"Tantalizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sat there, a smile on her pretty lips that Lord Donal thought most tantalizing. A railway official announced in a loud voice that the train was about to resume its journey. There was a general shuffling of feet as the passengers ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... discovered interposed a barrier to the further progress of ships towards his longed-for goal, as inexorable as the mountain ranges and vast steppes of Asia, was mercifully concealed from his eyes; and the elusive "secret of the strait" through which he to the last hoped to pass, though tantalizing in its constant evasion, kept in tension the springs of hope and moral energy which might have succumbed under the knowledge ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... thoughts run in bright grooves. That is the strange thing about the sea—its moods have an instant effect on the mind; and, as it changes with wild and swift caprice, the seafarer finds that his views of life alter with tantalizing but pleasant suddenness. Just now I am speaking only of content and exhilaration; but I may soon see another side of the picture. The afternoon glides by like the morning; no churlish houses and chimney-pots hide the sun, and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... his acquaintance, had the greatest natural gift of public speaking.[47] Both the Bishop and the Statesman found, each in the other, a foeman worthy of his steel; but both had passed beyond these voices before I entered Parliament, leaving only tantalizing traditions—"Ah! but you should have heard Derby on the Irish Church," or "It was a treat to hear 'Sam' trouncing Westbury." Failing those impossible enjoyments, I found great pleasure in listening to Lord Salisbury. ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... me about your tantalizing chaps, did you ever meet up with one as bad as Frank can be when he knows the rest of us are so ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... said. "So that I am near you, I am comparatively happy. It is more than this earthly wretch called Me deserves—you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom—hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air! Forgive me for being gross, as you call it! Remember that our calling cousins when really strangers was a snare. The enmity of our parents gave a piquancy ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... its tantalizing undercurrent of mystery, was reenacted before his inner vision. He seemed to hear Nicol Brinn, startled from his reverie, exclaim: "I think it was an owl.... We sometimes get them over ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boom that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the idea of creatio ex nihilo, Ibn Ezra renders, in accordance with its etymology, to limit, to define, by drawing or incising a line or boundary. Having said this, Ibn Ezra, in his wonted mysterious manner, stops short, refusing to say more and preferring to mystify the reader by adding the tantalizing phrase, "The intelligent will understand." He means apparently to indicate that an eternal matter was endowed with form. In fact he seems to favor the idea of eternal creation and maintenance of the universe, the relation of which to God is as the relation ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the valley and sees Shaw's Cottage commanding the most beautiful view in the hills; the very eaves of her ladyship's house seem to have wrinkled into a constant scowl of annoyance. Shaw's long, low cottage seems to smile back with tantalizing security, serene in its more lofty altitude, in its more gorgeous raiment of nature. The brooks laugh with the glitter of trout, the trees chuckle with the flight of birds, the hillsides frolic in their abundance of game, but the acres are growling like dogs of war. "Love thy neighbor ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... at him unless he started down. My excitement was difficult to control. I found it impossible to attend to my sensations, to think about what I was feeling. But the moment was full of suspense. The bear went into a small clump of spruces and stayed there a little while. Tantalizing moments! The hounds were hot upon his trail, still working to and fro in the oak thicket. I judged scarcely a mile separated them from the bear. Again he disappeared behind a little bush. Remembering that five pairs of sharp eyes could see me from the points above I stood up and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... with a tantalizing little laugh, and a moment after was swept off into the dance by Archie, who had been seriously considering ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... tell tales out of school," commanded the Major in mock alarm; but Anstice noticed how the man's brown fingers closed round his wife's hand, and suddenly he felt as though this spectacle of their reunion was too tantalizing to be pleasant to a ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... to think over how I was going to get down. I was very thirsty and it was tantalizing to see the water down in the valley sparkling in the sunlight. It looked very clear ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... manifest such a terror of dogs when out feeding at night (for the slowest dog can overtake them), in the evening, when sitting upon their mounds, they treat them with tantalizing contempt. If the dog is a novice, the instant he spies the animal he rushes violently at it; the vizcacha waits the charge with imperturbable calmness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and then disappears into the burrow. After having been ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... passionately). The truth—Oh, God! what do you know about the truth? Your business is crawling up into a little power, that you may use it by tantalizing, morally and physically, people a thousand times better than you.... You sit there in your smug authority ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... of art; full of tantalizing and unexpected flavors of orange, mint and clove. The girls, who knew it of old, groaned with pleasure at sight of the frosty-looking pitcher with sprigs of ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... that white city and Monte Carlo. It is quiet and lovely. For this reason the great army of tourists pass it by; there is no casino, no band, no streets full of tantalizing shops. On the very western limit of Villefranche, on the winding white road which rises out of Nice, a road so frequently passed over by automobiles that a haze of dust always hangs over it, is a modest little villa, so modest that a ballerina would scorn it and a duchess ignore ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of excitement. A steady fire of questions and answers passed between the younger and older brother. The wolf was in hand, the horns of a hundred angry cows held the enemy prisoner, and yet the boys were powerless to make the kill. The situation was tantalizing. ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... disappointed, because the cloth had been thoroughly impregnated with the salt of the ocean in which I had been immersed. I lay on my back, my mouth open to catch the few rain- drops that fell directly into it. It was tantalizing, but it kept my membranes ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... you value my opinion so highly," she answered, in that half-frivolous and half-serious tone that was especially tantalizing to one of his ardent temperament, "I shall be very careful of the advice ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... it in his father's pocket," nodded the coroner, with all the tantalizing brevity of a man who knows he has a choice morsel of information that is eagerly awaited. "It's addressed to 'My boy David,' so I calculated we'd better give it to him first without reading it, seeing it's his. After he reads it, though, I want to see it. I want to see if what it says ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... afternoon," she reflected, "and she told me everything she had to tell—and what does she-mean by such a tantalizing message as this? 'Dearest Ethel: I have the most extraordinary news. Come to me immediately. Dora.' How exactly like Dora!" she commented. "Come to me im-mediately—whether you are in bed or asleep—whether you are sick or well—whether it ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... though no man regarded; and the cordial fragrance of the strawberry-beds, mingling with entangled masses of honeysuckle in their exuberance of midsummer blossom, seemed to mock me, as I loitered in the dusk near the old gateway, with the tantalizing illusions of a fairy-tale—the Barmecide's feast, or Prince Desire surveying his princess through the impermeable walls ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... in rather a quarrelsome frame of mind while—well, I was hungry, too (it was long past our dinner hour) and so felt in a tantalizing mood. If we had not been at just these odds on this lovely September evening, the incidents which follow might never have occurred. Out of this foolish beginning of a quarrel came a chain of circumstances which entirely changed the current ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another child,—another and the same,—with likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a statue, and his face was as white. The attorney dropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizing smile. ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... automobiles traveled swiftly through Washington allowing the four "Automobile Girls" only tantalizing glimpses of the executive buildings which they passed on ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... tint, mingled with white. Still, he was Sebastian; and after the first shock of his altered appearance had been got over, Josephine carried her incense in the old way, and found her worship as dear and as tantalizing as ever. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... saw nothing of windmill or of palisaded village or of royal governor; and field and meadow and woodland all seemed too sleepy to tell us much about them. They only served to recall the tantalizing, broken bits that the records give of the picturesque life that was here—of colonial pomp and savage dignity, of London trade and Indian barter, of English games and merriment, of colonial trials and tragedies: all this of which we know, yet ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... the noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come to his first ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... could be tantalizing without mercy, and when he had fully aroused his wife's anger he ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... towards him with very short steps, her head a little on one side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an approach more tantalizing than an escape. He looked on, eager—charmed. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... intense even than that of naked nature; when all faces are strange to us; when no pulse of sympathy throbs from our heart to the hearts of others when each passes us by, engaged with his own destiny, and leaving us to fulfil ours. In this tantalizing solitude of the crowd, in this sense of isolation from our fellows, if never before, do we feel, with sickness of heart, that we are alone. There is a solitude of sickness,—the solitude of the watcher or of the patient,—a solitude to which, at times, duty and Providence call us all. ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... illy as I could afford the time, to make such investigations as I could, without exciting invidious suspicion, into the character of the person whom I found domesticated at Ridgeley on my return from my summer tour. The information I picked up in that cautious city was so meagre and tantalizing as to provoke me into the belief that he had selected his references with an eye to the slenderness of their knowledge of his personal history. Accident, however, has since placed within my reach a means of learning all that I wish to know. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "you are a most tantalizing person. Why cannot you tell me? If the matter is secret you have no cause to be afraid. To whom could I whisper it in ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... had been less narrowly practical. Indeed, this limiting of the record to a single definite purpose, which was the controlling interest in making it, renders the information which it gives us upon all the subjects in which we are now most interested fragmentary and extremely tantalizing, and forces us to use it with great caution. It remains, however, even with this qualification, a most interesting collection of facts, unique in all the Middle Ages, and a monument to the practical genius of the monarch ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... as Gregory recognized, almost painfully direct, but there was no doubt that Sally looked very pretty with the faint flush of color in her cheeks and the tantalizing light ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... stranger. Peace and little men ought to keep each other company," spoke the man, with a strong, nasal twang, after having adjusted his thumbs in the arm holes of his waistcoat, and passed twice or thrice up and down the, room, with a tantalizing air. Ephraim Flagg had given up driving the stage between New London and Norwich, and had recently taken to books, and so studied certain exact and inexact sciences, as they were called, and neglected all business, that it was feared he would become a town tax. In ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... It was strange how tantalizing was that goldenrod. Always just ahead she saw another bunch, and yet another, each a little finer than the one within her reach. With joyous exclamations and gay little calls back to the waiting Jamie, Pollyanna—looking particularly attractive in her scarlet sweater—skipped ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... said Sam, "but I wish we were in the Cubapines. This inaction is terrible while so much is at stake. It's a consolation to know that I am going to help to save the country, but it is tantalizing to wait so long. Then in your own way you're going to help the country too," he added, thinking that he might seem to Cleary to be monopolizing ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... volcano of Jorullo; but as the road is described to us as being entirely devoid of shade, and the heat almost insupportable—with various other difficulties and drawbacks—we have been induced, though with great regret, to abandon the undertaking, which it is as tantalizing to do, as it is to reflect that yesterday we were but a short distance from a hill which is but thirty leagues from ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... morrow Jim started digging. She condescended to take a little interest in this, for the experience was novel. A lucky strike might mean freedom from this life of hardship and misery. Once back in England—— The thought was tantalizing. She watched Jim commence to drive a hole through the matted undergrowth, exhibiting surprise when the pick rang hard on the ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Wells never could become reconciled to his mincing ways; yet I confess now that I began to value him greatly, and longed more than once to join with the two who rode in our advance, cheering their wearisome way with quips of fancy and snatches of song. He knew it too, the tantalizing rascal, and would frequently send back a biting squib over his shoulder, hoping thus to draw me away from the silent grim-faced soldier beside whom I ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... taking a nap, with a basket of stale eggs for a pillow," said the bad boy, as he took the old man by the arm and raised him up, and looked at him with a grin that was tantalizing. "What is it, sewer gas? My, but the board of health won't do a thing to you if the inspector happens in here. Those eggs must have been mislaid by a hen that had a diseased mind," and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out of the show case and began to sprinkle the floor, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... more warmly; Sexes alike are free, reciprocally gay, and Pleasures are persu'd without Reflection, if Principle or Fear refuse us Love; for I'm the tenderest of a Lady's Honour, the Fair One still has tantalizing Charms, her tuneful Voice, her graceful, easie Movement, her lively Converse, happy turn of Thought, Language polite, keen Wit, fineness of Argument, but Marriage turns the Edge ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have failed to attract the attention ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... actresses, and their superb adornments of natural flowers artistically arranged in coronets and wreaths, with costly pearls and diamonds. The play itself was simply a farce—a series of ridiculous passages between some lovesick swains and their rather tantalizing lady-loves, who eventually escaped, amid a shower of roses and bon-bons, from their pursuers, and disappeared behind a huge palm tree, which the next instant had vanished into air, roots, branches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... was sitting unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself. Weary caught the words, sung absently, under ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... house-tops, and the poor fellow's mind had reached the point where the slam of a window or the ripping creak of a floorboard would have shattered his brittle nerves into a thousand cursing tortures—then that teasing, tantalizing little friend of all rheumatic invalids—the Morning Nap—came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped out of his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of pain which he had been accumulating so laboriously ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... from myself the memory of that beautiful girl, the cause of whose death I had certified. The perfect countenance haunted me constantly. In my dreams I often saw her alive and well. The marvellous face was turned towards me, with merry, dancing dark eyes and a tantalizing ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Suppose a farmer becomes satisfied that the manure he makes is not rich enough. To tell him, when he is anxious to raise a good crop of potatoes next year, that he must go to work and improve his stock of cattle, sheep, and swine, and then buy bran and oil-cake to make richer manure, is somewhat tantalizing." ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... get one end of his grass rope caught upon some projection at the top of that tantalizing aperture! In the instant's pause and thought an idea occurred to him. He would attempt it. Turning back to the tumbled wall, he seized one of the large, flat slabs that had composed it. Hastily making one end of his rope fast to the piece of granite, he returned to the shaft, and, coiling ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as possible, and to facilitate this keep the brush soft by occasionally applying a little turpentine to it. This, however, is a slow and tantalizing process of varnishing, and there is an easier and better one. Procure a bottle of Canada balsam in benzole. It is used for mounting microscopic objects in, and can be got from any optician's. It should be quite fluid. Get a large wide-mouthed bottle and pour the balsam and benzole ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... submissive and placating, and permitted Happy Jack to appropriate the conventional garb of a male human, the while coffee and bacon were maddening his hunger with their tantalizing odor. He seemed much more at ease, once he saw that Happy Jack, properly clothed, was not particularly fearsome to look upon, and talked volubly while he got out bread and stewed prunes and boiled beans ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the octopus crouched, staring upward with motionless orbs, and gathering himself together. Then he sprang straight up, like a leaping spider. He fixed two tentacles upon the tantalizing prey; then the other tentacles straightened out, and with a sharp jet of water from his propulsion tube he essayed to dart ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... revelation, it was easy work for Mrs. Horncastle to launch out into a playful, tantalizing, witty—but, I grieve to say, entirely imaginative—account of her escapade with Mrs. Barker. How, left alone at the San Francisco hotel while their gentlemen friends were enjoying themselves at Hymettus, they resolved upon a little trip, partly for the purpose of looking ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... certain but that Mr. Gilder's "New Day" is entitled to rank as a spring poem in the sense in which I am speaking. It is full of gayety and daring, and full of the reckless abandon of the male bird when he is winning his mate. It is full also of the tantalizing suggestiveness, the half-lights and shades, of April ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... but more determined than ever to marry this tantalizing beauty, left the room and retired ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... turtle. Several people were waiting with covered dishes, for turtle soup and turtle, which had been bespoken in different parts of the city. The dishes, as fast as they were filled, continually passed by me, tantalizing me by their savoury odours. I sat down upon a stool near the fire—I saw food within my reach that honesty forbade me to touch, though I was starving: how easy is it to the rich to be honest! I was at this time so weak, that my ideas began to be confused—my head grew dizzy—-I felt the heat of ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... wager $400 on a card, and the Kid began really to play. Glenister now lost steadily, not in large amounts, but with tantalizing regularity. Cherry had never seen cards played like this. The gambler was a revelation to her—his work was wonderful. Ill luck seemed to fan the crowd's eagerness, while, to add to its impatience, the cases came wrong twice in succession, so that those who would have bet heavily ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... clandestine visits to the baskets after the formal ceremonies have been concluded. At a picnic there is no such expression as "from soup to nuts," for there is no soup, and perhaps no nuts, but there is everything else in tantalizing abundance. If I find a plate of deviled eggs near me, I begin with deviled eggs; or, if the cold tongue is nearer, I begin with that. In this way I reveal, for the pleasure of the hostesses, my unrestricted and democratic appetite. Or, in order to obviate any possible embarrassment ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... task of being disagreeable that Allie was at her wits' end how to manage her; Howard openly quarrelled with her, and even Charlie, the courteous, marched out of the room and slammed the door behind him, while he sang, with tantalizing distinctness,— ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... the boy be doing? The loft was an unknown land to Bonaparte. He had often wondered what was up there; he liked to know what was in all locked-up places and out-of-the-way corners, but he was afraid to climb the ladder. So Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing, questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... trying to see more than was visible in the microscope. The tantalizing suggestions of filaments around the nuclei might be the form of plague that was contagious. They might even be the true form of the bug, with the bigger cell only a transition stage. There were a number of diseases that involved complicated changes in the organisms that ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... ever known. Just to talk to him gives one such a queer feeling of—of dissatisfaction with one's self, and seeing him once more seems to have half revived in me a whole series of dead memories. And I have been trying to think, but it is all so tantalizing. There is some mystery about him," she insisted. "He disappeared suddenly, and my mother never mentioned him but once afterward, but other persons have spoken of him since—I forget who. He was so well known, and he used ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from these regiments into the line. Recruiting was going on vigorously all over the country. Horses were being bought up, and efforts made to place the attenuated regiments on a war footing. All this was tantalizing news to the Twenty-eighth. The colonel was known to have written to influential friends in London, begging them to urge upon the authorities the folly of allowing a fine regiment like his to leave the country at such a moment. But little was hoped from this, for ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... life into me to learn that Florence Douglas, my own dear Florence, had come out to this distant coast to search for me. But I tell you, Jake, it's rather tantalizing to think that she is waiting for me in San Francisco, while I am tied by the ankle to this lonely cabin so many ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... store. I had reached my last day and was putting in my "best licks" so as to have a good batch of orders to carry in with me, to make my welcome all the greater. But as luck would have it no day of my trip had been so uncertain and tantalizing. ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... safe and sound," cheerily said the driver of the huge black ambulance, as he pulled up before the piazza of Crestdale, the beautiful villa whose tower had been tantalizing the ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... handle them. The form of the books was preserved and the character of the writing distinctly legible, but, from the effect of moisture, the paper had lost its cohesion, and fell to pieces at every effort to turn a leaf. I was myself a witness to this tantalizing deception, and, with the Librarian, read enough to show the date and character of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... in search of some other source of patronage, and feeling averse to subjecting himself to further tantalizing delays and disappointments of the court, determined to repair to Paris. He departed, therefore, and went to the Convent of La Rabida to seek his son Diego. When the worthy Friar Juan Perez de Marchena ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... sun was half-way down the west, its glare remained untempered, and the tantalizing shade of the sparse mesquite was more of a trial than a comfort to the lone woman who, refusing its deceitful invitation, plodded steadily over the waste. Stop, indeed, she dared not. In spite of her fatigue, regardless of the torture from ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the nurse had bared his shoulder and had pricked it with something that felt like a pin, they came back—all those lovely faces; only now they seemed to peep from behind clouds of smoke, heavier than the mists, and more tantalizing in their concealments. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... note of Margery's fondness for sweetbreads en coquille. But of the rest my recollection retains only the picture of a slender girl in the depths of a big, cane chair, a slipper impertinently cocked upon the rung of another chair, the soft light which filtered through the leaves throwing into tantalizing shadow the curves of a mouth and the hide-and-seek play of blue eyes which were successfully employed in supplying me with an entirely new ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... didn't want to scare you," said the woman, in that tantalizing voice, "but if I was you, I wouldn't get any crazier than ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... himself. He became dejected again. Then, presently, he threw oil the cloak of bitterness which sat so ill on him, and, resuming his usual kindliness and benignity of manner, succeeded in making himself unconsciously tantalizing. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... angry lover. How tantalizing to be offered a fourth curate, with a long purse, only to find St. Wulstan's serving as an outlet for a lover's quarrel, and the youth restless and restive ere the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day, and his good-fortune could not escape the lynx eyes of his comrades. Nor could the size and shape of the envelope and the neat, small handwriting fail to be noticed. Weir always stole off by himself to read his daily letter, trying to escape a merry chorus of tantalizing remarks. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... snow fields is most agonizing, and can only be likened to the thirst of the desert. The snow around you is tantalizing, for to eat it does not quench the thirst in the slightest; it aggravates it. If I ever longed for water ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... idea was executed with the design of tantalizing the sufferers in their dying hours with the sight of that element the want of which would soon cause them the most acute anguish. By the side of the bowl he also placed a handful ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... dreaming tantalizing dreams of cooling, effervescent beverages. Over and over again in his dreams he had risen from his bed, and tripping lightly down to the surgery in his pajamas, mixed himself something long and cool and fizzy, without being able to bring the ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... overrun with wild grape and bittersweet, making fantastic pergolas from which the clear ringing challenge of the cardinal or the bold bugle of the Carolina wren came to us above the rush of the waters. Just a tantalizing struggle between mist and sunshine for perhaps an hour revealed bits of fair blue sky overhead and clouds of vapor resting ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... wants most is something you can't get her," thought David, looking up with a tantalizing little smile. Then her second ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... exclusively beloved, yet affects to set no value upon the preference that is shown to him; appears satisfied with his own approbation, and stoically all-sufficient to his own happiness. Leonora does not know how to manage his temper, but I do. The suspense, however, in which he keeps me is tantalizing: he shall pay for it hereafter: I had no idea, till lately, that he had so much self-command. At times he has actually made me doubt my own power. At certain moments I have been half tempted to believe that I had made no serious impression, that he ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... World of Three Dimensions. This done, I immediately sent for my Grandson; for, to confess the truth, I felt that all that I had seen and heard was in some strange way slipping away from me, like the image of a half-grasped, tantalizing dream, and I longed to essay my skill in making ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... wearing something black and satiny, cut in the newest Dallas-approved style, with long, tantalizing diagonal slashes across the breast and hips. Her hair was strikingly two-toned, black and blonde. Her teeth were a blinding white, and had been filed ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... Sheridan was peculiarly tantalizing. Born and brought up in the midst of those bright hopes, which so long encircled his father's path, he saw them all die away as he became old enough to profit by them, leaving difficulty and disappointment, his only inheritance, behind. Unprovided with any profession by which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... poor to buy at any one time all the necessary ingredients, particularly the fat in which to fry it. During the breadmaking, the smoke-blackened coffeepot boiled over. The aroma of freshly made coffee smote her nostrils and roused her from the tantalizing memories. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... floated in and out wearing tantalizing garments of oblivion. They seemed about to dance, then vanished. They reappeared half a dozen times, but never unveiled their faces. The imp Curiosity pulled Memory by the sleeve and said, "Why do they run away? 'Tis strange knavery!" Out ran Memory to capture them. After a great deal ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... This time, Jon drank the bitter liquid slowly, trying to figure out what it was. It had a familiar, tantalizing taste but he couldn't quite ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... would have only appeared ridiculous, and he was by no means sure that she would not have looked upon it as merely a confession of his inability to keep up with her. And yet there was something peculiarly fascinating and tantalizing in the situation. She did not see the sardonic glitter in his eye ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Mary looked at the gaily dressed girl on the sofa, her animosity rekindled. It was not Kate's bold black eyes that stirred her wrath, nor the hard red lips that recalled the taunts of other days: it was the sight of the auburn curls gathered in tantalizing profusion under the brim ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... crew frayed out in the heat. By night they slept amid tantalizing dreams of food; by day they sprawled in dreary silences under awnings which held heat like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught the sun's rays and threw out a furnace heat. The men ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... satisfied. The arrow had been pulled out, but its poison remained. He made use of another of his tantalizing pauses, then: ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... him, would have made the Courier and Inquirer powerful enough to cast off all party ties; and this he would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the small profits of the printing-office; ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... from the sand and gravel which cover it. It is about a league in length, and crosses the side of Chimborazo at an elevation of more than fourteen thousand feet. Chimborazo stands on the left of the traveler. How tantalizing its summit! It appears so easy of access; and yet many a valiant philosopher, from Humboldt down, has panted for the glory and failed. The depth of the snow and numerous precipices are the chief obstacles; but the excessively rarefied air is another hinderance. Even in crossing the Arenal, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... this land of summer, and sunshine, and flowers—had they no cares at all? He went out into the garden with these two girls; and they were like two young fawns in their careless play. Miss Carry, indeed, seemed bent on tantalizing him by the manner in which she petted and teased and caressed her sister—scolding her, quarrelling with her, and kissing her all at once. The grave, gentle, forbearing manner in which the elder sister bore all this was beautiful to see. And then her sudden ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... enough, Evelyn lay comfortably back on her pillow, her wonderful golden hair falling in long, loose waves about her. Her beauty now made little impression upon Grace, who knew only too well the tantalizing, troublesome spirit that lay behind it. "It is almost eight o'clock, Miss Ward. Remember, breakfast is ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... tantalizing manner. "I think you will take my advice and surrender," he said, sitting down carelessly in a chair and swinging one of his long legs over the other. "If, on investigation, it proves that you are not spies, you will be allowed to go on your way. ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... page of Eothen gives evidence of deliberate calculation of effect. That book is at once curiously like and curiously unlike Borrows' Bible in Spain. The two belong to the same period and, in a sense, to the same fashion. Each combines a tantalizing personal charm with a strong, almost fierce, coloring of circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas Borrow stood for ever ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... street, upon some one's fence-rail, climbed a honeysuckle vine; and every now and then Larry caught a whiff of a faint perfume as the breeze flitted by. He wished the breeze would carry heavier loads of it and come oftener. It was tantalizing to get just one breath and no more in ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... to take Charleston in 1706, but were repulsed with great loss, consisting principally of time which they might have employed in raising frogs' legs and tantalizing a bull at ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... just as he knew that she was a girl of education and refinement. A tantalizing thing to meet a disembodied voice like that, a low laugh, a mystery! The lady might have a face like a dried prune! (Only he knew that she hadn't!) Voices were not to be relied upon. Take that "hello-girl," for instance; she had had the softest lilting voice over the wire, ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... after rebuff, and delay after delay. Talleyrand met him with his usual front of impenetrable duplicity. He calmly denied everything connected with the cession of Louisiana until even the details became public property, and then admitted them with unblushing equanimity. His delays were so tantalizing that they might well have revived unpleasant memories of the famous X. Y. Z. negotiations, in which he tried in vain to extort bribe-money from the American negotiators [Footnote: Jefferson was guilty of much weak and undignified conduct during these negotiations, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... them, the young folks ran down the hill, with a very lively dog gambolling beside them, and took a delightfully tantalizing survey of the external charms of the big tent. But people were beginning to go in, and it was impossible to delay when they came ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the work of assuring the safety of the troop transports the navy of the United States may claim recognition for the larger share, since 82 per cent of the escorts furnished were American cruisers and destroyers. It was a nerve-racking and tantalizing experience—the troop ships sailing in echelon formation, preceded, followed, and flanked by destroyers; at night every glimmer of light eclipsed, the ships speeding ahead in perfect blackness, each inch of the sea swept by watchful eyes to discover the telltale ripple ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... war itself do not belong to a work such as this; but, tantalizing as it must be to an historian of any class to pass over the brilliant series of achievements which gave Britain the glory of being twice[175] the principal agent in the deliverance of Continental Europe, the glories of Salamanca, Victoria, Orthes, and Waterloo must be left to other ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... him to flee in another direction. He did not fully realize just what had happened to him, but he was conscious of having received a very hard jolt, indeed. The house, full of happy associations as it was, was just now too tantalizing a place. Aleck had won out, and he and Melanie were radiating that peculiar kind of lover's joy which shines on the eve of matrimony. Jim wished them well—none better—but he also wished they wouldn't make such a fuss over these things. ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... irritate him; the fearless, taunting gleam of his teeth, his audacious confidence, put him on edge. Twice again he struck out swiftly, but Jean had come and gone like a dart. His lithe body, fifty pounds lighter than Howland's, seemed to be that of a boy dodging him in some tantalizing sport. The Frenchman made no effort at attack; his were the tactics of the wolf at the heels of the bull moose, of the lynx before the prongs of a cornered ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... they could, declared it was the greatest inconsistency to take Emmeline to the Opera, and permit her to appear so often in company at home, and yet in other matters he so strict; why could she not bring her out at once, instead of only tantalizing her? but Mrs. Hamilton could never do anything like anybody else. Her daughters were much to be pitied; and as for her niece, she must pass a miserable life, for she was scarcely ever seen. They had no doubt, with all Mrs. Hamilton's ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... easily conceived how a young man of his disposition passed his time, in this tantalizing situation. He ejaculated with great fervency; but his prayers were not the effects of resignation. He ran back on foot, with incredible speed, in order to meet his valet, whom he unhorsed in a twinkling, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... you declare yourself glad, dear witch, in that case I'm glad too," he answered her. "But as to forgiveness, I'm inclined to hold it over until you leave off being tantalizing—and, upon my word, I find you uncommonly far from leaving off ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... little frown—gave her also a secret yearning for companions of her own gender. Any girl or woman that she did chance to meet always took a fancy to her, because she was so nice to them, which made the transitory nature of these friendships tantalizing. She was incapable of jealousies or backbiting. Let men beware of such—there is coiled in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is to be found such a legend, a tale of greater riches just beyond men's knowledge. No matter how dazzling is the wealth at hand there is always that tantalizing story of the lost mine, sometimes reputed to be far and inaccessible, sometimes only just over the next hill, yet always as difficult to discover as the end of the rainbow. But, as Abner Blythe said, it is so a country grows, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... awful wait," she said wearily. "We came here soon after two o'clock, thinking we would get the children on board early for their afternoon sleep; now it's after four, and we have stood here ever since. It's too tantalizing with the ship looking at us, and the poor babies are so tired. Still, I'm not the worst off. Look ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... DEATH 135 The dropping platform. Adrift! Captain Kennor, sea scout. A splendid inspiration. A bully for safety. The tantalizing craft. A glow-worm of the waves. And then—! Like a dream. ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... the light, please, you lovely, tantalizing witch," he answered, drawing the papers from the envelope and handing them to her. "If I didn't love you to distraction, I wouldn't stand this sort of thing a minute longer. God!" he cried, glancing heavenward, "you'll be the death of ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... of things!" said the talkative young man to Nekhludoff on the stairs, as though continuing the interrupted conversation. "It is fortunate that the captain is a kind-hearted man, and does not enforce the rules. But for him it would be tantalizing. As it is, they talk together and ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... had to pass, to get to our chamber over Monsieur Perrier's workshop; and in an evening the dainty, savory smell of dinner, cooking in the kitchen adjoining, sometimes filled the frosty air. Both sight and scent were tantalizing, and my dreams at night were generally of pleasant ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... smiled his lazy, tantalizing smile. "I might as well be broke as the way I am," he protested. "What's a paltry fifteen thousand dollars to a man who needs half a million? Mr. Parker, my horse is not for sale at ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... love! How tantalizing it is to me to meet you here in public, where I may scarcely take your dear hand, when my heart is nearly breaking with its repressed feelings!" he whispered, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Lake the "pathfinders" have crept into the valley of California. As he shields his face from biting winds, he can see again the panorama of the great plains, billowy hills, and broad vistas, tantalizing in their deceptive nearness. Thundering herds of buffalo and all the wild chivalry of the Sioux and Cheyennes sweep before him. The majestic forests of the West have darkened his way. The Great Salt Lake, a lonely inland sea; ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... stimulated the world. As to his treatment of Change, it reveals Bergson in one of his happiest moods. It is difficult to restrain one's praise in speaking of the subtle and resourceful way in which he handles this tantalizing and elusive question. It is a stroke of genius. The student of Philosophy, of course, at once thinks of Heraclitus; but Bergson is not merely another Heraclitus any more than he is just an echo of Jacobi. He places Change in a new light, enables us to grasp its character ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... rift in the trees. He told his Houssa to wait where he was in charge of the two guns and birds, and started off with his net in pursuit of the butterfly. The creature fluttered away with Frank in full pursuit. Hither and thither it flitted, seemingly taking an impish delight in tantalizing Frank, settling on a spot where a gleam of sunlight streamed upon the bark of a tree, till Frank had stolen up within a couple of paces of it, and then darting away again at a pace which defied Frank's best attempts to keep up with it until it chose ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... ending in ignominious flight, the advance of the allies, finally the capture of Paris. All this while Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg witnessed first the alarm and then the exultation of the court and the people as the rumors now of defeat, anon of victory, were brought by the couriers at tantalizing intervals; and he saw the rejoicings and illuminations which rendered the Russian capital so brilliant and glorious during the last portion of his residence. It was an experience well worth having, and which is pleasantly ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... lumpish mountains, or an abrupt huge chasm of awful rocks, each side being almost perpendicular, startles the traveller with a far-down prospect of some sunshiny, rich, leafy, valley region, at once showing at what a bleak elevation he has been roaming so long, and tantalizing him with the contrast of that far, far off, low, luring landscape, rendering more irksome than before the dead, heathery desert, interminably undulating before, behind, and all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various |
