"Alertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yards away, and was waiting for a favourable moment to charge, and, had he done so when we were in the thicket, he probably would have killed one of the party. My friend, who was an old hand, and of course saw the danger at a glance, cleared out of the thicket with wonderful alertness, and the rest were not slow to follow his example. We then passed round the upper side of the thicket, and came down upon the bull in the more open forest, and soon killed him. Just as we had done so, news came that a herd of bison was grazing on a ridge about half or three-quarters ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... the list of wounded," the surgeon said, as he looked after her. "She has been fighting a battle of some sort and has been hit pretty hard. Her expression has changed altogether. There was a brisk alertness about her before and she went about her work in a resolute business sort of way that was almost amusing in a girl of nineteen or twenty. It was easy to see that she had good health, plenty of sense, and an abundant confidence in herself. At one moment she would be lecturing her patients with ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... junior shows deference to the senior; the senior shows consideration for him. The salute is the ancient and universal privilege of fighting men. It is a recognition of a common fellowship in a proud profession. Saluting is an expression of courtesy, alertness, and discipline. The senior is as obliged to return it as the junior is to initiate it. In fact, in the Army particularly, it is not unusual to see the senior salute first. Interservice salutes should be exchanged as punctiliously as between members of a single ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... violent start, his feet swung to the floor, his body hunched as if to spring, his glance wildly alive. Then it fell on her and the fierce alertness died out; his face softened into a smile, almost sheepish, and he rubbed his hand over ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... how one single day could seem as long as that just past. She had no idea of admitting what part actual fatigue can play in one's perspective, neither would she have owned to nerves as the cause of her unnatural wakefulness; nevertheless these were both factors in her almost painful alertness. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... away, under the soft black lace, in loose abundance; her warm, clear complexion; the texture of her skin, firm and smooth, with tiny blue veins faintly showing at the temples; her sparkling, spirited dark eyes, their merriment, their alertness, their graver underglow; the spirited, high carriage of her head; that dark-blue, simple, appropriate frock; and then her figure, upright, nervous, energetic, with its fluent lines, with its fragrance ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... softly-lighted hall. Perhaps the sunshine had dazzled his eyes a little, but at that instant he thought it was a young girl who was advancing to meet him. The figure was so rounded and graceful, and there was such alertness and youthfulness in the bearing; but as she came closer to him he saw that her ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. "I've never seen ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... England ready to back up France in war, but now comes this meeting in the Black Forest. Germany has shown England the greater advantage of a German-English coalition, and France is frozen out. England, with her shrewd alertness to make the most profitable deal, entertained if did not close the German proposition. In a nutshell, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... complexion, and his clean-shaven jowl and his succession of chins hung in heavy folds. But any suggestion of material grossness was contradicted by the brightness of his rather pale-blue eyes, by his alertness of manner, and ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... whirled round, chasing one another and becoming entangled in Mariana's feverish brain. Pressing her lips closely together and folding her arms like a man, she sat down by the window at last and remained immovable, straight up in her chair, all alertness and intensity, ready to spring up at any moment. She had no desire to go to Tatiana and work; she wanted to wait alone. And she sat waiting obstinately, almost angrily. From time to time her mood seemed strange and incomprehensible ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... rolled in the blanket and trussed up as helpless as a mummy. I wondered whether that alone was sufficient to account for the quickness with which he had been pacified. Then I recalled Mrs. Cranston's remark about her mental alertness and physical weakness. Had it anything to do with ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... Petersburg. If, then, Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and Eugene against Barclay, but the former had ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... leaves enough on the undergrowth to conceal it we may come to know it as well as it is possible to know any bird whose home life is passed so far away. Usually it is the first warbler one sees in the spring in New York and New England. With all the alertness of a flycatcher, it will dart into the air after insects that fly near the ground, keeping up a constant chip, chip, fine and shrill, at one end of the small body, and the liveliest sort of tail motions at the other. The pine ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... bah!' the damsel rejoined in a merry voice, 'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the same condition ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... youth. It was incredible that I had ever even fancied myself content. My brain was still in a whirl, but it seemed to me that I was already conscious of new powers. My thoughts travelled more quickly, I felt a greater alertness of brain, a swifter rush of ideas. But it seemed to me, also, that something had gone, that never again would I find my way lie through the ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and had developed a fine technique of range-finding and the various other tactics of Twentieth Century massed artillery, to which was added the scientific perfection of the rocket guns and an average mental alertness that would have put the artilleryman of the First World War ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... somewhat too stout. His step was firm and his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but rather weak for so large a body. He was active in all bodily exercises, delighted in riding and hunting, and was an expert swimmer. His excellent health and his physical alertness and endurance can alone explain the astonishing swiftness with which he moved about his vast realm and conducted innumerable campaigns in widely distant regions ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the schemes of expansion in the fifty years between the Mexican and the Spanish wars, for the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was really only a rectification of boundary, this alone came to fruition. Seward could well congratulate himself on his alertness in seizing an opportunity and on his management of the delicate political aspects of the purchase. Without his promptness the golden opportunity might have passed and never recurred. Yet he could never have saved ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... such resistance as they offered could wear down and conquer the resources of Spain, yet the very numbers and alertness of the Spanish troops argued a somewhat formidable opposition. Did it not also argue an all-pervading restlessness which might some day escape control? O'Reilly, of course, had no part in this quarrel: but it struck ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... for concentration, detachment, and alertness of service, as well as for exhibiting the bright graces of the Christian character, is to be found in the contemplation of the two comings of the Lord. We should be ever looking back to the Cross, forward to the Throne, and upwards to the Christ, the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... who is not blindfolded carries a bell loosely in one hand, so that it will ring with every step. If desired, this bell may be hung around the neck on a string or ribbon. The blindfolded players try to catch the one with the bell, who will have to use considerable alertness to keep out of the way. Whoever catches the ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... think of us behind that quiet alertness of yours,' she said lightly, 'I believe I did imagine I—understood you a little that night; but I imagine it no longer! Perhaps I misjudge you now, but it cannot matter; you told me once you knew how to wait, and of course you are certain that all unfair ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... the sergeant's face underwent an extraordinary change. It filled with wonder, and then a grim alertness sprang to life all over him. He dropped his hand to his holster, and whipped out a big regulation 455 revolver, blue and sombre. The boys formed behind as under cover of a tower of strength, and the spy dashed ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... flies of Central America must have learned by experience to get out of the way of the nimble Central American lizards with great agility, cunning, and alertness. But green lizards are less easy to notice beforehand than brown or red ones; and so the lizards of tropical countries are almost always bright green, with complementary shades of yellow, grey, and purple, just to fit them in with the foliage they lurk among. Everybody ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... woman, physically considered, not of the common herd. She was a lioness, yet not quite the grand lioness of the desert. She lacked somewhat of dignity and grandeur of countenance, and had more of alertness and of craft. She was, though dark, more like the tawny beast of the Rocky Mountains, the California lion, as that great cougar is called, supple, full of moods and passion, and largely cat-like. She had filled his ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... though his will is probably in all essentials as absolute as that of Scindia, another Mahratta chief, whose interest in every form of Western activity is displayed almost as much in his physical energy as in his intellectual alertness. Some no doubt abandon the conduct of public affairs almost entirely to their Ministers and prefer a life of easy self-indulgence. Others, on the contrary, are keen administrators, and insist upon doing everything themselves. As masterful a ruler as any in the whole of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... the time when the wire-edge of novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals, without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by the fear of making a mistake—forgetting something, like the juice of a half orange at ten o'clock in the morning, the omission of which might have—who knew ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Pontgrave who for some misdemeanor had been banished from Port Royal and had spent the previous winter among the Indians of the St. John river, living just as they did. Biard speaks of him as "a young man of great physical and mental strength, excelled by none of the savages in the chase, in alertness and endurance and in his ability to ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... she always had the time in her head. And it was indeed wonderful how true this was—at any minute she could tell what time it was, although it was of very little consequence to her. In fact, this waiting, expectant woman possessed a remarkable degree of alertness, for as she was always listening to hear her son coming, she was naturally wide-awake all the time. And, although she never visited anybody in the village, and spoke to nobody, she knew everybody, and all about the most secret things that went on in the place. She could infer a great deal from the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... Lanier's life. It was "an idyllic marriage, which the poet thought a rich compensation for all the other perfect gifts which Providence denied him." She was a sufferer like himself, but her accuracy and alertness of mind, her rare appreciation of music, and her deep divining of his own powers, made her the ideal wife of the poet. Those who know "My Springs" and the series of sonnets which he wrote to her during their separation when he was spending the winters in Baltimore, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... open self-assertion. Yet we are nervous rather than phlegmatic. All that is on the father's side. My maternal ancestors have been concerned with farming and the sea and have also had a similar lack of business capacity, but with less mental adaptiveness and alertness, with more steadiness of purpose, however, always doers rather than dreamers. Among them I remember one cousin who was probably abnormal, although he died when I was too young to notice much. Again, they were all rather reserved ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... replied Galt with an affectionate glance that softened the shrewd alertness of his look. "My dear and valued friend, a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions. Convictions were all right when Madison was President, but that gentleman has been in heaven these many years, and ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... progressed from an alertness that was not free from suspicion to a fervid statement of the political situation, into which the element of his personal feelings had risen more and more to the surface. So naturally did he appear to take the mention of ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the nearest goal post was reached you would have seen first a squad—a veritable awkward squad—arranged in a ragged circle and passing a football with much mishandling and many fumbles. Further along you would have seen a long line of youths standing. Their general expression was one of alertness bordering on alarm. The casual observer would have thought each and every one insane, as, suddenly darting from the line, one after another, they flung themselves upon the ground, rolled frantically about as though in spasms, and then ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... breeze was stirring, and on it there was borne to him a faint rumble as of thunder. Instantly the man came to a rigid alertness. Thunder might mean rain, and rain would be salvation. But the sound did not die away. Instead, it deepened to a steady roar, growing every instant louder. His startled glance swept the canyon that ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... half-an-hour, without any attempt at going to sleep, when suddenly I felt extremely alert in mind, very much as Miss Porter described herself in the Captain Carbury episode. Almost immediately upon this feeling of mental alertness came the conviction that Mabel M'Leod (as I will call her) was in the room, close to me, and that she was in some dire and urgent need of help—instantaneous help, I mean. I could neither see nor hear on this occasion—I only knew ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... pervaded her whole being in the old days are gone. A poise and calmness of spirit have taken their place. Even her attitude as she sits there with the shadows flickering over her, is full of a suggestive alertness that expresses an awakened life. The forces that had slumbered so long in her being are fully alive to their duty and their privilege. Yes, Grace Carrington is awake, and happy as a wife and woman should be. ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... as soon as possible, and make frequent reports of his progress to Mr. Chelm. Meanwhile I sat within hearing distance, and occasionally took a peep at them from my coign of vantage. I could perceive from Mr. Chelm's manner that he was pleased with the tone and alertness of the other in putting matters into shape. He had shown me beforehand certain letters which he had received in answer to inquiries made regarding Mr. Prime. In these he was spoken of as a young man of irreproachable character but strong social tastes, which, while consistent with his ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... of mental alertness which is said by some to be peculiar to the Natives at the time of puberty is very often met with in the European youth or girl at that period of life. Competent observers have of late years come to the conclusion that this ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... a slight small man, much sunburned, nearly bald, and his hair snowy, but his eyes were beautiful, very dark, soft, and smiling, and yet their gaze peculiarly keen and steady, as if ready for any emergency, and his whole frame was full of alertness and vigour. His voice was clear and sweet, and his manner most refined and polished, indeed, his courtesy to Ethel, whenever there was a change of carriage, was so exemplary, that she understood it as the effect on a chivalrous mind, of living where a lady was a rare ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... three weeks of "service" that she could not recognize it when the girl returned to her home. It alternated between the high falsetto in which a shy child "speaks a piece" and the husky gulp with which the globus hystericus is swallowed. The alertness and bonhomie of the voice of the tenement-house child had totally disappeared. When such a girl leaves her employer, her reasons are often incoherent and totally incomprehensible to that good lady, who naturally concludes that she wishes to get away ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... protracted orgy was plainly visible in the bloodshot eyes and heavy movements of both men. And it was more from force of long habit than from any sense of alertness or premonition of danger that they crouched in the thicket and watched the smoke curl from the little iron stovepipe that protruded above the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... could carry on this business," she said, and her quiet assurance impressed Madame's turbulent temper. With a brief return of her mental alertness, the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... coming in of the maidens, fear seemed utterly to forsake him. A clarity of purpose, an alertness of brain, a strength of heart unknown before, took the place of the trembling bath of horror in which ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Bixby; formerly pilot under me—or rather, over me—now captain of the great steamer 'City of Baton Rouge,' the latest and swiftest addition to the Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the same tight curls, the same springy step, the same alertness, the same decision of eye and answering decision of hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost in weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, to leave a man thirty-five years ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his assailant, or even survive. Much the same objections—from the criminal's standpoint—obtain in nearly all the accepted modes of killing a man. Even the use of venom a second time possesses the disadvantage of a certain alertness against the very thing on the part of the victim. Werner was a dope fiend, fully aware of the potency of a tiny skin puncture. I'll wager he was on constant guard against ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... jerky in his manner, with a bushy, tramp-like "get-up" of hair and beard, most swiftly and astonishingly disposed of at times only to be regrown at others, and always, and intentionally, I am sure, most amusing to contemplate. In addition to all this he had an air of well-being, force and alertness which belied the other surface characteristics as anything more than a genial pose or bit of ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... pick of the young officers of the German army, are preparing themselves for the examinations which admit a very small proportion of them, to appointments on the general staff, you will be delighted with the faces and figures, and the air of alertness and intelligence there. And you will find as fine a type of gentlemen, in face, manners, and figure, at their ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... through the gate, but the boy was half way through the yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... possession with true naval alertness, and were to be visited. Mary deplored the necessity for herself. "Nobody knew how much she should suffer. She should put it off as long as she could;" but was not easy till she had talked Charles into driving her over on an early day, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... shall claim more than their share of blood and energy. The man who sets type develops keenness of vision and manual dexterity. The stoker develops the muscles of his arms and back, the engineer alertness of eye and ear. All sorts of devices have been invented to aid this specialization of particular organs, as well as to correct their imperfections: the magnifying glass, the telescope, the microscope, extend the powers of the eye; the spectacle or an operation ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... amount of hesitation, as though his most recent precaution was not entirely to their liking. Without betraying any suspicion, he rode straight up to Bishen Ram, the Sirdar, and complimented him upon the alertness of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... he had a moment that was not pain; and he never got fully used to the labour. It was impossible for any one to work so hard and keep his mental alertness, his eagerness and sensitiveness; it was impossible to work so hard and be an adventurer—to be anything, in fact, but a machine. Hal had heard that phrase of contempt, "the inertia of the masses," and had wondered about it. He no longer wondered, he knew. Could a man be brave enough to protest to ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... than that, there was no question for them. So you see," she concluded, "where that puts me." She got up, on the words, very much as if they were the blue daylight towards which, through a darksome tunnel, she had been pushing her way, and the elation in her voice, combined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of the train that shoots at last into the open. She turned about the room; she looked out a moment into the August night; she stopped, here and there, before the flowers in bowls and vases. ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... leaving our losings with a shrug. Perhaps that is why we have been summoned to the board and the cards dealt round: that we may learn some of the virtues of the good gambler; his self-control, his courage under misfortune, his modesty under the strain of success, his firmness, his alertness, his general indifference to fate. Good lessons these, all of them. If by the game we learn some of them our time on the green earth has not been wasted. If we rise from the table having learned only fretfulness and self-pity ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... of immediate irruptions being made upon the frontiers by the Indians, and advising them to remove from the position which they then occupied; as from its exposed situation, without great vigilance and alertness, they must necessarily fall a prey to ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... logic and the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the marvelous readiness, and the headlong force of Douglas. Their set speeches were impressive, but in the quick fire, the question-and-answer, the ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... was half asleep when Puck came, but it opened with alertness, its beautiful round bright eyes, set in a rim of gold. Then Puck asked the question: "Oh, thou that carriest a jewel in thy head, are there any things alive that are older than ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... a trick of dropping his eyes to his boots. When he raised them, the effect was to alter his whole expression. His eyes, well-open, keenly observant, in perpetual motion, lent an air of alertness, of shrewdness, to his heavy, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... on certain occasions that have taken place in these islands, and by the reputation which they have everywhere gained for maintaining themselves among so many enemies, always attacking these with great personal bravery, without having had forts or defenses for their protection. Their alertness, good will, and discipline has all been due to the fact that the governors and captains-general who have come here on your Majesty's service, provide everything that, in the opinion of your master-of-camp and the captains, may appear to be requisite ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... is an absolute essential, for again and again the security of a Platoon, a Company, a Battalion, a Brigade, or even of Division, may depend upon the alertness of ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... storm was unabated. Throckmartin came to me at lunch. He had regained much of his old alertness. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... first began with clubs, but this was over almost as soon as begun; so that I had no time to make my observations upon it. They then went to single combat, and exhibited the various methods of fighting, with great alertness; parrying off the blows and pushes which each combatant aimed at the other, with great dexterity. Their arms were clubs and spears; the latter they also use as darts. In fighting with the club, all blows intended to be given the legs, were evaded by leaping over it; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... cottage. And all he saw and heard was like a weary refrain—it spoke of the same eternally unalterable longing and the same defeats. He reflected no further about the matter, but it entered into his blood like an oppression, purged his mind of presumption, and vitiated his tense alertness. When he lay his head on his pillow and went to sleep the endless pulsing of his blood in his ears became the tramping of weary hordes who were for ever passing in their blind groping after the road which should lead to light and happiness. His consciousness did not grasp it, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... wolves facing me seemed to have been asleep in the sun when I disturbed them. I realized the danger and was alarmed, of course, but my faculties were under control, were stimulated, indeed, to unusual alertness, and I kept a bold front and faced them without flinching. Their expression was one of mingled surprise and anger, together with the apparent determination to sell their lives as dearly as possible. I gave them all the attention which their appearance and their reputation ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... often found in his wanderings. When he was forced to take to the woods by day, he either proceeded cautiously or slept. Both his hearing and his eyesight having become acute, he saw and heard with the alertness of a fox, and lived as free—a cruel freedom that became a mockery. He had no clothes save the makeshifts he stood in. When it rained he remained soaking wet, like the ground and the trees about him; he became one of them, ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... occupied; his fancy eternally on the wing. Formerly he had travelled much, but without any pleasure in movement: he might as well have stayed at home. Now, when he travels, it is for an end; it is delightful to witness the cheerful alertness with which he sets about it. He is going down the Rhine;—for its scenery? Pshaw! he never cared a button about scenery; but he has great hopes of the waters at Kreuznach. He is going into Egypt;—to see the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... ducks is perhaps the most remarkable thing about them. When feeding at night in some lonely marsh, or hidden away by day deep in the heart of the swamps, they never for a moment seem to lay aside their alertness, nor trust to their hiding places alone for protection. Even when lying fast asleep among the grasses with heads tucked under their wings, there is a nervous vigilance in their very attitudes which suggests a sense of danger. Generally one has to ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... closed early, but he had time to show he could be vigorous and finely eloquent. I remember him most vividly as I saw him presiding at a Commencement dinner, a function which he discharged with extraordinary felicity. He had an alertness, as he stood lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from his strain of Huguenot blood. His wit was excelling, his learning comprehensive and well in hand. He was no more weighed down by his erudition than was David by his sling. Encomium, challenge, repartee,—all were quick and happy, and from time ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... dominated the world's thought for upwards of two thousand years, attributed his acquirements to the command he had gained over his mind. Fixedness of purpose, steady, undivided attention, mental concentration, accuracy, alertness, keen perception and wise discrimination are essential to achievement. This is true of giant minds; it is equally true of average intellects. The right musical education will conduce to these habits. Musical education without them must inevitably ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... no doubt that in this case his alertness was dulled. The fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness in the canoe, all combined to undermine his guard; and, moreover, the attack of the savages was stealthy in the extreme. Like ghosts, they must ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the girl with a sort of demure alertness which was somewhat amusing. The boy looked up, and fell to staring at my outlandish attire, but presently reddened and turned his head, as if he knew that ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... lemon-coloured kid gloves, and a white hat, placed somewhat too knowingly on one side, complete the description, and "give the world assurance of the man." And, with his light, firm, well-shaped figure, his clear complexion, his keen, bright eye, and features that bespoke the courage, precision, and alertness of his character,—that is to say, features bold, not large, well-defined, and regular,—you might walk long through town or country before you would see a handsomer specimen of humanity than our friend ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pavilions that had been assigned for their residence. Then all the mechanics and engineers, having completed the arrangements of the sacrifice informed king Yudhishthira of it. Hearing that everything was ready, king Yudhishthira the just, full of alertness and attention, became highly glad along with his brothers all of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that which we prepare for eating are "medicinal messengers" bearing light to the eye, vigor to the limb, beauty to the cheek and alertness to the brain, as vitamines, or distorted in the misdirected process are the harsh heralds of pain and debility to the human system. How great then is the influence of the one ...
— Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book - Numerous New Recipes Based on Present Economic Conditions • Mary A. Wilson
... mimes or jugglers; and with the same minuteness which her predecessor had exhibited, she passed the lamp over her face and person, which seemed to rival the male's in ugliness. But with all this most unfavourable exterior, there was one trait in the features of both which argued alertness and intelligence in the most uncommon degree. This arose from the brilliancy of their eyes, which, deep-set beneath black and shaggy brows, gleamed with a lustre which, like that in the eye of the toad, seemed to make some amends for the extreme ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... the breaking point before; but his alertness was now trebled, and, like a sensitive barometer, he felt the danger of Larry, the brute strength of Jeff, the cunning of Henry, the grave poise of Joe, to say nothing of Scottie—an unknown force. But Scottie was running ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... glance at Chess. She saw that he had moved. He was lying with his right hand covered by his body. There seemed an alertness about him—in posture and in gleaming, half-closed eyes—that startled Ruth. What had the young fellow in his mind to do. For what ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... is, if it were worth the trouble! As for me, get me my bonnet, Jen—my best Sunday leghorn with the puce chenille in it—I must look my featest going to a great house to pay my respects. And you shall come too, Duncan!" (She turned to me with her usual alertness.) "Run home and tidy—quick! Bid your mother put on your Sunday suit. No, Jen, I will not take you to fright the poor things out of their wits. Afterwards, we shall see. But at first, Duncan there, if he gets over his blateness, will be more ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... edge without adventure, and without having seen the slightest sign indicating the presence of savages upon the island. I therefore hastened back to the battery—narrowly escaping being shot by one of our people, who, in his excessive alertness, fired upon me without first giving the challenge—and hastily gathering together the watering-party led them to the brink of the river and succeeded in securing a couple of breakers of water, which I considered would be sufficient to last ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... fancied from his alertness that he had been waiting for an opportunity. "It would be wise to enjoy it while you can," he said. "In another year or two the freedom may be gone, and the prairie shut off in little squares by wire fences. Then one will be permitted to ride along ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... an early Victorian novel. But she now built at her top-heavy edifice for her own enjoyment; and the usual fate of the robust liar had overtaken her: she was beginning to believe in her own lies. Still she never ventured to relax her critical alertness, her careful surveillance of detail. For, just a day or two before, she had seen a quick flare-up of incredulity light Tilly's face, and oddly enough this had happened when she tried her audience with a fact, a simple little fact, an incident that had really occurred. She had killed the doubt, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... place of safety further away from the house. He would have gone down then and there, in spite of the fact that it was a blustering night of wind and rain and he not fitted to go out in such weather, but he was afraid of Julia. She was certain to hear and follow; she had almost an animal's alertness when once she was on the trail of anything. So he lay and planned and waited, hoping that a chance would come during the ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... brother, contrasting the changes that the three years had made in the two friends. Aubrey, drilled out of his home scholarly dreaminess by military and practical discipline, had exchanged his native languor for prompt upright alertness of bearing and speech; his eye had grown more steady, his mouth had lost its vague pensive expression, and was rendered sterner by the dark moustache; definite thought, purpose, and action, had moulded his whole countenance and person into hopeful manhood, instead ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again through the inky darkness. Noll relieved Hal, presently, though there seemed little need of alertness. The two prisoners capable of fighting looked pretty well cowed. Down at the rear end of the car, covered with a rubber blanket, lay the rigid remains of the man ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... as easy as they are fatal, and since to resist them requires courage, force, and alertness, it is only too probable that the man past fifty, who feels that he has failed, is beginning to submit to them. Do not do it. Resort to every possible device to prevent it; for degeneration, in itself, is failure; more, it is death. It is exactly the same force which rots out the heart of the ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... through space when the sunlight plays on their glossy feathers as the course of the flock is changed. With the rush of a wind of small measure but immense velocity, the flock descends earthwards, among and over the trees, perfecting itself by trials of endurance and intricate alertness. The birds return during the first week in August, in small and silent companies, to reoccupy favourite resorts in common. The nutmeg pigeons are also of exact habit, the time for their return generally coinciding with that of the starlings. This year (1916) both birds ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the stillness, and in a moment he had sprung to alertness. It was a cry—a sharp, wrung cry from the garden close to him, the garden of the hotel, and instantly following it a flood of angry speech in a man's voice ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... He admired his own decision; he was quite struck by it. 'I shall call her May before I leave her,' he thought, gazing at her, and discovering how well the name suited her, with its significances of alertness, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... tenderly, while at the same time his eyes were everywhere about the room and he was listening with the wary alertness ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... in those dilated eyes of mine that confronted his, for, as I sprang toward him, he bounded backward and escaped through the door of Mrs. Clayton's chamber, which he shot after him with undignified alertness. I stood smiling, and strangely cold, leaning against the mantel-shelf, while my heart beat as though, it would have leaped from my throat, and I could feel the pallor of my ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the powerful body had become shapeless and unwieldy; he had given up walking, and only left his stoep to drag himself clumsily into his carriage, and although he retained all his old tenacity of purpose, his mind had lost much of its former alertness. It needed all Mr. Smuts' mental resources—all that the young Afrikander had so recently learnt at Cambridge and the Temple—to enable the old President to maintain, even by the aid of his State-Attorney's ingenious paper pleadings, ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... sprang to his feet; lithe, active, eager. Swiftness, alertness, poise, certainty were in every line of his splendid body. His was the assured, resourceful bearing of the man of action, whose hands have kept his head, contrasting sharply with the Miner's heavy and tentative slowness, the awkward self-consciousness ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... reached to his knees. He was tall and stooped slightly, but there was none of the slouching figure and gait that characterized those around him. His movements were quick, and, when standing motionless, there was something in his very pose that conveyed an impression of alertness and of latent strength. His back was turned toward Rutherford, who was watching him under a sort of subtle fascination, when suddenly he wheeled, facing him. His eyes were keen and piercing, and as he looked ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the more one admires that extraordinary quality of "go"—a mental alertness and lucidity they have immeasurably beyond European nations; very few people are intellectual, but all are intelligent and advancing. No one browses like such hundreds do at home, and all are much more amusing companions ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... built out from the base of the last post relieved. It was all in the day's work—as Frontier men understand work. The exposure and long hours in the saddle had little effect upon his whipcord and iron frame: but a sharp attack of fever—unrecorded in his letter to his wife—had slackened his alertness of body and spirit; and it was with an unusual sense of relief that he faced the last twenty-mile stretch of road, leaving behind him six fresh men to take up the task of watching the blank, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... now by no feeling that the officer, eagerly trying to make contact, was a degenerate member of a dying race. In fact, as Raf glanced at the aliens about the room, he was conscious of an alertness, of a suppressed energy which suggested a ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... aspersion!—I am not capable of arts so low.] But the moment you are down with your poultry, or advancing upon your garden-walk, and, as you imagine, out of every body's sight, it is seem how nimbly you trip along; and what an alertness governs all your motions. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... work which requires brains, and is, to my thinking, a very admirable form of activity, and entirely worthy of the attention of the intelligent. That my neighbour is intelligent is at once made evident by the bright alertness of her eyes—eyes that nothing escapes, and that only gain in prettiness by being used to some good purpose. She is a recognised authority for miles around on the mysteries of sausage-making, the care of calves, ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... are other people, the so-called absent-minded, who are so over- concentrated, so wedded to a goal in thought, that lesser matters are neither remembered nor noticed. In its excess overconcentration is a handicap, since it robs one of that alertness for new impressions, new sources of thought so necessary for growth. The fine mind is that which can pursue successfully a goal in thought but which picks en route to that goal, out of the irrelevant associations, something that ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... nerve stimulated to alertness, he watched, and again he saw the light. Straining his eyes Colin could just distinguish the figure of a man with a gun on his shoulder and a lantern in his hand, making his way to the coast end of ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... A snapping alertness of the eyes indicated that Trevison knew what was coming. That was the reason he had been so quiescent this far; it was why he made no objection when Braman passed his hands over his clothing in ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... face it was! Eagerness, indeed, seemed to be the note of the whole man, of the quick eyes and mouth, the flexible hands and energetic movements. Even the straight, stubbly hair, its owner's passing torment, standing up round the high open brow, seemed to help the general impression of alertness ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... say that in competition with the whole world there must be alertness every day in the guidance of details of mechanism and business, and that it is not by the gathering together of a group of men at the end of the year or even once a month or once a week that business can be effectively managed; it is a continued application to the work every day ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... "E.W.R.," stimulated him to the work. "Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life, and of her joy of life," writes Mrs. Sharp in her memoir of her husband, "because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new doors in his mind and put him in touch with the ancestral memories of his race." ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... that it was all too good to be true; that her surroundings might any moment fade; that her gay clothes would disappear, and that she would again find herself, heartsick and weary, in her comfortless little combined room at Mrs Bilkins's. At the same time, her natural alertness took in everything going ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... that brighten my faculties of enjoyment! I should run about to see all I have hitherto omitted to seek, with the ardent curiosity of a traveller newly arrived ; and I should hasten to review and consider all I have already beheld, with an alertness of vivacity that would draw information from every object I have as yet looked at with undiscerning tameness. Oh, such a gleam of light would new-model or re-model me, and I should make you present ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... to keep her tone natural, but a certain shrill alertness crept into it and Barbara, who was watching her closely, was quick to detect the change. Helen's color altered at the question, and she observed the widow's ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... express words, than to any such composition. If any man offers to interrupt me, his blood be on his own head!" As Major Bridgenorth spoke, Whitaker threw open the door, and showed that, with the alertness of an old soldier, who was not displeased to see things tend once more towards a state of warfare, he had got with him four stout fellows in the Knight of the Peak's livery, well armed with swords and carabines, buff-coats, and pistols at ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... breakers. It happened, very fortunately, that the people had just been ordered upon the deck to put the ship about, and the most of them were at their stations, so that the necessary movements were not only executed with judgment, but also with alertness, and this alone saved us from destruction. The Discovery being a-stern was out of danger. Such hazardous situations are the unavoidable companions of the man who goes upon a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... a man apparently a year or two older than himself, about the same height and build, but harder and stronger, and possessing that peculiar erectness of carriage and alertness of movement that is owned only by those who have worked or fought, or done both, in the outlands of the earth. But a glance at his face confirmed Vane in the opinion he had formed when he heard his voice; he was undeniably both a gentleman and a man. He ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... in resistance. But in the front of the body, the breast is one great field of sympathetic touch, the belly is another. On these two fields the stimulus of touch is quite different, has a quite different psychic quality and psychic result. The breast-touch is the fine alertness of quivering curiosity, the belly-touch is a deep thrill of delight and avidity. Correspondingly, the hands and arms are instruments of superb delicate curiosity, and deliberate execution. Through the elbows ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... go away. All the alertness which had marked his coming had dropped away from him. He moved slowly and with drooping shoulders. Already his face had grown haggard underneath the bronzing of his sea voyage. Beatrix stood motionless, watching him, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... closely. There was something peculiar in his manner. He seemed almost fanciful, yet there was a wonderful alertness in the rapidity of his talk. He remained silent, and, presently, the other went on again, but he had switched off to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... movement of the compass-needle a sign for his ready hands to obey. Anon a concise order to shift a sail fell from his lips, for in spite of his interrupted conversation with the captain his every action showed a trained alertness. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... the hill with an alertness and agility that scarcely seemed compatible with his age and appearance. On arriving at the gate, his garb was a sufficient passport, without the necessity of a challenge. Three or four of the guards were loitering and laughing on a couple of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... both to herself and Anthony were in the house, and an occasional bout with the masks and foils was a means of exercise and diversion which both thoroughly enjoyed. Although Juliet was no match for the superior skill and endurance of her husband, she was nevertheless no mean antagonist, and her alertness of eye and hand usually gave him sufficient to do to make the encounter ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... built, Constantine was immensely strong, quick in his movements and capable of enduring tremendous strain. If it came to a rough and tumble he was as hard a man to handle as anyone would care to find. These qualities, along with his mental alertness and judicial training, made him a good man to send to a region where he had to exercise many functions until fuller government could be established. Constantine first of all made an investigating and exploratory trip accompanied by Staff-Sergeant ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... vicious hatred at his betrayal. That was what men were! That was what they did! Shirkers! They were all like that, except when they were ridiculous half-men like Gaga. What was she to do? What could she do? Her brain became very clear and active. It was working with painful alertness, so rapidly that she often did not reach the end of one channel before she was embarked upon another. Toby was hopeless. She must act by herself. ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... myself with Prince Rupert, who so warmly espouses the interests of Alexander against Lord Thanet, who declares himself for Caesar, I dare no longer think of assuming the hero: nevertheless, though I may dance awkwardly, yet, by observing the tune, and with a little alertness, I hope to come off pretty well; besides, Miss Hamilton will take care that too much attention shall not be paid to me. As for my dress, I shall send Termes off tomorrow morning; and if I do not show you at his return the most splendid habit you have ever seen, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of Menon, bore off the Olympic olive, Mount Kronion shook with shouting of Hellas' hosts assembled. They praised his manly beauty, his grace and strength of body. They praised his eyes' alertness, the smoothness of his muscles. They blessed his happy father and wished themselves his brothers. Sweet rang the glorious praises in ears of Creon's lovers. But I, when upward gazing, beheld a sight more wondrous. The gates of high Olympos were open wide and clanging, ...
— Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae • Jennie Hall
... speak to me first, and always show great sociability, and glad to have a good interchange of chat. These Western soldiers are more slow in their movements, and in their intellectual quality also; have no extreme alertness. They are larger in size, have a more serious physiognomy, are continually looking at you as they pass in the street. They are largely animal, and handsomely so. During the war I have been at times with the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... room, and so engrossed was he that he did not at first hear a tap upon the office door. When it was repeated, he started from his reverie and called to the visitor to enter, thinking that perhaps it was one of the clerks. It was not his habit to be caught off guard, for he prided himself upon his alertness and strict attention to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... to himself as he studied her (which having put aside the personal he could now do), "She has the New England alertness of mind inherited from her mother without the New England reticence, and from her Kentucky father, eccentric as he is, she gets the vivacity and charm which is the Kentucky ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... into the dimness of the background of a picture when one saw the man who was the master. Among a thousand picked men, his face and figure would have been distinguished. People did not call him old, for the alertness and force of youth radiated from him, and his gray eyes were clear and his color fresh, yet the face was lined heavily, and the thick thatch of hair shone in the firelight silvery white. Face and figure were full of character and breeding, of life ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... was to be carried through successfully it must be done when the policeman was off duty. Till then he had pictured himself catching Officer Keating in an unguarded moment on his beat. This, he now saw, was out of the question. On his beat the policeman had no unguarded moments. There was a quiet alertness in his poise, a ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... revealed as a light spring britchka. And as it came to a halt, there leapt on to the verandah of the mansion an individual of respectable exterior, and possessed of the art of moving with the neatness and alertness of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... each other, and people of our hero's principles are, of all others, the most apt to distinguish their own likeness wheresoever it occurs; because they always keep the faculty of discerning in full exertion. It was in consequence of this mutual alertness, that Ferdinand and the stranger, who was a native of Tyrol, perceived themselves reflected in the dispositions of each other, and immediately entered into an offensive and defensive alliance; our adventurer ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... hide it? America was a neutral country; technically she was neutral, and Germans could come and go as they pleased. Why unnecessarily set tongues wagging? He did not, being of a continuous shrewd alertness himself, a continuous wide-awakeness and minute consideration of consequences, realize, and if he had he wouldn't have believed, the affectionate simplicity and unworldliness of Mr. Twist. If it had been pointed out to him he would have dismissed it as a pose; for a man who makes money ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... was above the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically-shaped, combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier; with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of sudden fear, wondered whether she was showing it, lost it in unnatural alertness—all in the second before she answered: "Oh! just ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ball that whistled past her warned Mademoiselle de Verneuil of her rival's determination. "She sends me her card," thought Marie, smiling. Instantly a "Qui vive?" echoing from sentry to sentry, from the castle to the Porte Saint-Leonard, proved to the Chouans the alertness of the Blues, inasmuch as the least accessible of their ramparts ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... chair with the alertness of a man who had been accustomed to follow his impulse. In his joy over his friend's good fortune he forgot his embarrassment, forgot that he was a stranger; forgot that he alone, perhaps, was the only young man in the room whose life and training had not fitted him for the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... himself in one of the rabbit warrens of Nassau Street, where the King of England or the Czar of all the Russias might hide for a lifetime and never be found. But Masters could be "located," no doubt of that. "It only needs patience and alertness," said Lacey, looking straight into Madeleine's vigilant eyes. "I have a friend on the police force down there who will spot him before long and send ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... and intellectual value of music should by no means be overlooked. The mental alertness developed by sight-reading is of much importance. Some children are slow thinkers, and react lethargically: as a class, country children are mentally much slower than town-bred youngsters. A city child quickly has to learn to look after ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... to scrutinize either her face or person, and had but the most vague idea of her general appearance. Just as I had finished rolling up the compositions, the four o'clock bell rang; with my accustomed alertness in obeying that signal, I grasped my hat and ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... stream of light, it flung through our window-oval, forward under the dome and through the bow dome bullseye, into space. I saw the men on the deck spring into sudden alertness with the realization we were using it. The bow lookout on the forward observation bridge crouched at his 'scope-finder to ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... have been gold!" His brown eyes glowed and the White Chief noted that an eager alertness ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... all the alertness and exquisite politeness of the Parisian, and he compelled me to have a Benedictine at his expense. Then, as a quid pro quo, he took one ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... entirely the same might now be said of his face and manner. But Mary had seen the dart of his hand and the sudden alertness in his eyes. Her own rested on him for a moment with inquiry, for the first time with a hint of distrust. "I see!" she murmured vaguely, and, turning away from him, pursued her way to the door. Beaumaroy followed her with ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to form first in line for action and then in column for marching, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Pine's shoulder made him leap to his feet with the alertness of a wild animal on the lookout for danger. By his side stood Chaldea, and her eyes glittered, as she came to the point of explanation without any preamble. The girl was painfully direct. "I have heard every word," she said triumphantly. "And I ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... woodlands, about our country homes, and even in the neighborhood of our town dwellings, when there are bushes and trees close at hand. My saunterings among the mountains took me into the haunts of the lazulis, but I regret to have to confess that all my alertness was of so little avail that I saw only three males and one female. One day, while rambling among the cottonwoods that broidered the creek flowing south of Colorado Springs, I was brought to a standstill by a sharp chirp, and the next moment a pair ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... is the inherent attribute of all savages to be far in advance of the whites in the alertness and acuteness of two or three of the senses, the baby Pawnee was wonderfully so. He could hear the footsteps of a bear or the scratching of a panther, or even the tramp of a horse's hoof on the soft sod, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... foot. As ill fortune would have it, my horse's hoof loosened a stone, and one of them looking up recognized my figure clear drawn against the fading colors of the sky. They both jumped up with an alertness which would have done credit to old woodsmen, and before I could dodge by, had remounted and taken possession of the road. My more elevated position and perhaps better hearing, too, enabled me to detect the coming of persons along the road from Paris. Certainly as many as three ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... of nautical duty. In port or out of it, they are not idle. Every day a prescribed routine of exercise is rigidly enforced. Great have been the results. The French sailor of 1863 is not a reproduction of the sailor of 1800. In alertness, in knowledge, in silent obedience, he is a great improvement upon his predecessor. Actual experiment shows that a French crew will weigh anchor, spread and furl sail, replace spars or running-ringing, lower or raise topmasts, or perform any other duty pertaining to a ship, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... thrust of the sharp, upturned point of its murderous horn, was upon his antagonist, and I caught my breath sharply, fully expecting to see the man impaled, or at least tossed high in the air. But instead I beheld as splendid an exhibition of courage and alertness as I think I have ever witnessed, for the man, firmly standing his ground to the very last fraction of a second, sprang nimbly to one side at the precise moment when, as it seemed, the point of the horn was ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... relation of art to morals are too well known to be quoted; they will be considered in another chapter dealing with Lanier's work as critic. They are mentioned here only to show the range of Lanier's interest and the alertness of his mind when ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... there has been much change or influx of population in these districts for centuries. The alertness and intelligence of the natives must be to some extent an inheritance from the generations of strenuous clansmen whose blood flows in their veins. Life in a historical district is bound to have an ennobling effect on a man, especially if he ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... lost nothing by acquiring some of the Caucasian stock, but the men, in numerous cases, seemed to be inferior for the blending. In appearance they were inane, in speech laconic; they were shy in manners, and reserved, to boorishness, while in intellectual alertness they were inferior to the boisterous savage, or the shrewd, dignified white. But the woman perpetuated the shy, winning coyness of her red mother, and the arts, and somewhat of the refinements of her white father. ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... bits of hay off his uniform, and striving vainly to compose his features into their customary expression of a stolid alertness that hears nothing but his master's orders, sees nothing that does not concern his duties. He gave one sharp glance at the car, and his face grew chauffeurish, but the look of hang-dog despair returned ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... can afford long finger-nails, would not be tolerated in Yuen-ping, and in order to avoid the suspicion that I am suffering from a serious injury to the head, or have become a prey to a conflicting demon, it will be necessary to continue an even more highly-sustained tolerant alertness. This person himself has frequently suffered the ill effects of rashly assuming that because he is conducting the adventure in a prepossessing spirit his efforts will be honourably received, as when he courteously inquired the ages of a company of maidens into whose presence he was ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... stay in England I searched for, but could not find, the self-effacing spinster of former days. In her place was a capable woman, bright-eyed, happy. She was occupied and bustled at her work. She jumped on and off moving vehicles with the alertness, if not the unconsciousness, of the expert male. She never let me stand in omnibus or subway, but quickly gave me her seat, as indeed she insisted upon doing for elderly gentlemen as well. The British woman had ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... alertness and keenness of hearing, as well as of seeing, was something remarkable to me. The following is a good illustration of it. One summer, when thus travelling, I was on the lookout for some friendly Indians whose camping place was determined each summer by the ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... hills before him to the moist earth under foot. For the moment they did not seem the eyes of the Buck Thornton who had ridden to the bank in Dry Town a little before noon, but were gentle and dreamily meditative with all of the earlier sharp alertness gone. And then suddenly there came into them a quick change, a keen brightness, as he jerked his head forward and stared down at the ground at ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... just arrived, and was leaning against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets. He was a very ordinary, plain-countenanced, sandy-haired, quite commercial-looking man, this, who might have been anything from a Stock Exchange clerk to a suburban house-agent. But there was a sudden alertness in his eye as he turned it on the visitors, which showed them that he was well equipped in mental acuteness, and probably as alert as ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... on somebody's grave," said Ashe. Then, just as she became conscious that she had jarred upon him, and must find a new opening, he himself found it. "Tell me!" he said, bending forward with a sudden alertness—"who is ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this for the mother devotion in modern times, that it shows, and in exact proportion of its increasing social power, an alertness and a moral earnestness in all that concerns the welfare of children that have perpetuated and extended the protective functions of society as no other agency has done. Much of the modern legislation and social work directed toward the physical and moral safeguarding of the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... himself from the face of the precipice, and the yet more hazardous projecting cliffs which varied its surface. Tossed in empty space, like an idle and unsubstantial feather, with a motion that agitated the brain at once with fear and with dizziness, he retained his alertness of exertion and presence of mind; and it was not until he was safely grounded upon the summit of the cliff, that he felt temporary and giddy sickness. As he recovered from a sort of half swoon, he cast his eyes eagerly around. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott |
