"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 so largely to swell the bulk of results. The narrative fascinates ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... the Ironworker with the irresistible attraction of antipathy. The verro stood silent and as if abstracted among his admirers, who formed a circle around him. He seemed not to see the others, fixing his eyes on Margalida with a tense expression, as if he would conquer her with this stare which inspired fear in men. When the Little Chaplain, with the enthusiasm of youth, approached the verro, he deigned to smile, seeing in the boy ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was, and in one or other identity she could be my friend or my powerful enemy, could aid my country powerfully if she had the whim; or damage it irreparably if she had the desire. But—yes—as I studied her that keen, tense, vital ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... minutes—then liberty and life. The better to guard his movements, his gaze fell. Out and down went his right hand, then his left, as his lithe body slid forward. Again he glanced up, paused—and on the instant every muscle of his tense body went suddenly lax. Instead of the closed eyes and sleeping face he had expected, two steady eyes were giving him back look for look. There had not been a motion; the face was yet that of a sleeper; the chest still rose and fell steadily; ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... 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 ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... informed that the good people lived west of the tracks. East of the tracks it was different. The past tense is used with a full appreciation of the necessity for grammatical construction, for times have changed in San Pasqual, since it is no longer encumbered with the incubus that made this story possible—Harley P. Hennage, the town gambler and ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... resembles that of death. (7/9.) Now the Odynerus, the Anthidium, the Eucera, the Ammophila, and all the hymenoptera which Fabre has observed sleeping at the fall of night, "suspended in space solely by the strength of their mandibles, their bodies tense, their limbs retracted, without exhaustion or collapse"; and the larva of the Empusa, "which for some ten months hangs to a twig by its limbs, head downwards": do not these present a surprising analogy with those hypnotized persons ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... the fruits, the very essence of the delicious languor of the place that made our steps to falter. A bird shot a bright flame of color through the checkered light ahead of us. Suddenly a sound brought us to a halt, and we stood in a tense and wondering silence. The words of a song, sung carelessly in a clear, girlish voice, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the transition from the conditional to the future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things—of man, of institutions, of speech, ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... motion and fluidity of the music delighted him with a strange exasperation. There was something tense, exasperated to the point of intolerable anger, in his good-humored breast, as he played the finely-spun peace-music. The more exquisite the music, the more perfectly he produced it, in sheer bliss; ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... predisposition to think of everything as the result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no definite parts of speech; any word can be used as any part of speech, depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not words used as verbs; there are four tenses—spatial-temporal present, things here-and-now; spatial present and temporal remote, things which were here at some other time; spatial remote and temporal present, things existing now somewhere else, and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... his beard he plucked with merriment that jangled horribly on the girl's tense nerves. Suddenly he grew serious. For the first time he seemed to take clear notice of ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, has neither movement nor supporting strength. In the ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... with commanding rhyme— Soul calm, like thee, yet fain, like thee, to grow By double increment, above, below; Soul homely, as thou art, yet rich in grace like thee, Teaching the yeomen selfless chivalry That moves in gentle curves of courtesy; Soul filled like thy long veins with sweetness tense. By every godlike sense Transmuted from the four ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... subjacent tissues, and lymph vessels are thereby torn across. The cyst is usually situated between the skin and fascia, and contains clear or blood-stained serum. At first it is lax and fluctuates readily, later it becomes larger and more tense. The treatment consists in drawing off the contents through a hollow needle and applying firm pressure. Apart from injury, lymph cysts are met with as the result of the distension of lymph spaces and vessels (lymphangiectasis); ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... a few words now about the place itself. Greshamsbury Park was a fine old English gentleman's seat—was and is; but we can assert it more easily in past tense, as we are speaking of it with reference to a past time. We have spoken of Greshamsbury Park; there was a park so called, but the mansion itself was generally known as Greshamsbury House, and did not stand in the park. We may perhaps best describe it by saying that the village ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... the up-spouting column of flames the airship winged her way. Tense and alert, Tom sat at the wheel guiding his craft with her load of fire-defying chemicals. Behind him were Ned, Mr. Damon and Mr. Baxter, ready to drop the ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... smoke. 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 in Ten Bow. That's the Big ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... action," than by the dramatic speech or monologue, which imitates action as focussed in a particular mind. And Browning's dramatic genius found its most natural and effective outlet in the wealth of implicit drama which he concentrated in these salient moments tense with memory and hope. The insuppressible alertness and enterprise of his own mind tells upon his portrayal of these intense moments. He sees passion not as a blinding fume, but as a flame, which enlarges the area, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... 