"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father to his men, whose personal interests were always his first care. The moment was critical. McClellan, had he chosen, might have imitated the Roman generals who led the revolts of Praetorian Guards. But he stepped out on the front platform of the car, held up his hand, and, amid tense silence, asked the men to "stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me." The car they had uncoupled to prevent his departure was run up and coupled again; and then, amid cheers of mournful farewell, ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... 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 me think I am mistaken. Let this miserable firm of yours fail, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... In a hygienic life there must be a certain amount of actual rest. Every bodily power requires rest after exertion. The heart rests between beats. The muscles require relaxation after every contraction. The man who is always tense in muscle and nerve is ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... 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 bullet? The grim realism of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as if in surprise, but he didn't seem to notice that I'd used the present tense. To make him forget my slip, I hurried on to say I thought mine was courage, in a man, anyhow. What was his, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... concerned, they were stoutly bent upon maintaining and extending. Indeed, that was what they had crossed the ocean for. Under these circumstances they developed a kind of government which we may describe in the present tense, for its methods are pretty much the same to-day that ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... with my mind on my destination, thinking only of what I shall do when I get there, and how I shall do it. This thought influences my whole body. I am all "keyed up," my muscles are tense, my breathing, even, is constricted and the walk ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... alarm. And all her fears were realized. Terry had been fighting a hard battle and he was still fighting. About his eyes there was the look, half-dull and half-hard, that comes in the eyes of young people unused to pain. A worried, tense, hungry face. He took her arm and led her to the table. On it lay an article clipped out of a magazine. She looked down at it with unseeing eyes. The sheets were already much crumbled. Terry turned them to a full- page picture, and Elizabeth found herself ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... deliciously prosaic. Is she not the woman who said that she was always inspired to a pun by the sight of a cancer hospital? or am I thinking of Helen Mathers? I can never tell them apart—their lack of style is so marvellously similar. Why do women always write in the present tense, Reggie? Is it because they have no past? To go about without a past, must be like going about without one's trousers. I should ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... express by their forms all of the distinctions of mood and tense, person and number, found in the English, and form their participles, and are changed into verbal or participial nouns; and these modifications are for, the most part regular ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... blood of Abel cried out for vengeance against his slayer, how much more does the blood of Christ cry out for pardon for all who plead it! "It cleanseth (present tense) from all sin." ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... the back is the next region treated. The patient lies prone, folding the arms under the head; a firm pillow is put under the epigastric region, so as to the better relax the back muscles, which are too tense when a person lies flat. Beginning from the occiput, both hands stroke firmly and rapidly downward and outward to the spines of the scapulae, at first lightly, then with increasing force. Then the whole back ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... strung from one end of the room to the other, and while Bell went to the transmitter, Dom Pedro took up the receiver and placed it to his ear. It was a moment of tense expectancy. No one knew clearly what was about to happen, when the Emperor, with a dramatic gesture, raised his head from the receiver and exclaimed with a look of utter ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... neither he nor any other mortal could "look into the seeds of time" and say what would be and what would not be. The event was on the knees of the gods. Those who spoke with responsibility adhered strictly to the tense of the verb, the past tense: "kept." None rashly used, explicitly or by implication, the future tense: "will keep." In strictest truth they recited what had been, and, from their knowledge of the President's character and convictions, said that he would not ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... Nellie in a tense whisper. "Jerry— boys— don't have anything to do with this man. He may be all right, but there's something mysterious about him. Why should he want to hire you when, for the same money, or less, he could get a company of fishermen, who know these waters well, to make the search? ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... depths of the ocean! It was a moment to stir the pulses of the two Brighton recruits. Wide-eyed in wonder, tense with the strain of the experience, they stepped back from the periscope. Through Ted's mind flitted memories of Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and he was suddenly inspired to find out whether it was possible to glimpse any of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... religious reverence, hardly requires an outline. The whole world has placed "Ben-Hur" on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... when he sat down; she, with bowed head, went on with her sewing; her neck was very white under the light of the lamp; but Falk, hiding his face in the palms of his hands, shuddered faintly. He drew them down, even to his beard, and his uncovered eyes astonished me by their tense and irrational expression—as though he had just swallowed a heavy gulp of alcohol. It passed away while he was binding us to secrecy. Not that he cared, but he did not like to be spoken about; and I looked at the girl's marvellous, at her wonderful, at ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... some American poet will one day be able to write in the past tense similar verses of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... disturb her; nothing, that was, 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 ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Slavin, with an oath, as the mettled, high-strung animal began to kick affrightedly. Slipping again it sank down in the snow and remained still for some tense moments. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... mutual interaction by conciliatory conference is held to be applicable to international and interracial conflict as it is to that between workers and employer, or between man and wife. But it is not content to stop there. It would defy all fears and bring into the tense process of arriving at this joint decision a kind of patience and a quiet confidence which believes, not that there is no other way, but that there is a 'third-alternative' ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... this 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 ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... followed were like this one, silent, tense, expectant. It was as though each one of these people was waiting for something, all but breathless. MacKelvey, a heavy set, quick eyed man, the county sheriff, came one day and talked long with Martin Leland. The two sat for an hour on the corral fence below the stable. After that MacKelvey ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... 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 ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... of torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that his expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... this might have been put in the mouth of a jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a romance still dear to ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... prove anything!" he said in a low, tense tone. "You have made a fool of yourself and of me. I won't have my father's name dragged into this mess. I'm here as Zaidos, the stoker; and you will forget Zaidos of Saloniki as fast as ever you can. And if I find you telling anything more, I will thrash you, Velo Kupenol, ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... old gardener and I again awaited the cry of our feathered friends, but our waiting, like that of so many others, was in vain. The wild ducks are a thing of the past. Where have they gone? No one knows, no one has ever seen them. And in the tense hush of the Autumn nights, above the distant rumble of the cannon rose only the plaintive cry of stray dogs ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... elderly warrior picked up a stone and handed it to the dandy with an expressive gesture. Instead of obeying he shook his head despairingly, and an ominous growl came from the assemblage. Again Donald looked at Christie, whose face was now tense and drawn, as though he were suffering ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... 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 ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other there had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... a different thing," pursued Barrant earnestly. "Do not be afraid, I am not going to demonstrate again. It was more in the nature of a pounce—a sort of tiger-spring hold, made by somebody in a state of great mental excitement, with tightened muscles which caused a tense clutch with the finger-tips, the nails digging into the skin, the fingers bent and wide apart. My opinion is that ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... 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 down across the road?—He cannot; the tree is too big ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... matter how charming their personalities or what the record says about their prior experience and educational advantages. Either that proposition is both reasonable and sound, or Arnold Bennett was singing off key when he said: "I think fine this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. It is the chief thing that distinguishes me from the cat by ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... identifies himself with the warriors, asserting that "we" have lifted up the red war club, red being the color symbolic of success and having no reference to blood, as might be supposed from the connection. In the first paragraph he invokes curses upon the enemy, the future tense verb It shall be, etc., having throughout the force of let it be. He puts the souls of the doomed enemy in the lower regions, where the black war clubs are constantly waving about, and envelops them ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... clambered up beside the driver and the engine rolled out of the yard and went clanking down the uneven, crooked track, leaving a dissolving trail of steam behind. When it returned the little face at the cab window was tense and somewhat pale beneath its tan, but the hand upon the throttle beside the engineer's lay steady ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... to stake their counters of cent-sous, their louis, or their hundred or five hundred franc notes upon the spin of the red and black wheel. It was the month of March, the height of the Riviera season, the fetes of Mi-Careme were in full swing. That afternoon the rooms were overcrowded, and the tense atmosphere of gambling was laden with the combined odours of perspiration ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... the slight noise in the outer room ceased; there was not a sound except their own breathing. The two knelt motionless, peering over the edge of the bed into the dim twilight, seeing nothing, each with finger on trigger—tense, expectant. Then, without warning, the flying figure of a man leaped across the doorway into the security of the opposite wall. It was done so quickly neither fired, but Cavendish licked his parched lips ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... British prophet may Adopt their graphic present tense, I would remark—and so forestall A truth they'll never dare to trench on— There is no Hindenburg at all, Or none ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Francisco. 