"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was looking at Rozsi. Her face was so alive and quivering! 'What's the excitement all about?' he thought. 'How pretty she looks!' She blushed, drew in her hands with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the room. 'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back and kiss her lips. He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in those faces ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the room changed with the passing of the sunlight—grew tense, electric, almost, one would have said, expectant; and Owen realized that the moment for ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... 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 ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... smile crossed his face, as he inquired in low, tense tones, "Of what avail are wealth and position to one who finds an insurmountable barrier placed between himself and all that he holds most ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... took the note, and Adrien turned away. As he walked out of the stable-yard he happened to glance back at Markham, who was re-covering the "King," and he saw that the jockey was still gazing after him, with a tense, almost longing expression in his small, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... we may be satisfied with their conduct. 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 ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... 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 ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... fellows!" he called in a low, tense voice. "Make every stroke count! Full muscle! Never mind your backs! ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... of the affair, he felt no shame in it. The moment of childish gayety had been but a passing mood. It had in no way slackened his tense enthusiasm, dulled the keenness of his spirit, lowered his high flight. He knew that well enough. But he wondered if she would understand, and he could not believe it possible. The mood of exaltation in which they had parted that afternoon came ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... in a scene which is charged with an inescapable atmosphere of foreboding; note the incident of the fugitive doves in the scene at Melisande's tower window; or the episodic passage near the end of the third act, during the tense and painful scene of Golaud's espionage: "Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—It has rained. And over there, do you see the old gardener trying to lift that tree that the wind has blown ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... feast for Death, and spoke His welcome in a tongue so long forgot That even his ancient guest remembered not What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend Still conjugating with each failing sense The verb "to die" in every mood and tense, Pursued his awful humor to the end. When like a stormy dawn the crimson broke From his white lips he smiled and mutely bled, And, having ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... when perforce the thought came upon him of the invisible Actor in the night's drama whose presence, whose action, he had been so strenuously asserting, he was like a man in pain who does not know what remedy to try; and his mood was tense, he sought only relief. He essayed one thought and another to reason away the cloud that was upon him; and then he tried saying his prayers, which of late had fallen somewhat into disuse. It was only by way of a try to see if it would do any good; and he did not give himself much time, for ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... never before realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged. Here in this small punctilious packet lay a Sesame—a power of transformation beside which the transformation of that rather flaccid face of the noonday into this tense, sinister face of midnight was but as a moving from house to house—a change just as irrevocable and complete, and yet so very normal. Which should it be, that, or—his face lifted itself once more to the ice-like gloom of the looking-glass-that, ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... deduct from a present, a past tense and twist the sentences to make from it 'The ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... received no answer. Shefford saw a dark, squat figure bending forward in the saddle. The man was tense. All about him was dark except the glint of a rifle across the saddle. The face under the sombrero was only a shadow. Shefford kicked the fire-logs and a brighter blaze lightened the scene. Then he saw this stranger a little more clearly, and made out an unusually large head, broad dark ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... prime distinctions is his power to visualize scenes. The terror, beauty, caprice, and mercilessness of the sea; the silence and strangeness of the impenetrable tropical forest; atmospheres tense with storm or brilliant with sunshine,—these he records with strong effect. But though he has gained his fame largely as a chronicler of remote seas and shores, his handling of the human element is but little ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... sound of her own name, then lay tense and rigid, waiting for Lilian's answer. She knew it was not honorable to listen, and she certainly did not care to do so; but if she cried out now, after having kept silent so long, Lilian, who was absurdly nervous in the dark, might be seriously frightened. Perhaps ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... luny now that's the end of him," said Emerson in a repressed, tense voice. "We must not let him get excited. Nick, you'd better stand there and keep him quiet, if you can, and pour water over his face and head and put a ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... The tense lines about the girl's mouth disappeared slowly as she passed a small brown hand across her forehead and ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... speaking stars seeming to call to her, with the moan of the wind in the pines, and the melancholy mourn of coyotes in the distance, she was not able to govern her thought and emotion. The day was practical, cold; the night was strange and tense. In the darkness she had fancies wholly unknown to her in the bright light of the sun. She battled with a haunting thought. She had inadvertently heard Nels's conversation with Stewart; she had listened, hoping to hear some good news or to hear the worst; ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... ye, Jim! Nex' shot'll be higher. Shove that gun back. Now then," as Plimsoll sullenly obeyed, "what in hell do you figger yo're doin'?" Mormon's jovial face was tense, his voice stern and cold, he stood crouched forward a little from the hips, legs apart, his gun a thing of menace that seemed ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... not once look up from that absorbing little operation with the fat forefinger, felt this pause and knew that Billy's grin had gone; and his own mouth drooped and drooped. It was a tense moment. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... tense instant, then closed the window, and possessing herself of a few little things, gathered hastily about the room, which she could stuff in her pockets, she opened her door softly, closed it behind her, ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... was becoming more tense, momentarily. Many towns in the heart of the lumber district had passed absurd criminal syndicalism ordinances. These prohibited membership in the I.W.W.; made it unlawful to rent premises to the organization or to circulate its literature. The Employers' ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... for himself. Both of these are traits common enough in a Frenchman, but in Mons. Margot their excesses rendered them uncommon. He was a most ultra specimen of le chevalier amoureux—a mixture of Don Quixote and the Duc de Lauzun. Whenever he spoke of the present tense, even en professeur, he always gave a sigh to the preterite, and an anecdote of Bayard; whenever he conjugated a verb, he paused to tell me that the favourite one of his female pupils was ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this we are able to see very little, so carefully do animals conceal themselves. In the night they emerge, and in the morning and evening there is a deafening din of insect life. But at noonday there is a soft and solemn hush, and we are tense with curiosity to know all that is going on in those mysterious forest depths and up among the tree-tops, so close but so impossible ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... the tiller, stood firmly posed and a little leaning forward, his body rigid, his face set in resolute lines, his eyes fixedly bent upon the course ahead; behind him the others, elately poised in readiness to swing their whole weight with his on the instant that his tense energy in repose flashed into energy in action as the critical turn was made—the whole group, raised above us on the high quarter-deck, in relief against the deep blue sky. Amy, or another of the Southern ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... near the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of the future. That there is such a double reference may be made very obvious if we notice that the first of the promises, which includes them all, and of which the others are but aspects and phases, is cast into the present tense, whilst the remainder stand in the future. 'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,' not shall be—'they shall be comforted,' they 'shall inherit the earth,' and so on. So, then, we are warranted, indeed we are obliged, to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... way to ruining himself and his home. The children were yet young, and depended on the breadwinner. William gave her the sense of relief, providing her at last with someone to turn to if Morel failed. But the tense atmosphere of the room on these waiting ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... tense with the importance of the explanation, this dismissal fell not a little chillingly; but she was glad that she had been able to induce her mother to consider the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the little cabin in which John Cummins ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... The Cynocephalus porcaria and the Semnopithecus entellus both menstruated each month for about four days. In the Macaci rhesus and cynomolgus at menstruation "the nipples and vulva become swollen and deeply congested, and the skin of the buttocks swollen, tense, and of a brilliant-red or even purple color. The abdominal wall also, for a short space upward, and the inside of the thighs, sometimes as far down as the heel, and the under surface of the tail for half its length or more, are all colored a vivid red, while the skin of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... He wasn't frightened, but he had never met an opponent like this. A chill raced up the back of his legs and spread over his stomach and chest. His mouth was dry and his muscles quivered with tense anticipation. But his concentration never wavered. His hard blue eyes never left George's, searching with microscopic intentness for the faintest sign of ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... toward a chair, which I didn't take. His authoritative manner was, I must say, not unimpressive. And he knew how to arrange a rather crude stage-setting; the room, with all air and sound excluded, seemed tense and breathless; the one dim candle on the table lent a certain solemnity ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... profess exactly as other people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... light!" said Paul, suddenly. His voice was tense. "Keep still a moment! See if you can hear anyone moving around ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... the past year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the way to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that were on her mind. She had many things on her mind, poor Mildred Theory, so caged and restless, and yet so resigned and patient as she was; with a clear, quick spirit, in the most perfect health, ever reaching forward, to the end of its tense little chain, from her wasted and suffering body; and, in the course of the perfect summer afternoon, as she sat there, exhilarated by the success of her effort to get up, and by her comfortable opportunity, she took her friendly ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... on the other side, makes tense the ligaments, first at one side and then at the other, by drawing the finger to the opposite side, and cuts them. The tendons being cut, the finger is detached. The vessels being tied, one point of suture is put in on the dorsal aspect, and the fingers on each side tied ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... waiting for the seal to come to the surface. According to all human reasoning, there was no earthly necessity for any delay upon the part of the attacking Apaches, and yet, for full an hour longer, they maneuvered and reconnoitered, without striking a blow. Despite the tense condition of the lad's nerves, he began to grow drowsy and weary at the prolonged delay, and had the attack been deferred a short time longer, he would have ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... tense silence; and then our ears were drenched in the ballet music of Delibes. Over the footlights it surged, and, racing down-stage, little Marjorie Carpenter flung herself into it, caressing and caressed by it, shaking, as it seemed, little showers of sound from ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... It is found only in the power of God. He has provided a complete salvation from the dominion and power of evil, which is a real victory—the only victory for the believer in this present life and conflict. It is a second form or tense of salvation, for it is possible to be saved from the condemnation and penalty of sin, and still for a time to be under its dominion and power. Salvation from the power of the world, the flesh, and the ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... somewhere in the papers that a large shipment of heavy cannon had left America for Russia," he said with dry humor, "in transit for us—for if they're consigned to the Russians, we'll have them sooner or later, I hope;" adding, with his habitual tense earnestness, "the Americans are something more than shrewd, hard-headed business men. Have they ever vividly pictured to themselves a German soldier smashed by an American shell, or bored through the heart by an American ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... some men and women who have no taste for such diversions. To them they may have little value or usefulness. But, to the ordinary missionary who has done a hard day's work an hour's diversion in tennis, badminton or golf has often been a godsend. It has brought relief to the tense nerves and a new lease of life to the organs of the body. In a similar way an interest in carpentry, in geology, photography, or any other set study, brings to the jaded mind a diversion and a new lease of power, and prepares ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the few moments that remained—moments of tense anxiety, for they knew not to what a premature finding of the paper might lead—both men noticed that the carriage seemed to darken about them and to grow warmer; that Karswell was fidgety and oppressed; that he drew the heap of loose coats near to him and cast it back as if it repelled ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... broke the tense silence. With a gasping intake of breath, she reached up to claw at Brecken's face. Cursing, the man twisted his head away to protect his eyes. He released his grip on the girl's neck and swung a clumsy, backhand ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... sensitively organised and intimately related to her in thought, and alone at the time, undoubtedly got, if not her thought, at least the effects of her thought, as it went out to him under these peculiar and tense conditions. ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... suddenly, and is usually ushered in with febrile disturbance, gastric uneasiness, malaise, and rheumatic pains and swelling about the joints. The lesions vary in size from a cherry to a hen's egg, are rounded or ovalish, tender and painful, have a glistening and tense look, and are of a bright red, erysipelatous color which merges gradually into the sound skin. At first they are somewhat hard, but later they soften and appear as if about to break down, but this, however, never occurs, absorption invariably ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... blackness becomes more intense. An increased supply of blood in the skin seems in some manner to increase its blackness; thus certain exanthematous diseases cause the affected places in the negro to appear blacker, instead of, as with us, redder.[16] The skin, perhaps, from being rendered more tense by the filling of the capillaries, would reflect a somewhat different tint to what it did before. That the capillaries of the face in the negro become filled with blood, under the emotion of shame, we may feel confident; because a perfectly characterized albino negress, described ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... 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
... 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
... Karpin, and despite the revolver and the tense expression on his face, he was the least dangerous-looking man I'd ever run across. All at once, the idea that this anti-social old geezer had the drive or the imagination to murder his ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... in British Columbia is famous on the Pacific Coast. It was in the old days of murder and robbery on the trail to the gold diggings of Cariboo. In the face of the plainest evidence the jury had refused to convict. The astounded judge turned amid tense silence in ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... floor, second, third, fourth. The everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense, wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a near-by table and disappeared into ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... a step nearer, watching his face; tense, breathless. Clearly he had turned her thoughts from the fence, and he slipped the knife in farther and continued to pry and twist the wire loose. "How do you know it was a mistake?" she asked ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... verbs throughout are in the aorist, but the sense of the original is better expressed in English by the present than the past tense.] ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... crowded lobby to the desk and inquired whether there were any messages or visitors for Mr. Kay McKay; and the quiet, penetrating glances of the clerks on duty immediately discovered his state of intoxication but nothing else, except his extreme politeness and the tense ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... as one ought to do; I always feel so guilty. Most of the people there look scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel, and the rest look suspiciously at me as if I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are neither good enough nor bad enough. So I hurry through with the tense expression of a man who is merely using Bond Street as a thoroughfare, because it is the way to his dentist—as indeed in my case it is. But recently I did saunter in the proper way, and I took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... her father the Earl of Huntingdon. If Rob had been grimly resolved to win the arrow before, the sight of her sweet face multiplied his determination an hundredfold. He felt his muscles tightening into bands of steel, tense and true. Yet withal his heart would throb, making him quake ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... 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
... 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 began ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... junior partner in the firm; but he said it without any deep conviction. The atmosphere was growing a great deal too tense for ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave the ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... nail-pierced roof grew ruddy as the white-hot ploughshare or iron bar was drawn from the fire!