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 ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... carried baskets of fruit or washing upon the crown of her pate since her youth; her glorious bosom was like a bed of lotus buds in the southern wind; she moved like a deer, or a snake, or a bacchanalian dancer, as you will; but in any case in a way which in the present tense caused the Principal to mourn in secret, and in the future brought the condemnation of women and the eyes of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... to dances and suppers at the houses of college acquaintances. Sometimes she one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life's slipping past, she turned into a bacchanal, her tender eyes excited, her throat tense, as she slid down ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... too much just now of their rights. There is a decadent form of chivalry or at least a sexuality that perpetuates conventions and interests that on the whole seem to interfere with progress. Jealousy and in general the tense emotional relations between the sexes obscure larger issues. Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at least disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should be perfect harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive activities of the highest nature. The education of women, whether for the ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... pain, sorrow in silence endured; Fighting, at last I have fallen, and sought the breast of the Mother,— Quite cast down I have crept close to the broad sweet earth. Lo, out of failure triumph! Renewed the wavering courage, Tense the unstrung nerves, steadfast the faltering knees Weary no more, nor faint, nor grieved at heart, nor despairing, Hushed in the earth's green lap, lulled ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The moment was tense with danger. Heedless of the black looks of Dolph, Tom dug his heels into his pony's flanks, ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... her to him—crushed her in upon the ache of his chest. His muscles set hard and unyielding; at that moment he was a tense, vivid body of flesh, without a mind; his blood, alive and conscious, running towards her. He remained perfectly still, locked about Helena, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial acquiescent frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... visualizer—the stereographic device, in parallel with Solon's own brain recorder, which projected a three-dimensional picture into the "viewing-area" or dark space of the cabinet. Crane and Dunark, tense and silent, looked on in strained suspense as, minute after minute, the silent battle of wills raged. Upon one side was a horrible and gigantic brain, of undreamed of power; upon the other side a strong man, fighting for all that life holds dear, wielding against that monstrous ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fear emotions. Fear is unpleasant. In addition to its unpleasantness there is a multitude of sensations that come from the body. The hair stands on end, the heart throbs, the circulation is hastened, breathing is interrupted, the muscles are tense. This peculiar mass of sensations, blended with the unpleasantness, gives the characteristic emotion of fear. But we need not go into an analysis of the various emotions of love, hate, envy, grief, jealousy, etc. The reader can ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... at each other, heads forward, bodies tense; as they glared the fury of betrayal grew ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... speaking. No one could tell when he had begun. He stood slightly crouched, with his hands on the edge of the table. His face was absolutely blank and expressionless, while his eyes were fixed on the officer with a tense, glassy stare. His voice was cold and monotonous, without rise or fall, halt or intonation, and seemed to be more the wail of the spirit rising from somewhere deep within him than the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... amazing skill, the cavalry swung forward en route for the open country, staff officers galloped along the lanes, and in a few short moments the whole atmosphere had changed from pastoral peace to the tense excitement of military activity. Every few moments an enemy plane came over to have a look at Khan Yunus, though it is doubtful whether they saw very much, for an army could easily have hidden itself between ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... him moving from room to room, and presently, as I waited in hushed, tense watchfulness, he came in, depositing the grip upon the table. His ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... sidewise from the ground and neighed piteously. Madwell stepped forward, drew his revolver and shot the poor beast between the eyes, narrowly observing its death-struggle, which, contrary to his expectation, was violent and long; but at last it lay still. The tense muscles of its lips, which had uncovered the teeth in a horrible grin, relaxed; the sharp, clean-cut profile took on a look of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... beside the man, his voice a tense whisper in the musty cell. "I mean that right now you are practically dead. You may not know it, but you are. You walk into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... O——, 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 ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the conviction that there is no such thing as time—surely there can be no time here within Pellucidar, where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but our recent experiences seem ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... well, and more truly, be taken into account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett. "There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will modify everything. This is just what ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... 