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 ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... was a tense silence in the minister's little study. It was as though the two men were ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... asked Eveley, the first to break the tense silence that fell upon them when they were conscious of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... out of him. I 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 ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... strange atmosphere on board the little vessels, as they labored about and parted from the doomed Osprey. Many were subdued with awe and joy at their deliverance; others broke the tense strain of the last hours in suffocating sobs. Every throb of the panting engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon. Mr. Raleigh gazed after it as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... faint sound half wakened her, a sound scarcely louder than the lapping of the water against the sides which had lulled her to sleep. She opened her eyes but did not move, and waited, tense with excitement. A fish flopped out of the water, then all was silent again and she closed her heavy eyes once more. Then it came again, not louder than the wind in the aspen ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... the pipe. Soon it broke through, and the slight rush of air was stopped by the insertion of a tightly fitting rubber tube. The tube terminated in a heavy rubber balloon, which surrounded a frail glass bulb. The man stood tense, one hand holding before his silica-and-steel helmeted head a large pocket chronometer, the other lightly grasping the balloon. A sneering grin was upon his face as he awaited the exact second of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... other an ardent admiration 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 ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... until she scarcely breathed the last words and her little body trembled through and through with tense nervousness. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... the saddle. Sinker's death had come like a white-hot flash of lightning from the bulked clouds that had shadowed disaster impending—and in that shadow the three men rode silently toward the north. Again Corliss questioned Sundown. Tense with the stress of an emotion that all but sealed his lips, Sundown turned his white face to Corliss and whispered, "Wait!" The rancher felt that that one terse, whispered word implied more than he cared to imagine. There was ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... trembling, powerless to avert the crisis which she realized was at hand. Madison, who had watched the broker's actions with amazement, suddenly grew rigid as a statue. His square jaw snapped with a determined click, and one hand slipped stealthily into his hip pocket. No one spoke. The tense silence was ominous ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... passed, ten days, and twelve. Then came a golden October afternoon when the twins sat in the haymow looking out upon a mellow world. Constance was in the yard, reading a fairy story. The situation was a tense one, for the twins were hungry, and time ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... we 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 felt alive, defiant of all death and sorrow, ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... said Tish exultantly, and stopped the car with a jerk. In an instant she was out in the road, cutting lengths of barbed wire from a fence with the scissors and placing them across the road behind us. Her expression was set and tense. When she had placed some six pieces of wire in position, she returned ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... one-act play? I have sat here for eight solid horrible days with a fine fat box of extra quality paper untouched and the keyboard leering at me, and not a line, not a word, have I written! The hideous period of beginning to begin! I imagine it's like the tense moment in a football game, just before the kickoff, only those lucky youths are pushed and prodded into action, willynilly. If only a whistle would blow or a ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... best was the way in which the repetition of the Lord's Prayer rolled from the lips of the assembly like the sound of the surging of the sea. It was the emotional effect of a strongly emotional moment. One felt tense. It was hard to restrain tears. As far as crowd-sympathy has any spiritual value it was there. The Caucasian God was taken out of His pigeon-hole ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... the tense strain and of the terrible burden which is being carried by these people, over and above that required for the maintenance of the household. The tenant who raises one crop of rice pays a rental of $23.89 per acre. If he raises two crops he pays $31.58; if it is upland field, he pays $13.52. To ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... preventing him. They looked into one another's eyes for a tense interval, then, as the blood began to trickle down his chin ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... gender: thou Lion Herald to silly etymology: thou antipode of grammar: thou executioner of construction: thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded: thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax: thou scavenger of mood and tense: thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance: thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense: thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom: thou persecutor of syllabication: ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and rear rank, would fire together, and so on, down the line. The object of this was apparent: by the time the left of the regiment had emptied their guns, the right would have reloaded, and thus a continuous firing would be maintained. With guns cocked and fingers on the triggers, we waited in tense anxiety for the word to fire. Maj. Ohr was standing a few paces in the rear of the center of the regiment, watching the advance of the enemy. Finally, when they were in fair musket range, came the order, cool and deliberate, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... back to a region of tinkling china and humming kettle. The room became quiet enough for any one to read, but the first citizen somehow could not read. He was ridiculously conscious of that tense little figure by the fire with the disturbingly friendly eyes. How on earth could a boy be noisy who was absolutely quiet? Yet his very presence seemed to clamor—the clamor of an ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... complained of continuous, also occasionally of marked tearing and contracting pains in the entire abdomen, most severe upon the right side low down; the temperature was 103.2 degree F., the pulse was 112, full, somewhat tense, regular ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... The tense quiet of her tone carried conviction. "Not only far-off things, I can never forget—nearly killing me and—and Roy. But because she is always stabbing at me with sharp words and ugly thoughts. She cannot ever forgive that I am here—that ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... hours—full of adventure and tense situations. I was a bit disappointed to find that the Pirate was a Greek who preyed mostly upon Italian, Greek and Turkish vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean, because I had hoped that Kingston would address himself to the problem in the previous century, where Barbary and Algerine pirates were ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... causes, we must be satisfied with the fact—he wore a wig; and, in the distraction of mental perplexity, when Monsieur Cherfeuil was essaying to get the poet out of the absent into the conditional mood, the man of verse, staring abstractedly upon the man of tense, would thrust his hand under his peruke, and rub, rub, rub his polished scalp, which all the while effused a divine ichor—(poets never perspire)—and, when he was gently reminded that his wig was a little awry towards ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... in the past tense? I love her still. I shall always love that sweet companion of these many happy years. From the time I saw her in those poor London lodgings I loved her with all the strength of my manhood. But you know that, being already married, she could not be my wife. ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... jostles about the long green cloths. Algerian soldiers on leave, gambling their meagre pay. Moorish merchants from the upper town. Negroes. Maltese. Colonists who have come a hundred miles to wager the price of a cart or a pair of oxen on the turn of a card. Pale, tense and anxious as ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... 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
... shore was musk-ox country, and we scanned it carefully, but saw none of the animals. Some miles down the bay we came upon the tracks of a couple of deer. A little farther on we were electrified by a tense whisper from ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... de Forest Brush. There is a touch of the hearthstone priestess about the woman. The force of sex has turned to the austere comforting passion of motherhood. From the children, under the wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life. There is nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating of the inner fire, without which all outer action is mockery. Hearthstone tales keyed to the mood and using the brush stroke that delineates this especial circle would be unmistakable ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... in the text are [Greek: kekleismenon ton thyron] in the past tense, the gates or doors having been shut; but that they were shut in the instant of Christ's entry, it says not: they might of course, if Christ had so pleased, have been insensibly opened, and shut in like manner again; and, if the words be observed, it will appear that St. John mentioned the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... her brows a little knitted, her expression distressed. Ella had turned and was looking out westwards across the park, towards the sea. For a moment she dreamed of all the wonderful things that lay on the other side of that silver streak. She saw inside the crowded Opera House. She felt the tense hush, the thrill of excitement. She heard the low sobbing of the violins, she saw the stage-setting, she heard the low notes of music creeping and growing till every pulse in her body thrilled with her one great enthusiasm. When she turned back to the table, her eyes ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Don't tense up, I won't," I told her. At the same time I made myself the little promise that if I ever got to feeling restless, that is, restless and bad, I'd just go ahead and punch the button and see what happened—sort of leave my future up to the gods of the Deathlands, ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... closer pressed the tense mob about the party. These courteous and gentle Japanese had suddenly been transformed ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... over all hopes of yours. By-the-by, my 'grata superveniet' should be in the present tense; for I perceive it looks now as if it applied to this present scrawl reaching you, whereas it is to the receipt of thy Kilkenny epistle that I have tacked ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... lines and perfect good taste that we are unaware of the transition. There is a perfection of dignity and serenity about a free-grown pasture pine that I find equalled in no other tree. These are druids of eld, if you will, harpers hoar, plucking wild symphonies from the tense wires of the storm wind's three-stringed harp. Yet the dryad dwells within them as well, and on gentler days they show her in many phases of queenly womanhood. They mother the romping shrubs, the slender, maidenly birches, the maples, vainglorious in their dainty spring colors, their ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... 