"Alertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... back in his chair, looked at them all again, one by one. Re-evaluating. For a moment the facial tic stopped and his eyes held the old alertness. ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... activity, stores were brought up all day, and the trenches improved for the attack as far as intense enemy fire would permit. Lieut. Downs that night took out a patrol from the right, who explored the south-west corner of Pozieres in spite of the extreme alertness of the Huns, and returned safely with the most valuable information for which the Anzacs, over whose attacking frontage the patrol had gone, were most grateful. Everyone was glad to have them on our flank, for they were splendid men, full ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... the mission in 1627. Noue lacked the physical strength and the mental alertness essential to a missionary in these wilds. Finding himself totally unable to learn even the rudiments of the Huron language, he returned to Quebec, since he did not wish to be a burden to Brebeuf. For a year longer Brebeuf and the Recollet Daillon remained together at Toanche. But in ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... gloves, and a white hat, placed somewhat too knowingly on one side, complete the description, and "give the world assurance of the man." And, with his light, firm, well-shaped figure, his clear complexion, his keen, bright eye, and features that bespoke the courage, precision, and alertness of his character,—that is to say, features bold, not large, well-defined, and regular,—you might walk long through town or country before you would see a handsomer specimen of humanity than ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The sentence must be two or three times repeated at proper intervals, before you can contrive to have each of the lords in turn at the required distance. This will demand a considerable degree of alertness and agility. But alertness and agility are qualities by which your lordship is so eminently distinguished, that I should have very few apprehensions about your success. Meanwhile it will be proper to have a select ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... very fine swimmer, but no one could swim in such a sea. It was only good fortune and his alertness that landed ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... looking at them with grave affability from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the sergeant's pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures, the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp, crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the double-tree with a piece of rope, she studied him curiously. He was tall—taller even than Sir Redmond, and more slender. Sir Redmond had the straight, sturdy look of the soldier who had borne the brunt of hard marches and desperate fighting; Mr. Cameron, the lithe, unconscious grace and alertness of the man whose work demands quick movement and quicker eye and brain. His face was tanned to a clear bronze which showed the blood darkly beneath; Sir Redmond's year of peace had gone far toward lightening his complexion. Beatrice glanced briefly at him and admired his healthy ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... squad—arranged in a ragged circle and passing a football with much mishandling and many fumbles. Further along you would have seen a long line of youths standing. Their general expression was one of alertness bordering on alarm. The casual observer would have thought each and every one insane, as, suddenly darting from the line, one after another, they flung themselves upon the ground, rolled frantically about as though ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth, it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual look of the pure-bred ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... all satisfied and I should fret my heart out whether you are or not. Nick showed resource, and alertness, and a lot of other stuff that's in the handbook, page something or other. If it isn't there it's somewhere else. Shut up and give me a chance to speak. Here you go, Nick, catch this. Your silver cup of joy is full and we shall all live happily ever ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... must greatly surpass other kinds in sagacity to have escaped extermination. In the present condition of things, the jay is perhaps the best off, on account of his smaller size and less conspicuous colouring; but whether more cunning than the crow or magpie or not, in perpetual alertness and restless energy or intensity of life, he is without an equal among British birds. And this quality forms his chief attraction; it is more to the mind than his lifted crest and bright eyes, his fine vinaceous brown ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... awkwardness in a man, the saddle mirrors it; and if there lie in him anywhere dormant an unsuspected alertness, it wakes in the saddle to action. Her companion had hardly found his stirrups before Kate perceived a change. His body sprung molded from the cantle, his careless shoulders came to attention, and as the pony curvetted riotously, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from the start, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... with his usual alertness; and, indeed, Waverley rather gained than lost in the opinion of the Highlanders by his anxiety about the wounded man. They would not have understood the general philanthropy which rendered it almost impossible for Waverley to have ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... military, is that he was a man of high professional training, admirably skilled in the science of war, capable of commanding a large army with success, but at the same time not original in plan, not fertile in resource, and lacking the energy, the alertness, the daring, the readiness to take great risks for great ends, which distinguish the military leaders of the world. For a commander of armies, in an offensive campaign, his caution was too largely developed. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... fast and furious, and several casualties occurred. The toiler up the hill, too, had need of all his alertness to dodge the numerous erratic cars ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... sentiment is inclined to become strong; boundless enthusiasm manifests itself; and organization and cooperation begin to appeal and be appreciated more and more. There is a growth in logic, independent thought, alertness in thinking, and quickness of receptive powers. The boy at this age is in the period of highest resolves and greatest endeavor, is apt to show religious skepticism, and reason often takes the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... is a telephone girl instead of a telephone boy is due to the alertness and good business sense of the company. To put a boy before a switchboard and expect him not to pull it apart to see how it was made; or to place him in a position to entertain himself by connecting the wrong parties and listening to the impolite names they ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... half miles according to our sledge meter. We started again at midnight, and, steering by stars, kept our course correct. The hot tea seemed to run through my veins; its effect was magical, and the ice-bitten feeling of tired men gave way once more to vigour and alertness. ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... of Baroda the outward forms of what we call Western progress, though his will is probably in all essentials as absolute as that of Scindia, another Mahratta chief, whose interest in every form of Western activity is displayed almost as much in his physical energy as in his intellectual alertness. Some no doubt abandon the conduct of public affairs almost entirely to their Ministers and prefer a life of easy self-indulgence. Others, on the contrary, are keen administrators, and insist upon doing everything ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... which I never noticed on the countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article, eulogizing the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs's contempt for Scotland Yard that he never would visit Scotland during his vacations, nor would he ever admit that a Scotchman was ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... business of regimen, of constant alertness and petty self-sacrifice, is bound to grow irksome before it settles down in life and becomes habitual. But what does a little irksomeness count—or even a great deal of irksomeness—as against the long, deep thrill of doing better than you thought you ever knew how—of going from strength ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... than the Marquis Tudesco. His red waistcoat was gone; instead he wore a sort of sleeved vest of coarse ticking, but his shining face, with the little round eyes and hooked nose, still wore the same look of merry, mischievous alertness that was so like an ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... how one single day could seem as long as that just past. She had no idea of admitting what part actual fatigue can play in one's perspective, neither would she have owned to nerves as the cause of her unnatural wakefulness; nevertheless these were both factors in her almost painful alertness. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Perhaps she's eating plaster again," suggested Eliza, with the alertness that even charming children sometimes show when face to face with ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... was in high spirits, and full of hope: the task of weighing anchor and setting sail was executed with alertness and rapidity; and as the ship began her course, cutting the foaming billows, the men joyfully embraced each other, and with loud huzzas expressed their hearty wishes for the success of our undertaking. To me this scene was highly gratifying. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... for me, get me my bonnet, Jen—my best Sunday leghorn with the puce chenille in it—I must look my featest going to a great house to pay my respects. And you shall come too, Duncan!" (She turned to me with her usual alertness.) "Run home and tidy—quick! Bid your mother put on your Sunday suit. No, Jen, I will not take you to fright the poor things out of their wits. Afterwards, we shall see. But at first, Duncan there, if he ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... pain darken her blue eyes and decided to probe no further. Instead, he wandered about, inspecting the instruments. A few minutes later, with a spaceman's indefinable alertness, he felt a change ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... once, but might talk and give a description of his assailant, or even survive. Much the same objections—from the criminal's standpoint—obtain in nearly all the accepted modes of killing a man. Even the use of venom a second time possesses the disadvantage of a certain alertness against the very thing on the part of the victim. Werner was a dope fiend, fully aware of the potency of a tiny skin puncture. I'll wager he was on constant guard against any sort ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... that such resistance as they offered could wear down and conquer the resources of Spain, yet the very numbers and alertness of the Spanish troops argued a somewhat formidable opposition. Did it not also argue an all-pervading restlessness which might some day escape control? O'Reilly, of course, had no part in this quarrel: but it struck him as ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... even among those who can afford long finger-nails, would not be tolerated in Yuen-ping, and in order to avoid the suspicion that I am suffering from a serious injury to the head, or have become a prey to a conflicting demon, it will be necessary to continue an even more highly-sustained tolerant alertness. This person himself has frequently suffered the ill effects of rashly assuming that because he is conducting the adventure in a prepossessing spirit his efforts will be honourably received, as when ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... latter, having vainly struggled with his sleepiness, has at length begun to nod. Hearing his name pronounced, he starts to his feet, takes the document, which is not yet dry, to sand it, and, desirous to show by his alertness that he has been all the time wide awake, empties over it—the contents of the inkstand! Awkward individual!—there he stands, dumfounded and aghast. His master quietly resumes his seat, procures fresh materials, and, though it is long past midnight, begins his task ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... reached to his knees. He was tall and stooped slightly, but there was none of the slouching figure and gait that characterized those around him. His movements were quick, and, when standing motionless, there was something in his very pose that conveyed an impression of alertness and of latent strength. His back was turned toward Rutherford, who was watching him under a sort of subtle fascination, when suddenly he wheeled, facing him. His eyes were keen and piercing, and as he looked for an instant at Rutherford with an expression of suspicion and distrust, and then ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... actresses—that is, in so far as they have originated among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts are ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... heavy hearts. They threaded lanes filled with sobbing women, many of whom had frightened children clinging to their skirts, passed groups of old men and boys who were visibly trembling with trepidation and stood aside for ranks of brisk soldiery who marched with an alertness that was in strong contrast with the terrified attitude of the citizens. There was war in the air—fierce, relentless war in every word and action they encountered—and it had the effect of depressing ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... something of the satisfaction that the eye has in watching acrobats in a music-hall. One wonders at the ingenuity, the agility, the perfect training. Like acrobats, these Chancery lawyers are a relief from the average troupe of actors and actresses, by reason of their exquisite alertness, their thorough mastery (seemingly exquisite and thorough, at any rate, to the dazzled layman). And they have a further advantage in their material. The facts they deal with are usually dull, but seldom so dull as facts become through the fancies of the average playwright. It is seldom ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... carry on this business," she said, and her quiet assurance impressed Madame's turbulent temper. With a brief return of her mental alertness, the old woman studied ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... precipitous trail from the mountains, a naked stranger bearing an Enfield upon his back. Silently he moved downward toward the bottom of the gorge and there where the ancient trail unfolded more levelly before him he swung along with easy strides, though always with the utmost alertness against possible dangers. A gentle breeze came down from the mountains behind him so that only his ears and his eyes were of value in detecting the presence of danger ahead. Generally the trail followed along the banks of the winding brooklet at the bottom of the ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her, smiling, but he still drove with the air of one who intends to continue in his present occupation. The black colts were going at a spanking trot, making nothing of the decided upward trend of the road. Their shining coats gleamed in the sun; alertness and power showed in every line of them. They were alive from the tips of their forward-pointing satin ears to the ends of their handsome uncropped tails, and ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... exclaimed Keredec, "that the individual must be immortal before it is born, ha! then this babbler might have writted some intelligence!") On the surface everything was as usual with our trio, with nothing to show any turbulence of under-currents, unless it was a certain alertness in Oliver's manner, a restrained excitement, and the questioning restlessness of his eyes as they sought mine from time to time. Whatever he wished to ask me, he was given no opportunity, for the professor carried him off to work when our coffee was ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... of dropping his eyes to his boots. When he raised them, the effect was to alter his whole expression. His eyes, well-open, keenly observant, in perpetual motion, lent an air of alertness, of shrewdness, ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... covert. They had found the quest vain, and concluding, doubtless, that they had gone too far, were returning to look elsewhere. But the paddlers were weary, and the chiefs and renegades, too, drooped somewhat. They did not show their usual alertness of eye as they came back against the stream, and Henry judged that the pursuit would lapse in energy, while they went ashore in ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... over their little outings, he took care to visit a different health-resort each time, feeling that no expense or trouble should be spared in a matter of this kind. It was wonderful with what vigour and alertness of mind he sat down in the evenings to the preparation of his speech on the Coast ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... talked with him ten minutes before I felt as I do when the scene changes suddenly in one of Shakespeare's plays,—as if I had been flung like a meteor into a new world. I felt the necessity for mental alertness for the first time in my life; always, before, I had striven to conceal what I knew. The natural consequences, of course, were first the desire to feel that stimulation again and again, then to realize the littleness ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... had seized the handle of the stiletto with both hands in a determined effort to withdraw it and die. I had had no time to order my faculties to the movement of a muscle, when Entrefort, with incredible alertness and swiftness, had Arnold's wrists. Slowly ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... fancied from his alertness that he had been waiting for an opportunity. "It would be wise to enjoy it while you can," he said. "In another year or two the freedom may be gone, and the prairie shut off in little squares by wire fences. Then one will be permitted to ride along a trail between rows of squalid ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... by fowls, and found them as incapable of distinguishing friend from foe as the young of domestic birds. The only difference between the young of wild and tame is that the former are, as a rule, much more sprightly and active. But there are many exceptions; and if this greater alertness and activity is what is meant by "wildness," then the young of some wild birds—rhea, crested screamer, &c.—are actually much tamer than our newly-hatched chickens ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... him a reflection of his wife's face; then turned away again, like one waiting for some sort of reassurance and not getting it. Mary, muscularly relaxed, indeed, drooping over the tea-table, had visible about her, nevertheless, a sort of supernormal alertness. Every time her father looked into the mirror she glanced at him, and she rippled, like still water, at all of her ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... for ability, keenness, alertness and capacity, and in proportion as you limit these qualifications by lack of sleep, so in proportion will your ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... it you favor libertarian government," he said. "In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable encroachments of power ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... vegetarians, and others, we are tending toward the conclusion that the percentage of appendicitis in a given community is simply the percentage of its recognition,—in other words, of the intelligence and alertness, first of its physicians, and then of its laity. As an illustration, my friend Dr. Bloodgood kindly had the statistics of the surgical patients treated in the great Johns Hopkins Hospital at Baltimore investigated for me, and found almost precisely the same percentage of cases of appendicitis among ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... book to beget intelligent reading, so as to develop in the student mental alertness, poise, ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... the lawn when a sudden alertness came into the scene; the silk-hatted line of callers stepped aside; those who were seated arose; newspaper correspondents turned with vigilant ears. A nervous voice inquired, ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... personality. Younger than the President by at least ten years, yet little short, I should guess, of sixty, he is extremely neat and dapper in person, while his very handsome face has a birdlike keenness and alertness of expression betokening not only great intelligence but high-strung vitality. He is a copious, eloquent, and witty talker, and his remarkable charm of manner accounts, in part at any rate, for his immense popularity. Assuredly no monarchy could have more distinguished representatives ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... I took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness in his stammerings. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... that in this case his alertness was dulled. The fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness in the canoe, all combined to undermine his guard; and, moreover, the attack of the savages was stealthy in the extreme. Like ghosts, they must have crept back from the bush to ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... it be that Bennington de Laney waited for some one, and that therefore his gaze was so fixed? It would seem so. For when the beat of hoofs became audible, the white face quickened into alertness, and the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... they plugged along the trail with an increasing alertness, and wondering how soon the drill runner would turn off. At last he looked back and gestured to them. They understood. He slipped off the trail into the brush and began going slowly. Once he stopped to whisper to them to be cautious, inasmuch as within a few hundred ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... isle, called Pootoo Pootooa, surrounded with breakers. It happened, very fortunately, that the people had just been ordered upon the deck to put the ship about, and the most of them were at their stations, so that the necessary movements were not only executed with judgment, but also with alertness, and this alone saved us from destruction. The Discovery being a-stern was out of danger. Such hazardous situations are the unavoidable companions of the man who goes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... T. station, however, the excitement increased, manifesting itself in many ways. The trains came in and went out on their scheduled time, and the routine work went on without variation, but there was a nervous alertness evident everywhere. Train crews stood in little knots about the platform and yards, speculating about the fight whose issue meant much to each of them, but in which they had not as yet been able to take a part. At one forty-five No. 14, which leaves Truesdale at two o'clock for Tillman City, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... evidence of the fears that had inspired him, but indicated a mind made up in desperation to carry out his plans, through Peter, whatever happened later. Only the present concerned him. But underneath his outward appearance of calm, Peter was aware of an intense alertness, for from time to time his eyes glowed suddenly and the muscles worked in his cheeks as he clamped his jaws shut and ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Prince's shout, the man's cry, and the sound of clashing arms aroused from their deep slumbers the robber crew within the cavern, and with the alertness that comes of such a lawless life, every man of them sprang to his feet and seized his weapon ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Jesse, he sprang back with quick steps to the cabinet. He hastily ran the tips of his fingers along the beveled edges of the wide shelf from end to end several times, each time the expression of alertness deepening into one of disappointment. He stopped for a moment and listened. All was quiet. Again with quick motions he felt beneath the edges. Suddenly his eyes brightened and he breathed quickly; his sensitive fingers had detected a slight unevenness in the smooth ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... before the dawn, and when the sea was yet full of darkness, I was greatly startled to hear a prodigious splash amid the weed, mayhaps at a distance of some hundred yards from the boat. Then, as I stood full of alertness, and knowing not what the next moment might bring forth, there came to me across the immense waste of weed, a long, mournful cry, and then again the silence. Yet, though I kept very quiet, there came no further sound, and I was ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... upon him, she gave him a steady look. He was not nearly so much like Guy as she had thought the previous night, though undoubtedly there was a strong resemblance. On a closer inspection she did not think him handsome, but the keen alertness of him attracted her. He looked as if physical endurance were a quality he had brought very near to perfection. He had the stamp of the gladiator upon him. He had ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... poised head, the small, swiftly moving hands, and the tiny feet there was a birdlike alertness which was the epitome of action. The supple body, however, lacked the bird's fluttering uncertainty; rather the figure bespoke a control that had its birth in an absence of all self-consciousness and the obedience of perfectly trained muscles to ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... Buck stood dark and frowning against the closed door, his hunted eyes like black coals in a setting of snow, went furtively around the room in restless vigilance. His body wore the habitual air of crouching alertness. He started slightly when anyone moved or spoke to him. Michael went quickly over to the table and ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... even if temporarily, was now full. Early in February came in ten regiments of militia, summoned on service until the first of April. They manifested, he wrote with satisfaction, the greatest alertness, and the determination of men engaged in the cause of freedom. And on the first of March he called into camp the militia of the neighboring towns, who were to report at Roxbury fully equipped for three days' service. ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... graceful accomplishments and by their seemly compliance dispelled all thought of treachery. Having thus gained the esteem of their companions, and by the lavish persuasion of bemusing wine dimmed their alertness, all this band, while it was still dark, crept back to the town, each secretly carrying with her the arms, robes and insignia of the one who had ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the truth; for, although I had pretty well satisfied myself before I lay down, that the weather was improving and that therefore I had little or no cause for immediate apprehension, a sailor quickly acquires the trick of maintaining a certain alertness, even in the midst of his slumbers, since he knows that the weather is his most formidable and treacherous enemy, against which he has always to be on his guard; and this faculty of alertness is of course especially active when, ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... State House. He considered that the parlous situation in state affairs demanded full dress. During the evening he had been going on his rounds at half-hour intervals. On each trip he had been much pleased by the strict, martial discipline and alertness displayed by his guardsmen. The alertness was especially noticeable; every soldier was tautly at 'tention when the boss warrior hove in sight. General Totten was portly and came down hard on his heels with an elderly man's slumping gait, ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle! What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps!—and, oh! that comfortable alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold our coatflaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window; and then, quite la Tityre, repose our recumbent bodies at our ease! Such moments as these are snatches of indefinable bliss. It would appear probable, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... frigate. I believe that my gentlemanly ideas were innate, Mr Simple; I never, as a child, could bear the idea of the merchant service. After I had been a week on board, I was appointed servant to the purser, where I gave such satisfaction by my alertness and dexterity, that the first lieutenant took me away from the purser to attend upon himself, so that in two months I was a person of such consequence as to create a disturbance in the gunroom, for the purser was very angry, and many of ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... man's glance, Darrell began to scan the faces of the crowd. Suddenly his pulses gave a bound. Seated at a little distance and partially facing them was a man of the same size and height as the prisoner, but whose every move and poise suggested alertness. He was leaning his arms on the back of the seat before him; his head was lowered so that his chin rested lightly on one hand, while the other hand played nervously with the seat on which he leaned. His whole attitude was that ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... blanket and trussed up as helpless as a mummy. I wondered whether that alone was sufficient to account for the quickness with which he had been pacified. Then I recalled Mrs. Cranston's remark about her mental alertness and physical weakness. Had it anything to ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... Williams had never been described to me, my first sight of him fitted my own ideas. He was tall and spare; his weather-beaten face seemed set like a dark mask; only his eyes moved, and they had a quivering alertness and a brilliancy that made them hard to look into. He wore a wide sombrero, a blue flannel shirt with a double row of big buttons, overalls, top-boots with very high heels, and long spurs. A heavy revolver swung ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... beautiful to-night Alice," he presently said, with a suddenness which took even her alertness by surprise. A flush rose to his dark face and immediately gave way to a grayish pallor. His heart came near stopping on the instant, he was so shocked by his own daring; but he laid a hand on her hair, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... thinking, as I looked around on so many men whom I had heard of historically all my life, how very much less they bear the marks of age than men who have been connected a similar length of time with the movements of our country. This appearance of youthfulness and alertness has a constantly deceptive influence upon one in England. I cannot realize that people are as old as history states them to be. In the present company there were men of sixty or seventy, whom I should have pronounced at the first ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... it became known to a few that Yuan was seriously ill. He was suffering from Bright's disease with its consequent weakness, loss of mental alertness, and lack of concentration. French doctors were called in, but Yuan's wives insisted upon treating him with concoctions of their own, and on June 6, shortly after three o'clock in the morning, ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... a slight hillock, the grooms resting at the foot. As ill fortune would have it, my horse's hoof loosened a stone, and one of them looking up recognized my figure clear drawn against the fading colors of the sky. They both jumped up with an alertness which would have done credit to old woodsmen, and before I could dodge by, had remounted and taken possession of the road. My more elevated position and perhaps better hearing, too, enabled me to detect the coming of persons along the road from Paris. Certainly as many as three or ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... likeness of Dr. Traprock, the author of the present volume, admirably expresses the intensity, alertness and intrepidity which have carried this remarkable personage through so many harrowing experiences. A certain bold defiance, which is one of Dr. Traprock's characteristics, has here been caught to the life. With just ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... mortifications, their constantly reviving and ever irrepressible vigour and interest in the fight, we may wish that the shabbiness and the pettiness of the daily lives of some of them had faded away from memory, and left us nothing to think of in connection with their names but the alertness, courage, tenacity, self-sacrifice, and faith with which they defended the cause of human emancipation and progress. Happily the mutual hate of the Christian factions, to which liberty owes at least as much as charity owes to their mutual love, prevented a common union for burning the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... returning from preparation had passed them, and they were now standing at the gate of the house. As Fenn spoke, a little, restless-looking man in cap and gown came up. His clean-shaven face wore an expression of extreme alertness—the sort of look a ferret wears as he slips in at the mouth of a rabbit-hole. A doctor, called upon to sum up Mr Kay at a glance, would probably have said that he suffered from nerves, which would have ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... followed all his guests to the pavilions that had been assigned for their residence. Then all the mechanics and engineers, having completed the arrangements of the sacrifice informed king Yudhishthira of it. Hearing that everything was ready, king Yudhishthira the just, full of alertness and attention, became highly glad along with his brothers all of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... were Englishmen, while the fourth might have been denominated as a typical American from the professional class. Of rather slender form, with a face of rare sensitiveness and delicacy, and restless, penetrating eyes, his every movement indicated energy and alertness. On the present occasion he had little to say, but was engaged in listening attentively to the ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... almost confined to the visitor and Alice, although the former carefully avoided the shutting out of the hostess from the conversation, in which she was incapable of taking a brilliant part. Jim, in the host's place, sat dumb and still, except for his alertness in anticipating his guest's little wants. Guthrie Carey, on her other hand, was equally silent. Neither of the two men heard what she talked about for listening to the mere notes ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... and, expressing his hope that he had been pleased with the operation of his medicine in behalf of Sir Hugh Robsart, added his desire to accompany him to court. This was indeed what Tressilian himself had several times thought of; for the shrewdness, alertness of understanding, and variety of resource which this fellow had exhibited during the time they had travelled together, had made him sensible that his assistance might be of importance. But then Wayland was in danger from the grasp of law; and of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... meals, however, was not only that we were all kept at a very high strain of alertness and attention, singularly inconducive to the enjoyment of food or to the sober business of digestion, but that they were of such interminable length. The plain fact was that by utilizing almost every moment between eight o'clock in the morning and nine o'clock at night we could fortify ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... the stand and touched a button. Instantly the scene changed; fields, forests, streams and hills ran by in a murky blur, and then a larger town flashed on the mirror. Here the same stir and alertness characterized the scene. The gaze of every inhabitant was fixed on the threatening horizon. Rapidly the scenes shifted at the king's will, till a hundred cities, towns and villages ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... on account of merit, and not relationship. So he got himself transferred to another boat that was about to sail for the West Indies, and took the rough service that falls to the lot of a jack-tar. His quickness in obeying orders, his alertness and ability to climb, his scorn of danger, going to the yardarm to adjust a tangled rope in a storm, or fastening the pennant to the mainmast in less time than anybody else on board ship could perform the task, made him a marked ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... and powerful swing of movement, she was a woman, physically considered, not of the common herd. She was a lioness, yet not quite the grand lioness of the desert. She lacked somewhat of dignity and grandeur of countenance, and had more of alertness and of craft. She was, though dark, more like the tawny beast of the Rocky Mountains, the California lion, as that great cougar is called, supple, full of moods and passion, and largely cat-like. She had filled his eye casually. Why had she sent him the tie, the silken thing ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... her from her trance—a heavy footstep, mayhap, in the street below, the distant roll of a drum, or only the clash of steel saucepans in Aunt Marie's kitchen. But suddenly Jeanne was alert, and with her alertness came terror ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets. He was a very ordinary, plain-countenanced, sandy-haired, quite commercial-looking man, this, who might have been anything from a Stock Exchange clerk to a suburban house-agent. But there was a sudden alertness in his eye as he turned it on the visitors, which showed them that he was well equipped in mental acuteness, and probably as alert as ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... excellently well is a work which requires brains, and is, to my thinking, a very admirable form of activity, and entirely worthy of the attention of the intelligent. That my neighbour is intelligent is at once made evident by the bright alertness of her eyes—eyes that nothing escapes, and that only gain in prettiness by being used to some good purpose. She is a recognised authority for miles around on the mysteries of sausage-making, the care of calves, and the slaughtering ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... had been Commander-in-Chief on the Mediterranean station, enjoyed a confidential discussion with him in Malta concerning certain strategical questions in that part of the world, and had been amazed at the alertness of his brain, his originality of thought, his intoxicating enthusiasm, and his relentless driving power. Now, in 1915, he seemed to be even younger than he had seemed then. He covered the ground at such a pace that I was speedily toiling breathless ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... cover St. Petersburg. If, then, Jerome's division had promptly advanced from Grodno, Bagration would have been cut off and annihilated. The plan failed, partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because Davout did not cooeperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond pursuit. For a moment Napoleon contemplated a junction of Ney and Eugene against Barclay, but ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of the knock he raised his head, an expression, which was a mixture of fear and senile cunning came into his lined and pallid face, his dull eyes peered from under their lids with a flash of sudden alertness, and with one motion of his long hands he hurriedly folded the deed before him, crammed it, with the others, into the box, locked it with a hurried and trembling hand, and placed it in a cupboard, which he also ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... almost no game-playing where boys and men hustle one another about as in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours of application, from the school-boy to the ministers of state, all of which tend to and do produce a physical lack of alertness, vivacity, and audacity in the ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Selden of precisely that part of her life which she most wished him to ignore—increased her longing for shelter, for escape from such humiliating contingencies. Any definite situation would be more tolerable than this buffeting of chances, which kept her in an attitude of uneasy alertness toward every possibility ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Wetherby made her way through the silent, gloomy halls, and out to the street. Face, step, and manner were very different from what they had been when she tripped up the steps less than half an hour before. All the alertness, the springiness, the joy of living were gone. For half a block she listlessly dragged one foot after the other. Then, suddenly, she threw back her head ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... first I've heard of it. How did you hear, Uncle Jo?" He turned upon the old man with a keen alertness which, taken in connection with the Colonel's oratory, was ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... was all a-quiver with alertness. "I don't ever seem tired now. Keeping one's own house—is great! and it seems like everything is waking up every minute. Sometimes I hate to go to sleep for fear ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... alertness with which we were served and the eager zeal of the bearded Cossack whom Pugatchef had appointed Commandant, I saw that, thanks to the talk of the postillion who had driven us, I was taken for ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... toward the howling spectators, but his marvelous speed and alertness were on the wane; while on the other hand his foremost pursuer, who had taken part in hundreds of similar events, had every confidence in his own endurance. Each leap brought him nearer, fiercer and more determined. The last effort of the Jack was to ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... reply by a stare. He had never in his life encountered anything like this woman, and he was bewildered by her audacity, her alertness, her beauty, and the dash with which she ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... grow on somebody's grave," said Ashe. Then, just as she became conscious that she had jarred upon him, and must find a new opening, he himself found it. "Tell me!" he said, bending forward with a sudden alertness—"who ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... play of individuality. The enlightened Socialist nowadays often realizes something of the relationship of Socialism to Individualism, and the Individualist—if he were not in recent times, for all his excellent qualities, sometimes lacking in mental flexibility and alertness—would be prepared to admit his own relationship to Socialism. "The organization of the whole is dominated by the necessities of cellular life," as Dareste says. That truth is well recognized by the physiologists since the days of Claude Bernard. It is absolutely true of the physiology of ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... sameness about winter scenes in Alaska, as the reader has doubtless already remarked; yet the sameness is more due to a lack of alertness in the photographer than to an absence of variety. If the traveller had nothing to think about but his camera, if all other considerations could be subordinated to the securing of negatives, then, here as elsewhere, ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... mind, his constant freshness, alertness, brilliancy, warmth, sympathy, endear him to his congregation, and when he returns from an absence they bubble and effervesce over him as if he were some brilliant new preacher just come to them. He is always new to them. Were it not that he possesses some remarkable quality of charm ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... in Mexico and on the plains of the West. But General McLaws was not the man for the times—not the man to command such troops as he had—was not the officer to lead in an active, vigorous campaign, where all depended on alertness and dash. He was too cautious, and as such, too slow. The two Georgia brigades, a Mississippi brigade, and a South Carolina brigade, composed mostly of the first volunteers from their respective States, needed as a commander a hotspur like our own ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... tragic hour under the reefs two nights before. Without a glance in our direction, he made for the side and stepped ashore. There was a bright light behind him; his form stood out plainly. It had lost the lines of vigor and alertness; it was the figure of a different and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it is over, to criticise at all, and nothing to criticise severely. It was creditable alike to the general who commanded and the army which had executed it. Sherman had on this campaign some bright, wide-awake division and brigade commanders whose alertness added a host to ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... fast asleep and deep drifted in snow. The advance porter summoned the place, and the summons drew to what did for door a man as mouselike as his mansion. He had about him a subdued, monkish demeanor that only partially hid an alertness within,—a secular monk befitting the spot. He showed himself a kindly body, and after he had helped the porters off with their packs, led the way into the room in which he and his mate hibernated. It was a room very much in the rough; boards for walls, for ceiling, for ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell |