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 should ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... crowded sidewalk a creation in white hurtled past us. One glance at the tense face in the flickering arc light was enough for Kennedy. He pulled my arm and we turned and followed at ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... stylus, afforded a time record in quarter seconds. Upon this tambour, placed within comfortable reach of the reactor's hand, the various rhythm types were beaten out. The impact of the finger-tip on the tense surface of the drum gave forth a faint and pleasing but at the same time clearly discernible and distinctly limited sound, which responded with audible variations of intensity to the differing stresses involved in the process of tapping, and which I have considered preferable to the short, sharp ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... he had pushed her arm from his shoulder, and stood in tense and trembling silence, looking up, as though listening for an answer ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... heads, and he started violently back. In the shadow of the room stood a great shadowy figure-silent. They saw the face dimly in the half-light, with unexpressive dark patches under the pent-house brows. Every muscle in Raut's body suddenly became tense. When could the door have opened? What had he heard? Had he heard all? What had he ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... to him every male that openeth the womb, both of man and beast," from the time of the death of the first-born of the Egyptians. The impropriety of ex post facto legislation, the reason assigned for this law, and the grammatical meaning of the language in the present tense, all combine to show that the law is prospective; and the number of the first-born, twenty-two thousand two hundred and seventy-five, afterward given in Numbers, shows plainly that this is the meaning, being about the proper increase of thirteen months. But the bishop ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... I was last up. I'd begun waggling as usual, body swaying, shoulders rigid, muscles tense, dreading to swing and wondering whether the result would be a schlaff or a top, when—well, I simply cannot describe the sensation. Something came over me; I don't know what. As if someone had waved a magic wand above my head. I stopped swaying, relaxed, felt the weight of the club head in ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... of the preterit plural is never different from the stem of the preterit singular; hence these verbs have only three distinctive tense-stems, or principal parts: viz., (1)the present indicative, (2)the preterit indicative, and (3)the ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... that went on day after day for weeks, sometimes dull with legal formalities, sometimes tense with "human" interest. And, day after day, the three girls occupied their favored seats beside the judge, listening to the evidence of the great conspiracy against Society, watching the prisoners—a sorry lot of men generally—and staring haughtily down at the jammed ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... delicacies hitherto unheard of in that land! In the other box was an object almost as unfamiliar as an oyster can,—an oblong, smooth, and now partially frost-covered object with tinfoil about its upper end. A certain tense ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... enemy had divided and fled. For a few moments there was a strange, tense silence. Then ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... to retrospective judgments, using the past tense, what these judgments utter WAS true, even tho no past thinker had been led there. We live forwards, a Danish thinker has said, but we understand backwards. The present sheds a backward light on the world's previous ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Count Victor, questioning, but he got no answer. Doom came up to him and peered at him as if he had been a ghost, a tear upon his cheek, something tense and troubled in his countenance, that showed him for the moment incapable of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... weeks passed, the situation became more tense. All the principals in the drama were at the capital—Adams as Secretary of State, Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury, Clay as Speaker of the House, Jackson as Senator—and the city was filled with followers who busied themselves ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... cheer-leader, leaped upon the platform, raised a megaphone to his mouth, and shouted, "A regular cheer for Sanford—a regular cheer for Sanford." Then he lifted his arms above his head, flinging the megaphone aside with the same motion, and waited tense and rigid until the students were on their feet. Suddenly he turned into a mad dervish, twisting, bending, gesticulating, leaping, running back and forth across the platform, shouting, and finally throwing his hands above his head and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... He walked away. He was quite warm and tense now—almost nervous. It was quite clear to him that he had done or was contemplating perhaps a very treacherous thing. Under the current code of society he had no right to do it. It was against the rules, as they were understood by everybody. ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... now correctly describe what, at so small a distance from the days of Luther and Calvin, may be supposed to have been the feeling among the Polish Unitarians; whereas Dr. Pusey's jacet (lies low, in the present tense) does as certainly partake somewhat of the grandiloquent. That no "boast," however, was intended, becomes probable, when we consider that the distich was designed to convey a feeling of reverence towards Socinus rather ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... motioned the innkeeper to enter. Following closely behind, he saw the innkeeper start with surprise at the sight of the two inmates of the room. Mr. Cromering was seated at the table, but Superintendent Galloway was standing up with his back to the fireplace. There was a moment's tense silence before ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... nominations, in due course presented its slate as usual, but here the real battle began. Bradley suddenly found himself tense with interest. His ancestry must have been a race of orators and politicians, for the atmosphere of the convention roused him till it ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... constipation with persistent vomiting. The lump may be tense, hard and irreducible. Then there is faintness, collapse; severe abdominal pain, complete constipation, with no gas passing, then vomiting, at first of food, then of the bile-stained fluid and finally of fluid with a bowel odor. All these symptoms ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... 