—what alternations of light and shadow! No painter ever drew figure in such relief as the blacksmith presented in that wonderful light, with his glistening face, his tense muscles, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... dawn, glitterings in the jungle announced the arrival of the convoy. Messengers, in advance, shouted the news. Men from Yugna went out to inspect. The atmosphere grew tense. The air fleet ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... edge of 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 so ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... ascended from the sanctuary in a fragrant cloud, lingering over the congregation. The celebrant offered the bread and wine to Our Father in Heaven. And all this took time; the children were tired by their tense concentration; their prayers had all been said two and three times over; and they were now vacantly waiting and longing, looking at their clothes, at the stained-glass windows in the choir or St. Anne in her crimson cloak, or counting the stars that were painted ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... club knew that Mr. Spugg's chauffeur might be killed at any moment. But great as the strain must have been, Spugg went up and down to his office and in and out of the club without a tremor. The situation gave him a new importance in our eyes, something tense. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... it may be said, that [Greek: en] is in the former part of the sentence, and therefore might have been repeated in the latter part, which is the converse of it, though it might not be exactly the proper tense. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... you think I am—honest. You may change your mind; I hope you do, dear; and if you do, write me, 'phone me, telegraph me, cable me, wireless me. But, of course, not to me direct; the police, you know. Address me in care of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft." Tense though the moment was to him, the young man could not restrain his odd whimsical smile. "The Reverend Mr. Pyecroft has taken an interest in me; like you he is trying to make me a better man. He'll see that I get your message. Herbert E. Pyecroft—P-y-e-c-r-o-f-t—remember ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... Enemy; rapidly proceeding, his 40,000 and he, along those elevated upland countries, watershed of the Black Sea and the Baltic, bleakly illumined by the April sun; a march into the mists of the future tense, which do not yet clear themselves to Daun. Seeing the march turn southward at Troppau, a light breaks on Daun: "Ha! coming round upon Bohemia from the east, then?" That is Daun's opinion, for some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... elementary comment was not likely to be committed to print, but echoes of similar technical difficulties are occasionally heard. Tyndale, speaking of the Hebraisms in the Greek Testament, asks his critics to "consider the Hebrew phrase ... whose preterperfect tense and present tense is both one, and the future tense is the optative mood also, and the future tense is oft the imperative mood in the active voice and in the passive voice. Likewise person for person, number for number, and interrogation for a conditional, and such ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Then they have to make 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 would expect from ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... to drink. But she stopped almost at once and stood motionless, with her paws tense and stiff. A shiver passed through the little body. The dog gave a hoarse groan, spun round two or three times, ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... more did they sense the situation that would face their sons and brothers when they returned from France. But they were not afraid; and in all of the riots of the period the noteworthy fact stands out that in some of the cities in which the situation was most tense—notably Atlanta and Birmingham—no great race trouble ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... side of the circle a sudden commotion broke up the tense expectancy of the onlookers. Every eye responded, and the unanimity of the change of interest suggested the desire for relief. The commotion continued. There was some sort of struggle going on. Then, in a moment, it ceased. A tall, lean, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... not tell him at once. On the drive home, in the dark December afternoon, he was tense with apprehension; once or twice he ventured some questions about the Shakers, but she put them aside with a curious gentleness, her voice a little distant and monotonous; her words seemed to come only ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... the inner life is throbbing fast and strong, intimate expression becomes impossible. And above these two men, chatting about the trivial things of their existence, hung a black shadow of dread: a strain of waiting which, minute by minute, grew more tense. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... tense voice of Allen Washburn calling, as he and his chums clambered aboard the Pocohontas. There had been a hurried filling of the gasoline and oil tanks after the suggestion offered by Tin-Back, that the disappearance of the mysterious schooner ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... replied Lady Ruthven, refusing to accept Barney's tense. To her, death made no change. "And here she found ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... which he and two others held; the rest—each rope now held by three or four men—bent their back to the labor. As the ropes drew tense, the canoes crowded and jostled together. Those men who were not at the ropes, worked with the paddles to keep the boats apart, so that the ropes should not foul or bind. And in an irregular ring, all round the active ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... comprends pas," but "mo pas connais"; similarly for "I am going away," he does not say, "je m'en vais," but "ma pe couri"; while for "I have a horse," instead of "j'ai un cheval," he will put the statement, "me ganye choue." It is a dialect lacking mood, tense, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... tense, with a note of nervousness in it, which Nat recognised at once. He turned with a sudden desire to see the speaker's face. Here was one who felt as he did, one who could understand him, but his eyes sought in vain among the lines ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... have sat there even longer had not a sound startled him into breathless attention. It was the rhythmic stroke of a canoe paddle and as it came nearer it was intermingled with the whispers of muffled voices. Possibly he might have thought nothing of the happening had there not been a note of tense caution in the words that came to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... very good introduction to the animals, both mammals and birds, of South Africa. The snakes get a mention, too. Several very tense moments are built up, and you will be wondering right up to the very last moment how whoever is involved in the story, is going to get out of the situation. Recommended as perhaps one of the best books by this prolific author. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... forward half of her, being an absolute 'slaughter-house.' Though we had only twenty-five killed and twenty-eight wounded (some of whom afterwards died) on that day, yet numbers were torn into fragments, (men with their muscles tense, subjected to violent concussion, seem as brittle as glass,) causing the deck and its surroundings to present a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... admired the dignity of Miss Portman's mind, and the simplicity of her character," continued her ladyship, with an arch look at Belinda; "and though he was too much a man of genius to begin with the present tense of the indicative mood, 'I love,' yet I was, and am, convinced, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... quite possible that she was led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very first class—the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-minded Erfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil—a type again, as he was evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. She was a devotee of Rousseau, and she undoubtedly had the egregious Bomston before her. But, though her sojourn in England ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... instead of flying loose to her heels, no drapery hung lower than her knees, and this without a check to her wonderful speed, nor embarrassment by the cumbering of the folds. She held her head as before; her lips were firmly set, only the tense nostrils gave her breath; not a sign of distress witnessed to the long sustaining of that ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... a bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. "There he is!" he said, in a tense tone. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... The result is the same and the two sides gradually assume opposing positions. Each one takes a leader and spokesman; the discussion is probably between those two and an occasional interjection by the others. By this time the argument has grown tense and after half an hour the original arguments of counsel, the evidence, the instructions of the judge have become merged in the minds of the jury with what has been talked of in the jury room. The recollection of each juror includes the recollection ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... which more readily appeals to the Mexican. The bull-fight, with its accompaniments of showy dress, tense excitement, and elements of danger and bloodshed, is his favourite amusement. Military parades and political functions enter largely into the distractions of polite life, as indeed is the case throughout Spanish-America generally. Military titles are exceedingly ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... past, he turned his face toward the doctor. From the physician his gaze went to the nurse, then back again to his mother's old friend. His eyes were burning with shame and sorrow—with pain and doubt and accusation. His low voice was tense with emotion, as he demanded, "What does this mean? Why is my mother here like—like this?"—his eyes swept the bare ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... word) as he does about fowls. Look at that old hound, who stands doubtful, looking up at his master for advice. Look at the severity, delicacy, lightness of every curve. His head is finer than a deer's; his hind legs tense as steel springs; his fore-legs straight as arrows: and yet see the depth of chest, the sweep of loin, the breadth of paw, the mass of arm and thigh; and if you have an eye for form, look at the absolute majesty of ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... her room, and for a few moments paced it in deep disquiet, and her whole form seemed to become tense and rigid. In low tones she communed ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... for independence. The manuscript of this book was completed over four months ago. Since then many important changes have occurred in the international situation. Chapters in which we dealt with the then still existing Dual Monarchy must of course be read in the past tense, since Austria exists no more. And again, many things which we anticipated and hoped for in the future have already become accomplished facts. However, I trust that the story itself has not only lost none of its value thereby, but has acquired an additional ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... which victory hung (we can use the past tense now) was none other than his Excellency Alva Hopkins, governor of the state. The bill would never get to his Excellency now—so people said; would never get beyond that committee who had listened so patiently to the twelve weeks of argument. These were only rumors, after ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... their privileges."[**] This was a plain assuming of the whole legislative authority, and exerting it in the most material article, the government of the militia. Upon the same principles they pretended, by a verbal criticism on the tense of a Latin verb, to ravish from the king his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... arches are flexible, heels comfortable, straight last, and whose soles look very much like the lines of the foot unclothed. This style is particularly good during the maternity days. Painful feet are a great strain upon the general nervous system. Who of us has not seen women with strained, tense faces hobbling about in high-heeled, narrow-toed shoes? And if we followed them we would not only see tenseness and strain in the features of the face, but could hear outbursts of temper on the least provocation. ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... of intimacy means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust. One might call it a social difference, for after all, the common socius of us all is the great universe whose children we are. If materialistic, we must be suspicious of this socius, cautious, tense, on guard. If spiritualistic, we may give way, embrace, and ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... suddenly and I felt the arm about me grow tense and rigid as from beyond the bolted door the harsh voice reached us, fiercer, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the girl, and she got up. The expression on her face was so tense and vivid, that it seemed that in an instant either she would burst into ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... "Either I am deceived, or by your plausible and pleasant lookes, you are not in any serious and earnest discourse amongst your selves;" to whom one of them, named Heracleon the Megarian, answered, "That belongeth to them, who busie themselves in seeking whether the future tense of the verbe , hath a double, or that labour to find the derivation of the comparatives, [omitted] and of the superlatives [omitted], it is they that must chafe in intertaining themselves with their science: as for discourses of Philosophie ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... and in plenty. He had only to open his mouth and take his fill. Yet he had no appetite. For the first few days of his water existence he sat amid the weed, rising only at rare intervals to the surface for air, and eating nothing. He was feeling the sudden change. His skin was tense and drawn all over, so tense, indeed, that each time he opened his mouth he felt the strain of it. Nor was the discomfort in his mouth alone. His coat was stretched to bursting-point along his back; his limbs seemed cased in gloves a size too small. A crawl ashore ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... grass. And I just want to take the sky in my arms." As she swept across meadow and through woodland, with the eagerness of a child, greedily hastening from room to room of some inexhaustible palace, her little tense body seemed like a transparent garment fluttering round the ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... business: his slowness to speak created an atmosphere. There was no jest in his voice or manner. The air grew tense. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... The muscles are all lax - the head is drooping, the arms are closing in around the face, the wings are folding, the knees are bending - and she too will soon sink to slumber with the world in her arms. What a fine contrast of feeling between the tense young "Sun" and ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... speech seemed to impress Eliza favorably. She relaxed somewhat from the tense alertness that was habitual with her, and looked at the other girl ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... once a quiver jerked through the tense bodies of the waiting men, but the white horse had merely stiffened and raised his head high. Now, with arched neck and flaunting tail he neighed loudly, as if he asked a question. How could he know, dumb brute, that what he asked ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... himself to any exact statement which could be brought against him if, later on, he decided to drop the whole affair. Charmian's abrupt interposition was a challenge. It held Claude dumb, despite that rage of contempt. It drew Alston's eyes to the face of his patron. There was a moment of tense silence. In it Claude felt that he was waiting for a verdict that would decide his fate, not as a successful man, but as a self-respecting artist. As he looked at the face of his wife he knew he had not the strength to decide his own fate ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the North. He mentions also the federal election laws and the Force Bill but finally concludes that the experiment of making the Negro a citizen was a failure. Here again Mr. Rhodes shows his lack of knowledge of human affairs in that he studies history only in the present tense. No man at present is wise enough to say whether we shall finally obtain more good than bad results from the Reconstruction, for we are too close to that part of our history to make a proper estimate ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... architect. And he knew and felt that he was. And the disordered bed, and the untransparent bath-water, and the soap-tin by the side of the bath, and the breakfast-tray on a chair, were as much a part of the inspiring spectacle as himself tense and especially dandiacal ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he shook himself and laughed. "Some howl!" he muttered, "I bet they heard that ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... fists clenched,] God blarst it! [He sinks slowly back in his chair again, the knuckles showing white on his clenched hands, his face tense with the effort to suppress his grief ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... elderly gentlemen, for the most part of less than average ability, for they are cut off from the new life of the masses. Hitherto, the United States has been the freest of the nations. She has reached a critical hour, not for herself merely, but for the world at large, which regards her with tense anxiety. Let America beware. Even a just war may give rise to all possible iniquities. Vestiges of ancient fierceness linger within us; the human animal licks its chops as it watches the gladiatorial combats. We veil these cannibal appetites under highsounding names, speaking ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... phrases in his mind needs help. He needs a Socrates who will separate the words, cross-examine him until he has defined them, and made words the names of ideas. Made them mean a particular object and nothing else. For these tense syllables have got themselves connected in his mind by primitive association, and are bundled together by his memories of Christmas, his indignation as a conservative, and his thrills as the heir to a revolutionary tradition. Sometimes the snarl is too huge and ancient for quick unravelling. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... solemnity and sadness than usual—no very easy task, I have been told; otherwise, I really had not the remotest conception of what his lordship meant. I knew very well the thing called a tense; I knew even then by name the Aoristus Primus, as a respectable tense in the Greek language. It (or shall we say he?) was known to the whole Christian world by this distinction of Primus; clearly, therefore, there must be some low, vulgar tense in the background, pretending also to the name of Aorist, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... he began dancing a wild, barbaric dance. Sanine burst out laughing, and leaped about in the same way. Their nude bodies gleamed in the sun, every muscle showing beneath the tense skin. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... irrevocable. Which had he been—wise or fortunate, or only trivial? Perhaps, everything considered, merely fortunate; and he wondered how she would have met an infidelity of his? He put his question in the past tense because now, Lee congratulated himself, all the danger was passed: forty-seven, with responsibilities that increased every month in importance, and swiftly growing children; the hair above his ears was patched ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... had not every one bolted, for here sat two of the colony among the broken rocks. These two had not been frightened off. That both of them were greatly alarmed, any one could see from their open beaks, their rolling eyes, their tense bodies on tiptoe for flight. Yet here they sat, their wings out like props, or more like gripping hands, as if they were trying to hold themselves down to the rocks against their ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... significantly, with her face turned away, looking down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward the rail. Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of her head and the tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse which the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... longer on earth like a luminary shorn of its splendours! I did not follow the counsels of friends of Jamadagni's son, of the celestial rishi Narada, and of island-born Krishna, while they offered me counsel. In the midst of the assembly, Krishna told me what was for my good, saying, "A truce (tense) to hostilities, O king! Let thy son take the whole kingdom! Give but five villages to the Pandavas!" Fool that I was, for not following that advice, I am now obliged to repent so poignantly! I did not listen to the righteous counsels of Bhishma. Alas, having heard of the slaughter ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... her eyes and left the room. We waited in tense silence, our eyes on the door. We heard the sound of footsteps on the stair; a moment, and she ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... had strapped in my mouth with his bandanna was giving me acute pain; it obstructed, too, what little breathing my emotion left me; and I dared not take my eyes off his. The strain on my nerves grew so tense that I felt myself fainting when his voice ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... but those intervening days were full of a strange excitement for the little group of friends who were in the secret, and there was that constant sense of expectancy, combined with an alert watchfulness, which kept the nerves tense and rigid, and rendered the mind ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... her violin and the noisy company was stilled. Slowly, under the spell of the music that, to him, was a message from the mountain heights, Aaron King grew calm. His tense muscles relaxed. His twitching nerves became steady. He felt himself as it were, lifted out of and above the scene that a moment before had so stirred him to indignant anger. His brain worked with that clearness and precision which he had known while repainting Mrs. Taine's portrait. ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... of M——, AEt. 63. Very painful and general swellings in all his limbs, which had confined him mostly to his bed since the preceding winter; the swellings were uniform, tense, and resisting, but the skin not discoloured. After trying guiacum and Dover's powder without advantage. I directed Infusion of Digitalis. It acted on the kidneys, but did net relieve him. It is not easy to say what the disease was, and the patient living ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... nudging one another; happenings that he had dismissed as casual took on new and sinister meanings. "Two and two together" became at once a huge sum, leaping to terrifying conclusions. Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting came the sense of things finished—done forever. A vast, all-embracing finality—"Neant"—the habitant expression for the uttermost nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but a premonition warned him that ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... commonly a darker day of cloud, still hard and forbidding, though milder in promise, with a sky of lead, deepening near the horizon into darker films of iron. Then, while all the nerves of the universe seem rigid and tense, the first reluctant flake steals slowly down, like a tear. In a few hours the whole atmosphere begins to relax once more, and in our astonishing climate very possibly the snow changes to rain in twenty-four hours, and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... more attractive as you advance in life? Is your eye softer and deeper, is your mouth kinder, your expression more sympathetic, or are you screwing up your face in tense knots of worry? Are your eyes growing hopeless and dull, is your mouth drooping at the corners, and becoming a set thin line in the centre, and is your skin ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... rounded boulders which formed the margin of the river. On the opposite bank another crowd was keeping pace with the wreck. As they ran, these people shouted at one another and gesticulated wildly. Their faces were white, their words were meaningless, for it was a spectacle tense with imminent disaster that they beheld; it turned them sick ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Garget or Congestion of the Udder in heavy milking ewes, just before and after lambing, the glands of the udder enlarge, become hot, tense and tender and a slight pasty swelling extends forward from the glands on the lower surface of the abdomen. This physiological condition is looked upon as a matter of course and disposed of in two or three days when the secretions of milk ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... of an oak desk and noticed the keen but suppressed energy of the wall-paper, the tense atmosphere of war vibrating through the room, the solid strength of England incarnate behind the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... Muriel Mercer in Hearts Aflame. The beauteous girl, in an alarming gown, was at the mercy of a fiend in evening dress whose hellish purpose was all too plainly read in his fevered eyes. The girl writhed in his grasp. Doubtless he was demanding her hand in marriage. It was a tense bit. And to-morrow he would act with this petted idol of the screen. And under the direction of that Mr. Henshaw who seemed to take screen art with proper seriousness. He wondered if by any chance Mr. Henshaw would call ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... Elvira Burton had rented for New York's winter season, that augustly beautiful or beautifully august lady sat writing. I may say that she was writing grimly and that there was Jovian determination stamped upon her high, broad forehead and indented at the corners of her tense lips. ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... all the mirth and gaiety, you could feel, tense, ruthless and dominant, the spirit of the trail. In that invincible onrush of human effort, as the oars bent with their strokes of might, as the sail bellied before the breeze, as the eager wave leapt at the bow, you ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... belly. The diagnosis here can be made only by microscopic examination of the blood. In strangles, equine variola, and scalma we have an intensely red, rosy coloration of the mucous membranes, full, tense pulse, and although in these diseases we may have depression, we do not have the stupor and coma except in severe cases which have lasted for several days. In influenza we have no evidence of the formation of pus on the mucous membranes as in ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts, Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green. She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar, And suddenly her eyelashes were dimmed, Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy; For there were daffodils which sprightly shook Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood, And every flower of those delighting flowers Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands Crying 'O daffies, could you ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... daddy's arm under hers, and carefully steadied the difficult, ricketty gait, supporting the heavy figure with a practised skill which took the place of strength in her slight frame. Her features were formed after the same pattern as his, the definite profile, tense spreading nostril, and firm lips, being repeated with merely feminine modifications; and as her clear, merry eyes, freshened by the sea-breeze, flashed with fun at the stumblings and uncertainties of their ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... was charged with 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
... his nephew to believe it no matter what happened. But, as Cristy had pointed out, new brooms had time to become worn and inefficient in twelve years of use. His uncle had been talking in the past tense! He had tried to do what he thought was his duty—at first, when he swept into politics, inspired by the victory over the Rives crowd. Twelve years apparently was a long time to expect an inspiration to burn in the face of ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... major ferias, privileged ferias and non-privileged. Ash Wednesday and the three last days of Holy Week are the major ferias which are privileged and exclude all feasts (vide Tit. II., sec. 2). Non-privileged feriae are the feriae of Lent and Advent, Quarter Tense or Ember days and Rogation Monday. They take precedence of ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... With muscles tense and every nerve alert the three young soldiers waited. It seemed as if the smoke from the three explosions would never lift and the three boys felt as if hours had elapsed before they could catch a glimpse of the room. Finally however the atmosphere cleared away and they saw ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... usteresin), as if I had been wondering, and fretting, and suspecting you of forgetfulness or of parsimony; no, I have been in a happier mood than that; for I, for my part (ego: slightly emphatic), have learnt (emathon: our perfect tense best gives this aorist) to be, in my actual circumstances, self-sufficing (autarkes); "carrying with me all I have"; independent, not of grace, ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... its seniors, which many centuries before, as the deified bulls died, had commenced to line the great straight thoroughfare. But this one has never reached its place and never held its mummy. It was the last. Even while men were slowly rolling it, with tense muscles and panting cries, towards what might well have seemed its eternal chamber, others gods were born, and the cult of the Apis had come to an end—suddenly, then and there! Such a fate may happen indeed ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum monumentorum veterum concinens ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... out of temper with my stupidity or dulness in not comprehending something about 'a preter-pluperfect tense,' or some mystery of that sort. He seized me by the ears, and beat my head against the wall behind me with such savage violence that when he let me go, stunned and unable to stand, I fell forward on the floor bleeding violently at the nose, and with a terrific ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... have had a great blessing; and I need not use the past tense, the work is going on yet, although the meetings do not continue. The work will continue forever, I believe; the truth is, we have had a new baptism, the members who came to us early in the fall, came filled with ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... wasn't afeared of you at all, 'cept fer what you mought find out. You couldn't do no harm to nobody without a gun, and I knowed thar wasn't no still up that crick. I know—I knowed whar it was." Hale noticed the quick change of tense. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... with nervous laughter than there had been outside. One of 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 ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... down to a form in which nouns and verbs are its only elements, is an established fact. In the gradual multiplication of parts of speech out of these primary ones—in the differentiation of verbs into active and passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete—in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of number and case—in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles—in the divergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of parts of speech by which civilized races express minute modifications of meaning—we ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... hung rakishly above one ear. Her hair loosened and fell in straggling wisps of gray to her shoulders. Her eyeglasses dropped from her nose and swayed dizzily on their slender chain. Her gloves split across the back and showed the white, tense knuckles. Her breath came in gasps, and only a moaning "whoa—whoa" fell in jerky rhythm from her white lips. Ashamed, frightened, and dismayed, Miss Prue clung to the reins and kept her straining eyes on ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... the herd, who in turn scrambled to their feet and stood, switching their tails, and all facing the same way, namely, toward the spot where I had observed the suspicious motion of the grass. But the motion had ceased now, and for nearly a quarter of an hour we all stood there tense, waiting and watching. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... face—it is sheer and smooth and icy now, as then. He was probably the first man to attempt its descent, and I was always weak and spent when he ended his story of it, so vividly did he portray its dangers. I sat tense, digging my nails deep into my palms, living through every squirm and twist with him, from the moment he slid down from the comparatively safe "Narrows" to the first niche in the glassy, precipitous wall, till, after many nearly-the-last ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... for the line, which had up till then been quite tense and kept on cutting through the water as the prisoner darted here and there in its wild efforts to escape, suddenly became slack, and, with an angry ejaculation, Lynton began ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... author's thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But above all, the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes; and for his apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent to let the spectator know his real feeling in the matter. Any ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and, with a movement that was not unlike the guarding action of a huge mastiff, rose to his feet. His face was a picture of animal rage; his teeth were bared, his eyes gleamed, his every muscle was tense. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... speech upon Trent was curious. For an instant his face was flooded with the emotion of surprise. As this passed away he gradually drew himself together, as he sat, into a tense attitude. He looked, she thought as she saw his knuckles grow white on the arms of the chair, like a man prepared for pain under the hand of the surgeon. But all he said, in a voice lower than his usual tone, was, I had no idea ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... glittered, the poor fellow having been a nautical dandy of the first water was drenched and clotted into heavy masses with the death—sweat, and had fallen back on the deck from his forehead, which was well formed, high, broad and massive. His nose was transparent, thin, and sharp, the tense skin on the bridge of it glancing in the silver light, as if it had been glass. His mouth was puckered on one side into angular wrinkles, like a curtain drawn up awry, while a clotted stream of black gore crept ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