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 had ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... strain in some voice of the woodwind or a ripple of the harp, it is sung in tense chorus of lower wood and horns,—soon joined by all the voices but the martial brass, ending with a soft echo of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... much esteemed by others,—and by himself. He combined two professions, in both of which he had been successful,—had been, and continued to be, at the time in which we speak of him. I will introduce him to the reader in the present tense as Rector of Bowick, and proprietor and head-master of the school established in the village of that name. The seminary at Bowick had for some time enjoyed a reputation under him;—not that he had ever himself used so new-fangled and unpalatable a word in speaking ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the response. "If 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; I always ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... of expression. The "lads" of Ludlow are so human to him, the hawthorn and broom on the Severn shores are so fragrant with associations, he cannot help but compose under a kind of imaginative wizardry of exultation, even when the immediate subject is grim or grotesque. In many of these brief, tense poems the reader confronts a mask, as it were, with appalling and distorted lineaments; but behind it the poet smiles, perhaps sardonically, but smiles nevertheless. In the real countenance there are no tears or grievances, but a quizzical, humorous expression which ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... three of the staunchest Hardy men relieved Farnum of his charge in the cloak room and took care of the two doubtfuls. The seats of Bentley, Miller, Pitts and Killen were still vacant, and there was a tense watchfulness in the room that showed rumors were flying of a break ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... was a tense one to the entire party, and John moved forward, placing himself directly ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... rest—when their hands were empty, their nerves and muscles relaxed, their hearts calm and their brains cool; now she saw them when their hands held the weapons of their warfare—the tools of their craft—when their nerves and muscles were braced for the strain of the conflict or tense with the effort of toil; when their hearts beat high with the zeal of their purpose and their brains were fired with the excitement of their efforts. She had known them only in the hours of their dreaming—when, ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... it, when they say unto me in presenting the relics to kiss, Centuplum accipies, that is, that for one penny I should take a hundred; for accipies is spoken according to the manner of the Hebrews, who use the future tense instead of the imperative, as you have in the law, Diliges Dominum, that is, Dilige. Even so, when the pardon-bearer says to me, Centuplum accipies, his meaning is, Centuplum accipe; and so doth Rabbi Kimy and Rabbi ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... terrific jump. Would Blizzard take it? A reassuring pressure of a knee was all the inspiration the horse needed. They seemed to rush through the air. Then they were sliding down the bank in a cloud of dust, Blizzard tense and stiff-legged. By a miracle, they reached the bottom unhurt, and without losing a second, Kid Wolf headed his faithful mount into a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... corner, tied him securely to a ring in the wall. His bonds were loose enough to permit him to lie down on the hard earth and stone floor, but he sat with his back against the wall, wide awake, every nerve tense and quivering. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the usual close shaves and tense moments, but finally they achieve their end, and return ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... realise," he said in a low, tense voice, "that since I met you every racing minute has been sweeping me ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... sink down into your ears" was His forceful prelude on this occasion, in Galilee. Then followed the reiterated prediction, spoken in part in the present tense as though already begun in fulfilment: "The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day." We read with some surprize that the apostles still failed to understand. Luke's ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... in the private car at the end of the row of coaches. No noise had come from its occupants during even the worst, or the best, of it. First tense attention and then when it was over and the superintendent had ridden away, three pairs of eyes which, turned upon each ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... I don't think about it either way." He added, after tense compression of the lips; "I'm all alone in the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... whose body, however, was not found for some time, where it had been forced into a cranny by the stream; and in strange corroboration of the tale Philip Hexton had to tell, his great muscular hand still grasped the big iron bar, round which the muscles were as tense as steel. ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... and stared curiously, the canvas bucket partly tilted and dripping its contents to the deck. The dying man beat a tattoo on the hatch with his heels, straightened out his legs, and stiffened in one great tense effort, and rolled his head from side to side. Then the muscles relaxed, the head stopped rolling, and a sigh, as of profound relief, floated upward from his lips. The jaw dropped, the upper lip lifted, and two rows of tobacco-discoloured ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... exclaimed Curlie in a tense whisper. "Why, that's what they use for S.O.S. at sea! It's criminal. Endangers every ship in distress. Five years in prison for ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... Tense between the two was the enmity that ever sunders age and youth—age seeking to keep its sovereignty of life by inculcating blind respect and reverence, and youth rebellious, demanding its own with the passion of hot blood ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... they went out he left a half-eaten meal and presently might have been observed on a swift-rolling street-car. He mumbled as he blankly surveyed palm-bordered building sites along the way. He was again rehearsing a tense scene with the Montague girl. In actor parlance he was giving himself all the best of it. But they were new lines he mumbled over and over. And he was no longer eluded by the title of that book he remembered on the library shelf at Simsbury. Sitting in the cafeteria ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... citer textuellement? L'exactitude! l'exactitude! C'est la premiere vertu du bibliographe; on ne saurait trop le repeter a M. Dibdin." CRAPELET. vol. iv. 124. Quaere tamen? Ought not M. Crapelet to have said "il mourrira?" The sense implies the future tense: But ... how inexpiable the offence of making a French Academician speak bad French!!—as if every reader of common sense would not have given me, rather than the Abbe Betencourt, credit for ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... 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 to ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... not forgiven me," she said. "But, Mr. Linden, I only spoke of what I had seen. I had been unfortunate; and I am sure I needn't confine myself to the past tense! I knew ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... tense and fearful moment—but very thrilling. We both had our eyes shut tight. I heard the atlas fall open with a bang. I wondered what page it was: England or Asia. If it should be the map of Asia, so much would depend on where that pencil ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... minutes were approved. The regular business of the meeting forthwith began, and the atmosphere, which had been a little tense, relaxed. As if to show his ease and familiarity with an unusual situation, Mr. Mowry cut off a large piece of tobacco, crossed his hands behind his head, and lifted his right leg on the top of the small oak desk which was supposed to contain pen and paper ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... clergyman sighed and closed the volume of "Browne on The Thirty-nine Articles," and pushed it from him on the table. He could not tell what the words meant; he could not keep his mind tense enough to follow an argument of three sentences. It must be that he was very tired. He looked into the fire, which was burning badly, and about the bare, little, dusty study, and realized suddenly that he was tired all the way through, body and soul. And swiftly, by way ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... 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 beneath ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... A good deal of manipulation has been needlessly employed for the purpose of placing these heretics as early as possible; but nothing definite can be extracted from Irenaeus's notices of them. Hippolytus's use of the present tense, in speaking of them, renders it probable that ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... God. "Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." To cleanse ourselves is shown by the Greek tense to be an act done definitely and once for all. It means, therefore, to put ourselves under the conditions of cleansing by a definite act of consecration to God. It means to place ourselves in co-operation with the Holy Spirit, who is distinctively ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... I grow up I'll have no nurse, Nor yet a governess; And lessons will not bother me When I grow up, I guess. I'll pay no heed to proper nouns, Nor yet to mood nor tense"— Here nurse put in: "When you grow up Let's ...
— Pages for Laughing Eyes • Unknown
... 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 for himself in accordance with the dictates of the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... was the conflict of which I have spoken. There was that in him, which we name the Will, which continued tense and strong, striving against despair. Neither his mind nor his heart could help him in that Night; his mind informed him that he had sinned deadly by presumption, his heart found nowhere God to love; and all that, though he told himself that God was loveable, ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... matters; but as time passed little grievances accumulated on both sides until the relation between the people and the soldiers was one of settled hostility, and at last, after two years, the tense situation culminated in the famous Boston Massacre. On the evening of March 5, 1770, there was an alarm of fire, false as it turned out, which brought many people into the streets, especially boys, whom one may easily imagine ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Patry who appears in Wace as having entertained Earl Harold as a guest at the time of his stay in Normandy. And we did get to La Lande-Patry another day. Strange to say, while De Caumont spoke of traces of the castle in the past tense, Joanne, so much later, spoke of them in the present. At any rate, the thing was worth trying; one might at least muse on the spot. We found the place a little way from Flers, a church and a few houses, called ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... overhead and nothing happened. Three more followed and still no bombs fell, and then the tense incident was closed by the calling out of the order of the march and, in squads of four, the battalion wheeled into the road ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... yellow lights. Life had changed for me during the last few weeks. The old, placid days of content were over; already I was in a new world, a world of bigger things, where the great game was being played, with the tense desperateness of those who gamble with life and death. I had not sought the change! Rather it had been forced upon me. I had no ambitions to gratify; the old life had pleased me very well. I had quitted ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the position is unassailable. But the scope of the argument has, of course, its fixed limits. The inner light can only testify to spiritual truths. It always speaks in the present tense; it cannot guarantee any historical event, past or future. It cannot guarantee either the Gospel history or a future judgment. It can tell us that Christ is risen, and that He is alive for evermore, but not that He rose again the third day. It can tell us that the gate of everlasting ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... taut, tense; snug, close-fitting; (Colloq.) close, penurious, stingy, parsimonious; (Colloq.) stringent; (Slang) ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the baboons sitting together in a mass at the farther side. But not for long; for as we waited there was a movement among the animals, and two long files of them left the main body and came slowly towards the part in which we lay hidden. Tense with apprehension we sat and gazed, expecting that they would make a dash for us. They kept steadily on, however: two long lines of huge beasts a few yards apart, and between them a bigger one that walked almost erect. Within twenty ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... fully an hour farther along, and the tense strain of suspense was beginning to tell upon the man who sat thoughtful and alone in the second-floor office of the Crow's Nest, when Benson ran up to report the situation ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... that Hugh's professional life had brought him was a friendship with his father; their relations had been increasingly tense all through the undergraduate days; if Hugh had not been of a superficially timorous temperament, disliking intensely the atmosphere of displeasure, disapproval, or misunderstanding, among those ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... tense hush which had fallen on the crowd at the restarting of the wheel, Sally's laugh rang out with an embarrassing clearness. It had a marked effect on all those within hearing. There is something almost of religious ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... intermittently with bonds in vain endeavor to free myself; as much, however, that I might hasten to her protection as that I might escape the fate which had been planned for me. And while I was thus engaged and had for the moment forgotten my apprehensions concerning prowling beasts, I was startled into tense silence by a distinct and unmistakable sound coming from the dark corridor farther toward the heart of the cliff—the sound of padded feet ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Carabas,' by Harriet Prescott Spofford, is a work of unique quality, being really a poem in the guise of a prose novel. The thought is tense and sublimated, and the style glowing, musical and polished. There is abundant invention in the story, and nothing of common-place and indolent imitation which in the case of ordinary raconteurs contributes ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... spoke. Thus, without art or rhetoric, roughly dragged forth by head and ears, came his momentous confession into the world. Gnulemah had more than once striven to check it, but in vain. When he had come to an end, and stood tense and quivering as a bowstring whose arrow has just ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... I, "True!" Yet, even as I spake, stood all tense and rigid, straining my ears to catch again the words of this hateful song. But now my dear lady catches my hand and, peering up at me in the dimness, presently draws me into the outer cave where the ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a step nearer, and the light from some torch close at hand flashed onto his uplifted face. She could see it clearly, tense and set, the ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... his hands over his chair-arms, his mind and muscle tense; but at that unbelievable sight, he fell back in his chair relaxed, staring and dazed like one who sees a goddess in ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Betty, a little tense figure in the bottom of the boat, uttered a gasp of dismay, as Allen began carefully to lower himself ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... There was a tense silence while Julia Cloud struggled for words to break through her unwilling lips, and then quite softly ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... officer could not make it out. With the instinct of the true cavalryman and a particular indisposition to the discharge of firearms, he drew his saber. The man on foot made no movement in answer to the challenge. The situation was tense and a bit dramatic. Suddenly the moon burst through a rift in the clouds and, himself in the shadow of a group of great oaks, the horseman saw the footman clearly, in a patch of white light. It was Trooper Dunning, unarmed and bareheaded. The object at his feet resolved itself into a ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... seated on a sofa in a shadowy corner, holding both Miss Scarlett's hands in his; saw the girl frantically, but in vain, trying to take them from his grasp. He sat like a statue, with his eyes set wide and unwinking like a corpse's, every limb and muscle rigid, his body tense and immovable as a stone image. The sight was terrible. It was as if the living man had been transformed in an instant into a ghastly trap, to catch those soft, warm, pretty hands! She ceased her efforts to break away, but stood white ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... The tense expression of her face relaxed; her mouth drooped; she lay back in the sofa-corner and shut her eyes. For what seemed a long time, there was no sound in the room. Maurice thought she had fallen asleep. But at his first light movement ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession. He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and again, to watch ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... sounds about her. Every muscle in her lithe young body was strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the delight ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... for Brinnaria a tense and anxious period of waiting. Flexinna obtained her parents' permission and remained with her friend. The entire household continued in good health and there was nothing to distract t he two from their dread on the one hand that ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... began jigging. Jig, jig, jig, from side to side, with short, heavy jerks, he worked his way back and forth twice the length of the pool. Chichester knew it was dangerous. Any one of these sharp blows might snap the leader or the hook. But he couldn't stop it. There was nothing to do but wait, with tense nerves, until ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... anniversary. He looked, and he probably was, the master. Surrounded as he was by the celebrities of science and the ornaments of London drawing-rooms, there was none who had quite the same kind of intellectual ascendancy which belonged to him. The square forehead, the square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing dark eyes, the impression of something more than strength he gave you, an impression of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with the gentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength—all this belonged to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... he would say, speaking of his own tongue, "look at this teffle of a language! It has no present tense to its verbs: the people they are always looking forward to a melancholy future or looking back to a melancholy past. In the name of Kott, hef we not got ourselves to live? This day we live in is better than any day that wass before or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Followed a tense silence; then Mrs Conolly came to her and put an arm round her. But the girl stiffened under the touch of sympathy implying mutual knowledge of that which belonged only ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of the Tola and on the roads between Urga and Ude. The Chinese carefully concealed the truth by preventing anybody from passing westward from Urga. However, rumours existed and troubled all. The atmosphere became more and more tense, while the relations between the Chinese on the one side and the Mongolians and Russians on the other became more and more strained. At this time the Chinese Commissioner in Uliassutai was Wang Tsao-tsun and his advisor, Fu Hsiang, both very young ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... this unuttered petition, a tense cord seemed to snap suddenly in his brain, . . a rush of tears came to his relief, and through their salt and bitter haze the face of Sah-luma appeared to melt into a thin and spiritual brightness,—a mere aerial outline of what it had once been, . . the glazed dark eyes ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... speech, warned him that she was not telling him all of the trouble which oppressed her. Her fears were more definite than she had given him as yet reason to understand. There was not enough in what she had said to account for the tense clasp of her hands, and the glint of terror ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... old-fashioned, whimsical ways, her small defiances that covered up a good deal of shyness, over the littleness and grace that made him want to pick her up and pet her and protect her, he said . . . Marjorie could remember, even yet, with pleasure, the lovely things he had said to her in that tense way he had on the rare occasions when he wasn't laughing. She had fought off marrying him till the very last minute. And then the very day before the regiment sailed she had given in, and the other two—married two ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... 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 a most thrilling inventory of the principal classes of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... tense moment. Every one of the adventurers felt it, and all but Tom grasped their weapons with tighter grips. They were ready to spring out as soon as a landing was made. Tom managed the machinery in the dark, for he knew every wheel, gear and lever, and could have put his hand on any one with ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that in the person of Indian Charley ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to be the best thing possible: I sat quite still, and screamed for mother as loud as I could. She must have known from my voice that something serious was the matter, because in a second, just as the puma's muscles were growing tense for the final spring, there was a sudden crash of broken boughs behind me, a feeling as if a whirlwind was going by, and my mother shot past me straight at the puma. I had no idea that she could go so fast. The puma was ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... decision of his whole legal career did more excitement center. While the justices were considering the evidence public meetings were being held, not only in Toronto but in other Canadian cities. Newspapers were furiously defending the fugitive and the judgment of the court was being awaited with tense interest. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... 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
... hands to get the mug to his lips, mouthing the stinging liquid in dull despair. Only, instead of bringing nausea with it, the stuff settled his stomach, cleared his head, with an after glow with which he managed to relax from the tense state of endurance which filled ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... stairway, nobody appeared. The wind was still, the sea like glass; not a sound anywhere. Struck by something of strangeness in the uncanny silence, Jim sat up and called "Ahoy, Chamberlain!" There was no answer. But in the tense stillness there was a sound, and it came from below—the sound of a man's ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... language which may for ordinary purposes be learned as easily as French or German; this language, also, having its grammar and its pronunciation, to be conquered or acquired only by persistence in irksome exercise—an error in a form being as entirely and simply an error as a mistake in a tense, and an ill-drawn line as reprehensible as ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that the lean, ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... them with a great fear. But they had little time for thought, for at once nine hundred pounds of quivering horse flesh, bone, and sinewy muscle leaped out of the darkness into their midst, and reared wildly when suddenly checked by a pair of strong, tense arms. With head tossed high, and champing madly at his bits, Midnight reeled back almost upon his haunches in such a manner that an inexperienced rider would have been unhorsed in an instant. But Glen was ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... understanding and compassionate eyes upon her friend. She had seen her growing a little thinner and more tense everyday; had seen her putting on spectacles, and fighting anaemia with tonics, and yielding unresistingly to shabbiness. Would she always be speeding breathlessly from one classroom to another, palpitantly yet sadly seeking for the knowledge ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie |
