"Nervous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great sigh and began to read again. She became very nervous, and seemed about to faint. When she had finished the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... orientation is determined by two factors, first a peculiar photo-sensitiveness of the retina (or skin), and second a peculiar nervous connection between the retina and the muscular apparatus. In symmetrically built heliotropic animals in which the symmetrical muscles participate equally in locomotion, the symmetrical muscles work with equal energy as ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Carlin, commanding a brigade at Pilot Knob and threatened with an attack by a Confederate force under Jeff. Thompson. The latter had already made a raid in Carlin's rear, and interfered seriously with the communication to St. Louis. In the nervous condition of the military as well as the public mind at that time, even St. Louis ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... hurried forward, very conscious, very nervous, and for once uncertain of himself by reason of his new and unaccustomed splendor. But the look in the Viscount's boyish eyes, his smiling nod of frank approval, and the warm clasp of his hand, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... seats; trunks, boxes, wagon-seats, kegs, and those who could not be provided with seats sat on the floor. There were probably a hundred in all. The weight of so many people on the floor was too much for the sleepers. Some of them gave way, and the floor settled somewhat, but the audience was not "nervous" and was only amused. As I sat at the organ, a group outside the door attracted my attention; several bright faced girls, their shawls drawn over their heads with a grace a white girl might envy, but could not hope to attain, and ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... the case, we'd best be looking after him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns, psychasthenia—that's going to be a long-drawn affair—bruises, maybe a little concussion, and possibly internal injury—that was equivalent to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... was shy when I came in here. I was thinking to myself, "Now I'm going to see the great Ilam Carve actually in the flesh," and I was shy. You'd think my profession would have cured me of being shy, but not a bit. Nervous disease, of course! Ought to be treated as such. Almost universal. Besides, even if he is shy, your governor—even if he's a hundredfold shy, that's no reason for keeping out of England. Shyness is not one of those diseases you can cure by change ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... not necessary to plead for the bill. He was confident of the patriotism of the House; his duty was to curb the nervous anxiety which recent events had produced. These proposals were not for war, but for peace; but they must indeed be prepared for war, for that was a danger that was never absent, and by a review of the last forty years he shewed ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... neck and looked down at the obsequious speaker, or at least he thought so. And he saw how fair she was, a creature how delicate and gracious, with grey eyes frank and wide, and full red lips where a smile (nervous and a little wistful, he judged, rather than defiant) seemed always to hover. Such clear-cut, high beauty made him ashamed; but her colouring (for he was a painter) made his heart beat. She was no ice-bound shadow of deity then! ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... statement, as the flushed and nervous singer, who responds to friendly clappings, comes forward, bows, sings, and retires, so do I, and the curtain falls on the Jimmies and Bee and me, all kissing our hands to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... hear his words; or, if she did, set no meaning to them, Her glance, however, strayed to the narrow window, and then wandered back to the well-worn interior of the coach. Suddenly, as the startling realization of her position came to her, she uttered a loud cry, sprang toward the door, and, with nervous fingers, strove to open it. The man's face became more rubicund as he placed a detaining hand on her shoulder, and roughly thrust her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... almost as deep as that of being himself a plotter. In fact, the fears of the honest Justice, however ridiculously exorbitant, were kept so much in countenance by the outcry of the day, and the general nervous fever, which afflicted every good Protestant, that Master Maulstatute was accounted the bolder man and the better magistrate, while, under the terror of the air-drawn dagger which fancy placed continually before his eyes, he continued to dole forth Justice ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... apple-gathering, aunt Hannah found her seated by a little cherry-wood table near the window, with her box of paints out finishing up a sketch on the leaf of an old copy-book. The same thing had often happened before, but this time there was a nervous rapidity of the hand, and that singular glow upon the face, which made the old woman pause to look ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... be with the nervous little seedpods of the touch-me-not, which children ever love to pop and see the seeds fly, as they do from balsam pods in grandmother's garden, they still startle with the suddenness of their volley. Touch the delicate hair-trigger at the end of a capsule, and the lightning response of the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... risk of irritating a reader, I must again insist, all those old properties that went to bolster up the ordinary novel—the trembling lips, the flashing eyes, the determined curve of the chin, the nervous trick of biting the moustache, aye, and the hectic spot of red on either cheek—will be made spiflicate, as the puppets were spiflicated by Don Quixote. Yes, even now Demos begins to discern. The same spirit that has revived ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... and hesitated a moment. "I do not know, godfather! We have not seen Le Gardeur since our arrival." Then after a nervous silence she added, "I have been told that he is at Beaumanoir, hunting with His ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... descriptions of the autumnal season introduced into his various works, will show that his mind and imagination had something in harmony with that which is, in our opinion, the most poetical portion of the year. Like many persons of a highly nervous organization, the brilliant sunshine of spring-tide produced in Pushkin's temperament an impression of melancholy, which he explained by a natural tendency ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... his chair. He was feeling rather like a nervous and peace-loving patron of a wild western saloon who observes two cowboys reach for their hip-pockets. Neither his wife nor his sister-in-law paid any attention to him. The concluding exercises of a duel of the eyes was in progress ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... dozen who applied the next day I accepted a Swede by the name of Anderson. He was about thirty, tall, thin, and nervous. He did not fit my idea of a stockman, but he looked like a worker, and as I could furnish the work we soon came ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... where to stand or what to do with his hands and feet, is afraid of Burgess, and would run away into solitude if he dared; but the very intensity with which he feels a perfectly commonplace position shows great nervous force, and his nostrils and mouth show a fiercely petulant wilfulness, as to the quality of which his great imaginative eyes and fine brow are reassuring. He is so entirely uncommon as to be almost unearthly; and to prosaic ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... the paragraph, with not a syllable of note or comment on cause or consequences. It was evidently an every-day occurrence. What recklessness was here indicated! and how comforting to a sick and nervous man, now near the very spot of the occurrence, and in a vessel about to be placed in the same pleasant relation to one of those grunting monsters as the unfortunate "barque" had but three days before occupied, with the trifling ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... bit, I'm stripped bare here," he said in a low voice, "letting you see me. To-morrow I'll be a nervous, stammering fool, hiding all I feel, swanking like hell about my people, myself and everyone I've ever seen, like I was doing to-day when you told me off so beautifully. To-morrow I'll be drunk, and I'll lie to you till all's blue. To-night ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... before seen such an expression in her face. Her eyes flashed, her nostrils dilated, and she drew her breath like one in the agonies of death. Then pressing his hand with a nervous grasp, she answered,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... chemical and mechanical laws of nature must be applied to vital phenomena in order to see whether they can furnish a satisfactory explanation of life. Are the laws and forces of chemistry sufficient to explain digestion? Are the laws of electricity applicable to an understanding of nervous phenomena? Are physical and chemical forces together sufficient to explain life? Can the animal body be properly regarded as a machine controlled by mechanical laws? Or, on the other hand, are there some phases of life which the forces of chemistry and physics cannot account for? Are ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... mother keeps her is a hygienic measure, dear Pepe, and the only one that has been successfully employed with the various members of my family. Consider that the person whose presence and voice would make the strongest impression on Rosarillo's delicate nervous system is the chosen of ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... on politics," interposed the low voice of Caroline. She had better not have spoken just then. Having scarcely joined in the conversation before, it was not apropos to do it now. She felt this with nervous acuteness as soon as she had spoken, and coloured to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... men must not marry little, nervous or sanguine women, lest both they and their children have quite too much of the hot-headed and impulsive, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... getting more and more nervous about his health, had long been on the point of starting on some southern travels with Thomas Wedgwood, but Wedgwood had gone alone; his friend James Webbe Tobin, mentioned later in the letter, lived at Nevis, in the West ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... six feet tall might easily have frightened Mr. Wordsley into a nervous breakdown by staring at him with that gaunt, hollow-eyed stare, but this creature, though manlike, was fully fifty feet tall, incredibly elongated, and stark naked. Its hair was long and matted; its cheeks sunken, its lips pulled back in an expression which might have ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... myself that no one could have entered. On advancing towards the bed, I perceived his Majesty extended across it, in a position denoting great agony, the drapery and bed-covering thrown off, and his whole body in a frightful condition of nervous contraction. From his open mouth escaped inarticulate sounds, his breathing appeared greatly oppressed, and one of his hands, tightly clinched, lay on the pit of his stomach. I was terrified at the sight, and called him. He did not reply; again, once, twice even, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... swung slowly up Dick felt that the intense nervous excitement he had felt the night before was seizing him again. The officers of the regiment remained on foot. Colonel Winchester had sent their horses away to some cavalrymen who had lost their own. He and his staff and other officers, dismounted, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it," replied Mr. Lucre, applying the sudariolum once more with a very nervous and quivering ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Peking—has been officially warned that foreign guards, whose arrival has been duly authorised by the Tsung-li Yamen, may be a little late and that consequently the Ch'ien Men, or the Middle Gate, should be kept open a couple of hours longer, the chief guardian may become nervous and irate and incontinently shut the gates. This alone might provoke ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... called them to witness that, at the Emir's command, I was going to try to do the operation I had seen the white doctor perform, although I was but an ignorant man, and feared greatly that I might fail. I really was desperately nervous, though at the same time I did feel that, having seen the operation performed two or three times, and as it was a simple one, I ought to be able to do it. Of course, I had everything laid handy. The tourniquet was first put on the arm, and screwed tightly. Then I administered the chloroform, ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... and down with caged, impatient steps, she watched him with an uneasy, anxious glance. He kept shaking his head with a nervous movement, and he stared angrily across the ravine to the opposite hill, where against the skyline the large mass of Eype Castle, James Mottram's dwelling-place, stood four-square to the high winds which ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... death! I ran into the house. Mrs. Grove was in the dining room, sleeping heavily. I was about to awaken her, when I remembered that I would have to account for the strange fact of the body lying at the front door. How could I tell Mrs. Grove, who had showed herself to be a weak and nervous woman, the wonderful story of our night walk? Would she be able to help me if she knew it? I thought of calling upon Miriam's father, but that seemed horrible. These thoughts rushed through my mind with the rapidity of lightning, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Sun behind it,' means the instructions laid down in the Vedanta as based upon Srutis. Drishtam implies 'Sruti', for it is as authoritative as anything seen. 'Pura' implies a city, a citadel, or a mansion. Here it refers to the body. The avasatha within the pura refers to the chakra or nervous centres beginning with what is called the muladhara. At the time when Brahman is realised, the whole universe appears as Brahman and so nothing exists, besides Brahman, upon which the mind can then dwell. Telang, I think, is not correct in rendering ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... first of the great new siege guns they are trying on the lower meadows. Sit down, dear, for a moment. Do be careful—you are getting"—she hesitated—"hysterical. There will be another presently. Do sit down, dear aunt. Don't be nervous." She was alarmed by her aunt's silent statuesque position. She could have applied no wiser remedy than her warning advice. No woman likes to be told she is nervous or hysterical and now it acted with the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... a prayer in vain: her mind, so fearfully tried, resumed its self-command, and calmness and peace stole back again into her heart. She opened her window: it was a lovely day, and the mountain air, so bracing and reviving, so deadly to sickly fears and nervous sentimentalities, had an inspiring effect upon her; she laved herself in the cold spring water, arranged her dress, ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... thee that spoilest and thou wast not spoiled," Grantly Ffolliot began in a voice of thunder. The congregation lifted startled heads, and looked considerably surprised. Grantly was nervous. He read very fast, and so loud that Mary was moved to cover her ears with her hands; and ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... V. The same nervous fear and vain attempt to shuffle responsibility off himself give tragic interest to his theatrical washing of his hands. The one thing that he feared was a riot, which would be like a spark in a barrel of gunpowder, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... think she will find the prediction in my letter to her verified. She might join us at Goshen and go with us, or come here. Why did she not come up with her father? I went to see him last evening, but he was out. Your mother, I presume, has told you of home affairs. She has become nervous of late, and broods over her troubles so much that I fear it increases her sufferings. I am therefore the more anxious to give her new scenes and new thoughts. It is the principal good I anticipate. Love to Rob. Custis still talks of visiting you, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... complacently. He stretched his arms, looked at the palms of his hands to see if they had blistered, and addressed himself to the second part of his business. Thud! thud! went the axe on the trunk of the tree, and the sweat broke out all over Carnaby's skin, not with exertion but with nervous terror. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it was no casual selection of a theme, but that Calvin had conceived the hope of mitigating hereby the severity of the persecution then raging. The author's own correspondence, however, betrays less anxiety for the attainment of that lofty aim, than nervous uneasiness respecting the literary success of his first venture. Indeed, this is not the only indication that, while Calvin was already, in 1532, an accomplished scholar, he was scarcely as yet a reformer, and that the stories of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... realized. They hadn't had time to tire of each other before the War broke out. And Colin insisted on marrying before he joined up. Their engagement had left him nervous and unfit, and his idea was that, once married, he would present a better appearance before the ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... night had already fallen. I began to get scary. I could only think of bears and catamounts, so, as it was five o'clock, we decided to camp. The trees were immense. The lower branches came clear to the ground and grew so dense that any tree afforded a splendid shelter from the weather, but I was nervous and wanted one that would protect us against any possible attack. At last we found one growing in a crevice of what seemed to be a sheer wall of rock. Nothing could reach us on two sides, and in front two large trees had fallen so that ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... 20th regiment were sent from Hongkong, and with the consent of the Japanese government took up their residence in 1864 at barracks in the foreign settlement. They were afterwards joined by a French contingent, and for many years they were a familiar sight, and gave a sense of security to the nervous residents. ...
— Japan • David Murray
... are nevertheless very vicious and truculent, striking right and left and biting freely on the smallest provocation—this is the case with the species of which the doctor had previously placed a specimen on the table. Moreover, many snakes, some entirely harmless and some vicious ones, are so nervous and uneasy that it is with the greatest difficulty they can be induced to eat in captivity, and the slightest disturbance or interference will prevent their eating. There are other snakes, however, of which the mussurama is perhaps the best example, which are very good captives, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... he made in public was carefully considered beforehand, and then written out and committed to memory. As he had to speak in a foreign tongue, he considered this precaution absolutely necessary. At the same time it often made him feel shy and nervous when speaking before strangers, and this sometimes gave to those who did not know him a mistaken impression of ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... horseback, that they were supposed by strangers to perform the ordinary duties of civil life, to eat, to drink, and even to sleep, without dismounting from their steeds. They excel in the dexterous management of the lance; the long Tartar bow is drawn with a nervous arm; and the weighty arrow is directed to its object with unerring aim and irresistible force. These arrows are often pointed against the harmless animals of the desert, which increase and multiply ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... It is absolutely inconceivable in imagination, wholly incredible to reason, intrinsically nonsensical every way, that a shifting concourse of atoms, a plastic arrangement of particles, a regular succession of galvanic shocks, a continuous series of nervous currents, or any thing of the sort, should constitute the reality of a human soul, the process of a human life, the accumulated treasures of a human experience, all preserved at command and traversed by the moral lines of personal identity. The things lie in different spheres and are full of incommunicable ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... "We'll be nervous with this seventy-eight dollars in camp, in addition to the few other dollars we have," ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... to Mainom, by the Dewan, in the previous December.] After this the Soubah came to me, as I have related; and returning, had Campbell brought bound before him, and asked him, through Tchebu Lama, if he would write from dictation. The Soubah was violent, excited, and nervous; Tchebu Lama scared. Campbell answered, that if they continued torturing him (which was done by twisting the cords round his wrists by a bamboo-wrench), he might say or do anything, but that his government would not confirm any ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... grounded conviction attempts to show reason for his confidence in the poet's virtue, he may advance such an argument for the association of righteousness and genius as has been offered by Carlyle in his essay, The Hero as Poet. This is the theory that, far from being an example of nervous degeneration, as his enemies assert, the poet is a superman, possessing will and moral insight in as preeminent a degree as he possesses sensibility. This view, that poetry is merely a by-product of a great ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... to Congress as a representative of the rights of the laboring classes was Eli Moore, a New York journeyman printer, who had organized trades unions and successfully engineered several strikes by mechanics against their employers. He was a thin, nervous man, with keen, dark hazel eyes, long black hair brushed back behind his ears, and a strong, clear voice which rang through the hall like the sound of a trumpet. He especially distinguished himself in a reply to General Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, who ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... from the subject. It is not new. There is no new need to discuss it. We shall not alter our attitude toward it because some amongst us are nervous and excited. We shall easily and sensibly agree upon a policy of defense. The question has not changed its aspects because the times are not normal. Our policy will not be for an occasion. It will be conceived as a permanent and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Before this, the nervous and irritable feeling of many Northern politicians, who found in emancipation a good subject for quarrel among themselves and in the slow progress of the war a good subject of quarrel with the Administration, led to a crisis in Lincoln's Cabinet. Radicals were inclined to think Seward's ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... despatched judges from Rome with orders to condemn the accused to death. Conformably with the laws of the Church, the trial opened with the torture. Savonarola was too weak and nervous to support it; he vowed in his agony all that was imputed to him, and, with his two disciples, was condemned to death. The three monks were burned alive, May 23, 1498, in the same square where, six weeks before, a pile had been raised to prepare ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... doctor was called in. The doctor advised him to take a taxi home. A few days later the bankclerk was presented with a bill for $3.50—half a week's salary. The indigestion, needless to say, had been caused by eating a cold lunch under the nervous excitement of waiting work. Another time he had been searching in the vault for a package of old vouchers and a book had fallen on him, breaking both lenses of his glasses: cost $4.50—more than half a week's pay. Those things were all "in a day's work," Willis used to say. So were board and bed. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... prolonged nervous strain you have been suffering; and I am afraid I have not known how to spare you as I might the fatigue, the altitude perhaps, the long journey face to face with these cruel memories. But I will not press it, I will not press it," he concluded hastily, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... foreign representatives than native genera, among which are Coffea, Cinchona, and Ipecacuanha (Uragoga), all of which are of economic importance. The members of this family are noted for their action on the nervous system. Coffee, as is well known, contains an active principle known as caffein which acts as a stimulant to the nervous system and in small quantities is very beneficial. Cinchona supplies us with quinine, while Ipecacuanha ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... be pleased to go away. On hearing themselves addressed in the Asiki language, they seemed surprised, for their faces changed a little, but go they would not. The result was that Alan grew extremely nervous and ate and drank so rapidly that he scarcely noted what he was putting into his mouth. Then before Jeekie, to whom the women did not kneel, had half finished his dinner, Alan rose and walked away, whereon two of the women gathered up everything, including the dishes that had ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... discharge their workers on account of lack of orders. Happily, Teresa with Catalina's help had done all she could to aid the poor folks in our neighborhood. Paula had sewed incessantly. Her stitches were pretty uneven and the thread frequently knotted in her nervous hands, but Teresa said that the mistakes she made were more than made up by the love that she put ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... Come home with me, and see my cat,—my clever cat, who can groom herself! Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth! Then, again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous fool! He will start at a piece of white paper in the road as if it was a lion. His one idea, when he hears a noise that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it. What do you say to those two common instances of the sense and ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... he hopes that Caspar has kept his. Of course Caspar has done nothing of the kind. It is suggested that Max shoot at once, not awaiting the arrival of his betrothed, lest the sight of her make him nervous. The Prince points to a white dove as the mark, and Max lifts his gun. At the moment Agathe rushes forward, crying, "Do not shoot; I am the dove!" The bird flies toward a tree which Caspar, impatient for the coming of his purposed victim, had climbed. Max follows it with his gun and pulls ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... she relates another affliction—Mr. Judson, who had frequently been asked by the natives, 'Where are your religious books?' had been diligently employed in preparing a Tract in the Burman language called 'A Summary of Christian Truth;' when his nervous system, and especially his head became so afflicted, that he was obliged to lay aside all study, and seriously think of a voyage to Calcutta as his only means of restoration. But he was prevented from executing his design by the joyful news that two additional missionaries were about ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Mr. Parasyte had been very uneasy and nervous. It was plain to him that he ruled the boys by their free will, rather than by his own power; and this was not a pleasant thing for a man like him to know. Doubtless he felt that he had dropped the reins of his team, which, though going very well just then, might take it into its head to ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... I'll vamp an accompaniment. It will be better than nothing," said Lady Mary kindly, and Will whispered low in my ear: "Don't be nervous. Do your best. Astonish them, Babs!" And I did. That whisper inspired me somehow, and I sang "The Vale of Avoca," father's favourite ballad, pronouncing the words distinctly, as the singing mistress always made us do at school. ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... fever. I had a peculiar feeling in my head, as if my intellect, never too bright, had now been altogether dulled. My hearing, too, became less acute. I felt my strength slowly dying down like the flame of a lamp with no more oil in it. The nervous excitement and strain alone kept me alive. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... indeed, had more the air of an art gallery than a place where grim plots and deals innumerable had been put through, lawmakers corrupted past counting, and the destinies of nations bent beneath his corded, lean and nervous hand. And now, as the Billionaire sat there thinking, smiling a smile that boded no good to the world, the soft spring air that had inspired his great plan ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along, hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognized the White Rabbit: it was talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... feeling very nervous, I determined to call my cousin Emily, who slept, you will remember, in the next room, which communicated with mine by a second door. By this private entrance I found my way into her chamber, and without difficulty persuaded her to return to my room and sleep with me. We accordingly lay down ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... very serious. One leg and arm are broken; and he is very badly bruised; but worst of all is the great shock to his very sensitive nervous system," was the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... which the nervous system is concerned are what we call reflex actions. All the visceral actions which keep us alive from moment to moment, the movements of the heart and lungs, the contractions of arteries, the secretions of glands, the digestive ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... in our camp arrangements this evening, and went to bed as soon as it was possible for him to do so. He said little, but he was very weak, and I could tell from his drawn face that he was suffering, and knew that it was nothing but nervous energy that kept him at his work—that, and a promise which he had made to build a fire, within a stated time now less than two weeks away, in Bright Angel Creek Canyon, nearly three hundred miles below this ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Notwithstanding my nervous apprehension, a sleep more like the torpor of lethargy than natural slumber, fell on me at once. I neither stirred nor heard any thing till near two o'clock, when a piercing shriek from the deck aroused me. The moon had set, but there was light enough to show the decks abaft ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... incident of the violin and the carving-knife, it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the spirits of Fiddlin' Jack. He was sad and nervous; if any one touched him, or even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a deer. He kept out of everybody's way as much as possible, sat out in the wood-shed when he was not at work, and could not be persuaded to bring down his fiddle. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... that it was not in him to do good work in the world, but at least he would pay his own way. He had been a mass of vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he shrank from the passers-by. Perhaps the long strain had damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous centre—I do not know what change a physician would have found in him, but ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... piloted the bright-eyed, willful Chicago girl through the dim religious light of the Cathedral. His mocking history of the gay life and racy adventures of Bonnivard, when posing as the rollicking Prior of St. Victor in the wild days of his youth, greatly amused the nervous American heiress. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... tensity of the body. A neurologist, versed in the by-products of war, could have made a fair guess at this man's medical-history sheet. But the folk on the platform that night were not specialists in subtle diagnosis of the nervous system. Nor were the committees. They were male and female of those who had done their bit at home, were doing it now, welcoming their broken heroes. The sight of a man with a scarred face, a mutilated limb, elicited ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... shuddering and horror-stricken, I waited the coming wave, and struck off swimming with all my might. It was only a minute's task; but when, after twice trying, my feet touched the bottom, I was panting heavily, and so nervous, that I had to lean, trembling and shaking, against the side. But I had a tight hold of Hodson, whose head I managed to keep above water; and it was not until warned of my danger by the rising tide, and the difficulty I found ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... a moment, unconsciously and irresistibly admiring her. Then, with a little shake of his head, answered her remark. "No, no, he is most nervous always. It is your amateur who knows no stage-fright. Papa," he went on, using the name that to English ears sounds so strangely on grown-up lips, "says he invariably feels as though the audience were wild beasts going to rush at him ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... inches high, with a round bald head, smooth and shiny as an ostrich's egg, no beard unless the unshorn growth of a week could be so described, and a long hooked nose that supported a huge pair of spectacles such as with many near-sighted people seems to have become a part of their individuality. His nervous system was remarkably developed, and his body might not inaptly be compared to one of the Rhumkorff's bobbins of which the thread, several hundred yards in length, is permeated throughout by electric fluid. But whatever he was, his life, if possible, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... and make together perhaps the most likely to be remembered of Sussex pictures. It is surprising how little this tranquil vale is known except to the chance visitor from Seaford. When one remembers the much exploited and spoilt beauty spots of Dorset and Devon one feels nervous for the future of these lesser known but equally ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... opened her purse, slipped the little gun which had been in the palm of her left hand into it, reached out and gripped Halder's hand for an instant. "You drive, Halder," she said. "I'm so nervous I could scream! I'm scared ...
— The Other Likeness • James H. Schmitz
... heart. In a word, the preceding events had a powerful effect upon her nervous system, and she was ordered much quiet and sal-volatile by her skilful medical ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... part of the coast; and the sea, being pent between the rocks which skirt the continent and the northern side of Bute, became so boisterous, that the boatmen began to think they should be driven upon the rocks of the island, instead of reaching its bay. Wallace tore down the sails, and laying his nervous arms to the oar, assisted to keep the vessel off the breakers, against which the waves were driving her. The sky collected into a gloom; and while the teeming clouds seemed descending even to rest upon the cracking ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Covent Garden on April 12. The house was packed from pit to dome, and the success was tremendous. Next morning the composer was in a highly nervous and exhausted state, but felt he must keep his promise to Kemble and conduct the first twelve performances of "Oberon." He was to have a benefit concert, and hoped through this to have a goodly ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... time following this walk I was very nervous; more so for the awful manner in which Mrs. Rusk received my statement—with stern lips and upturned hands and eyes, and an angry expostulation: 'I do wonder at you, Mary Quince, letting the child walk into the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... invisible wall of iron. Without paying any attention to these attempts at capture, Inga advanced slowly and the goat kept pace with him. And when Rinkitink saw that he was safe from harm he gave one of his big, merry laughs, and it startled the warriors and made them nervous. Captain Buzzub's eyes grew big with surprise as the three steadily advanced and forced his men backward; nor was he free from terror himself at the magic that protected these strange visitors. As for the warriors, they presently became terror-stricken and fled in a panic ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... artistic temperament, are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other, but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms and an instinctive reticence of personal attitude which Miss Cather only shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is more assured in the traditional quality of her work ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the corner house, made her eleventh tour of the parlor, dining-room and kitchen at The Savins, and then took her stand at the front window where she tapped restlessly on the glass and swayed the curtain to and fro impatiently. She was not a nervous woman; but to-night her mood demanded constant action. Moreover, it was only an hour and a quarter before the train was due. If she were not watchful, the carriage might come without her knowing it, and the occupants miss half their ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He grasped my hand with a nervous empressement which alarmed me, and strengthened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatural lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... the morning it was past ten. Borgert began to rage. Almost half the day was gone now, and yet he had meant to do so much. Had this ass of a servant again forgotten to wake him? With that his head ached, and he felt nervous and out of sorts. Throwing his dressing-gown loosely about him he went into his servant's room and found Roese laboriously penning a letter. When his master entered the poor fellow shot out of the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... now, and wines. Is there not an American wine called Catawampus? The Mad Doctor has his eye on me; he seems interested. I thought I heard him murmur Aspasia, or Aphasia, or something like that. It is not Catawampus—it is Catawba. I feel that I patauge—flounder, I mean. I am getting quite nervous; feel like a man in a powder-magazine, with lighted cigarettes everywhere. If one can withdraw them to the smoking-room, they will settle down somehow. They do. The Military Critic gets into a corner with BEILBY. The Americans and I consort together. Most agreeable fellows; have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... voracious supercargo, a bearded lady, and a little boy, not three years of age, with a chin already quite black and curly, all plying their victuals down their throats with their knives—allow, madam, that in such a company a man had a right to feel a little nervous. I don't know whether you have ever remarked the Indian jugglers swallowing their knives, or seen, as I have, a whole table of people performing the same trick, but if you look at their eyes when they do it, I assure you there is a roll in ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the tall weeds. I heard the door close. I fancied him lie down in a heap in the corner and go to sleep. He was a better philosopher than I was, and he had called me a coward, but he had not altered my determination. I began to sweat. It was like the action of a fever on my body, and I became very nervous; but I was determined to meet the ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the hero with his eyes, trying to pierce the bronzed skin, to read the record. From his seat upon the stage John, also, stared at the illustrious guest. John was frightfully nervous, but looking at the veteran he forgot the fear of the recruit. Both Desmond and he were wondering what "it felt like" to have done so much. And—they compared notes afterwards—each boy deplored the fact that the great man was not an Old Harrovian. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... in London he fattened himself for the fray with a hearty dinner, then he strove to get acquainted with his neighbors and his environment. The nervous force within him needed outlet, but he was frowned upon at every quarter. Even the waiter at his table made it patent that his social standing would not permit him to indulge in the slightest intimacy with chance guests of the hotel, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... insect is far too low. We think, then, for the present, that there are two distinct repositories, or two different sources, of light in the fire-fly; and that while one depends on the head, and is a strictly vital phenomenon, the other is altogether independent of any physiological law of the nervous or circulating system. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... manifestations of mental, moral, and even physical shock and injury. I've seen a man with a bullet in him run a half-mile—anywhere; I've seen a man ripped up by a crosscut-saw hold himself together, and walk—anywhere—till he dropped. Physical and nervous activity is one of the forms which shattered force takes. I expect that your 'M'sieu' Jean Jacques' has been busier this last year than ever before in his life. He'd have to be; for a man who has as many irons in the fire as he has, must keep running from bellows to bellows ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... subsequently disentangled, but which, at the time, were involved in utter confusion. What actually happened was that Fred had begun boldly to ascend the stairs, in some way missing the fishing-line, and being closely followed by his more nervous comrade. The latter, less fortunate, caught his foot in the line, stumbled, tightened the line and brought the shot-bag hopping down the stairs. What I heard was the sound of the stumble, followed by the quick thud, thud, of the descending shot-bag, exactly resembling the footfalls ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... plead guilty myself to another attempt at impersonation. During my father's second term of office as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, my mother had a severe nervous breakdown, due to the unexpected death of a very favourite sister of mine. One of the principal duties of a Lord Lieutenant is (or rather was) to entertain ceaselessly, and private mourning was not supposed to interfere with this all-important task. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... was comparatively uninteresting during the progress of the repast. There was none of that conviviality which one is accustomed to find at a friendly banquet; each member of the circle appeared constrained and nervous in the presence of his comrades and an undefined suspicion that he had been decoyed into a trap of some kind flashed through Pomeroff's brain. Drinking, rather than eating, formed the chief part of the entertainment and the spirits ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... not trying to tell you that terrestrial trees think, too, nor even that they have a nervous system. They don't. But—well, on Earth, if you've ever touched a lighted match to the leaf of a sensitive plant like the mimosa, say—and I have—you've been struck by the speed with which other leaves close up and droop. I mean, sure, we know that the leaves droop because ...
— Tree, Spare that Woodman • Dave Dryfoos
... are going a short passage, and are at all nervous, you lay in a good load. It's a good load in the hold what steadies the ship. It's them half-empty cruisers as goes a-rollin' and a-pitchin' and a-heavin' all over the place, with their stern up'ards half the time. ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... was over Rose's eyes. The Spaniard's voice was hard and flippant. Did he care for her, after all? And if he did, was it nevertheless hopeless? How her cheeks glowed! Everybody must see it! Anything to turn away their attention from her, and in that nervous haste which makes people speak, and speak foolishly too, just because they ought to be silent, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... his mind, sometimes even with startling bluntness, but he never tried to silence an opponent by dogmatism or bluster. The keenest argument, therefore, could not betray him into the least discourtesy. He might occasionally frighten a nervous antagonist into reticence and be too apt to confound such reticence with cowardice. But he did not take advantage of his opponent's weakness. He would only give him up as unsuited to play the game in the proper temper. In short, he ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the river, Clarissa strolled into one of the shrubbery walks, quite alone. It was after luncheon; and the rattle of plates and glasses, and the confusion of tongues that had obtained during the banquet, had increased the nervous headache with which she had begun the day. This grove of shining laurel and arbutus was remote from the river, and as solitary just now as if Mr. Wooster's hundred or so of guests had been miles away. There were ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... one of these millionaires who don't know how rich they are, for the money comes on rolling in. Restless, nervous sort of men who must be doing something, and then they want to do something else, and get tired of the idea before they've begun. He had an idea that it would be a fine thing to imitate Brassey, but ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... noting that, were it for nervous invalids alone, or those who from various causes find it difficult to sleep, or apply the mind to work, this book would be of unquestionable value. In fact, even while writing this chapter, a lady has called to thank me for the substantial benefit which she ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... you want to spoil my nervous system? We are not given much to tea-balls in Durford. We consider ourselves lucky if we get a plain old-fashioned pot. Now you get fixed up," she directed, "while I get supper ready, and I'll stay just this time, if you'll let ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... times that Dr Grantly could not be at Paddington station till 2 P.M., and our poor friend might therefore have trusted to the shelter of the hotel for some hours longer with perfect safety; but he was nervous. There was no knowing what steps the archdeacon might take for his apprehension: a message by electric telegraph might desire the landlord of the hotel to set a watch upon him; some letter might come which he might find himself unable to disobey; ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Hadria?" asked Fred, "she will scarcely speak to me. I was just telling her the best joke I've heard this year, and, will you believe me, she didn't see the point! Yes, you may well stare! I tried again and she gave a nervous giggle; I am relating to you the exact truth. Do any of the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... is a little bristly, bohemian man, as fidgetty as a kitten, who runs round the table while he talks to you. When he agrees with you he shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head. When he means anything rather seriously he ends up with a loud nervous laugh. He talks incessantly and is mad on the history of Oxford. I sent him my review of Ruskin and he read it before me (Note. Hell) and delivered himself with astonishing rapidity to the following effect: "This is very good: you've got something to say: Oh, yes: this is worth saying: I ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... home three times during the winter. The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and everywhere, making after-dinner speeches. The saving on his dinner bills didn't pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected. It was as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of his head, so that he couldn't go out, the way he used to do in Athens when he was afraid he would ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... plan of this kind has been adopted, boys have been inclined to look upon it as a great bore, and have dreaded the return of the so-called social evening, when they would have to be, for some hours, in a state of nervous anxiety, lest they should be catechised in a corner, or be betrayed into something that they would be ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... transmits it, and it could sustain no other than a transient relation to any outside material through which it passed. But if we know anything, we know that the human mind or spirit is a vital part of the human body; its source is in the brain and nervous system; hence, it and the organ through which it is manifested ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and gave us an outline sketch of his proposed tour. I thought he seemed strangely restless and nervous, ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... said they, "we will draw near," For much they wished to see and hear What was this fuss and noise about, So joined the party to find out. The Frogs received them with a smirk, And gave their hands with nervous jerk. Bowing and smiling in return, The Ducks prepared themselves ...
— The Ducks and Frogs, - A Tale of the Bogs. • Fanny Fire-Fly
... the curious carved stones of the temple were to the disciples—be amiable to thine eyes, and nervous sentences, solid observations, with a kind of insinuating, yet harmless behaviour, be taking with thy spirit, here they are also, and acquainting thyself with them, either as the sinner or the saint, which thine ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... this account the animal was subsequently placed by Gegenbaur in a special class of Vermes, the Enteropneusta. In 1883-1886 Bateson showed by his embryological researches that the Enteropneusta exhibit chordate (vertebrate) affinities in respect of the coelomic, skeletal and nervous systems as well as in regard to the respiratory system, and, further, that the gill-slits are formed upon a plan similar to that of the gill-slits of Amphioxus, being subdivided by tongue-bars which depend from the dorsal borders of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each in a way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard, woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,—with "eyes that shone like lamps," ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... to the ground and they sat down together, he nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was full ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... believe study, almost what she likes. I don't know what she is," (Miss Darley laid her hand, trembling, on the young master's sleeve,) "but I can tell when she is in the room without seeing or hearing her. Oh, Mr. Langdon, I am weak and nervous, and no doubt foolish,—but—if there were women now, as in the days of our Saviour, possessed of devils, I should think there was something not human looking out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... strangers took their departure for their distant homes, and quiet reigned once more in the small, dark cottage. But days and weeks brought to Edna no oblivion of the tragic events which constituted the first great epoch of her monotonous life. A nervous restlessness took possession of her, she refused to occupy her old room, and insisted upon sleeping on a pallet at the foot of her grandfather's bed. She forsook her whilom haunts about the spring and forest, and started ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... opposite—those are her books beside her. And the rebel!"—he pointed smiling to the portrait of John Boyce. "When you are gone I shall shut myself up here—sit in his chair, invoke him—and put my speech together. I am nervous about to-morrow" (he was bound, as she knew, to a large Labour Congress in the Midlands, where he was to preside), "and sleep will make no terms with me. Ah!—how strange! Who can that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the hospital where Mitya was lying now. The day after his fate was determined, Mitya had fallen ill with nervous fever, and was sent to the prison division of the town hospital. But at the request of several persons (Alyosha, Madame Hohlakov, Lise, etc.), Doctor Varvinsky had put Mitya not with other prisoners, but ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... earnestness. "Honest and truly, I wouldn't! I NEVER write letters to strangers, unless I'm SURE the strangers are Patty Fairfield. And I'm sure I shouldn't dare to write a letter to the young lady of the photograph that came to me. She looked like an angel in the last stages of nervous prostration." ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... writes: "Gestern hat jemand berechnet, wieviel Poststunden ich in zwei Monaten gefahren bin, und es ergab sich die kolossale Summe von 644, die ich im Eilwagen unter bestaendiger Gemuetsbewegung gefahren bin."[77] That this habit of almost incessant travel tended to aggravate his nervous condition is a fair supposition, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Karl Weiler[78] skeptically asks "what about commercial travellers?" Lenau himself complains frequently of the distressing effect of such journeys: "Ein heftiger Kopfschmerz ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... jacket clumsily mended. The sky was now a curious leaden color, and the wild barley shone a livid white against the dark riband of the trail; the air was very hot and there was not a breath of wind. Festing noted that the horses were nervous and trotted fast, although they had made a long journey. Now and then they threw up their heads and snorted, and swerved violently when a gopher ran across the trail or a prairie-hen got up. The flies seemed to have gone, ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... succession of extremes which seems to be a governing law of nature (as the flow the ebb, the calm the storm, day the night, etc.), was not less elated than she had been depressed in the early part of the day,—but still, I take it, in a nervous, excitable condition. And hearing her father, whom she has not seen so long, is here, a thousand mad projects enter her lively imagination. So, when Mrs. Butterby, after the refusal of her warm caudle, proposes she shall bring Madam a tray of victuals, that she may pick ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... was about the same as a man holding a cocked pistol at another man's head and assuring him that it was nothing but a nervous arm that kept the ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the young soldier hoarsely, straining her to his breast, while endeavoring to calm his nervous and excited horse. "What would ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pretended to be much astonished at his request, and said that he deserved something much better than the foal, for the beast was lazy and nervous, blind in one eye, and, in short, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... away after the conversation related in the last chapter, and one evening Hilda was in her boudoir alone, as usual. She was somewhat paler, more nervous, and less calm than she had been a few months previously. Her usual stealthy air had now developed into one of wary watchfulness, and the quiet noiselessness of her actions, her manner, and her movements had become intensified into a habit of motionless repose, accompanied ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... had often hunted wolves before, and saw no special peril in the sport; and Joanna and Gertrude felt that not even the most nervous guardian could hesitate to let them go with such ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... my pants, and Ma and the doc. laughed awful. When Pa got back from church and asked for me, Ma said that I had gone down town. She said the doctor found my spine was only uncoupled and he coupled it together, and I was all right. Pa was nervous all the afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects that we played it on him. Say, you don't think there is any harm in playing it on an old man a little for a good cause, ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... not have taken advantage of the new opportunity that was offered him. His new position lasted but a short time. The third fall of the government hastened that of Marcas. Lodged once more on rue Corneille he was taken with a nervous fever. The sickness increased and finally carried away this unrecognized genius. Z. Marcas was buried in a common grave in Montparnasse cemetery, January, 1838. [A Prince of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Napoleon said to me, "Are you sufficiently strong to raise Josephine, and to carry her to her apartments by the private staircase, in order that she may receive the care and assistance which she requires?" I obeyed, and raised the princess, who, I thought, was seized with a nervous affection. With the aid of Napoleon, I raised her into my arms, and he himself taking a light from the table, opened the door, which, by an obscure passage, led to the little staircase of which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... universal was the belief in this strange being, that before nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent state of siege. And before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror went through the whole watching nervous countryside. Going from whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length and breadth of the country, passed the story of ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... and nervous, was, nevertheless, in many things, a girl of spirit, and possessed a great deal of natural wit and penetration. On that day Woodward exerted himself to the utmost, with a hope of making a favorable impression upon her. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... her head. As she went upstairs she heard her father calling to Marie Gigot, giving severe commands in a nervous voice, and she smiled ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... of an approaching relief, and certainly troops had rarely been more in want of it, for our two battalions had been in the trenches for fourteen days, with pretty stiff fighting—and nervous, jumpy fighting in the dark at that—all the time, and no chance of being comfortable or quiet during the whole of this period. Each battalion had had to find its own supports or reserves; but even the latter had to be pretty close up to the firing ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... of it, as it were—a shrill, nervous little whinny; the boys whirled round to see whence it came. The persistent rasping noise of the sorghum mill and the bubbling of the caldron had prevented them from hearing an approach. There, quite close at hand, peering through the rails of the fence, was a little ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... boy of fifteen, tall and plump, with a sharp face, deep-set bluish eyes, and very large hands and feet for his age. Likewise he was awkward, and had a nervous, unpleasing voice. Nevertheless he seemed very pleased with himself, and was, in my opinion, a boy who could well bear ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... walking in the literal—or physical—sense. But nevertheless the consequences of the act remain far-reaching. To walk involves a displacement and reaction of the resisting earth, whose thrill is felt wherever there is matter. It involves the structure of the limbs and the nervous system; the principles of mechanics. To cook is to utilize heat and moisture to change the chemical relations of food materials; it has a bearing upon the assimilation of food and the growth of the body. The utmost that ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Louvois and Louis. What can he have known? The charges against his master, Roux de Marsilly, had been publicly proclaimed. Twelve years had passed since the dealings of Arlington with Marsilly. Yet, Louvois became more and more nervous. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... behold our penitential rites Performed without impediment by saints Rich only in devotion, then with pride Will you reflect:—Such are the holy men Who call me Guardian; such the men for whom To wield the bow I bare my nervous arm, Scarred by the motion of the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... audibly. Crispin drew himself up, erect, lithe and supple—a figure to inspire confidence in the most despairing. He placed a hand, nervous, and strong as steel, upon the boy's shoulder, and the clutch of his fingers made ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... man sat perched upon his high stool. The stranger was working rapidly and doing good work. George noticed though, that the hand which held the stick trembled; and that sometimes a letter dropped from the nervous fingers. "What's the matter?" he asked, ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... from the very fact that their fiction half deceives them. If Rudyard Kipling, for instance, had written his short stories in France, they would have been praised as cool, clever little works of art, rather cruel, and very nervous and feminine; Kipling's short stories would have been appreciated like Maupassant's short stories. In England they were not appreciated but believed. They were taken seriously by a startled nation as a true picture of the empire and the universe. The English people made haste to abandon ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... be forgiven for being, on this same important Monday, in a state of some nervous excitement. He had a severe attack of what are vulgarly called "the fidgets," and Sir John, who was spending the morning at the Club (for his court was not sitting), glanced at him over his eye-glasses with an irritated look. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... in the jam. When they moved at all it was by inches. When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... evening prayers, looked under the bed—a precaution taken ever since the night upon which she had discovered the burglars—and, finding all right, she blew out her candle and lay down. She could not sleep—many persons of nervous or mercurial temperaments cannot do so the first night in a strange bed. Cap was very mercurial, and the bed and room in which she lay were very strange; for the first time since she had had a home to call her own she was unexpectedly ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth |