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 ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... practice she craved it, and expected it, and was irritated if she did not get it. But, as she realized how unattractive this weakness was, she usually took perhaps more pains than does the average person to conceal it. That day her nerves were too tense for petty precautions. However, Mrs. Colman was too busy inspecting the details of Miss Hastings' toilet ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... her chair and brought the letter to Constance close to the light. She read it through, calmly, without haste or excitement. Roger's hands gripped the arms of his chair and his face turned ashen. His whole body was tense. ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... There was a tense silence while Julia Cloud struggled for words to break through her unwilling lips, and then ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... against its loss of Manchuria. The League sent a commission (the Lytton Commission), which condemned Japan's action, but nothing further happened, and China indignantly broke away from her association with the Western powers (1932-1933). In view of the tense European situation (the beginning of the Hitler era in Germany, and the Italian plans of expansion), the Western powers did not want to fight Japan on China's behalf, and without that nothing more could be done. They pursued, indeed, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... to bound over the billowy waters of the lake towards their destination, with all the speed which strong arms and nerves made tense with excitement could impart, let us anticipate their arrival, to note what befell the objects of their anxieties, whom we so abruptly left in their perils from the fire, to bring up the other incidents of the day having an equal bearing on the story, with ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... she paused upon the threshold, tense, thrilled, apparently speechless. Tom was reminded of a trim little wren poised upon the edge of its nest. This time it was more difficult to counterfeit an exclamation of joy, but the catch in "Bob's" voice, the moisture in her eyes, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a little space of very tense silence, during which my eyes roved to the little silver traveling-clock on the mantel, and then I said in a voice ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... for a more ecstatic burst. You purposely prolong his suspense; he is all atilt, expecting the delightful surprise. You drawl out each word; you drone the ditty over and over again, till every tiny nerve is tense with expectation. "Boo!" at last, and over he goes, in the complete abandon of baby glee; his cherry lips are wide asunder, his head hangs powerless back, and the "Hicketty-hicks" burst tumultuously from his little, beating throat. And ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... 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 devil, ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... to put it that way because Scandinavian grammar is not a strong point with me, and my knowledge of the verbs is as yet limited to the present tense of the infinitive mood. Besides, this was no time to worry about grace ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... "nerve yourself. I'm afraid it's going to be worse than I feared. It seems that there were actually six of them—only one is not quite finished. The competition was very tense—and they all arrived in my absence. Old man, hold ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tense silence for a minute. Through all the bewildering and overwhelming thoughts that were crashing through Broussard's brain, but one thing was clear and unshakable, the deathless loyalty that a ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at the top of ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith), bastards (Antony; Le Fils Naturel), ex-convicts (John Gabriel Borkman), people with ideas in advance of their time (Ghosts), and a host of other characters that are usually considered dangerous to society. In order that the dramatic struggle might be tense, the dramatists have been forced to strengthen the cases of their characters so as to suggest that, perhaps, in the special situations cited, the outcasts were right and society was wrong. Of course it would be impossible to base a play upon the thesis that, in a ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... dropped her embroidery upon the bench and was looking upward, her head thrown back, the muscles of her arching neck tense and drawn. She seemed wrapt in ecstacy, as if visions of the past were filing by in front of her. Suddenly ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... passion as when Jeremiah speaks in his own person. The Prophet is very sure that his God is Love, and he hears that love utter itself in tones of yearning for the love of men, and even of agony for their sin and misery. There is, too, a singular prayer of his which is tense with the instinct, that God would surely be to Israel what Jeremiah had resolved and striven to be—not a far-off God who occasionally visited or passed through His people, but One in their midst sharing their pain; not ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... 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
... hurry—no earthly hurry. He felt sure of it. In the silence and the blackness—in the tense, steamy atmosphere of expectancy—he felt perfectly at ease, although he knew, too, that there was superstition to be reckoned with—and that is something which a white man finds hard to weigh and cope with, ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of an old bed- sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack" always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half expecting to see ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... low and laughing and warm with a sweet friendliness, but they crashed through the room like the breath of a swarm of furies. Andrew Sevier's face went white and drawn on the instant, and every muscle in his body stiffened to a tense rigidity. His dark eyes narrowed themselves to slits ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... tones mingled with the blue wreaths that 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 Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... of little gasps, emanating, apparently, from nowhere, from no one, fall into the next pause. ANTHONY is the color of chalk. GLORIA'S lips are parted and her level gaze at the old man is tense and frightened. There is not one smile in the room. Not one? Or does CROSS PATCH'S drawn mouth tremble slightly open, to expose the even rows of his thin teeth? He ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was in tense whispers, and the listening was now of the same tenseness. Two khaki-clad Sammies stood on the alert in the muddy ditch, dignified by the title, "trench," and tried to pierce the darkness that was like a pall of black ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... as frequently elsewhere, the syllable ya is introduced merely to complete the metre. Ordinarily it is the sign of the imperfect tense, and has other meanings (see the Vocabulary), but in many instances does not admit ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... pretended to be four or five hundred years more ancient than the matters it speaks of, refers to, them as facts; for in the case of pursuing them unto Dan, and of the kings that reigned over the children of Israel; not even the flimsy pretence of prophecy can be pleaded. The expressions are in the preter tense, and it would be downright idiotism to say that a man could ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... affair, collectively and in detail. He devoted his chief attention, however, to Big Waller. He "caught" that gigantic Yankee in every conceivable action and attitude. He photographed him, we might almost say, with his legs apart, the hatchet high above his head, and every muscle tense and rigid, preliminary to a sweeping blow. He "took" him with a monstrous pile of logs on his brawny shoulder; he portrayed him resting for a moment in the midst of his toil; he even attempted to delineate him tumbling over one of the logs, and hurling ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... all betrayed a friendly interest, though they were not at all persons that mattered, being of the semi-leisured class who each day went down, as they put it, "to see Number Six go through." There was thus a rather tense air of expectancy when the train pulled in. From one of the Pullman night coaches emerged the Honourable George, preceded by a blackamoor or raccoon bearing bags and bundles, and followed by another uniformed raccoon and a white guard, also bearing bags and ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 whiteness ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... stiff collar Lord Saint Sinnes looks down at her—with something of the deep intuition which makes him the finest steeplechaser in England. Perhaps he notes the quiver of the lip, the sinews drawn tense about her throat. Such silent signals of distress are his business. Certainly he notes the little shiver of abject fear which passes through the girl's slight form as they pass out of the room together. Their departure is noted ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... I remember 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 and ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... 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 ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... are tense and damp with the dews of thought. In that head you see the great future, careless of the black and white stones; and even when you turn to the voluptuous beauty of the mouth, the impression remains so strong, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a tense pause. The two at the center of the room were gazing straight at each other; and it seemed to Johnnie, wavering weakly against the table, that he ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the whir of a bell, the murmur of voices. Jean sat tense. Then as her caller entered, she got somewhat ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... approach of two horsemen from the Gully Crossing. They did not stop at the garden gate, but made for the usual station entrance at the back. One of them, lingering behind the other, gazed earnestly at Lady Bridget's tense little figure and bent head, poised in a listening attitude and conveying to him the impression that something momentous had happened or was about to happen. And just then, appalling shrieks, from the rear of the home, justified ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... little book again and read. He read steadily for a quarter of an hour in a monotonous, singsong voice, and John Minute slowly sat himself erect and listened with tense face and narrow eyelids to the record. He did not interrupt ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... and was evidently ready to tell Frankie exactly what he meant. But Frankie broke in, his voice low and tense. "Milt—" ...
— Vital Ingredient • Gerald Vance
... of duty. Dudley had used him as a guide, and the man had a dog-like devotion to 'the lieutenant' which counted with me. Also he didn't talk. I think he knew only four words. I flung orders at him and there would be first a shock of excitement, then a second of tense anxiety, then a radiant smile and the four words: 'C'est bien, Mon Capitaine.' I was ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... from my mind, for even more vividly than my earlier impressions of Con Darton, it marked the wizardry as well as the fearfulness of his power. A hundred times during that burial service the sound of a banged door and a rasped voice sounded in my ears and the sight of a tense, hurrying figure in a black dress and a bumpy red shawl moved before my eyes. The thin figure was lying there now and over it, his rusty black coat tails curving in the wind, like wings bent to trap the air, his gray eyes misty with emotion, hovered the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... With what hushed, tense expectation they would enter the chamber! Think of the mother's eyes watching Him. The very words that He spoke were like a caress. There was infinite tenderness in that 'Damsel!' from His lips, and so deep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... tense moment for both men; and tremendous in its possibilities. There was no shrinking in either now; no yielding. But, as it ever was, Jim took the lead after a ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... representation of the common events befalling us in these times, upon an appreciation of which this history depends, one turns at whiles a languishing glance toward the vast potential mood, pluperfect tense. For Nevil Beauchamp was on board the cutter, steering her, with Dr. Shrapnel and Lydiard in the well, and if an accident had happened to cutter or schooner, what else might not have happened? Cecilia gathered it from Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, whom, to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was how it came about that this devoted daughter, after days of exasperation and nights of anxiety, reached a point of tense determination. She would go and see the man's son, and say ... that afternoon, as she stood before the swinging glass on her high bureau, tying her bonnet-strings, she tried to think what she would say. She hoped God would give her words—polite words; "for I must ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... again and waited. The silence was so tense that it seemed to bear the impact of her pulses; it throbbed and quivered with pain. Outside, the sound of the pebbles, crunched under Pilkington's footsteps, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... doubt that you and the original of this picture are closely united by ties of consanguinity, for your resemblance to her is very striking. You spoke in the past tense, however, so I suppose the lady is ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... So tense was Eustace's concentration that he did not see Billie Bennett, seated in the front row. Billie had watched him enter with a little thrill of embarrassment. She wished that she had been content with one of the seats at the back. But her friend Jane Hubbard, ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... neck, the horses raced. Miss Prue's bonnet slipped and 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 the ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... with shut eyes, I mean to weld our faces—through the dense Incalculable darkness make pretense That she has risen from her reveries To mate her dreams with mine in marriages Of mellow palms, smooth faces, and tense ease Of every longing nerve of indolence,— Lift from the grave her quiet lips, and stun My senses with her kisses—drawl the glee Of her glad mouth, full blithe and tenderly, Across mine own, forgetful if is done The old love's awful dawn-time ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... wild noise of the college yells greeting the teams, the taunting horns that shattered the music of the rival bands, the shrill treble of gamins who had climbed over impossible fences, the hoarse bellow of the brown paper megaphones,—all this tumult had hushed suddenly into a tense, aching silence in which fingers dug into board seats and College hearts stopped beating when the teams faced each other ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... Crawshay's muscles tingled with the apprehension of danger. There was a smouldering light in the other's eyes, such a light as might gleam in the tiger's eyes before his spring. Crawshay's hand slipped to his hip pocket. So for a moment they remained. Then Jocelyn Thew shrugged his shoulders, and the tense moment was past. ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in an involuntary attitude of defiance. His arm was raised, his fist clinched, as if for a blow; his face uplifted with stern reprisal; then his arm dropped, his tense muscles relaxed. "I could not marry her if I did not give it up," he said. "I should not be worthy of her; there is no ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of in the past tense, as we speak of the dead, was not pleasant to Sir Francis, walking behind Geoffrey ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... "buried aour little Anny Mari'," and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all. And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various ladies, who, having conjugated the verb to live as far as the preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept himself so much out of the way as the master ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... already referring to the foolish Persian in the past tense; yet, in view of probable results, and in the stress of such violent circumstance, her anti-mortem sorrow might at ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... looking out over the fields. Only by the light of the moon could Douglas see his face, and he noticed that it was very haggard. But he could not see the fire of anger which was kindling in his eyes. Only when the bent form straightened itself with a jerk, and a tense arm was thrust out, did he fully realise the greatness of ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... my features to a deeper 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 ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Robert de Baudricourt awaiting my coming in the great hall, pacing restlessly to and fro. Bertrand was with him, and I saw by the tense expression upon his face that he was eager for my report. I gave him one quick glance upon entering, which I trow he read and understood; but to De Baudricourt I spoke with caution and with measured words, for he was a man whose scorn and ridicule were easily aroused, and I knew that ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... hoisted, and the beautifully-shaped cutter began to rush through the water at a rapid rate, leaving two long lines of foam in an ever-widening wake, while, like some gigantic sword-fish, she ploughed her way through the glittering sea. The sails bellied out tense and stiff, and the wind whistled as it seemed to sweep off the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... which candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quae erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia meant are those of the album iudicum who ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that, even since the first of August, 1834, the evils of West India emancipation on the lips of the advocates of slavery, or, as the most of them nicely prefer to be termed, the opponents of abolition, have remained in the future tense. The bad reports of the newspapers, spiritless as they have been compared with the predictions, have been traceable, on the slightest inspection, not to emancipation, but to the illegal continuance of slavery, under the cover of its legal substitute. Not the slightest reference to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... out on his tiptoes, encased himself in his mitt and turned, tense and alert. He had gone through his first ordeal triumphantly. No chances had come to him in the field, but at bat he had accidently succeeded in being hit, and though he had struck out the next time he had hit a ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... 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' which will annihilate ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... prize money. Marshall's decision was a strong assertion of the federal jurisdiction and power. The Governor of Pennsylvania, under sanction of the state legislature, called out the state militia to resist enforcement of the judgment of the Court. Matters were tense for a time and bloodshed seemed imminent but ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... looking at him when he awoke. Like a wild animal, all of him was awake the instant he opened his eyes. The first he saw was the parasol, strangely obtruded between him and the sky. He did not start nor move, though his whole body seemed slightly to tense. His eyes followed down the parasol handle to the tight-clutched little fingers, and along the arm to the child's face. Straight and unblinking, he looked into her eyes, and she, returning the look, was chilled and frightened by his glittering eyes, cold ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the only living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting that it WAS a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and leaders in action. Out of these came the speakers. One by one, they stepped into the clear space between the pillars. Such a man was cool and weighty, such a man was impassioned and persuasive. Now the tense crowd listened, hardly breathing, now it broke into wild applause. The speakers dealt with an approaching tempest, and with a gesture they checked off the storm clouds. "Protection for the manufacturing ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... level with his, revealing it bravely, perhaps defiantly. Its tense expression, with a few misery-laden lines, answered back to the inquiry of the nonchalant outsiders: 'Yes, I am his wife, his wife, the wife of the object over there, brought here to the hospital, shot in a saloon brawl.' And ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... 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 ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... after some minutes of tense expectancy, the cannon opened fire, and speedily gaps were seen in the white masses. Yet the crescent never slackened its advance, except when groups halted to fire their muskets at impossible ranges. Waving their flags and intoning their prayers, the Dervishes charged ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... brown eyes looked into the soft black ones for a full minute, then, with a long-drawn breath, the tense expression in the stranger's relaxed. "I see," said the weary voice. "You are used to having your way—just as he is. I'll have to let you because I haven't any strength left to fight with. You are wonderfully kind. But—I'm not a ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... very word to use in this connection," I observed, remembering the subtly provisional character of Marlow's long sojourn amongst us. From year to year he dwelt on land as a bird rests on the branch of a tree, so tense with the power of brusque flight into its true element that it is incomprehensible why it should sit still minute after minute. The sea is the sailor's true element, and Marlow, lingering on shore, was to me an object of incredulous commiseration like a bird, which, secretly, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... 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 shops, the results ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... jerk on the rope and noticed that now it was motionless, whereas before it had trembled and shifted as Rob moved along the shelf. Skookie was the first to divine what had happened. He pointed to the cord, now tense and stiff, and leaned out over the rim, peering down at the shelf where Rob ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... face turned a pasty hue, and the tip of his tongue slid along his puffed lips, but the lines of Faro Sam's face never changed, and his eyes retained the blank impassivity of a snake's as he slipped his cards. There was a sudden, tense silence. The girls pressed forward with hurried breathing and the men ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... 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
... he swiftly adjusted a beard that swept its sable flow down his youthful chest. Then he addressed us again, still in tense, hoarse accents. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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, as they looked out upon life, they talked ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... nations, Olive-skinned French with clipped moustaches, Almond-eyed like Paris apaches. Rosy French with their faces shining From joy of living and love of dining. Silent Spaniards, merry Italians, Nobles, commoners, saints, rapscallions; Russians tense with the quest of truth That maddens manhood and saddens youth; Learned Norwegians hale and limber, Brown from the barques new in with timber. Oregon men of six feet seven With backs from Atlas and hearts from Heaven. ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm. "Staerk!" he said. "Ja—strong, and with a strong heart. A man—ja! He ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... excited &c. v.; wrought up, up the qui vive[Fr], astir, sparkling; in a quiver &c. 821, in a fever, in a ferment, in a blaze, in a state of excitement; in hysterics; black in the face, overwrought, tense, taught, on a razor's edge; hot, red-hot, flushed, feverish; all of a twitter, in a pucker; with quivering lips, with tears in one's eyes. flaming; boiling over; ebullient, seething; foaming at the mouth; fuming, raging, carried ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... 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 other, ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... that it is cylindrical, consisting of an elongated kettle or wooden vessel, or perhaps a section of the hollow trunk of a tree about 10 inches in diameter and from 18 to 20 inches in length, over both ends of which rawhide is stretched while wet, so that upon drying the membrane becomes hard and tense, producing, when beaten, a very hard, loud tone, which may be heard at ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... steadily, the slender line was paid out, amid a tense silence on the part of the little group at the top of the canyou. After what seemed to them hours, a sharp call from the depths reached ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... shout to Johnny who was driving big-eyed, his lips pursed with the tense purpose that held him to his work. "Turn back and land at the rancho. We'll never make Los Angeles with those damned buzzards after us. I'll have to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... was reached. It was wide, marshy, edged with cowslips. It would take a long jump to clear it. Gething felt the back gather beneath him, the tense body flung into the air, the flight through space, then the landing well upon the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... did, Mr. Hamilton?" The detective suddenly leaned forward across his desk, his body tense, his eyes alight with fervid animation. "Are you sure Pennington Lawton ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... he heard voices—the voices of children, and toward him came two little girls, followed by a young lady. They drew near. Standing his ground, with muscles tense, Warburton glanced at the young lady's face, and could not doubt that this was Rosamund's sister; the features were much less notable than Rosamund's, but their gentle prettiness made claim of kindred with her. Forthwith he doffed his hat, and ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... as a dozen seconds or so of tense silence between them. She never once flinched. The cold question of her eyes seemed to burn its way into the man's composure. A fierce ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... steadier, now. The first great strain had subsided. He was cool, tense, now—though not a whit less determined to win at ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... is contrast always to this. I reason: I have lived as they in their inmost rites— they endure the tense nerves through the moment of ritual. I endure from moment to moment— days pass all ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... behind the hovel-wall of that dense female, Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell In tortoise-nakedness, Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof, And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls, ...
— Tortoises • D. H. Lawrence
... holly on the streets, and silver mistletoe; The surging, jeweled, ragged crowds forever come and go. And here a silken woman laughs, and there a beggar asks— And, oh, the faces, tense of lip, like mad and mocking masks. Who thinks of Bethlehem today, and one lone winter night? Who knows that in a manger-bed there breathed ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... so much better than she could have hoped for, both easier and more friendly. Eight years it lasted, then the husband died, and she mourned him with a sincere heart. She had learned to love his fine, thin-blooded nature which with a tense, egotistic, almost morbid love loved whatever belonged to it by ties of relationship or family, and cared nought for anything in all the great world outside, except for what they thought, what their opinion was—nothing else. After her husband's death she had lived chiefly for her ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... savin powder, which did not, however, produce any ill effect. When admitted she looked ill and pinched. The left thigh and leg were painful and edematous. The abdomen looked like that of the sixth month of pregnancy. The abdominal wall was tense, smooth, and without lineae albicantes. Palpation revealed a cystic immobile tumor, extending 2 inches above the umbilicus and apparently fixed by deep adhesions. The fetal parts could only be made out with ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in, and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Learn to apply readily the following principles of method: First, use the past tense in telling a story except in direct quotation. The rules of grammar require this, and it is an aid to clearness and effectiveness. For example, do not say, "So he goes" or "Then he says"; but say, "So he went" or "Then he said" (or, for variety, replied, growled, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... His jaw very tense, his back painfully stiff, Link strode heavily down the lane and out into the highroad. Chum, always eager for a walk with his god, frisked about ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... quivered when they spoke They've said brave things or tried to make a joke; Said it's not worse than trenches in the rain, Or pools of water on a chalky plain, Or bitter cold from which you stiffly woke, Or deep wet mud that left you hardly sane, Or the tense wait for "Fritz's master stroke." You seldom hear them talk of their "bad luck," And suffering has not spoiled their ready wit, And oh! you'd hardly doubt their fighting pluck, When each new operation shows their grit; Who never brag of blows for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various |
