"Alert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and an Italian of some renown was decorating the ceilings. His Grace appeared to be at some pains that the significance of these improvements should not be lost upon us; was constantly appealing to Mr. Fox's taste on this or that feature. But those fishy eyes of his were so alert that we had not even opportunity to wink. It was wholly patent, in brief, that the Duke of Chartersea meant to be married, and had brought Charles and Comyn hither with a purpose. For me he would have put himself out not an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... joke at the young gentleman's expense! Perhaps, as they had no orders from Maltravers, and they did not know where to find him, and thought he would be little inclined to prosecute, the search was not very rigorous. But two houses had been robbed the night before. Their owners were more on the alert. Suspicion fell upon a man of infamous character, John Walters; he had disappeared from the place. He had been last seen with an idle, drunken fellow, who was said to have known better days, and who at one time had been a skilful and well-paid mechanic, till his habits of theft ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pupkin stood, revolver in hand, in the office of the bank, he had forgotten all about the maudlin purpose of his first coming. He had forgotten for the moment all about heroes and love affairs, and his whole mind was focussed, sharp and alert, with the intensity of the night-time, on the sounds that he heard in the vault and on the back-stairway of ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... with himself. By steady riding he could reach Tanis shortly, but once within the capital of the Pharaoh, he was near to Har-hat and within reach of the fan-bearer's potent hand. When he entered the city he must be mentally and physically alert. He had not slept since the last daybreak, and he ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... girl stopped Andy near the door. Instantly his alert mind pictured Waldstricker's present anxiety and the awful retribution he'd exact when he learned of her abduction. He had no idea as yet what Tess intended to do and her attitude revealed no hint. Personally, he was powerless because, to his physical ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... certain meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his sombre moods—hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a trifle more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging his head in so doleful a fashion that I took the bull by the horns and told him he had by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and that he owed it to himself to banish that woman ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... the bank very wisely sent a cable to their legal agent, Clarence A. Seward, in New York, asking him to set the American detective force on the alert. He was a man of the world and understood quite well what sort of men then ruled at Police Head quarters. So he sent at once for Robert A. Pinkerton and gave him entire charge of the American end of the line. Eventually they unearthed the whole plot, secured the evidence that convicted us and recovered ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... path becomes punctured beneath moccasin tread. By day dawn, misty and gray in the May woods, the English are at the Indian camp and march forward escorted by the redskins, single file, silent as ghosts, alert as tigers. Raindrip swashes on the buckskin coats. Muskets are loaded and carefully cased from the wet. The old chief stops suddenly . . . and points! There lie the French in a rock ravine sheltered by the woods like a cave. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... sits Stirless,—as in the wave its counterpart,— Looking, with quiet eye, towards the shore Of dark-green copse-wood, dark, save, here and there, Where spangled with the broom's bright aureate flowers.— The blue-winged sea-gull, sailing placidly Above his landward haunts, dips down alert His plumage in the waters, and, anon, With quicken'd wing, in silence re-ascends.— Whence comest thou, lone pilgrim of the wild? Whence wanderest thou, lone Arab of the air? Where makest thou thy dwelling-place? ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... washed her hands, she betook herself eventually to T'an Ch'un's quarters, where she discovered the courtyard in perfect stillness. Not a soul was about beyond several maids, matrons and close attendants of the inner rooms, who stood outside the windows on the alert to obey any calls. P'ing Erh stepped into the hall. The two cousins and their sister-in-law were all three engaged in discussing some domestic affairs. They were talking about the feast, to which they had been invited during the new ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... final groan the cable train came to a halt, and the hypnotic sleep of the pilgrimage through Cottage Grove Avenue ended. Sommers started up—alert, anxious, eager to see her once more, the glow of enchantment, of love renewed in his soul. Yet at the very end of his journey he was fearful for the first time. How could they meet, after the foul scene ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... was silent and stared at the floor. Natalya did not leave her mother's side, and was at times lost in thought, and then bent over her work. Bassistoff did not take his eyes off Rudin, constantly on the alert for him to say something brilliant. About three hours were passed in this way rather monotonously. Alexandra Pavlovna did not come to dinner, and when they rose from table Volintsev at once ordered his carriage to be ready, and slipped away without ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... night omen-croaking, he sent forth his news from utter blackness into nerve-strung tension. No one member of the thirty but was on the alert for friction or sudden treachery; the were all eyes for each other, and the croaking fell on ears strained to the aching point. He had time to repeat his warning before one of Jaimihr's men stepped into the darkness where he hid and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... very white from too much sentry-go and too little sleep. There is little distinction between sailors and Legation people, for we are all in the same dilemma. On this eventful 20th of June, instead of being resolute and alert, everybody is merely tired and weakened by a couple of weeks' watchfulness against Boxers during an unofficial semi-siege, a state of affairs which has quite unfitted us for fresh strains. Yet beyond our barricades of upturned carts and stolen ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... evenings. Blanche vowed that she raffoled of Laura; and, very likely, Mr. Pen was pleased with Blanche. His spirits came back: he laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to hear him. It was not the same Pen, yawning in a shooting jacket, in the Fairoaks parlour, who appeared alert and brisk, and smiling and well dressed, in Lady Clavering's drawing-room. Sometimes they had music. Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang with Blanche, who had had the best continental instruction, and was charmed to be her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Clara's alert wits perceived that so many private interviews had some signification; and Mrs. Frost found her talking it over with her brother, and conjecturing so much, that granny thought it best to supply the key, thinking, perhaps, that a little jealousy ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... near the spot where Kennedy was seated, they caught sight of a squirrel's nest, and Frank was instantly on the alert to reach the spoil. While he was scrambling with difficulty up the tall fir, Cyril stayed at the foot, and Kennedy determined to call him. Cyril had grown into a tall handsome boy of seventeen, and Kennedy knew that he could be trusted to help him, for ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... his chart was the one stimulant that helped Ann to endure this long day of inactivity. It was like a small thimbleful of wine to one who longed for a generous draught; there was nothing else to do but to wait, alert for all chances that might help her. Evening closed in; the sisters were left alone. Christa returned indolently to lounging upon the bed and reading her novel. If Ann had had less strength, she would have paced the floor ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... was creeping alongside the hull of the sunken vessel. Jimmie handled the wheel dexterously, ever alert for possible danger. Harry stood by the engines, ready at a moment's notice to assist ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... he had intended for a joke to Ruth and Winifred. In some way he must get that candy and box back to the place from which he had taken it, or else tell the girls what he had done; and this last alternative would be unpleasant. All that afternoon he was on the alert for a chance to slip into the Pennells' garden, enter the shed and rescue the hidden sweets; but the day was warm and pleasant, and Ruth and Winifred with their dolls and Hero were out-of-doors playing ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis
... Chinese and the Runic; in it Warton wrote his history of poetry. Dr. Johnson, self-reliant and laborious, was producing his dictionary, and giving limits and coherence to the language. Mind was on the alert, not only subsidizing the present, but looking curiously into the past. I have ventured to call it the antiquarian age. In 1751, the Antiquarian Society of London was firmly established; men began to collect armor ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... his forces and proceeded to make a wily advance upon the fortress under cover of carefully—contrived artifices and stratagems of war. But he contended with an alert and suspicious enemy; and so at the end of two hours it was manifest to him that he had made but little progress. Still, he had made some; ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... watch for him down the Avon banks, and along the Channel shore for fifteen miles. All the Friday night "the mayor, with the aldermen, and twenty of the council, had kept privy watch," and searched suspicious houses at Master Wilkyns's instance; the whole population were on the alert, and when the next afternoon, a week after his escape, the poor heretic, footsore and weary, dragged himself into the town, he found that he had walked into the lion's mouth.[524] He quickly learnt this danger to which he was exposed, and hurried off again with the best ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... compliments to the Prince personally, of whose merits and labours there had been so much fame. This leads him at once to the Piedmontese business. Is not that an opportunity for the co-operation his Serenity had mentioned? At any rate, it behoves all Protestant princes to be on the alert; for who knows how far the Duke of Savoy's ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... curved inward a little, and not three inches from the grips of his guns. And Bedloe saw that Thornton carried a burning cigarette in his left hand, that his right, with thumb caught in the band of his chaps, was careless only in the seeming and that it, too, was alert and tense. And he remembered the lighting ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... energetic, officious, sprightly, alert, expeditious, prompt, spry, brisk, industrious, quick, supple, bustling, lively, ready, vigorous, busy, mobile, restless, wide awake. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... said cordially, always alert to plague her. For she was adorable when teased—especially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of his—and her bright confusion always ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... passed each other on either side of a thick hawthorn copse and neither had the least idea that the other was near. Then there was a joyful murmur among the Wolves as Dick swung round the far end of the copse, saw Chippy, and darted after him. But the Raven was on the alert, and observed Dick almost at once, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... and passing through dense patches of timber, he kept on the alert for signs of game. Now, Bluff did not make any pretence at being a skilful sportsman. In fact, until a year or so back he had been the bungler of the party when it came to a knowledge of woodcraft; but since then he had studied ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... the Indian was brave and alert, but cruel and revengeful, preferring treachery and cunning to open battle. At home, he was lazy, improvident, and an inveterate gambler. He delighted in finery and trinkets, and decked his unclean person with paint and feathers. His grave and haughty demeanor repelled the stranger; but ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... still lay along the pinon limb, every sense on the alert. He was not sure that it was not a trick to draw him out. He already was too good a woodsman to be caught ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... out for was any man who might be an African magician. That he would know such a man he felt sure, having a fair idea from a picture in his book of the robe, headdress, sandals and beard proper to magicians in general. But though he was alert enough as he traveled, the only unusual-looking person he met up with was a man with a peg leg and a tray ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... him up that he felt ready for anything. He was aroused from a dream of passing Aunt Harriet by in lofty scorn and a glittering carriage, by the shrill whistle of the boat. Chester pocketed his remaining crackers and cheese and his visions also, and was once more his alert, wide-awake self. He had inquired the way to the wharf from the grocer, so he found no difficulty in reaching it. When the boat steamed down the muddy little river, Chester ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... inconvenient. Besides, cousin though she was, or perhaps for that very reason, Wilfred was far less amenable to her voice than Agatha's; and if she attempted authority it was sure to rouse all the resistance left in him. Agatha had been constantly on the alert, liable to be called on every half-hour, to soothe fretful distress over impossible impatience at delay, anger at want of comforts, and dolefulness over the chances of improvements, and abuse, whether just or not, of ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... eloquent in discourse, and his hoary head was comely to look upon. He took part in the labours of the younger Brothers, and would perform lowly tasks, such as washing the trenchers, digging the ground, carrying stones, or collecting wood. It was his wont to come early into the choir, to be alert in watching, enduring in fasting, careful in celebrating the Mass, and devout in prayer. Once he was asked by a Religious what he had eaten during Advent, and whether he had had eggs from time to time; and he made answer: ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis
... up the Capilano the banished chief had built his solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current of air, what faltering note in the voice of the Medicine Man had deceived his alert Indian ears? But some unhappy fate had led him to understand that his solitude must be of ten years' duration, not ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic. For if he had refused to do ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... upon them, had either of them suspected it. Claudius held himself up to the full of his great height and steadied every nerve of his body for the meeting. Margaret belonged to the people who do not change colour easily, and when she spoke, even the alert ear of Mr. Barker opposite could hardly detect the faintest change of tone. And yet she bore the burden of it, for she ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... of the heathen abroad. For income the original promoters looked mainly toward a South Sea passage, gold mines, fisheries, Indian trade, and the production of silk, wine and naval stores. But from the first they were on the alert for unexpected opportunities to be exploited. The following of the line of least resistance led before long to the dominance of tobacco culture, then of the plantation system, and eventually of negro slavery. At the outset, however, ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Bobby grew and developed, Abel, on his part, taught him to be keenly alert, patient, self-reliant and resourceful—qualities that every successful hunter and wilderness dweller ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Pan, Creeping at night among the noiseless steeps And hollows of the Erymanthian woods, Roused her from sleep. With listening head, Snatched bow, and quiver lightly slung, she stands, And peers across that dim and motionless glade, Beckoning about her heels the wakeful dogs; Yet Dian, thus alert, is but a dream, Making more real this brooding quietness. How strong and wonderful is night! Mankind Has yielded all to one sweet helplessness: Thought, labour, strife and all activities Have ebbed like fever. The smooth tide of sleep, Rolling across the fields of Attica, Hath covered ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... hunter, because the twenty-first has seen him and has instantly run. Sometimes a deer or an antelope will deliberately give an alarm-cry at sight of something strange. This cry at once puts every deer or antelope on the alert; but they will be just as much on the alert if they witness nothing but an exhibition of fright and flight on the part of the first deer or antelope, without there being any conscious effort on its part ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... relapse into slumber when a gliding sound caught her ear, and in a moment she was listening again, with all her senses alert. Was it fancy? or was there a soft footfall, and a sound as of a hand drawn over the whitewashed wall of the passage? A board creaked, and Morva sat up, and strained her ears to listen. After a stillness of some moments, again there was the soft footfall and the gliding ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... find the day-flower open and alert-looking, owing to the sharp, erect bracts that give it support; after noon, or as soon as it has been fertilized by the female bees, that are its chief benefactors while collecting its abundant pollen, the lovely petals ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... and what he might be; and you're never absolutely sure which you're going to bury till he's dead. But a man in your position can do a whole lot toward furnishing the officiating clergyman with beautiful examples, instead of horrible warnings. The great secret of good management is to be more alert to prevent a man's going wrong than eager to punish him for it. That's why I centre authority and distribute checks upon it. That's why I've never had any Honest Old Toms, or Good Old Dicks, or Faithful Old Harrys handling my good money week-days and presiding over ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... the main ideas apply to humanity in general and not to any particular country. The paper on Divorce is of course written from an English point of view, but its suggestions may be of some use to those who are interested in the question of divorce in the abstract, and are on the alert as to the results of its facilities in America. I do not presume to offer an opinion as to its action there; and in this paper am not making the slightest criticism of the American divorce laws—only stating what seems to me should rule all such questions ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... had been put out of work in England because luxury was scared by the sudden vista of war, but the black-garbed girl, entrenched in her mahogany bower, was still earning some sort of a livelihood. In a moment, wakened out of her terrible boredom into an alert smile, she had sold to G.J. a bunch of expensive chrysanthemums whose yellow petals were like long curly locks. Thoughtless, he had meant to have the flowers delivered at once to Christine's flat. It would not do; it would be indiscreet. And somehow, in the absence of Braiding, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... of love, suffering continual frustration from the evaporation of emotional interest that defies their own needs; the many types of efficient workers, alert, hard, self-satisfied, not wholly cynical, yet with a touch of something that borders on cynicism, submitting almost with a secret repugnance to the mysterious but supreme bond which holds the sexes miserably together; and the prostitute woman of all kinds, out to seize every advantage from ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... cabin, while he moodily watched the big shadow of the mountain creeping silently over the wooded valley as the sun got on the down grade. Deep glooms began to lurk among the ravines of the great ridge opposite. The shimmering blue summits in the distance were purpling. A redbird, alert, crested, and with a brilliant eye, perched idly on the vines about the porch, having relinquished for the day the job of teaching a small, stubby imitation of himself to fly. The shocks of wheat in the bare field close ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... period of stretching or yawning. Mick was asleep one instant, and fully awake the next and shouting "Daylight". The black boys were also light sleepers, trained out of their native laziness by association with alert whites. There was Yarloo, who had come in from the west with Boss Stobart's message and had joined the white man's plant at once; and Ranui, a tall fine man from North Queensland, who showed both in his build and name a trace of Malay blood; and Ted and Teedee, two boys who had been ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... up beside him, shrewdly alert. He had never before ventured to utter words of counsel on this delicate subject. But having started, he was minded to make a neat job of it. Adam had never been the man to ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Landry Court, a young fellow just turned twenty-three, who was "connected with" the staff of the great brokerage firm of Gretry, Converse and Co. He was astonishingly good-looking, small-made, wiry, alert, nervous, debonair, with blond hair and dark eyes that snapped like a terrier's. He made friends almost at first sight, and was one of those fortunate few who were favoured equally of men and women. The healthiness of his eye and skin persuaded to a belief in the healthiness ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... had developed into a supreme instance of the "unmoral" woman, the conscienceless egoist, morally colour-blind, vain, lewd, the intelligence quick and alert but having no influence whatever on conduct. One instance will suffice to show the sinister levity, the utter absence of all moral ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... surprises, we are all warned to pay especial attention to the beat of the drum; always halting when they hear the long roll beat, and marching at the beat of the long march. We are more on the alert regarding the enemy now. We have our advanced pickets doubled, and two sentries at every post. The men on the advanced pickets are constantly under arms, with fixed bayonets, all through the night, and relieved every two ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... walking, nervously fingering the butt of his needlebeam. Something was certainly wrong, but he had no idea what it was. His nearest shelter now was the Wee Coven, about half a mile away. It seemed best to keep on moving in that direction, staying alert, waiting ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... favor of the many-headed, Charlie now proceeded from threats to action. His right fist swung round suddenly. But Beale was on the alert. He ducked sharply, and the next minute Charlie was sitting on the ground beside his fallen friend. A hush fell on the ring, and the little man in the purple tie was left repeating his formula ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... as much speed as his sleepy confusion would allow; and on reaching the opening he found that it was still dark, so that he could not have been long asleep, the fire was burning brilliantly, and every one was on the alert. ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... something, she could not tell what, roused Betty and she sat up suddenly in bed, every nerve taut, every sense alert. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... was up early, alert to continue her investigations. When she heard Mr. Kauffman go down to breakfast she took a bunch of pass-keys from her bag, went boldly through the hall to the door of 45, unlocked it with ease and walked in. A hurried glance showed her a large suitcase lying open upon a table. She ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... quite determine whether Westby was telling the story more as a joke on himself or on him. Anyway, in spite of the temporary embarrassment which they had caused him, there seemed to be nothing offensive in the remarks. He liked Westby's face; it was alert and good-humored, and the cajoling quality in the boy's voice and the twinkle in his eyes were quite attractive. In fact, his manner during supper was so agreeable that Irving quite forgot it was this youth whom he had overheard mimicking him: "I ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... mismanagement thus mischievously alert, or through torpor thus unaccountably base, that actually, on the 30th of May, not having raised their standard before the 26th, the rebels had already been permitted to possess themselves of the county of Wexford in its whole southern division—Ross ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... We neither of us closed an eyelid, so alert were we for the expected footstep on the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... city is Milan! The great houses are all of stone, and stand regular and in order, along wide straight streets. There are swift cars, drawn by electricity, for such as can afford them. Men are brisk and alert even in the summer heats, and there are shops of a very good kind, though a trifle showy. There are many newspapers to help the Milanese to be better men and to cultivate charity and humility; there are banks full of paper money; there are soldiers, good pavements, and all that man requires ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out and to come in.' For fighting, and for all the intercourse and manifold activities of life, his sinews are as braced, his eyes as clear, his spirit and limbs as alert as they were in those old days. No doubt you will say that was due to miraculous intervention. No doubt it was; but is it not true that, in a very real sense, a man may keep himself young all his life, if he will go the right way to work? And the secret of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... now facing; so, for safety's sake, and to avoid being blown ashore, he was compelled to stand off the coast a good deal farther than he had originally intended. He knew that he was in a position of some danger, and, besides being himself additionally on the alert, he posted an extra look-out, with orders to keep his eyes wide open for the first signs of light or loom of moving ship upon that black, rushing waste ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... only deposit their eggs and die. They are very heavy, and if forced to flight must have big wings to support them. I was so interested in this that I slightly chloroformed the female, and made a study of the pair. The male was fully alive and alert, but they had not mated, and he would not take wing. He clung in his natural position, so that he resembled a big fly, on the smooth side of the sheet of corrugated paper on which I placed the female. ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... sailing, one after the other, and landed on the deck beside me. We stood silent, alert. No one appeared from within the cabin or from the lengths of the deck. Venza was watching Molo with her weapon upon him. Snap and I had planned this boarding: Anita and Venza to stay here and guard Molo while we ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... the Paige type-setter would do everything that a human being could do except drink and swear and go on a strike. He might properly have omitted the last item, but of that later. Paige was a small, bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed man, with a crystal-clear mind, but a dreamer and a visionary. Clemens says of him: "He is a poet; a most great and genuine poet, whose sublime ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... at her with surprise, then thrust his head from the window and bowed with smiling, if somewhat exaggerated, politeness. The next moment carriage and traveler vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, but an alert observer might have noticed an eye at the rear port-hole, as though the person within was supplementing his brief observation from the side with a longer, if diminishing, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... amendments, amendments to the amendment, substitutes, and the thousand-and-one things that make up the business of one of the great meetings of the Empire State, and then come into the post-executive committee meeting with eye, brain, and hand alert, ready to record a day's crowded work for that body, must perforce contain much of interest, for these are qualities ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... ancient fathers, living the desert in, For just and holy works were duly fed; Think not they lived on locusts sole, 'tis certain That manna was rained down from heaven instead; But here 'tis fit we keep on the alert in Our bounds, or taste the stones showered down for bread, From off yon mountain daily raining faster, And flung ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... tail feathers out of Parson Higgins' pet rooster when the latch on the front gate clicked. Zip was awake in a minute, sitting up on the cushion with ears sticking straight up and every nerve alert to see who was coming ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... masoned in. By the time this cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like a well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the other end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or three alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the Indian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole. Inserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the bucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word to the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... poor, he says truly: "These are the sort of evils which, where there are no resident gentry, grow to a height almost incredible, and on which the remedial influence of the mere presence of a gentleman known to be on the alert is inestimable." But nothing, as I often had occasion to remark, could be more judicious than his interference on behalf of the poor, or more unlike the fussy impertinence of the philanthropists who think themselves born "to expose" Boards of Guardians. His aim throughout ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... father had his ears on the alert; he heard the window creak, and he ran up, though again too late. In the morning he ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... him with the turn Heathcliff's humour has taken. Having no excuse for lingering longer, I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog. But he was too much on the alert to be cheated: as I closed the door, I heard a cry, and a frantic repetition of ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... yards and after looking at the fleece and bones a minute, stopped to pick up a wisp of wool, when from right at hand there burst forth the most frightful growl that I ever heard. It broke on the utter stillness of that quiet nook like a thunder peal and it so wrought on my already alert senses that I ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... manner which did not make them desire its further acquaintance. As soon as the boar perceived the Tailor it ran at him with foaming mouth and gleaming teeth, and tried to knock him down; but our alert little friend ran into a chapel that stood near, and got out of the window with a jump. The boar pursued him into the church, but the Tailor skipped round to the door and closed it securely. So the raging beast was caught, for it was far too heavy and unwieldy to spring out of the window. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... became the left of the besieging army, and all the troops were constantly on the alert, never less than one tenth of them on ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... the two men paused at the door of the inner room, that the first wore a military fatigue-cap, and his alert carriage as he threw open his cape-coat indicated the bearing of an American army officer. He was of medium height, and his features and eyes implied that the storms and winds of the plains and mountains were familiar friends. This was Park Stanley, charged at that time with ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... trolley-cars caused me some delay. I stood gazing at him restively as he picked his weary way. I had known him as a young man, although to my childish eye he had looked old—a strong fellow, probably of twenty-eight, with jet-black side-whiskers and beard, with bright, black eyes and alert movements. At the time I saw him on Broadway he must have been about sixty, but he ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... difficulty about utterance now; the words flowed in a torrent. "How can Judaism—and it alone—escape going through the fire of modern scepticism, from which, if religion emerge at all, it will emerge without its dross? Are not we Jews always the first prey of new ideas, with our alert intellect, our swift receptiveness, our keen critical sense? And if we are not hypocrites, we are indifferent—which is almost worse. Indifference is the only infidelity I recognize, and it is unfortunately as conservative as zeal. Indifference and hypocrisy between ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... guidance of his uncle, Mr. Edwin Morgan, a consulting engineer of high repute, he visited in process of time every industrial establishment in the neighbourhood—steel works, foundries, engineering shops and tinplate works. His insatiable curiosity, his desire to know the reason for everything, his alert interest in all the processes of manufacture, were noted with smiling admiration by managers and workmen. His last visit to Llanelly was in the summer of 1914. We joined him there in the third week of August. Clear in recollection is an incident that took place during our stay there. One sunny ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... that gentleman, who was on the alert directly. "Come with me to your room, Lacey, my boy, and let's ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... because it is fundamental. Students often read a book without any adequate conception of the facts of which it treats. Even after honest endeavor they frequently have gross misconceptions and fail to see much that was intended for their observation. To keep the class alert and interested, and at the same time to see that the work has been well done, requires patience, tact, and ingenuity. Sometimes difficulties and consequent discouragement are avoided by assigning with the lesson a few general questions to aid the pupil ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... the drawing-room. The women smoked, and drank liqueurs as well as coffee, with the men. One of them went to the piano, and a little impromptu ball followed, the ladies dancing with their cigarettes in their mouths. Keeping my eyes and ears on the alert, I saw an innocent-looking table, with a surface of rosewood, suddenly develop a substance of green cloth. At the same time, a neat little roulette-table made its appearance from a hiding-place in a sofa. Passing near the venerable landlady, I heard her ask the servant, in a whisper, "if the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... windows and their hiding-places, at the Bavarians who were stationed on the upper bridge of the Inn, and were firing thence at the Tyrolese. The Bavarian bullets, however, whistled harmlessly through the streets, the alert Tyrolese concealing themselves, before every volley, in the houses or behind the walls. But no sooner had the bullets dropped than they stepped forward, sang, and laughed, and discharged their rifles, until the exasperated Bavarians fired at them again, when the singing Tyrolese disappeared ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... it, and instantly his round, simple face became clever and alert. Here he was on his own ground. In five minutes he had ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... possibly prevented them from noticing the singular change which had taken place in the second captive since the episode of the kiss. His high color remained, as if it had burned through his mask of indifference; his eyes were quick, alert, and keen, his mouth half open as if the girl's kiss still lingered there. And that haste had made them careless, for the horse of the man who led him slipped in a gopher-hole, rolled over, unseated his rider, and even dragged the ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... people, but also with the Parliament. Already were the presidents and councillors of the law-courts discussing the charges to be brought against the fallen minister in order to justify his dismissal; while the foreign ambassadors were equally alert in writing to acquaint their several courts with the overthrow of Richelieu and ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... outbreak of hostilities in Turkey was that of the youthful Enver Pasha. He was one of the heroes of the remarkable rebellion that resulted in the downfall of Abdul Hamid, and since then he had ever played a leading part in the constantly shifting drama in Constantinople. Dapper, alert intelligent, and approachable, modest almost to the point of shyness, Enver was almost a venerated figure among the Turkish people. As he passed on horseback, his slim figure erect and stiff in its military pose, he attracted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... shall take care always to anchor near the flagship, keeping watch over their oars. They shall be alert. From Malaca each afternoon they shall ask for a watchword, so that, if they meet any hostile ship, it may be known. A copy of these instructions shall be given to the other galleys, so that they may keep them. Given on the seventh of March, one ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... need being put at ease. They talked at random—at least, Hauserman tried to make it seem so—for some time about his work, his book about the French Revolution, current events. He picked his way carefully through the conversation, alert for traps which the psychiatrist might be laying ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... Keenly alert to the possibility that my movements might be watched, I paused, wondering if the sound—which had proceeded from a low bough directly above me—had really been made by an owl or by a human mimic. For the hoot of an owl, being easy ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!... When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good—you will get that.... Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox—then watch him start, alert and interested!" ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... very late hour, while groups of loafing boys and hoydenish girls stand about at the street corners half the night. There is little wonder that the morning finds them heavy and unrefreshed, and that schoolwork suffers severely from want of the alert and vigorous attention that might be secured ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... The carnivora, whose opportunity for obtaining food—unlike the herbivora—is irregular and often at long intervals, gorge themselves upon opportunity and are in the habit of sleeping after a meal. The frugivora and herbivora, however, are alert and ready to fly from their enemies should such appear. The conveying of so much nourishment to the liver and blood stream at one time, is probably a greater tax on them. A light lunch between the usual full meals has nothing to recommend ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... opportunity to declare, that they always shewed the utmost readiness to carry into execution, in the most effectual manner, every measure I thought proper to take. Under such circumstances, it is hardly necessary to say, that the seamen were always obedient and alert; and, on this occasion, they were so far from wishing the voyage at an end, that they, rejoiced at the prospect of its being prolonged another year, and of soon enjoying the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... wrapped his diminutive body were threadbare, greasy, and patched in all directions. Fifty years' wear could not have worsened them; and, indeed, from the whole aspect of the man, you might guess him a century old, were it not for the nimbleness of his gestures and his eyes, which were grey, alert, and keen as needles. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and general appearance indicate health or want of it to them, and all who do not appear normal are turned aside for further examination, which is thorough. The women have a special inspection by the matrons, who have to be both expert and alert to detect and reject the unworthy. The chief difficulty lies in too small a force to handle such large numbers, which have reached as high as ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... hike along all right before we learned that." His guardian angel was alert this time, and he returned to his delving without further comment. By and by he got up. "Pshaw!" He dropped the wearisome volume on the reading-table, took up a paper-covered novel, and turned to the last fight of the blacksmith in Rodney Stone. Here was something ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... another office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion, wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet, he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... signs of losing respect to, we went hand in hand into the stream, till it took us up to our necks, where the no more than grateful coolness of the wafer gave my senses a delicious refreshment from the sultriness of the season, and made more alive, more happy in myself, and, in course, more alert, and open to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Hay for a week or two. The Liberals had put into the field a stronger man than he had expected to encounter, and there was a sudden awakening in the constitutional camp. He had to go the rounds and visit his bandsmen, and without being particularly alert himself to see that everybody else was on the qui vive. The constitutional candidate was, perhaps, as little interested in the coming strife as any man in the limits of the constituency, but he had allowed himself to be entered for the race, and was bound to ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... they trudged through the forest, for the most part in silence. Although they traveled by a circuitous route, and with eyes and ears alert, they neither saw nor heard anything that pointed to the presence of other human beings in the forest. The ground bore no telltale footprints. No incriminating marks were discernible on the trees. Smoke was nowhere visible. No firearm disturbed ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... "enterprise." No one on earth is more fertile in expedients than an American editor, kept constantly to the collar by a sense of competing energies all around him. No trouble, or expense, or contrivance is spared in the collection of news; scarcely any item of interest is overlooked by the army of alert reporters day and night in the field. The old-world papers do not compete with those of the new in the matter of quantity of news. But just here comes in one of the chief faults of the American journal, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... alert while you are here in the store. Then, in place of an indifferent salesman, you may become a good one—such as I should be very sorry to lose. At present, I confess I should not feel it to be a great loss if you withdrew ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... have tracked him to the shelter where he secretes and waits upon Sapphira, always to find that he has discovered and occupied the best stable in the village. The grooms of my brother-officers never learn that Steggles' vacuous expression is the disguise of an intellect subtle, discriminating and alert, so they never trouble to endeavour to forestall him. To find Sapphira is to find Steggles, as he always likes to spread his blanket where she could tread on him if she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... vivaria was thrown open, and another of equal size, but of a more alert and rapid step, broke forth, and, as if delighted with his sudden liberty and the ample range, coursed round and round the arena, wholly regardless both of the people and of Probus, intent only as it seemed upon his own ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... and galloped over the South African plains. There was not much in the way of thrilling incidents, to be sure, and nothing whatever of wild adventure, but there was novelty in everything, and possibilities enough to keep the spirit ever on the alert. ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... thought. The escalators weren't running, and we weren't going to alert any hypothetical ambush by starting them. We tiptoed up, and I even drew my pistol to show that I wasn't being foolhardy. The big social room was empty. A couple of us went over and looked behind the bar, which was the ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... His alert faculties of observation belied the leisurely manner of his approach to the main street. He was a keen-strung, watching, listening machine. The lighting and smoking of a cigarette was mechanical pretense—he did ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... into which a man might well have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... White Sands continued to be on the alert for UFO's while the camera stations were in operation because they realized that if the flight path of a UFO could be accurately plotted and timed it could be positively identified. But no more ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... sense, and not all beasts to be powerful. He is a practical thinker and deals with each phenomenon as it presents itself, and particularly as it shows itself to be connected with his interests. He is constantly on the alert to distinguish between the profitable and the unprofitable, the helpful and the injurious. He himself is the center of his whole scientific and religious system, and the categories into which he divides all things are determined by ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... humbled eyes. The long slender flattened skull beneath the long pointed cap brought before Stephen's mind the image of a hooded reptile. The eyes, too, were reptile-like in glint and gaze. Yet at that instant, humbled and alert in their look, they were lit by one tiny human point, the window of a shrivelled soul, ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... from him of Finisterra," replied Antonio. "This is a young Senorito, lately arrived from Madrid. He is not even a Gallegan. He is a mighty liberal, and it is owing chiefly to his orders that we have lately been so much on the alert. It is said that the Carlists are meditating a descent on these parts of Galicia. Let them only come to Finisterra, we are liberals there to a man, and the old valiente is ready to play the same part as in the time of the French. But, as I was ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... cause which he had laughed away as a mere nothing—a jest of some discontented courtier of one of the old Greek families who had been in Cyprus before the days of the Lusignans; and all the more if they were always alert for fancied slights? ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... kept the garrison on the alert, awaiting an assault. "On the night of the fourth of March, and through all its hours, from candle-lighting time to the clear light of another day, the same incessant thunder rolled along over camps ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... profound for three or four hours was subsequently restless. The mind, when agitated, watches for the body, and wakes it at the time when it should be on the alert. Newton woke up: it was not yet daylight, and all was hushed. He turned round, intending to get up immediately; yet, yielding to the impulse of wearied nature, he again slumbered. Once he thought that he heard a footstep, roused himself, and listened; but ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with Dr. R. H. Jesse, former president of the university, at its head. Though the State in general was still apathetic the women in the large places, especially in St. Louis and Kansas City, were alert and active. Mrs. Richardson, after two strenuous years, had been succeeded by Mrs. David O'Neil as president of the St. Louis League. She was followed in October by Mrs. John L. Lowes, who had to resign from exhaustion and Mrs. O'Neil was ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... completely collapsed into her seat, folded her arms, and closed her eyes. "Laws a massy!" she exclaimed. "What next? Old Tom, drunken Tom, swearin' an' ravin' Tom Brent's boy a preacher!" Then suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up very erect and alert as she broke forth, "Sally Martin, what air you a-tellin' me? It ain't possible. It 's ag'in' nature. A panther's cub ain't a-goin' to be a lamb. It 's downright wicked, that 's what ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... case, too, the march was harassed by Saladin, who hovered on the flank of the Crusaders, and followed them all the way, sending down small parties from the mountains to attack and cut off stragglers, and threatening the column at every exposed point, so as to keep them continually on the alert. The necessity of being always ready to form in order of battle to meet the enemy, should he suddenly come upon them, restricted them very much in their motions, and made a great deal of manoeuvring necessary, ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... them with approval. Each had slung over her shoulders a vasculum for botanical or other specimens, and each carried in her hand a copy of the notes. They looked business-like, healthy, well trained, and alert with intelligence, altogether an excellent advertisement for the school and its ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... wonderful dancing, every action of her alert young body was so beautifully graceful that you forgot her modern costume and could imagine her a nymph in classic draperies. Her arms kept motion with her tripping feet, and both were in time with the tune that she was trilling. It seemed a spontaneous ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil |
