"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great thing for Fleeming to make, even thus late, the acquaintance of his father; but the harrowing pathos of such scenes consumed him. In a life of tense intellectual effort, a certain smoothness of emotional tenor were to be desired; or we burn the candle at both ends. Dr. Bell perceived the evil that was being done; he pressed Mrs. Jenkin to restrain her husband from ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glanced significantly at the young librarian, who was leaning upon the counter in a tense, keyhole position, with his private ear turned somewhat ostentatiously ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... and laughing and warm with a sweet friendliness, but they crashed through the room like the breath of a swarm of furies. Andrew Sevier's face went white and drawn on the instant, and every muscle in his body stiffened to a tense rigidity. His dark eyes narrowed themselves to slits and ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... watch aloft. Henry sat tense at the wireless, waiting to catch any possible message, and Roy and Willie scrambled cautiously down to their favorite observation post in the pines. On came the transports, riding the waves in a stately column; yet the little house seemed ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... rope leading from the ship, which had been drawn very tense, was suddenly slacked on board the ship, and the middle of it fell ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... The tense feline growl of the tiger grew more distinct. The Prince's hand sought the jewelled handle of his kris. There was a swift rush in the darkness, a crashing among the rubber-vines, a short, quick snarl, ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... a tense silence while Julia Cloud struggled for words to break through her unwilling lips, and then ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... use of his extra few inches of height to glance around the briefing room. He saw row on row of tense faces—faces that reflected the same emotions he was feeling. Space exploration was something still new and mostly unknown, and even the experienced men of IES still knew fear occasionally. The galaxy ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... follow the counsels of friends of Jamadagni's son, of the celestial rishi Narada, and of island-born Krishna, while they offered me counsel. In the midst of the assembly, Krishna told me what was for my good, saying, "A truce (tense) to hostilities, O king! Let thy son take the whole kingdom! Give but five villages to the Pandavas!" Fool that I was, for not following that advice, I am now obliged to repent so poignantly! I did not listen to the righteous counsels of Bhishma. Alas, having heard ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... taken place independently in the principal groups of Bantu languages, the arrangement followed being probably founded on a fundamental system common to the original Bantu tongue. The exception alluded to may be a method of forming the preterite tense, which seems to be shared by a great number of widely-spread Bantu languages. This may be illustrated by the Zulu tanda, love, which changes to tandile, have loved, did love. This -ile or -ili may become in other forms -idi, didi, -ire, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... cucullatorum habet Grex id subinde in ore, se esse mortuum Mundo: tamen edit eximie pecus, bibit Non pessime, stertit sepultum crapula, Operam veneri dat, et voluptatum assecla Est omnium. Idne est mortuum esse mundo? Aliter interpretare. Mortui sunt Hercule Mundo cucullati, quod inors tense sunt onus, Ad rem utiles nullam, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... no movement. There was a tense pause. The high-priest gave a little sigh, like one waking from a ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... the tree with a bow and poisoned arrow, she wondered? Suddenly a sound seemed to strike her ear, the sound of a man's footsteps walking over grass, and she perceived that the figure of the dwarf, crouched upon the bough, became tense and alert, and that his fingers tightened upon the bow-string until the blood was driven from their yellow tips. Following the glance of his wicked black eyes, she saw advancing through the shadow a tall man clad in a dark robe. Now he ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... a tense one to the entire party, and John moved forward, placing himself directly ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... James Houghton felt himself at liberty to plunge into an orgy of new stock. He flitted, with a tense look on his face, to Manchester. After which huge bundles, bales and boxes arrived in Woodhouse, and were dumped on the pavement of the shop. Friday evening came, and with it a revelation in Houghton's window: ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... tense—ready to spring upon the man the moment he should come within reach. Just inside the door the man paused and again sought to determine the ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... of the month, however, the skies cleared, the wind settled steadily into the north, and a great quiet began to deepen over the fields, a quiet that at night grew so tense you seemed to hear the close-glittering heavens snapping with the light of the stars. Everything seemed charged with electric cold; the rich soil of the garden struck fire like flint beneath your feet; the tall hillside pines, as stiff as masts ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... other places. Donnegan turned and saw in the shadow and about the edges of the room a host of drawn, tense faces and burning eyes. Never while they lived would they forget ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... against the faint luminousness of the sky-line. Once, far over there to the left, a gun was fired, the flame splitting the night asunder, and against the distant reflection a black figure rose up between, only to be instantly snuffed out again. Hamlin put down his uplifted foot, and waited, in tense, motionless silence, but nothing happened, except the echo of a ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... and to Paul every moment was tense and vivid. The darkness was far more suggestive of danger than the day had been. He took his eyes now and then from the loophole, for a moment, to glance at Henry's face, and about the third or fourth time he saw a sudden light leap into the eyes of his comrade. The next instant ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... argument in a sermon on apostacsy. He said, "'If they shall fall away'—means that they cannot fall away, for anybody that knows anything about the English language, knows it is a verb in the impossible mode and everlasting tense." ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... is, by way of a shortened comparison, not unfrequently used for designating the deepest darkness. The point of comparison is here furnished by the first member of the verse. Parallel is Ps. lxxxviii. 4 ff., where Israel laments that the Lord had thrust it down into dark hell. The Preterite tense of the verbs in our verse is to be explained from the prophetical view which converts the Future into the Present. How little soever modern exegesis can realise this seeing by, and in faith, and how much soever it is everywhere disposed to introduce the real Present instead of the ideal, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... the Queen's closet in this tense and dangerous mood, he sees the king on his knees. His brow relaxes in a moment; he stops, looks curiously at ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... we came with the assistance of the coffee-pot" (rein). The guesser is allowed to make three guesses aloud, but after that he must meditate on the word in silence or put questions to test his theories. If the word is a verb and a past tense or present tense has to be used in an answer, the player says "coffee-potted" ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... I eat, I love, I work. Passive verbs, denote suffering, they are only the participle passive of an active verb with a tense of the neuter verb to be before it; as, I am ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... Mingotts, stood behind her in a lovely anxious group, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins and flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow. All were young and pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-like ease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent her soul upon some ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... he, "I don't think I'll croak you," and he slipped the revolver into his pocket while Spike watched him in sudden tense eagerness. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... thing in the world to stir humankind's ever-tense burglar-nerves into hysterical jangling. In house after house, for miles of the peaceful North Jersey region, old pistols were cleaned and loaded; window fastenings and doorlocks were inspected and new hiding-places ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... We found her a good-looking young woman about seventeen years of age, rather pale and considerably emaciated, very nervous and hysterical, and suffering with severe pain in the left breast, which was swollen to nearly double the natural size, hot, tense, pulsating, and extremely tender to the touch. Occasionally she would experience paroxysms in which she apparently suffered extremely, being sometimes semi-conscious, and scarcely breathing for hours. We suspected the cause of these peculiar manifestations at the outset, ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Cecil, be to blame? That did not seem any more likely. Manuel was afraid of Cecil, though he would not admit it, even to himself. The Englishman's chill restraint, even in moments of the most tense excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing ever seemed to be known. And ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark, and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that his expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. With competitors ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given him a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touching him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of the embankment, arose a crackling sound, ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... stab there is in those words, thou hast been! when the sense of them becomes absolutely clear to us. One feels one's self sinking gradually into one's grave, and the past tense sounds the knell of our illusions as to ourselves. What is past is past: gray hairs will never become black curls again; the forces, the gifts, the attractions of youth, have vanished ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we ought to get that established, for the record," another of the trustees put in. "Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein in one of your classes on the sixteenth of ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... the long silences which held her; her quiet dignity, the way she moved. He placed her on a pedestal in his thoughts, which was a thing he had never dreamt of doing for any other woman, and before long his admiration melted into love. Then being forty-two the disease took rapid and tense possession. He was only happy when he was with her, able to talk to her now and again, ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... mean by 'real difference'?" he demanded. "I have told you, haven't I, that 'I wrote' is the perfect tense, while 'I have written' is the imperfect tense." This was in accordance with the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... and resolution, shook off the cowardice of bed. Then he strode into the nursery. As soon as they heard him raising the shades there was complete silence. They hastened to pull the blankets over themselves, and lay tense, faces on paws, with bright expectant upward eyes. They trembled a little with impatience. It was all he could do to restrain himself from patting the sleek heads, which always seemed to shine with extra polish after ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... of him there—he felt it thrilling along the tense-drawn reins—was a calm, powerful grip, even, steady, masterful. Turn his head he could not, but he knew very well that Lloyd had taken a double twist upon the reins, and that her hands, even if they were gloved in white, were ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on a height of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. The clashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfect reproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere of the arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... the name of the men who attacked you and treated you so cruelly?" asked Peggy, breaking the tense silence which followed the conclusion ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... months when she had completely lost him. He made no demands whatever. In the small attentions, which he had never neglected, he was even more assiduous. He paid her ever-increasing bills without comment. He submitted, in those tense days when every day made the national situation more precarious, to hours of discussion as to the country house, to complaints as to his own lack of social instinct, and to that new phase of her attitude toward Marion Hayden that ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the difference. In a climate that keeps the pulses in full leap and the nerves tense, we call upon pride to lash on the quivering body and spirit to run the unrighteous race, the goal of which is to seem richer than we are, and make "smartness" (American smartness) cover the want of capital. Having created false standards ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... the old farmer tried to comfort his wife, while inside the house no one spoke lest he should seem careless of the grief and disappointment of those who were still within hearing. Suddenly a third voice was heard outside, speaking excitedly. Once again that tense clutch of suppressed emotion permeated the room and Colin, with his heart in his mouth, looked up. No one ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... repeats this incision on the other side, makes tense the ligaments, first at one side and then at the other, by drawing the finger to the opposite side, and cuts them. The tendons being cut, the finger is detached. The vessels being tied, one point of suture is put ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... mean?" demanded Bob in a tense voice. "Name somebody. I suppose the fact that Germany has murdered a lot of Americans has nothing to do with ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he shook himself and laughed. "Some howl!" he muttered, "I bet they ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... the excitement to watch me eat it. The fish was by no means bad; but I have reason to believe that my performance in the matter of eating it was not at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon in the eyes of such a ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... crunched into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... direction, and then remembering what he had said about the transmission of thought between sympathetic affinities, she sought to reach him with hers. She closed her eyes so that she might concentrate her will sufficiently for it to penetrate his brain. She sat tense with her desire, her hands clenched for more than a minute, but he did not answer to her will, and its tension relaxed in spite of herself. "He sits there listening to the music as if he had never heard a note of it before. Why does he not come to me?" As if in answer, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... tense moment Archie found time almost unconsciously to admire his father-in-law's penetration and intuition. He seemed to have a sort of sixth sense. No doubt this was how great fortunes ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... a tense air of expectancy over all three as he began to read. Tyke kept nervously polishing his glasses, and Captain Hamilton's hand was the least bit unsteady as it guided the pencil. Drew's voice trembled, though ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... hours are so full of fateful events that they seem one big blur on the memory. Although everyone was convinced that an appeal to the sword was inevitable, there was still a tense feeling of dread expectation hanging like a cloud over the land. During the whole of that long night the author was an observer from an overcrowded train which left Nuremberg at 9 p.m. and rumbled dismally into Cologne the next morning at ten o'clock. Every station, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... Sage, Mr. Llewellyn John's features relaxed from their drawn, tense expression. A look of relief flashed momentarily ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... with your look and your reputation," she said calmly, "was worth a woman's looking up. When that woman had need for a man." Her eyes were glittering now; she leaned forward, suddenly rigid and tense and breathing hard. "When I have found a man who stakes ten thousand, twenty thousand on one throw and is not moved; who returns ten thousand in rage because a word of pity goes with it, am I ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... observation did not stir. He could not. Even to his crude imagining there was something utterly horrible in the thought of Creed alone at that hour in just such black darkness as this, with the great timbered chamber haunted at least by its dread memories. He could only wait, tense and fearful of he ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O'Keefe's arm. "Staerk!" he said. "Ja—strong, and with a strong heart. A man—ja! He ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... their captains glitter afar, beautiful in gold and purple; the rest of the crews are crowned with poplar sprays, and their naked shoulders glisten wet with oil. They sit down at the thwarts, and their arms are tense on the oars; at full strain they wait the signal, while throbbing fear and heightened ambition drain their riotous blood. Then, when the clear trumpet-note rang, all in a moment leap forward from ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... biting chill of night, the manifold rays of stars and silence, silence reft of winds, yet alive with the tense immobility of the crouching beast, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... present tense, yet as I write these things exist no longer. The red drawing-room is closed, the dwelling on the Rue de Clichy is deserted. Victor Hugo is in Guernsey, and from that far retreat come sinister rumors respecting his failing health. These are denied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... ever written by Miss Ethel M. Dell are gathered together in this volume. They are arresting, thrilling, tense with throbbing life, and of absorbing interest; they tell of romantic and passionate episodes in many lands—in the hill districts of India, in the burning heart of Africa, and in the colonial bush country. The author's vivid and vigorous style, skillfully ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... glanced round at the ordinary-looking room, the curtained windows, the dull furniture; and the second time he looked back at the pencil he was almost certain that some movement had just taken place with it. He resolutely fixed his eyes upon it, bending every faculty he possessed into one tense attitude of attention. And a moment later he could not resist a sudden movement and a swift indrawing of breath; for there, before his very eyes, the pencil tilted, very hesitatingly and quiveringly, as if pulled ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... her hands, and Taous came, to be told in a tense voice that the Agha must be summoned. Then Mabrouka turned ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the past tense in speaking of the practical men—for although they were very formidable thirty years ago, I am not sure that the pure species has not been extirpated. In fact, so far as mere argument goes, they have been subjected to such a feu d'enfer that it is a miracle if any have escaped. But I have remarked ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... the turn in a tense agony of excitement; she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs clutched ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... its coquetry of arrangement, its tormented structure of phrase, its jingle of sound-repetition, its desperate rejection of simplicity in every shape and form. To describe precisely the means resorted to would take a chapter at least. They are astonishingly modern—the present tense, the use of catchwords like [Greek: holos], the repetitions and jingles above referred to. Excessively elaborate description of word-painting, though modern too, can hardly be said to be a novelty: it had distinguished ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of shacks is simply that of the forest: inept the woodsman who would not recognize it at once. The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have risen ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Much depends upon the proper pitch of the voice. The key upon which one reads may be medium, or low, or high, and what it is depends upon certain physiological conditions. If the vocal chords are tense, the pitch is high. Accordingly, any state of mind that produces tense vocal chords produces high pitch in the voice. A person can forcibly tighten his vocal chords and utter sounds at high pitch, but they are strained, artificial ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... "Tense. They're waiting to see what is going to happen on Five. So am I, for that matter." His eyes were curious. "You decided not ...
— In Case of Fire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... after the stopping of the motor, and the consequent sudden dropping toward the earth of the monoplane, Tom glanced at Mr. Damon. The latter's face was rather pale, but he seemed calm and collected. His lips moved slightly, and Tom, even in those tense moments, wondered if the odd gentleman was blessing anything in particular, ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... closer and sniffed at the ape-man. Tarzan stood very still, his fangs half bared, and his muscles tense and ready for action; but there was none there to question his right to be with them, and presently, the inspection satisfactorily concluded, the apes again returned their attention to ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you wouldn't speak in the future tense, though. Woodward," he added, addressing that gentleman, "remember that I told you that I sleep with one ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... rises from the island of Corsica and moves toward Central Europe. All too well does Europe know its meaning. From north and south, from east and west, she pours into the field the finest armies that the Old World ever saw. Then she pauses. Europe grows tense with a nameless dread. The storm cloud blackens, hovers lower, then bursts with all its fury through the continent. For ten long years, at the command of an imperial butcher, the soil is drenched with blood, the ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... a construction very characteristic of Terence, found, but rarely, in Cic. and Livy. In promptu ... reconditiora: cf. in promptu ... interiora in De Div. II. 124, also Ac. I. 4. Quae dico: Goer. is exceedingly troubled by the pres. tense and wishes to read dixero. But the substitution of the pres. for the future is common enough in all languages cf. Iuv. IV. 130 with Mayor's copious note. Si non fuerint: so all Halm's best MSS. Two, however, of Davies' have si vera etc. In support of the text, see I. 9 ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it mean?" said Garrison, tense with emotion. "What have you done to me, Dorothy? He isn't your husband, ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... and power for the time being. Bessy lived in the full secret expression of her girlish adoration. She was worshipping a hero; she was glorifying in her sacrifice; she was faithful to a man; she was being a woman. At first she grew pale, tense, quiet, and seemed to be going into a decline. Then that stage passed; and the roseleaf flush returned to her cheeks, the purple fire deepened in her eyes, the quivering life in all her supple ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Farinata degli Uberti, who rose from his tomb to ask the news of Florence, Dante spoke, observing in the mean time a shade that, on hearing the Tuscan tongue, rose next Uberti, questioning, "Where is my son, my Guido?" Fancying from the poet's delay in answering, and his use of the past tense, that his beloved child no longer enjoyed the sweet light, Cavalcante fell back and ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... and the stars burned as calm as in all the past. The shepherds were as unconscious of any coming wonder as the sleeping sheep that lay like drifted snow on the ridges. Yet the heavens were strained tense with expectation and were on the point of being shattered into song. Flocks of angels were flying downward from the stars, and as their white wings struck earth's atmosphere they kindled it into radiance with heavenly ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that in the person ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of confusion and furious activity. The face of each individual was calm and his motions by themselves were not excited. But taking all together and adding the tense, strained expression underneath the calm—the expression of the professional gambler—there was a total of active ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself—defending Ellesborough—and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the North ande). This present participle may be said still to exist— in spoken, but not in written speech; for some people regularly say walkin, goin, for walking and going. —The plural of the present indicative ended in ath for all three persons. In the perfect tense, the plural ending was on. —There was no future tense; the work of the future was done by the present tense. Fragments of this usage still survive in the language, as when we say, "He goes up to town next week." —Prepositions governed various cases; and not ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... his damned money!" Edwin snapped, in a breaking voice. The statement was not quite accurate, but it suited his boiling anger to put it in the present tense instead of in the past. He hesitated an instant in the hall, throwing a look behind at Maggie, who stood entranced with her hand on the latch of the open door. Then he bounded upstairs, and shut himself in his room with a tremendous ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... was straining her ears to catch some faint sound. A half dozen times she caught herself listening with nerves on edge and muscles taut, and each time forced herself to relax. But always she came back to that horrible, tense listening. She charged herself with cowardice, and pooh-poohed her fears, but it was no use, and she wound up by covering her head with her blanket. "I don't care, there was somebody watching, but if he thinks he's going to find out where I keep these," her hand ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... dim, empty spaces of the splendid apartment, followed by the doctor; a ghostly little procession it seemed. The door was closed behind them. For a few moments a curious silence ensued. Gerald remained tense and apparently suffering from some sort of suppressed emotion. Esther for the first time moved in her place. She leaned towards Hamel. Her lips were slowly parted, her eyes sought the door as though in terror. Her ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spoke these words in a low but tense tone. He was more or less excited by the strange ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Saal. With Mimi's assistance she put on his coat, the hilt of the dagger thrusting forward the row of medals on his breast. Marie went out into the street and flitted up and down like a big gray moth, her gray little face tense with rapture. Her devotion to Gisela had been fanatical from the first but now she begged what invisible power her wild little mind still recognized to be permitted to ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... I beg pardon for so much philosophy at one time, and now let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... feet. The footsteps were close at hand now upon the tessellated pavement. Then through the drooping palm boughs they saw him. Julien was standing tense and prepared, his uninjured arm was ready to strike. ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... she paused upon the threshold, tense, thrilled, apparently speechless. Tom was reminded of a trim little wren poised upon the edge of its nest. This time it was more difficult to counterfeit an exclamation of joy, but the catch in "Bob's" voice, the moisture in her eyes, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... parted eyelids, considering her pretty eyes, all of which might have been those of some waxen image of uncritical faith, cooled the heat of his helplessness very much as if he were laying his head on a tense silk pillow. She had, it was true, forms of speech, familiar watchwords, that affected him as small scratchy perforations of the smooth surface from within; but his pleasure in her and need of her were independent ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... her attention was riveted upon the three. Could it be? O Jad-ben-Otho! had she but known a moment before. When they passed she might have joined them, for they were her father and two brothers. Now it was too late. With bated breath and tense muscles she watched the race. Would they reach the summit? Would the Kor-ul-lul overhaul them? They climbed well, but, oh, so slowly. Now one lost his footing in the loose shale and slipped back! The Kor-ul-lul were ascending—one hurled his club at the nearest fugitive. The Great God was ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... glittered, the poor fellow having been a nautical dandy of the first water was drenched and clotted into heavy masses with the death—sweat, and had fallen back on the deck from his forehead, which was well formed, high, broad and massive. His nose was transparent, thin, and sharp, the tense skin on the bridge of it glancing in the silver light, as if it had been glass. His mouth was puckered on one side into angular wrinkles, like a curtain drawn up awry, while a clotted stream of black gore crept ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... flesh. She talked and thought of him as in his babyhood, and left him her blessing at the last. As year after year crept by, the twin-brothers ceased to talk of him. But it was because they had begun to think of him with that strained, tense attention with which we sit and listen for the steps of one who long delays his coming, and who may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... face, white and shining in the moonlight, leaned out of the buggy toward the retreating vaquero. "Don't you dare hurt my father! Don't you dare!" she warned. The words choked in her tense throat. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... broad upper intercostal spaces, an interesting feature, due to the tense and rigid nature of the muscles closing the intervals, and their large admixture of fibrous tissue, was sometimes noticed. The bullet, especially if passing obliquely, was apt to cut a slit in the muscles far exceeding in size the opening ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... With a feeble dash of spirit, Jenny had attempted tactical flight. The sense of it made her feel as she had done, as a little girl, in playing touch; when, with a swerve, she had striven to elude the pursuer. So tense were her nerves on such occasions that she turned what is called "goosey" with the feel of the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... In the tense silence which followed, the sheriff, attracted by the noise, emerged from the coroner's door with a shout and hurled himself like an enormous ram into the crowd. Pushing men this way and that, he reached the empty ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... a sudden conviction that after all there was something behind this disturbance. I saw, during the whole of the rest of that day, Grogoff's strange face with the exalted, bewildered eyes, the excited mouth, the body tense and strained as though waiting for a blow. And now, always when I look back I see Boris Grogoff standing in the doorway of the "Cave de la Grave" like a ghost from another world ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... specimen of the desert tribes: a tall well-shaped form; a head and face of much beauty and character, with a pair of eyes that, at first glance, betrayed a close relation to the woman lying on the bed. They were of the same size, color and brilliance; but the tense, powerful expression that was seen in those of the aged woman, here was softened to a mild, yet piercing glance, which had, at the same time, a touch of sadness. She appeared to be not more than twenty-five years old, although her face, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... very good introduction to the animals, both mammals and birds, of South Africa. The snakes get a mention, too. Several very tense moments are built up, and you will be wondering right up to the very last moment how whoever is involved in the story, is going to get out of the situation. Recommended as perhaps one of the best books by this prolific author. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... aboard the vessels, and went swiftly and silently to work. Up from the hold came case after case of tea, which were seized and broken open by the hatchets, the sound of their breaking being clearly audible in the tense stillness; and the black contents were showered into the waters. Minute after minute, hour after hour went by, and still the wild figures worked, and still the multitude looked on, forgetful of the cold, their hearts beating ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Careni-Amori and Olga Obosky, and at some distance by the whispering, gesticulating Jews. The great soprano was profoundly agitated. Obosky, a pace or two behind her, was tense and silent. Her head was slightly bent. There was a strange, dog-like expression in her eyes as they regarded the back ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... turning slightly grey, did not hide the mouth, which had unusually pale lips. The ears were set very flat against the head, and were finely shaped. The chin was pointed. The general look of the whole face was tense, critical, conscious, but in the defiant rather than in the timid sense. Such an expression belongs to men who would always be aware of the thoughts and feelings of others concerning them, but who would ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... pure palate and healthy eye the sights and sounds would have made a heaven; but my mouth was like a furnace, and my eye was fevered. Nevertheless, I managed to enjoy the sweet panorama more and more as my muscles grew tense, and I pulled on doggedly for full three hours, until I had not a dry stitch on me; then a funny little waterside inn drew my eye, and I went ashore. Bob Darbishire met me with a shout of welcome, and I wondered what brought him there. Bob did not often visit The ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... madly; but in a moment his will reasserted itself. He was intensely frightened, but he beat down his fear with the lash of self-scorn, as he would have whipped a hound that refused to do his bidding. He steadied himself for a moment against the doorway with tense muscles, setting his teeth together. He drew a deep breath, turned back into his stateroom, and put on a cork jacket. He was cool enough. Before he buckled it he transferred his wallet and papers from the pocket of his coat to that on the inside of his waistcoat. Then he hurried out ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... I don't think about it either way." He added, after tense compression of the lips; "I'm all alone in ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Antaeus" and the well-known engraving of naked men fighting a series of savage duels in a wood, might be chosen as emphatic illustrations of his favourite motives. The fiercest emotions of the Renaissance find expression in the clenched teeth, strained muscles, knotted brows, and tense nerves, depicted by Pollajuolo with eccentric energy. We seem to be assisting at some of those combats a steccato chiuso wherein Sixtus IV. delighted, or to have before our eyes a fray between Crocensi and Vallensi ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... stunned. The blood rushed in a tumultuous flood to his thin cheeks, then receded, leaving his face mottled red and white. His steel-gray eyes suddenly glowed like hot metal. There was a moment of tense silence; then he said, his voice steady and controlled, his manner stiff but not without dignity, "Pray do not allow that to discompose you. She ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... disentangle the aromatic string from her falling braids,—for I kept apart,—he breathed the penetrating incense of each separate amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every atom of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would be associated with the loathed amber in his undefined consciousness, would be surrounded with an atmosphere of its perfume, that Lu was truly sealed from him in it, sealed into herself. Then again, saying no word, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... genius of the age is in marked contrast to some of the theories held by contemporary "imagists." As we have already noted, in Chapter II, they stress the individual reaction to phenomena, at some tense moment. They discard, as far as possible, the long "loop-line" of previous experience. As for diction, they have, like all true artists, a horror of the cliche—the rubber-stamp word, blurred by use. As for rhythm, they fear any conventionality of pattern. In subsequent ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... be established that the systems relative to an ancient unknown people, first creator of all the sciences, and relative to the Atlantidae, rest on foundations devoid of solidity. Yet, if Bailly still lived, we should be only just in saying to him, as Voltaire did, merely changing the tense of a verb, "Your two books were, Sir, treasures of the most profound erudition and the most ingenious conjectures, adorned with an eloquence of style, which is always suitable ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... in some respects, I admit," he observed, with an appreciative glance at Edith, who stood beside him outwardly calm and collected, though the hand that rested upon his arm was tense with repressed emotion, "but in others it is wide of its mark. You have her personal appearance, in a general way, and the dress happens to correspond in everything but the hat. You will observe that the lady wears a ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... steady tramp of the solid columns, through waving flags and handkerchiefs and mad cheers—cheers that arose before them, swelled away on either side and sank out of hearing behind them as they marched—through faces bravely smiling, when the eyes were full of tears; faces tense with love, anxiety, fear; faces sad with bitter memories of the old war. On the end of the first rank was the boy Basil, file-leader of his squad, swinging proudly, his handsome face serious and fixed, his eyes turning to ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... heard the angry jarring of the rattles of the great king of snakes, but he didn't need to be told the meaning of the blood-curdling sound, which seemed to come from all directions at once. He gazed about him for a moment, with every muscle tense, until he caught sight of the head of the reptile waving slowly to and fro above the irregular coils of his body. The snake seemed to be within striking distance and the unnerved boy sprang suddenly away from it, landing among the thorn-bearing ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... good, and I waited in tense eagerness for the phrase that came next. "They may laugh at Dukes; I'd like to see them 'alf as kind and Christian and patient as lots of the landlords are. Let me tell you, sir," he said, facing round at me with the final air of one launching ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... plunged the next morning, for all he was worth. His money brought him ten thousand shares. The morning papers did not have it, and all that day the Boa Constrictor lay as torpid as any other snake in cold weather. Peckham's face had taken on the tense, wild look of the gambler. He left the office half a dozen times during the day to look at the stock-boards. He had a hundred minds about taking his money out and putting it into something else. But nothing else promised anything definite, and he ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... at the table. She sat leaning sideways against it; one thin arm was stretched out on it. The hand gripped the paper weight that he had pushed away. It was this hand, so tense and yet so helpless, that he was looking at. He laid his own over it gently. Its grip slackened then. It lay ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... was silent, and his nerves grew tense. The silence was suddenly broken, not rudely but stealthily as a thief breaks it, or as one who knows that crime is best accomplished in the night; a key was being fumbled into the lock. Sabatier would open quickly, knowing the ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... Englishman had not been injured; but it was good to be second in the race; to have a chance to win a contest which the whole country was watching; to be dashing into a rosy dawn of fame. But while he sang he was keeping a tense lookout for Tad Warren. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... you in the present tense, lends in the conditional mood, keeps you in the subjective, and ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... his breast, continued to regard the melancholy figure opposite with a moody eye. It seemed a long minute before he broke the tense silence by a sigh of discomfort. "I do not discuss these things with anybody," he said then, coldly. "If I had known who you were, I don't ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... over the white goat and worked his hands under her shoulders. He lifted her up and felt the strain all over his frame, the muscles springing tense on his arms. She was a dead weight, and he had always prided on her size. His knees dug into the puddle in the bottom of the pool as he felt the pressure on his haunches. He strained hard as he got one of his feet under him. With a quick effort he ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... the women ran back and forth along the water's edge, wailing and praying to all the saints they trusted. The men at home, pale and frowning, bit nervously at the ends of their cigars, and, from the lee of the boats drawn up on the sand, studied the lowering horizon with the tense penetrating gaze of sailormen, or nervously watched the harbor entrance beyond the Breakwater on whose red rocks the first storm waves were breaking. What was happening to so many husbands and fathers caught with their nets down off shore? Each succeeding squall, as it sent the terrified ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man in the black coat, who was fighting his way through the crowd, only a few yards in front of me,—a square-set figure, in the holiday clothes of a respectable workman. I saw only his back now, every muscle tense in his desire to escape the vengeance on his track; but I had seen his face for an instant, and could identify ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stirring of the hair at the back of his neck. From moment to moment he expected the swift attack, the battle for his life. But he was keyed up to it. It was not fear that made his nerves tingle, but the tense, trembling excitement of the situation. Even against these strange, hidden forces of the forest, his spirit felt sure of victory. He felt as if his rifle would go up and speak, almost of itself, unerringly at the first instant of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... complete constipation with persistent vomiting. The lump may be tense, hard and irreducible. Then there is faintness, collapse; severe abdominal pain, complete constipation, with no gas passing, then vomiting, at first of food, then of the bile-stained fluid and finally of fluid with a bowel odor. All these symptoms increase and the patient gradually sinks ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... memories gave her no such thing as that. Her sobs had ceased; she sat listening in tense excitement to the history of the scene that she had descried, dim and far off, from the terrace of Merrion ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... ill-adjusted, the rope too long, the convict tall and lank. This last circumstance was no fault of the executioner's, but it helped. When they turned him off, the lad's feet swept the ground, and his friends, gathering round him like guardian angels, bore him up. Cut down at the end of a tense half-hour, he was hurried away to a surgeon's and there copiously bled. And being young and virile, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... primordio," for "tristiores primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incertas" for "amore an odio incertum" (XIII. 9), and "conquerentium irritum laborem," for "conquerente irritum laborem" (XV. 17). The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens concordes agunt spernuntur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords agunt, spernitur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habere" for "nationes promptum habaret," and "neque dubium haberetur" for "neque ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... himself he stretched forth an arm with a snap of the fingers, and in a flash Toby was kneeling by his side. The arm closed around him like a spring, and Toby uttered a low, tense ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced the decks; along the port railings on each deck soldiers were clustered thickly, looking out across the grey, tossing sea to a winking ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a lithe liquid ease, he was on his feet, body tense, alert. Her form was vaguely familiar as she ran toward him. She dodged from his sight, then re-appeared as the winding path cut behind ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... friendly foes, Foes dazzled with your prowess, well inclined To reverence your lineage, more, to obey; So would have built you, in a few short years, A just, therefore a safe, supremacy. For well he knew, what you, his chiefs, did not— How of all human rules the over-tense Are apt to snap; the easy-stretch'd endure. O gentle wisdom, little understood! O arts above the vulgar tyrant's reach! O policy too subtle far for sense Of heady, masterful, injurious men! This good he ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... had held the line, and that the Germans were not going to get through. One sergeant said, "You put a lot of braces in my tunic when you talk like that, Sir." Nothing is more wonderful than the way in which men under tense anxiety will respond to the slightest note of cheer. This was the case all through the war. The slightest word or suggestion would often turn a man from a feeling of powerless dejection into one of defiant determination. These young Britishers whom I met that morning were a splendid type of men. ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... softly and looked out. In the distance she saw a man approaching, striding briskly toward her. As she stood idly watching him and wondering about him, suddenly she caught her breath. She had sighted the other figure behind, the man creeping stealthily after him. Nearer and nearer they came. In tense expectation she waited, sensing some unusual development. They had reached her block now. Almost directly under her window the man in advance paused to light a cigarette. His shadow paused, too, but some incautious movement on his part ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... of her disgrace, ever with her, had, in the past month or two, built up an impassable wall between her past life and her present state of existence. She no longer thought of herself in the present tense, still less ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... feverish eagerness in his eyes, a tremulousness in his voice. The doctor is to be up presently, and Grandon is persuaded to wait. After the first rejoicing is over, Grandon will not allow him to talk business, but taking up Goethe reads to him. The tense, worn face softens. Now and then he drops into a little doze. He puts his hand out to Grandon with a grateful smile, and so the two sit until nearly noon, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas |
