verb jalan; whereas it is in fact a sentence of which jalan, buli, etc. are constituent words. It is improper, I say, to talk of the case of a noun which ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... My wanderings and freaks do not count; I was a Bohemian, with the tastes of a Romany and the curiosity of a philosopher; I went into the most abominable company because it amused me and I had only myself to please, and I saw what a fearfully tense grip the monster, Drink, has taken of this nation; and let me say that you cannot understand that one little bit, if you are content to knock about with a policeman and squint at signboards. Well, I want to know how these legislators can go to ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... by in the corridor. She had scarcely seen it. Rather she had felt its passing. But the dream was gone. She was alert, tense, expectant. Paris was near. And he was near. She linked the two together in her mind. And she felt that she was drawing close to a climax in her life. A conviction took hold of her that some big, some determining event was going ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... again—the finding the watch, and the presumption from it of a maker; and in this case there was the watchmaker's shop close by. He urged, too, that Homer was the only great poet who did not in narrating past events use the present tense—speak of them as if happening at the moment. He quoted long passages from Paradise Lost to show how Milton would fall into the present tense, though he might have begun in the past. The fact that throughout the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... knew just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching her about the waist and holding on hand and foot—yes, by my feet; I could hold on by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel in my tense grip the pull of the hair as her skin and her muscles moved beneath with ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... and man aboard was tense with nervous excitement as we awaited the result of the reading. The crew had known almost as soon as I that we were doomed to cross thirty, and I am inclined to believe that every man jack of them was tickled to death, for the spirits of adventure ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inseparable from fair hair, a clean, healthily ruddy complexion, and a direct blue glance that rested on men and things with a kind of pensive wondering. All the same, the heavy-browed face on a big, tense neck had a frowning, perhaps a lowering expression that reminded Guion of a young bull before he begins to charge. The lips beneath the fair mustache might be too tightly and too severely compressed, but the smile into which they ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... the text, "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord"—a statement which, after the lapse of so many centuries, has still to be couched in the future tense. The delay has been excessive, but Dr. Hitchens is hopeful. He believes in the ultimate and speedy fulfilment of the prophecy. One of his grounds for so believing is this (we quote from the Christian Commonwealth), that "Out of 20 leading lecturers, authors, editors, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... perfectly calm, but with the calmness which is the outgrowth of an excitement so tense that it is still. As the vision floated nearer, I heard soft music—a crooning, yearning, soul-satisfying lullaby; I saw a little child, a mother, and a father. The child was as beautiful as an angel, and there was that in its ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... to an end after a tense two days. The packed court-room fat in a terrible silence awaiting the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... scent came again; and then I was thrust down under the weight, monstrous, insupportable; further and further down; and there came a sharp bright streak, like a blade severing the strands of a rope drawn taut and tense; another and another; one was left, and the blade ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... treatise, is Professor De Morgan; and I can only say that if I am accused of heterodoxy, either from the spiritualist or anti-spiritualist side of the discussion, I am not ashamed to be a heretic in such company. Let me put the matter in the present tense, indicative mood—that is the state of my opinion on the cause of the phenomena. Admitting the facts, I hold the spiritual theory to be "not proven," but still to be a hypothesis deserving our most serious consideration, not only as being the only ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the day before, the violence of a conflict which a confession would provoke. But, this time, his resolve was taken. There were too many reasons urging him towards a breach which he considered necessary. With his mind and his whole frame palpitating with his tense will, he was about to utter the irrevocable words, when ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... back in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... swelling becomes more profuse, the animal is fevered, and the symptoms of lameness increased. Poulticing is at this stage perhaps resorted to. By its means the process of suppuration is aided, and the swelling (at first tense and hard) either becomes gradually softened, its contents discharged, and a simple abscess cavity left behind, or the suppuration runs immediately round the necrosed structures, and casts them off bodily as a slough. This latter condition is always manifested, where the hair does not hide ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... after him. She was rather white, but she remained very erect and taut until the keeper had disappeared from view. Then the tense rigidity of her figure slackened, as a stretched wire slackens when the pull on it suddenly ceases, and she leaned helpless against the trunk of a tree, limp and shaking, every fine-strung nerve ajar with the strain of her recent encounter with ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female, Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell In tortoise-nakedness, Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... tense moments that followed, the Subaltern owned to himself that as a driver he was not much good. The German artillery had got their range to a yard, and it was very trying to have to stand up in the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... the car, won't you, Jim?" Her voice was somewhat tense. "No, I'm not going to drive," she added as Deacon hesitated. "We ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... swiftly adjusted a beard that swept its sable flow down his youthful chest. Then he addressed us again, still in tense, hoarse accents. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... asleep in that room above—" I looked up at the closed shutters, scarcely seeing them for the blinding rush of tears; yet stared steadily till my eyes were dry and hot again, and my choked and tense throat relaxed. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... "To some extent I follow you, but when you speak of Hunterleys as a power in the present tense, doesn't it occur to you that his Party is not in office? He is simply a member of the Opposition. If his Party get in again at the next election, I grant you that he will be Foreign Minister and a dangerous one, but to-day he is ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... few tense seconds the two bodies of men remained motionless, forming a tremendously impressive tableau. There was the line of uniformed Chinese soldiery, their bayoneted rifles held at the charge, their officers standing ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... A very tense condition of affairs existed, when on January 31 I asked for a special interview with Admiral Koltchak that I might introduce my colleague and comrade, Colonel Johnson, and talk over the situation. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... woman, its strange complex of passion and maternity. She wondered if it would ever come to her. She rather thought not. But she was also conscious of a new attitude among the three at the table, her mother's tense watchfulness, her father's slightly squared shoulders, and across from her her grandfather, fingering the stem of his wineglass ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a word to the handsome and strong; Megillus of Corinth, and Damoxenus the wrestler will do. Inform them that auburn locks, eyes bright or black, rosy cheeks, are as little in fashion here as tense muscles or mighty shoulders; man and man are as like as two peas, tell them, when it comes to bare skull ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Captain Strong," he paused and finished his sentence in a tense whisper, "I'll search the universe until I find Coxine. And when I do, I'll break him ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... going high and hard and well for a time, and then failing. She had seen Letty snivelling and dirty; Letty shamed and humiliated. She knew her Letty to the soul. Poor Letty! Poor dear Letty! With a sudden clearness of vision Cissie realised what was happening in her sister's mind. All this tense scheming of revenges was the imaginative play with which Letty warded off the black alternative to her hope; it was not strength, it was weakness. It was a form of giving way. She could not face starkly the simple fact of Teddy's death. That was too ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... kneeling close by my side had clasped his hand. I tried to order her away, but my tongue could not form the words. I could only look at her mutely, and there must have been an effective appeal in my eyes, for she got up, nodding an acquiescence, and stood silent and tense a yard from Alresca's feet. With a violent effort I nerved myself to perform my work. The voice of Nolan, speaking to the audience, and then a few sympathetic cheers, came vaguely from the other side of the big curtain, and then the orchestra ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... was why each had cried out at Aix-les-Bains against the merry little tune. It was interesting. I saw however that it must have jangled horribly on tense nerves. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... a feeble dash of spirit, Jenny had attempted tactical flight. The sense of it made her feel as she had done, as a little girl, in playing touch; when, with a swerve, she had striven to elude the pursuer. So tense were her nerves on such occasions that she turned what is called "goosey" with the feel of the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... and tiny clicking of the ball as it rebounded from the metal grooves struck across the tense stillness. As though this was the releasing signal, a roar of activity burst forth. Men all talked at once. The other tables and the bar were deserted, and everybody crowded down toward the lower end of the room. Danny Randall ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... structure is in stable equilibrium; the body, springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... as time—surely there can be no time here within Pellucidar, where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but our recent experiences seem to demonstrate ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... up-spouting column of flames the airship winged her way. Tense and alert, Tom sat at the wheel guiding his craft with her load of fire-defying chemicals. Behind him were Ned, Mr. Damon and Mr. Baxter, ready to drop ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... signified vision. In past years he had had a rooted belief that the standard wife was a burden who not only robbed one of mobility, but also demanded her portion of all moments, however individual, absorbed or tense they might be. In such circumstances there was nothing around which he could build a mental fence and ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... bridle rein; and then sat silent and motionless on the back of his horse, his eyes on his comrade, waiting in tense expectancy for the moment when he would reach the clump of bushes and look down into the valley beyond and see the cause of those strange and terrible cries that had so suddenly ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... removed his hat. Then the fine line of his face from the crown of his head to the tip of his chin printed itself ineffaceably upon our minds. The dome-like brow was that of one highly specialized on lines of logic and sympathy. There was also something in the tense poise of his ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... a man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her. My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,—they would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,—if I loved. Harry, don't let ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... tense moment. In the flash of a second, he could not determine the character of the dog. His knife gleamed in his hand. To delay was dangerous. The beast might, in a twinkle, ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was tense excitement, the dramatic, ungoverned excitement of children. While with shrill cries two or three of the women gathered the little ones together, the rest pulled frantically at the poles holding each tepee in place. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... the usual well-written sequence of tense moments we get from this author. A good read, and a nice audiobook if you prefer that. ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... spoke in a low, tense tone. "Strangest of all, the tip has just come to us that Fletcher, Haxworth, Sherburne and all the rest of those wealthy men were insured in the Consolidated Mutual Life. Now, Jameson, I want you to find Taylor Dodge, the ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... tripped upon the tense, for her hand was on his arm, and, in consequence, a series of warm, delicious little shivers was running about his body in a fashion highly favorable to extreme perturbation ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... letter use the words "we received," —using the past tense, as if some days before, instead of "we have your letters," or "we have just received your letters," which would rather indicate present, or recent, time. Probably some days elapsed after the "pilott's" arrival, before this letter of acknowledgment was sent. It is hence fair to assume that ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... clear that these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few days before publication. On the other hand—but this is a Note, not a ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... and muscle was tense with expectation. The music of the hounds grew fainter. "Evidently circling again," I mused. I was getting to be quite a huntsman, and chuckled at how ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... the coming renunciation in his voice and in his half-unconscious change of tense, and she dropped her eyes again, for fear they should betray the gladness that she felt, and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... horse. Oliver tried to help him, but he could not do much, the horse was so deep in the snow. And, besides, he was standing, or rather lying, in such a position, that many parts of the harness were drawn so tense, that Oliver had not strength enough to ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... went on, his voice deepening and his face growing more tense, "then we were sent to Verdun. That was the hottest place of all. It was at the top of the big German drive. The whole sea rushed and fell on us—big guns, little guns, poison-gas, hand-grenades, liquid fire, bayonets, knives, and trench-clubs. Fort after fort ...
— The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France • Henry Van Dyke
... rheumatism, the 'acute' and 'chronic', both of which are attended with either general fever or local inflammation. The attacks usually come on rather suddenly, the joints swell, the pulse becomes full and tense, the parts tender, and the eyes blood-shot, the stomach deranged, and the bowels costive. Severe lancinating pain runs through the articulation, and along the course of the larger muscles, the tongue is coated, the muzzle hot and dry, and the poor animal howls with agony. The breathing becomes ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... the faces of the children Flooded with sweet innocence! God's smile on their foreheads glisten Ere their heart-strings have grown tense. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... So tense was Eustace's concentration that he did not see Billie Bennett, seated in the front row. Billie had watched him enter with a little thrill of embarrassment. She wished that she had been content with one of the seats ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the electricity of an excitement so tense, so suppressed, that it struck her like some living force as she rode through the ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... with excitement, tense in every limb. With a loud cry Beatrice flung herself at the door and beat upon ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... was tense with impatience, the marshal rose to his feet. An aide deftly received the cigar for disposal, and the party drifted expectantly toward ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe |
