"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feelings already possessed by them, and is in a non-aggressive mood, he is likely to use less of the direct and emphasis-giving gesture, and to employ principally the gesture that is merely illustrative of his ideas, more reposeful, less direct, less tense. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... followed her to the 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 ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... streaked with oil and rust, then had but one thought in his mind—to hit the target. He looked neither to right nor left but was still at the periscope. The warship was there. We were there, and one could imagine the tiny periscope just above the water. The situation was tense, even if the vessel to be fired at was not an ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... up from memory. Some of them point to their own date, some I have dated, and some are undated. Whenever it could answer my purpose to transplant them from the natural or chronological order, I have not scrupled to do so. Sometimes I speak in the present, sometimes in the past tense. Few of the notes, perhaps, were written exactly at the period of time to which they relate; but this can little affect their accuracy, as the impressions were such that they can never fade from my mind. Much has been omitted. I could not, without effort, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... it. The sympathy, the suffering, the wilderness, the Cross, the Resurrection, all the experiences He went through, these give to this victory-word, Jesus, a meaning unknown before. They put the name Jesus actually above every name in the experiences of tense conflict and sweeping victory it stands for. This threefold chording makes music never to be ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... would not lend herself to, except in so far as, occasionally, to remind her of some forgotten point in a rule that would suggest a way to work out the knotty problem, or to give her a cue as to case or tense, that ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... honest rage, only the sense of his lady's proximity keeping him from carrying his high-handed measures a little further. Mr. Landale, livid, with eyes suddenly black in their orbits, moistening his white lips while he quivered from head to foot with a passion so tense that not even his worst enemy could ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... had also risen from his seat, and for the briefest possible space the three men stood thus, facing each other, as if uncertain how to act. Then the tense silence of the dining-room was broken by the loud report of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... by such as these. Suddenly 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 ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Robert de Baudricourt awaiting my coming in the great hall, pacing restlessly to and fro. Bertrand was with him, and I saw by the tense expression upon his face that he was eager for my report. I gave him one quick glance upon entering, which I trow he read and understood; but to De Baudricourt I spoke with caution and with measured words, for he was a man whose scorn and ridicule were easily aroused, and I knew ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a tense silence; several pairs of eyes were glued on that document which Rod meant to have framed if ever he were lucky enough to get it safely home with him. It would be a badge of honor to which he and his chums might proudly point when ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... said, that [Greek: en] is in the former part of the sentence, and therefore might have been repeated in the latter part, which is the converse of it, though it might not be exactly the proper tense. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... a tense silence. What Albert was thinking one cannot say. The thoughts of Youth are long, long thoughts. What George was thinking was that the late King Herod had been unjustly blamed for a policy which had been ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not have told how she knew that the girl had come to college to please a mother whose great regret was to have missed such training, nor did she remember when her incurious friend had learned her tense determination of flight; she could have sworn that she had never spoken of it. Sometimes, so perfectly did they appear to understand each other beneath an indifferent conversation, it seemed to her that the words ...
— A Reversion To Type • Josephine Daskam
... It was a tense moment. The loud words brought attention to us. Then there came what seemed a question from someone over by the girls. We could not answer it. Then two or three other ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... before he realized that his mother-in-law occupied the front seat across the narrow space, and even before he recognized that large bulk, he had registered something rigid and tense in its muscles; strained in its attitude. When he raised his eyes to the face he found himself looking at the right cheek instead of the left, and it was pervaded by a sickly green tint quite unlike Madame Delano's florid color. She was listening to a man who sat just behind her on the long ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... my parishioners," the minister was saying for the comforting of Rebecca Mary. Unconsciously he used the past tense, as one speaks of those close to death. It was well enough, for already big, gaunt, white Thomas Jefferson was in the ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... as to direction. A voice from overhead or broken by echoing obstacles does not readily betray its source. Finally she stood up and listened once more intently—her attitude full of tense earnestness. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... "A tense story founded on PORTER EMERSON BROWNE'S play, is full of tremendous situations, and preaches a great sermon." 12mo, cloth bound, with six illustrations from scenes in the ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... she said. "I'm going to tell you what." She paused—and in the pause felt his body grow tense in a familiar way. For a moment the prospect frightened her. She felt, vaguely, that she was playing with that which was infinitely delicate—which might break in her very hands, and leave her desolate. "You know, dear," she continued, faltering, "we used to be very ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... almost stopped, so that only a dull, slow throb came up from below, instead of the swift 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 light that flashed and twinkled out ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... With tense expectation, I put my ear close to the psychic's lips and listened breathlessly. The horn soared into the air and was drummed there, as if to show that it was out of the reach of the psychic, but no voice came from it! This was a disappointment to me, as ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... editors have it, tum) must be referred to the second meeting or the senate, for it does not appear that any proposal concerning the punishment of the prisoners was made at the first meeting. There would be no doubt on this point, were it not for the pluperfect tense, decreverat. I have translated it as the perfect. We must suppose that Sallust had his thoughts on Caesar's speech, which was to follow, and signifies that all this business had been done before Caesar addressed the house. Kritzius thinks that the pluperfect was referred ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... Bentley begged him to cancel her promise, and allow her to go. But that was impossible. He could not remain alone with Emily; if he left her she would not fail to believe that he had gone after her rival. The situation had become so tense that they ended by discussing these questions almost without reserve. To make matters worse, Emily had begun visibly to lose her health. There was neither colour in her cheeks nor light in her eyes; ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... some extent I follow you, but when you speak of Hunterleys as a power in the present tense, doesn't it occur to you that his Party is not in office? He is simply a member of the Opposition. If his Party get in again at the next election, I grant you that he will be Foreign Minister and a dangerous one, but to-day he is simply ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her small defiances that covered up a good deal of shyness, over the littleness and grace that made him want to pick her up and pet her and protect her, he said . . . Marjorie could remember, even yet, with pleasure, the lovely things he had said to her in that tense way he had on the rare occasions when he wasn't laughing. She had fought off marrying him till the very last minute. And then the very day before the regiment sailed she had given in, and the other two—married two weeks by then—had whisked her excitedly through it. And then ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... way to speak to your own father, what give you your being," said Granger, in a puzzled, would-be indignant voice, for he could not understand Bet's speaking of all her trouble and rage in the past tense. "What's come to you, lass?" he continued. You was in a rage—ain't you in a rage still?—the beat's gone for aye and ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... the guest, for in Chichikov's face there dawned a sort of tense expression, and it reddened as though its owner were striving to express something not easy to put into words. True enough, Manilov was now destined to hear such strange and unexpected things as never before had greeted ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... fortnightly moistening of her lips with cold water, the child had neither ate nor drank anything for the last twenty-three months. The whole region of the belly was tympanitic, and the muscular walls of this cavity were tense and drum-like—a condition not infrequently concomitant of a well-known class of nervous disorders. The child's intellectual faculties and special senses were perfectly healthy. Before her illness she was very much devoted to religious reading. This devotion has lately considerably increased. ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... With what hushed, tense expectation they would enter the chamber! Think of the mother's eyes watching Him. The very words that He spoke were like a caress. There was infinite tenderness in that 'Damsel!' from His lips, and so deep an impression did it make on Peter that he ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... whole hall full of people held their breath in a tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... they realized that work would not be readily offered to a man who might quail before its unpleasantness, so it was a matter of bread-and-cheese to them to cultivate "roughness." I need not, indeed, be writing in the past tense here. It is still bad policy for a workman to be nice in his feelings, and several times I have had men excuse themselves for a weakness which they knew me to share, but which they seemed to think needed apology when they, too, exhibited it. Only a few weeks ago a neighbour's cat, affected ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... an arm, took the blow on his elbow-joint and writhed, cursing; but while I laughed at the fellow's contortions, the plump man sprang (marvellous nimble) and dashed out the light and, as I stepped from before the window, I heard the lattice go with a crash of glass. Followed a long, tense moment wherein we all (as I judge) held our breath, for though the storm yet roared beyond the shattered casement, within was a comparative quiet. Thus, as I stood in the dark listening for some rustle, some stealthy creeping step to guide ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... her startled, frightened eyes, and for a moment her glance met Harley's; it seemed to him to be full of entreaty; the whole atmosphere of the place was to him tense, strained, and tragic; why, he did not know, but he shook himself and decided that it was only the result of weariness, the long ride, and the night in the storm. Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he willed ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... such a cry been heard within the halls of fashion. Faces turned ashen pale and screams resounded through the spacious mansion. Helter-skelter, in every direction, fled the terrified masqueraders. The Moslem thought that his last hour on earth had come. Then Brant's arm fell; his tense features relaxed, and he had become once more the genial 'Captain of the Mohawks.' According to his own declaration, which may or may not have been exactly true, he only intended a playful contribution to the pleasures of the evening. The Turk was calmed, and the frightened company ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... about the woman. The force of sex has turned to the austere comforting passion of motherhood. From the children, under the wings of this spirit, come special delicate powers of life. There is nothing tense or restless about them, yet they embody action, the beating of the inner fire, without which all outer action is mockery. Hearthstone tales keyed to the mood and using the brush stroke that delineates this especial circle would be ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... not every one bolted, for here sat two of the colony among the broken rocks. These two had not been frightened off. That both of them were greatly alarmed, any one could see from their open beaks, their rolling eyes, their tense bodies on tiptoe for flight. Yet here they sat, their wings out like props, or more like gripping hands, as if they were trying to hold themselves down to the rocks against their ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the English perfect tense. There are many other cases in these poems where the preterit had best be ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... the pores and capillary blood vessels of the skin are tense and contracted. Therefore the heat cannot escape, the skin is hot and dry, and the interior of the body remains overheated. When the skin relaxes and the patient begins to perspire freely, we say the fever ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... Though the ride was hot and monotonous I was impressed with his vitality. He seemed to have eyes all around his head. The man was in repose, but it was the repose of a leopard; at a sudden call, every fibre would evidently become tense, the servant of a nimble brain, and an instant pounce upon any opposition could be depended upon. What a pity, I found myself thinking, that the fellow has no longer a chance for his live energy (the war was then well over), and I had to check an incipient wish that a turmoil might arise that ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... laughter than there had been outside. One of the Hounds called out, "I don't want any of you girls to kiss me!" and gave the relief of indignation to the hysterical emotion of the believers; the more serious of the unbelievers found escape in their helpless laughter from their tense expectation of triumph in the failure ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... up entirely to the bed, a dead weight,—letting the bed hold them, instead of trying to hold themselves on the bed. Watch, and unless you are an exceptional case (of which happily there are a few), you will be surprised to see how you are holding yourself on the bed, with tense muscles, if not all over, so nearly all over that a little more tension would hardly increase the fatigue with which you ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... now that's the end of him," said Emerson in a repressed, tense voice. "We must not let him get excited. Nick, you'd better stand there and keep him quiet, if you can, and pour water over his face and head and put a ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... and intolerant, she seized the Bible and thrust it out of sight, into the drawer. Then, her body still tense with the atoms of anger, she sat down upon the edge of the bed and rocked from side to side. But shortly this movement ceased. The recollection of the forlorn and loveless years—stirred into consciousness by the unexpected confrontation—bent her ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... exactly as other people do. The second is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... within Pellucidar, where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but our recent experiences seem to ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Some tense situations in the story of the Deerslayer are associated with Three-Mile Point, the present picnic resort of Cooperstown; and a full understanding of the events described as having taken place ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... tense, grey look had come back into his face. Looking at her in silence, presently his gaze seemed to become remote, his absent eyes ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... drawn back. The sandwich-board man stood in the centre of the road alone looking sharply round him. Suddenly a wave of rage seemed to possess him. He shook his fist in the air, and even as he shook it, his eyes caught the blue sheen of the tense skin over the knuckles. He stopped, staring stupidly, and the rage passed from his face, leaving ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... cold sweat Charles Rambert started and sat upright in bed, every muscle tense, listening with all his ears. Was he dreaming, or had he really waked up? He did not know. And still, still he had a consciousness of ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... forebodings which even the most optimistic shared, Congress reassembled. Feeling was tense in both houses, but it was more noticeable in the Senate, where, hitherto, political differences had not been a barrier to social intercourse. Senator Iverson put into words what all felt: "Look at the spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it? There are Republican Northern senators upon that ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... conditions of tense sadness. As they ate, the Lord sorrowfully remarked: "Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me." Most of the apostles fell into a state of introspection; and one after another exclaimed: "Is it I?" "Lord, is it I?" It ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... at this point that there occurred one of those little incidents so dear to the comic draughtsman, but less popular with "us." A moaning howl, a rushing hissing sound, a moment of tense and awful silence, a devastating crash, and the E.G.A. officers' bath-house, "erected at enormous trouble and expense" by a handful of T.U. men and myself the day before, soared heavenwards with an acre or two of the surrounding scenery. "Yes," said the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... with blinding smoke by this, so that Borsdale could see nothing save his co-partner in this adventure. Both men were shaken by what had occurred before. Borsdale incuriously perceived that old Sir Thomas rose, tense as a cat about to pounce, and that he caught the unstained knife from Borsdale's hand, and flung it like a javelin into the vapor which encompassed them. This gesture stirred the smoke so that Borsdale could see the knife quiver ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... be made audible by the following means. In a room guarded against noise, press the thumbs lightly upon the ears and tense the muscles of the hands and arms - say by pressure of the fingers against the palms or by contracting the muscle of the upper arms. If this is done repeatedly, the muscle-tone will be heard after some practice with increasing distinctness. It is easily distinguished ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... by the two lovers in a scene which is charged with an inescapable atmosphere of foreboding; note the incident of the fugitive doves in the scene at Melisande's tower window; or the episodic passage near the end of the third act, during the tense and painful scene of Golaud's espionage: "Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—It has rained. And over there, do you see the old gardener trying to lift that tree that the wind has blown down across the ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... But she stopped almost at once and stood motionless, with her paws tense and stiff. A shiver passed through the little body. The dog gave a hoarse groan, spun round two or ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... for her Heart's Desire! No doubt, no misgiving, assailed the moment of joy. Forward, just a little beyond, success awaited her. The possibility of defeat was over forever. From now on, through weariness, toil, and perhaps suffering, she was going to her own. She had never realized the tense mental and physical strain through which she had passed; she did not realize it now, but with the relaxation came an almost dangerous exhilaration. The present, only so far as it verified the past, had no hold upon her; she let ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from the tree to her, would she have continued ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... 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 heard that ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... until the chancelleries of Europe have given up their secrets, if certain then; but, whatever the motive, all the world outside Germany has agreed that had she willed she could have averted the fatal ending of those tense days ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... men had sprung to their feet. It seemed from Power's attitude as though murder might be done. Philip, however, stood his ground almost contemptuously, his frame tense and poised, his fists clenched. Suddenly the strain passed. The man whose face for a moment had been almost black with passion, lowered his cane, swayed a little upon his ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... though I could not understand the words, I could tell from the people's faces what it was about. When he spoke of the horrors of war, the losses and the deaths and the suffering that had come to so many of them, one woman put her apron to her face and sobbed aloud in the tense silence. And in a moment the whole congregation began sobbing and moaning and swaying themselves to and fro. The young priest stopped and left them alone a moment or two, and then began to speak in a low persuasive voice. I do not know what he said, but he gradually ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... been proved satisfactory, the Master rapped for order. Silence fell. The men settled down to listen, in tense expectancy. Some took chairs, others occupied the divan, still others—for whom there were no seats—stood along ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... a gay burst of laughter from inside the store. In a moment Dave enters from the store with Daisy on his left arm. With his right he is stuffing shells into his pocket. The air is tense. Lindsay, Hambo and Joe Clarke all ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... they've sent me away. Oh, they've been all that's kind, of course—I must have at least six months' rest, they say—they talk about nursing homes—I've thought and thought and thought about it until I'm certain. There's only one rest for me, Majy dear." She raised a tear-stained, tense and beautiful face and drew herself up so that one arm leaned on my chair, and the other on my shoulder. "And that is to be with the one human being that is left for me to love—oh, really love—you know what I ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... indistinct. And when the last little flame flickered and went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. But later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why?—I, to whom the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the door there was a faint cry fiom within scarcely louder than a whisper, tense with agony and pitiful ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... beside the great stone, and the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, who were at the time busy with the wheat harvest, broke up the cart and made on the stone a burnt-offering of the kine by which it had been drawn. After they have finished, the Levites come up (ver. 15) (in the pluperfect tense) and proceed as if nothing had happened, lift the ark from the now no longer existent cart, and set it upon the stone on which the sacrifice is already burning;- of course only in order to fulfil the law, the demands of which have been completely ignored in the original ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... demurely by her father the Earl of Huntingdon. If Rob had been grimly resolved to win the arrow before, the sight of her sweet face multiplied his determination an hundredfold. He felt his muscles tightening into bands of steel, tense and true. Yet withal his heart would throb, making him quake in ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... beginning of Smokey's discharge of obligation. He interviewed the Pullman conductor. The conductor passed the word to Mulcahy at Utica, and two days later the porter brought back word to the tense, waiting little figure at the Saranac Lake station that it was all fixed and Jimmy was coming on ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... fired again, could not. With a quick, frantic wrench and twist Chris had knocked the gun from his hand, and it had slithered away, now lost in the bunching smoke. But Istafiev's other hand, steel-ribbed with tense muscles, had darted like a snake into the American's throat, and under that iron, relentless grip Chris was weakening. His head was whirling; the old wound throbbing waves of nausea through him. Desperately he tried ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... came, its thick verdure proffering ambuscade, the air hung tense along the border. Traders had sent in word that Shawanoes, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, and Cherokees were refusing all other exchange than rifles, ammunition, knives, and hatchets. White men were shot down in their fields from ambush. Dead Indians lay among ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... has gone by, the atmosphere is still tense and surcharged with feeling, and the situation remains unaltered. However, the newspapers have changed their headings from "Outrage" to "Affair," although they are still devoting columns and columns to the matter. Protest meetings are still being held, and the run on the French bank must ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... protection as that I might escape the fate which had been planned for me. And while I was thus engaged and had for the moment forgotten my apprehensions concerning prowling beasts, I was startled into tense silence by a distinct and unmistakable sound coming from the dark corridor farther toward the heart of the cliff—the sound of padded feet moving stealthily ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and they do make their fortunes, but not from sealing. There are so many tense situations, so very well described, that the book might almost have come from the pen of George Manville Fenn. A well-written and interesting book, and with a very good description of the Franco-Prussian War, the war which is so ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the last time from the bench, these were fixed. His appearance was one of great calmness tense above a suppressed ebullition. Before him his programme stretched like a broad, clear road. He ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... The tense silence was broken. Sweet tones with throbbing notes of appeal, carrying with them that Christmas message of immeasurable love, penetrated every corner of the house of worship and the heart of every listener. The story that she sung—that oft-repeated but never ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... the arch of Septimius Severus. The commentator on Winckelmann is of the same opinion with that learned person, and is incensed at Nardini for not having remarked that Cicero, in speaking of the wolf struck with lightning in the Capitol, makes use of the past tense. But, with the Abate's leave, Nardini does not positively assert the statue to be that mentioned by Cicero, and if he had, the assumption would not perhaps have been so exceedingly indiscreet. The Abate himself is obliged to own that there are marks very like the scathing of lightning in the hinder ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... and savage states, though there was certainly a strong preponderance in favor of the latter. In common with all his people, who dwelt within the influence of the Anglo- Americans, he had acquired new wants, and his dress was a mixture of his native and European fashions. Notwithstanding the in tense cold without, his head was uncovered; but a profusion of long, black, coarse hair concealed his forehead, his crown, and even hung about his cheeks, so as to convey the idea, to one who knew his ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... is a word which signifies action or the doing of something. A verb is inflected by tense and mood and by number and person, though the latter two belong strictly to ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... into the canteen or the Y.M.C.A. hut. Letters were written, pathetic scrawls many of them. There was a feeling of excitement, tense and only half suppressed, among the men who were going. There was no sign of depression or fear; certainly no hint ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... though she had been turned to stone. Every nerve in her body seemed tense and quivering. The cry which rose from her heart parted her death-white lips, but remained unuttered. Wider and wider grew her eyes as she gazed with horror across the room. The power of action seemed to be denied to her. Her knees shook; a sort of paralysis seemed to stifle every ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Maimachen on the shore of the Tola and on the roads between Urga and Ude. The Chinese carefully concealed the truth by preventing anybody from passing westward from Urga. However, rumours existed and troubled all. The atmosphere became more and more tense, while the relations between the Chinese on the one side and the Mongolians and Russians on the other became more and more strained. At this time the Chinese Commissioner in Uliassutai was Wang Tsao-tsun and his advisor, ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... voice I heard, Despite my close and tense endeavour, When many an important word Was lost and gone forever; Though, unlike others at the play, I never whispered: "wha'd'd ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... did its work. Usually in such case Bobby howled before the first blow fell, but to-night he set his lips and uttered no sounds. Slap! slap! slap! slap! with deliberate spaces between. Bobby was released. He climbed down, his soul tense, with agony, but his face ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... own making," the Prince declared, a note of tense enthusiasm creeping into his tone,—"China recreated after its great lapse of a thousand years. You and I in our lifetime shall not see it, but there will come a day when the ancient conquests of Persia and Greece and Rome will seem as nothing before the all-conquering armies ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... There followed a tense moment of silence; but the doctor was used to such moments, and could usually determine during the silence, whether the confidence should be allowed or avoided. He turned and looked steadily at the ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... at him when he awoke. Like a wild animal, all of him was awake the instant he opened his eyes. The first he saw was the parasol, strangely obtruded between him and the sky. He did not start nor move, though his whole body seemed slightly to tense. His eyes followed down the parasol handle to the tight-clutched little fingers, and along the arm to the child's face. Straight and unblinking, he looked into her eyes, and she, returning the look, was chilled and frightened by ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... setting it in the middle of the cage retired to a respectful distance. Brandu crouched on the floor beside it, and, although the performance was not accompanied by the weird Oriental music which signaled the public appearances of the snake charmer, the tense expression of his face and the uncanniness of the surroundings made it sufficiently impressive, for he was about to handle the cobra de capello, the most venomous snake in all the great collection. He wasted no time in the pantomime and incantation ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... He was quite warm and tense now—almost nervous. It was quite clear to him that he had done or was contemplating perhaps a very treacherous thing. Under the current code of society he had no right to do it. It was against the rules, as they were understood by everybody. Her father, for instance—his ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... that?" he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully prepared kind," ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... crossed his face, as he inquired in low, tense tones, "Of what avail are wealth and position to one who finds an insurmountable barrier placed between himself and all that he ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly. And Luigi's arms and back ached so that each night Vincenza had to rub them with the oil which now cost ten cents more in the ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... flash and glitter and 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, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... faded; and even during the day, indoors, he shrugged desire aside. It was night that he dreaded—the long hours, lying there tense, stark-eyed, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a tense instant, then closed the window, and possessing herself of a few little things, gathered hastily about the room, which she could stuff in her pockets, she opened her door softly, closed it behind her, and trotted off down ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... probability can thus be eliminated from the copula, much more so can expressions of time, which may always be regarded as forming part of the predicate. 'The sun will rise to-morrow' may be analysed into 'The sun is going to rise to-morrow.' In either case the tense belongs equally to the predicate. It is often an awkward task so to analyse propositions relative to past or future time as to bring out the copula under the form 'is' or 'is not': but fortunately there is no necessity for ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... widen and brighten like those of some fierce, brave bird. Then he pushed his way to the front of the company and looked up at Simone steadfastly, and his arms were still folded across his body and his sharp-featured face was tense with suppressed rage, and he spoke very quickly but clearly, too, for all the ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Hattie's tense expression breathed a determination which might have been interpreted do or die; to Hattie life was a battling foe to be overcome and trodden beneath a victorious heel; Hattie was an infantile St. George always ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... introduction, and in the most proper spirit displayed a single-minded ambition to get back to play, and this I thought an excellent and admirable point in your character. You were also,—I use the past tense with a view to the time when you shall read rather than to that when I am writing,—a very pretty boy, and to my European views startlingly self-possessed. My time of observation was so limited that you must pardon me if I can say no more ... but you may ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... must indulge me in a long parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already told. Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... the real earnestness of conviction. They seemed to give Cousin Jasper some sort of comfort, for his face relaxed, he moved from his tense attitude, and turned to walk up and down the terrace through the patches of light and shadow that lay between the windows. Janet thrust a friendly, affectionate hand under his arm as she walked beside him. It was a hot night, at June's ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... return to England I mentioned this inscription to a friend who, as a young man, had been an excellent Latin scholar; he took a panic into his head that "eritis" was not right for the second person plural of the future tense of the verb "esse." Whatever it was, it was not "eritis." This panic was speedily communicated to myself, and we both puzzled for some time to think what the future of "esse" really was. At last we turned to a grammar and found that "eritis" was right after all. How skin-deep ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... Clayton suffered less than he anticipated. He had become interested from the first. There was nothing in the pretty glen, when he came, but a mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old apple-trees, the roots of which checked the musical flow of a little stream. Then the air was filled with the tense ring of hammer and saw, the mellow echoes of axes, and the shouts of ox-drivers from the forests, indignant groans from the mountains, and a little town sprang up before his eyes, and cars of shining coal wound slowly about ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... springing, poised, upon its fine ankles and narrow feet, never stands without implying and expressing life. It is the leg that first suggested the phantasy of flight. We imagine wings to the figure that is erect upon the vital and tense legs of man; and the herald Mercury, because of his station, looks new-lighted. All this is true of the best leg, and the best leg is the man's. That of the young child, in which the Italian schools of painting delighted, ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... seemed unusually fine, is the result of lack of attention to this detail of vocal method. The windpipe, requiring the support of a firm chest-wall, becomes unsteady, the singer loses his control of the air-column, and the vibrations of the vocal ligaments are uncertain, instead of tense and sure. ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... natural to James to be requited with thanks; but he was not uncivil in his notice of a wrong tense that had been allowed to pass, and the question was argued with an eagerness which showed that he was much enlivened. On the principle that Louis must care for all that was his, as he rose to take the still-sleeping child upstairs, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preached from the text, "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord"—a statement which, after the lapse of so many centuries, has still to be couched in the future tense. The delay has been excessive, but Dr. Hitchens is hopeful. He believes in the ultimate and speedy fulfilment of the prophecy. One of his grounds for so believing is this (we quote from the Christian Commonwealth), ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... softened; then again became tense. Everybody—everybody was against him and Fleur! It all strengthened the appeal of her words: "Make sure of me—marry ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... greatest of all tragedies had come into their little world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the little cabin in which John Cummins knelt with his sobbing face ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... my private office. I had just irately blamed a printer for a blunder of my own, and the words I overheard reminded me of the unpleasant truth that I had recently made a great many senseless blunders, over which I chafed in merciless self-condemnation. For weeks and months my mind had been tense under the strain of increasing work and responsibility. It was my nature to become absorbed in my tasks, and, as night editor of a prominent city journal, I found a limitless field for labor. It was true ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... was it who called Professor Masson's style Carlyle on wooden legs? What can be drearier than when a plain matter-of-fact writer attempts to be animated, and tries to make his characters live by the easy but futile expedient of writing about them in the present tense? What is wanted is a passion for facts; the style may be left to take care of itself. Let me name a historian who detested fine writing, and who never said to himself, 'Go to, I will make a description,' and who yet was dominated by a love for facts, whose one desire always ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... rather you wouldn't speak in the future tense, though. Woodward," he added, addressing that gentleman, "remember that I told you that I ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... long before our little party came under this strange influence. My own sense of the eternal fitness of things is so highly developed that I was under the tense strain of nervous excitement which always wrecks me after reading a strong novel or witnessing a tragic play. I was afraid to see the Passion Play for two reasons. One that I could not bear to see the Saviour of mankind personified, and the other that I ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... Laramie, more cool-headed than his friends, drawn-faced and tense about him, cooler far than his maudlin words implied, and still fighting for a forlorn chance, "why didn't Harry Van Horn tell me to turn in with a friend—why didn't he tell me to turn in with you, Tom Stone—with a man I rode ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... that these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few days before publication. On the other hand—but this is a Note, not a Preface. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in the papers that a large shipment of heavy cannon had left America for Russia," he said with dry humor, "in transit for us—for if they're consigned to the Russians, we'll have them sooner or later, I hope;" adding, with his habitual tense earnestness, "the Americans are something more than shrewd, hard-headed business men. Have they ever vividly pictured to themselves a German soldier smashed by an American shell, or bored through the heart by an American bullet? The grim realism of the battlefield—that should ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... are you going to do?" she demanded again, with a tense, quiet utterance that boded ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... condescension is not so well recognized as it deserves to be. Indeed, condescension may not seem to be an appropriate term for the passionate devouring of romance that one can see going on any day in the trolley-cars, or the tense seriousness with which some readers regard certain novelists whose pages have a message for the world. True, the term will not stretch thus far. But it is condescension that has made the trouble, as I shall try to prove; for all of us, even the tense ones, do patronize that ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby |
