"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many an anxious heart told itself, favoured the oft-victorious giant; but then,—and here came reason for a true Hellene,—"the gods could not suffer so fair a man to meet defeat." The noonday sun beat down fiercely. The tense stillness was now and then broken by the bawling of a swarthy hawker thrusting himself amid the spectators with cups and a jar of sour wine. There was a long rest. The trainers came forward again and dusted the two remaining champions with sand that they might grip fairly. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of making yourself understood if you do the same. Probably, too, with the exception of two or three sentences like "I am well. I love you," you will notice that all his statements are written in the past tense, and that will be a guide to you to confine your own remarks to the past, for the most part, till you notice that he has begun to use the future and the present himself. Watch his letters carefully and adapt your ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... see If fat enough his dog might be. The rogue was now at home: He saw the hunter through the fence. "My friend," said he, "please wait; I'll be with you a moment hence, And fetch our porter of the gate." This porter was a dog immense, That left to wolves no future tense. Suspicion gave our wolf a jog,— It might not be so safely tamper'd. "My service to your porter dog," Was his reply, as off he scamper'd. His legs proved better than his head, And saved him life ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... table, his face tense with suppressed emotion. He was a grizzled veteran of the New York police force: a man who sought his quarry with the ferocity of a bull-dog, when the line of search was definitely assured. Lacking imagination and the subtler senses of criminology, Captain Cronin ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... perceive, are not of what is called society, but of the kind known in these circles, doubtless, as interesting. Nearly everybody in this gallery, in fact, is of the interesting sort. At once it is apparent that there is nothing of the perfunctory here. Art is vital. Art is earnest. The atmosphere is tense. The young women are clad in a manner giving much freedom to the movement of their bodies. They walk with a stride. Their clothes are not of the mode of the Avenue, but they have—how shall I say? To twist what Whistler said of his model: Character, character is what these clothes have. They suggest, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... a tense one to the entire party, and John moved forward, placing himself directly ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... photograph towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned in Paris. Apparently she never ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... what he will do takes hold of me. He sits white and tense as the two come into the clearer light of the courtyard. The man, I see, is one of the samurai, a dark, strong-faced man, a man I have never seen before, and she is wearing the robe that shows her a follower of the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... and Macalister the game-keeper, all speak a rather purer English than I do; far more carefully pronounced, and with every R sounded and rolled. Their idioms are more characteristic than their accent. They say "whenever" for "when," and use in their verbs several quaint variations of tense.) ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... out of bed and fighting my way into my dressing-gown, while Nobby, his black nose clapped to the sill of the doorway, stood tense and rigid and motionless ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... you were having a mood and a tense at the same time this evening," said Bel, looking with some surprise at her friend. "What has stirred you up so? Have you and Julian ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... claw-like little hand for Nan to shake, and the unexpectedly tense and energetic grip of it was somewhat surprising. She was a small, dark creature with bright, restless brown eyes set in a somewhat sallow face—its sallowness the result of several husband-hunting years spent in India, where her father had held a post ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... tense for convenience. The time drifted along—one hour—two hours—two hours and a half; then the deep booming of artillery told that the King and his grand procession had arrived at last; so the waiting multitude rejoiced. All knew that a further ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that her whole life had been devoted to learning what to do and what not to do for Lydia. As the time of action drew nearer she nerved herself for the campaign with a finely confident feeling that she knew every inch of the ground. Her expectancy grew more and more tense as her eagerness rose. During the long year that Lydia was in Europe, receiving a final gloss, even higher than that imparted by the expensive and exclusive girls' school where she had spent the years between fourteen and eighteen, Mrs. Emery laid ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... prove anything!" he said in a low, tense tone. "You have made a fool of yourself and of me. I won't have my father's name dragged into this mess. I'm here as Zaidos, the stoker; and you will forget Zaidos of Saloniki as fast as ever you can. And if I find you telling anything more, I will thrash you, Velo Kupenol, within an ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... action as, I eat, I love, I work. Passive verbs, denote suffering, they are only the participle passive of an active verb with a tense of the neuter verb to be before it; as, I am ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... "playing the game." And gradually, as the time went on and dessert was almost come, the conviction grew in Zara's brain that he was torturing her on purpose, overdoing the part when the servants were looking; for had he not told her but three hours before that he had loved her—using the past tense—and no man regretted a thing more! Perhaps—was it possible—he had seen when he kissed her that she loved him! And he was just punishing her, and laughing at his dominion over her in his heart; so her pride took fire at once. Well, she would not be played ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... picked up a stone and handed it to the dandy with an expressive gesture. Instead of obeying he shook his head despairingly, and an ominous growl came from the assemblage. Again Donald looked at Christie, whose face was now tense and drawn, as though he were suffering ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... became reckless. It was an inspiriting revelation to me to find that I could indeed use my head intelligently, and command my motions so well, at a time of such excitement. We grew hot, perspired, breathed fast and loud, kept our muscles tense, and held each other with glittering eyes as we moved about on firm but springy feet. We must have fought very swiftly, for the ring of the steel sounded afterward in my ears as if it had been almost continuous. How long we kept it up, I do not exactly ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... The manuscript of this book was completed over four months ago. Since then many important changes have occurred in the international situation. Chapters in which we dealt with the then still existing Dual Monarchy must of course be read in the past tense, since Austria exists no more. And again, many things which we anticipated and hoped for in the future have already become accomplished facts. However, I trust that the story itself has not only lost none of its value thereby, ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... as the avoiding of a false concord, as they call it, and which you know how to do, as well as the best; not to put a was for a were, an are for an is, and to be able to speak in mood and tense, and such like valuable parts of education: so that, my dear, you can have no reason to look upon that sex in so high a light, as to depreciate your own: and yet you must not be proud nor conceited neither; but make ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the lamp, my white brother," he whispered in the same tense tones, "to do so would be to reveal to those who are now approaching that we are awake and expect them. Rather let us pretend that we are unaware that they come and spring upon them like the leopard when ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... cave-opening just ahead. He was a bungling woodsman at best; and now, stalking that greatest of all big game, man, the blood drummed in his ears and his heart seemed to slip a cog or two with every beat. He stood tense, yet trembling, for the space in which a man might count ten; surely if there were any one inside the cave—if the one whose presence he suspected were there—such a noise would have brought him forth. But a great banner of trumpet-creeper, which hid the opening till one was almost ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... had passed together into a sweet necropolis of dreams, whither, if the Reader care, I will soon take him by the hand. But just now I would have him concern himself with the afternoon of which I write, in that sad tense, the past present. Indeed, we did not ourselves tarry long among the shades, for we were young, and youth has little use for the preterite; its verbs are wont to have but two tenses. We soon came up to the surface in one, with eyes turned ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... tossed a coin on to number nine. Ann followed the circlings of the ball with a curious tense anxiety. She wished desperately that the nine would ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... who, according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—with or without the help of the ancient book—and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... name of the men who attacked you and treated you so cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the conclusion ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... Strong," he paused and finished his sentence in a tense whisper, "I'll search the universe until I find Coxine. And when I do, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... man," she said, and her voice was tense, "if I were a man and loved a woman, I would be ready to give up everything for her. My riches, my pride, my life, my honor, my soul even,—they would be as nothing, as less than nothing to me,—if I loved. Harry, don't let me think I am mistaken. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... sound increased. Like the ghost of a great wind it moaned and sighed about us. Little by little a new note crept in—a sibilant, metallic note as of a tense sheet of silk drawn rapidly ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... the end of the upper hall, near a door that was closed. Garrison had lost no space behind her. She turned a white, tense face as she ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... I write. I must begin by testifying that you yourself took no interest whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also (I use the past tense, with a view to the time when you shall read, rather than to that when I am writing) a very pretty boy, and (to my European views) startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... greater than all—prophet and priest—who, higher up the mountain than others, heard more distinctly the voice of destiny, whose heart and soul were full of prophecy and whose every faculty was tense and strong as he wrought for our nation's advancement and for the peace and contentment of his fellow-countryman. From the fullness of gratitude and joy, he thus wrote to one who had assisted in the consummation ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of the past year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... rest was impossible; my temples throbbed, the veins became swollen and tense, whilst my breathing grew short and difficult: getting at last a little alarmed, and, indeed, fearing a fainting fit, I rose to ring for my servant; but not finding the bell, opened my chamber-door with the ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... heeding me, peered down at Jones, between widespread paws. I could hear nothing except the hounds. Jones' gray hat came pushing up between the dead snags; then his burly shoulders. The quivering muscles of the lion gathered tense, and his lithe body crouched low on the branches. He was about to jump. His open dripping jaws, his wild eyes, roving in terror for some means of escape, his tufted tail, swinging against the twigs and breaking them, manifested his extremity. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... in a tense whisper. "Jerry— boys— don't have anything to do with this man. He may be all right, but there's something mysterious about him. Why should he want to hire you when, for the same money, or less, he could get a company of fishermen, who know these waters well, to make the search? Take a girl's ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... bear to Elizabeth Ann; and as he walked his great red tongue hung out of his mouth and his white teeth gleamed horribly. Elizabeth Ann shrank back in terror, clutching her plate of butter to her breast with tense fingers. Cousin. Ann said, over her shoulder: "Oh, bother! There's old Shep, got up to pester us begging for scraps! Shep! You go and lie down this minute!" To Elizabeth Ann's astonishment and immense relief, the great animal turned, drooping his ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... "Gee, thanks. You don't know how much this means to me." And then, with a mental grip on himself so tense that it hurt physically, he approached the guard, and said casually, "Earth 'gram for ...
— Runaway • William Morrison
... into instant silence, sitting tense and mute, scarcely even breathing, while the pale blue eyes opposite remained steadily and unblinkingly fixed ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... author make you see this plainly? He uses the present tense, as if the scene were happening now—"is bounding", "loses ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... once more. Captain Jethro was standing erect beside his chair. When, at last, he did speak, his tone was still more tense and threatening. Even the shallowest mind in that room—and, as Miss Phipps had said, practically every "crank" within ten miles was present—even the shallowest realized that something was ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... beautiful in its Eden-like nakedness. The creatures whom I met in the ways and by ways of Parisian life, whose gestures and attitudes I devoured with my eyes, and whose souls I hungered to know, awoke in me a tense irresponsible curiosity, but that was all,—I despised, I hated them, thought them contemptible, and to select them as subjects of artistic treatment, could not then, might never, have occurred ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... Name-form Past Tense Past Participle Transitive and Intransitive Verbs Active and Passive Voice Mode Forms of the Subjunctive Use of Indicative and Subjunctive Agreement of Verb with its Subject Rules Governing Agreement of the Verb Miscellaneous Cautions Use of Shall and Will Use of Should and Would Use of ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... glances were caught and held, and they stared for a moment at the street-corner ahead of them. A man was standing there, his knees bent, his eyes gazing upward with a tense expression as though he were about to make a leap toward the chilly sky. And then they both exploded into a shout of laughter, for coming closer they discovered it had been a ludicrous momentary illusion produced by the extreme ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at first sight, as she had every personal reason to, but in spite of Clarence's intensity she was not quite convinced. She looked up at him. He was white, and his mouth was tense. And he was holding her like a ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... as he spoke and fixed on her a tense look which spelled as plainly as though spoken, "It's all in ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... She arose, the tears blinding her, and slipped quietly out. She had seen Jean looking over the gallery railing with serious eyes, and Stuart standing by a pillar with a group of fellow-students, his face pale and tense. She dared not risk meeting them or anyone else she knew. She hurried down the stairs and out along the street struggling for her self-control. Half consciously her footsteps turned in the direction of that little street where she had seen the girl that looked like Eppie. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... text, "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord"—a statement which, after the lapse of so many centuries, has still to be couched in the future tense. The delay has been excessive, but Dr. Hitchens is hopeful. He believes in the ultimate and speedy fulfilment of the prophecy. One of his grounds for so believing is this (we quote from the Christian Commonwealth), that "Out of 20 leading lecturers, authors, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... whatever in the introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may perhaps like to know that the lean, ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... weights and materials was provided that all hygienic and social requirements might be adequately met. Anxious thought was daily spent that his play and playmates might be equally pleasing and free from danger. Almost prayerful investigation was made of the servants who ministered, and tense, sleepless hours were spent by this nervous mother striving to wisely decide between the dangers to her child of travel and those other dangers of heated summers and bleak winters at home. Frequent trips into the city and frequent visitations from the ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... communication the quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst friends, pleasantly and wittily jesting and rallying with one another? 'Tis an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, and which, if it be not so tense and serious as the other I spoke of but now, is, as Lycurgus thought, no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility. For my part, I contribute to it more liberty than wit, and have therein more of luck ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... One of the Hounds called out, "I don't want any of you girls to kiss me!" and gave the relief of indignation to the hysterical emotion of the believers; the more serious of the unbelievers found escape in their helpless laughter from their tense expectation of triumph in the failure ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the tense moment of the actual robbery had passed there was a general buzzing talk, voices lifted in surmise, a lively excitement replacing the cosy quiet of a few moments ago. Voices from the spare bed room urged Ma Drury to bring an account of the adventure, and Poke's wife, having ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... suggested, the minutes were approved. The regular business of the meeting forthwith began, and the atmosphere, which had been a little tense, relaxed. As if to show his ease and familiarity with an unusual situation, Mr. Mowry cut off a large piece of tobacco, crossed his hands behind his head, and lifted his right leg on the top of the small oak desk which ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... been strung from one end of the room to the other, and while Bell went to the transmitter, Dom Pedro took up the receiver and placed it to his ear. It was a moment of tense expectancy. No one knew clearly what was about to happen, when the Emperor, with a dramatic gesture, raised his head from the receiver and exclaimed with a look of utter ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... at the wheel drove so fast they felt the keen whip of the wind as they cut through the waves. They were glad to button their coats, even up to their chins. Uncle Darcy and Dan talked all the way over, but Georgina sat with her hand tightly locked in her mother's, sharing her tense ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... approaching feet halted decorously without, and instead of the door's bursting open there came only a manly knock upon it. Carlisle looked at her mother, and found that her mother was looking at her with quite a tense expression. This certainly was not the way they had ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... gasp and relieve his tortured lungs. The lad's weight seemed to be carrying him down as if he was a thing of lead, but Rainey would not relax his grip. He could not. He had centered all his energy upon the desire to save Sandy, and his nerve centers were still tense to that ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... 9 [Greek: Libios de kai taen apophoran tautaen] (which had been imposed by the Gracchan laws) [Greek: ton neimamenon aphairon haeresken autois]. The tense of neimamenon seems to show that the Gracchan as well as the Livian settlers are meant. See Underhill in loc. In any case, the reimposition of the vectigal on the allotments by the law of 119 (App. Bell. ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the movie 'Tron'] v. To become inaccessible except via email or 'talk(1)', especially when one is normally available via telephone or in person. Frequently used in the past tense, as in: "Ran seems to have tronned on us this week" or "Gee, Ran, glad you were able to un-tron yourself". One may also ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... about, discussing and conferring. Altogether doing nothing much with beautiful unanimity. All was noise, hurry, gaiety, and turbulence. In the midst of it all, with blue and white rosettes pinned on their breasts, sat two spectators, tense and silent, while the breakers of movement and sound struck and broke around them. It meant too much to Hannah and "little sister" for them to laugh and shout. Bud was with Company "A," and so the whole programme was more like a religious ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... voice, and kneeling close by my side had clasped his hand. I tried to order her away, but my tongue could not form the words. I could only look at her mutely, and there must have been an effective appeal in my eyes, for she got up, nodding an acquiescence, and stood silent and tense a yard from Alresca's feet. With a violent effort I nerved myself to perform my work. The voice of Nolan, speaking to the audience, and then a few sympathetic cheers, came vaguely from the other side of the big curtain, and then ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... a bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. "There he is!" he said, in a tense ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seemed to embarrass the guest, for in Chichikov's face there dawned a sort of tense expression, and it reddened as though its owner were striving to express something not easy to put into words. True enough, Manilov was now destined to hear such strange and unexpected things as never before had ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... and trailed its still renewing echoes through every fibre of its secret habitation. Nor yet for spring;—a couchant leopard has posed itself with horrid intent; murder glitters in its fixed golden eye, quivers in the tense loins, creeps in the tawny glitter of the skin, clutches the keen claws, that recoil, and grasp, and recoil again from the velvet ball of that heavy foot; murder grins in the withdrawn lip, the white, red-set teeth, the slavering crunch of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... In the tense silence which followed, the sheriff, attracted by the noise, emerged from the coroner's door with a shout and hurled himself like an enormous ram into the crowd. Pushing men this way and that, he reached the empty ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... teeming with animal and insect life, though of this we are able to see very little, so carefully do animals conceal themselves. In the night they emerge, and in the morning and evening there is a deafening din of insect life. But at noonday there is a soft and solemn hush, and we are tense with curiosity to know all that is going on in those mysterious forest depths and up among the tree-tops, so close ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... 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 prophecy ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the response. "If you fancy Will would cry baby at death, you knew him far from as well as I did. How strange it is to think of his being in the past tense, poor fellow. It was clever of him to leave me his Diaz; I always ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... broke ... ruined ... got to run for it. Couldn't stand gaol at my age. It ain't pretty, I know, but I'm fifty-nine, Lyveden, fifty-nine." The tense utterance broke into a whimper. "An'—an' that's too old for prison, Lyveden, an' they wouldn't give me a chance. The lawyers 'd make it out bad. You can gamble with others' money as long as you win, Lyveden, but you mustn't lose ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... shall come across a good deal of "acosmistic" philosophy in our survey of Christian Platonism; and the sentimental rationalist is with us in the nineteenth century; but neither of the two has any right to appeal to St. John. Fond as he is of the present tense, he will not allow us to blot from the page either "unborn to-morrow or dead yesterday." We have seen that he records the use by our Lord of the traditional language about future judgment. What is even more important, he asserts in the strongest possible manner, at the outset both of his Gospel and ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the old man had been ruined some other way, and was demented, like the poor old mother who had gone over the hills after her children had left the home nest. And assuredly in Merton's own action he found nothing that was not deeply earnest as well as strikingly dramatic. There was the tense moment when a faithful cowboy broke upon the festivities with word that a New York detective was coming to search for the man who had robbed the Hoffmeyer establishment. His friends gathered loyally about Merton and swore he would never ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... no 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 ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... strange gloom and a stranger fear; and so, because the greatest of all tragedies had come into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the little cabin in which John Cummins knelt with his sobbing face crushed close to ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... silence, felt, Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense. Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt, Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense, Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God's bow, tense As a war-steed's girth, and bright as a warrior's belt. Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... that ended as before in the maelstrom of air back of the ship. But the muffled roar was changed, punctured with a machine-gun's familiar rattle, and the stabbing flashes from Blake's ship before he threw it out of the other's path were a song of joy to the tense nerves of the men ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... hntal, and also for the present verbs of the first conjugation and proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian; not only of the second, but also of all the four conjugations; that verb is siriel. Here is the present tense:—siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. You observe that it runs on just in the same manner as hntal, save and except that the e is substituted for a; and it will be as well to tell you that almost the only difference ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... darkness of the night they could only distinguish the foe by the red glare from their guns. The English fort was dark and silent. It reserved its fire till the enemy came closer. The crisis was coming nearer and nearer. There was a tense feeling in the air, as though an electric cloud hovered ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lingered in all her big muscles. First she spread her slender fore paws, working the toes till they were all wide-awake, and bent her body at the shoulders till her deep chest touched the earth. Next a hind leg stretched out straight and tense as a bar, and was taken back again in nervous little jerks. At the same time she yawned mightily, wrinkling her nose and showing her red gums with the black fringes and the long white fangs that could reach a deer's heart in a single snap. Then she leaped ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... To change the tense. At the time of which I have just been speaking the crowds in the galleries were gazing at the stage and the pit with rapt interest and expectancy. One half of the great fan of desks was in effect empty, vacant; in the other half several hundred members ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... you awake?" persisted the pleading voice, for the brown eyes stared unblinkingly straight ahead of her, and not a muscle of her tense body moved. "May I come in and ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Sage, Mr. Llewellyn John's features relaxed from their drawn, tense expression. A look of relief flashed momentarily into Lord Beamdale's ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... no movement. There was a tense pause. The high-priest gave a little sigh, like one waking from ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... Alleghanies felt that the quarrel was their own; in their hearts the desire for revenge burned like a sullen flame. The old men had passed their manhood with nerves tense from the strain of unending watchfulness, and souls embittered by terrible and repeated disasters; the young men had been cradled in stockaded forts, round which there prowled a foe whose comings and goings were unknown, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the reader must indulge me in a long parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already told. Speaking ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... 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, was attributed by her ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to a region of tinkling china and humming kettle. The room became quiet enough for any one to read, but the first citizen somehow could not read. He was ridiculously conscious of that tense little figure by the fire with the disturbingly friendly eyes. How on earth could a boy be noisy who was absolutely quiet? Yet his very presence seemed to clamor—the clamor of an ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... 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 ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... dead horse, his gaze sweeping the wash, the sagebrush, and the distant group of cottonwoods from which he had seen a shot fired. Though he lay absolutely still, without the least visible excitement, he was alert and tense to the finger tips. Not the slightest sound, not the smallest motion of the moonlit underbrush, escaped ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... town! How it all comes back to me! I am a timid visitor in the little frontier village. It is sunset. A whiskey-crazed farmhand is walking bare footed up and down the middle of the road defying the world.—From a corner of the street I watch with tense interest another lithe, pock-marked bully menacing with cat-like action, a cowering young farmer in a long linen coat. The crowd jeers at him for his cowardice—a burst of shouting is heard. A ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... tight, a. taut, tense; snug, close-fitting; (Colloq.) close, penurious, stingy, parsimonious; (Colloq.) stringent; (Slang) tipsy, boozy, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a good deal of shyness, over the littleness and grace that made him want to pick her up and pet her and protect her, he said . . . Marjorie could remember, even yet, with pleasure, the lovely things he had said to her in that tense way he had on the rare occasions when he wasn't laughing. She had fought off marrying him till the very last minute. And then the very day before the regiment sailed she had given in, and the other two—married ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... comes out of a cloud, and shows me a white face above my own, drawn tense with emotion. "It ees all settle, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... and skill at his command, Monteith Sterry darted ahead. His crouching body, the head well in advance, somewhat after the manner of a racing bicyclist on the home-stretch, his compressed lips, his flashing eyes, with every muscle tense, were proof that he knew it had now become a struggle ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation. It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant later it had vanished. Grace, after triumphantly placing the last hook in its eye, began helping ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... The verbs all terminate in the syllables an, en, in, an, un, un; and are all regulated by a single conjugation, having all the voices, moods, and tenses of the Latin, with three or four others, and the singular dual and plural like the Greek. The terminations of the present tense of each mood form the roots of all the other tenses of the same mood, which are distinguished by certain particles, as che in the second present, bu in the imperfect, uje in the perfect, &c. as in the following example, which are placed between the radical and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... three. Could it be? O Jad-ben-Otho! had she but known a moment before. When they passed she might have joined them, for they were her father and two brothers. Now it was too late. With bated breath and tense muscles she watched the race. Would they reach the summit? Would the Kor-ul-lul overhaul them? They climbed well, but, oh, so slowly. Now one lost his footing in the loose shale and slipped back! The Kor-ul-lul were ascending—one hurled his club at ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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
... her with an expression of kindly concern, for the pretty face had turned white beneath its tan, and the brown eyes were wide and tense, as if beholding something hidden from ordinary gaze. She gazed fixedly, not back in his face, but past him down the ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... tense period of waiting there began to appear in the meantime a few difficulties. My friend had the piece returned from the management with a particularly polite but equally peremptory rejection. He now took the manuscript from bookseller to bookseller; but all to a man expressed themselves to the same ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... behind the hazel bushes on the other side of the enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... laugh, for he felt it would jeopardize his scheme, or hope rather, if he were too brusque with his companion. "You see it is hard for us to understand your cosmopolitan indifference. American feeling just now is rather tense on both sides of the line, and if you will recognize the fact you will ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Tense, excited men gazed spaceward from the ships and planes of the South Atlantic task force. Other watchers waited breathlessly in the control room of the ship Recoverer. Among these was ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... erect, tense, waiting, for miles and miles before her destination could be reached, when suddenly the conductor appeared, his face alive with the realization of sensation. The sheriff of the county had flagged the train. He had a vehicle in waiting for Mrs. Royston, in order that she might ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... amusing to see the change which had come over the looks and actions of the company at the mention and appearance of the violin. The faces that had shown indifference and the look of languid weariness freshened and became tense in all their lines; and on their heads again animation sat crowned. Those who were seated jumped to their feet. The conversationalists broke their circle and swung suddenly into line. Eyes sparkled. Little happy screams and miniature war-whoops from ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... them down, for she was deftly touching cords that stirred other forces—subtle, mysterious, mesmeric, which the old East understands—which Muhammad the Prophet understood when he harnessed evil in the shafts with men and wrote rules for their driving in a book. They rose in silence and stood tense. ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... the long silences which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession. He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and again, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... which many centuries before, as the deified bulls died, had commenced to line the great straight thoroughfare. But this one has never reached its place and never held its mummy. It was the last. Even while men were slowly rolling it, with tense muscles and panting cries, towards what might well have seemed its eternal chamber, others gods were born, and the cult of the Apis had come to an end—suddenly, then and there! Such a fate may ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... the canoe pulled in against the bank. Before he could recover sufficiently from his surprise to speak she had stepped aboard and he could hear her adjusting a cushion beneath her knees. Then came her tense ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... up the bank attempting the tense yet nonchalant expression that is suitable for ladies on ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... and sat straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeable-looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call groomed (one supposes this to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... bridle rein; and then sat silent and motionless on the back of his horse, his eyes on his comrade, waiting in tense expectancy for the moment when he would reach the clump of bushes and look down into the valley beyond and see the cause of those strange and terrible cries that had so suddenly ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil |
