"Alertness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it be that Bennington de Laney waited for some one, and that therefore his gaze was so fixed? It would seem so. For when the beat of hoofs became audible, the white face quickened into alertness, and ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... he put to it, by way of motto, Chamfort's saying, "Happiness is no easy matter; 'tis very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it anywhere else." Schopenhauer was so well read in European literature, he had such natural alertness of mind, and his style is so pointed, direct, and wide-awake, that these detached discussions are interesting and most readable; but for the most part discussions they are, and not aphorisms. Thus, in the saying that "The perfect man of the world should be he who never sticks fast in indecision, ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... vigour and interest in the fight, we may wish that the shabbiness and the pettiness of the daily lives of some of them had faded away from memory, and left us nothing to think of in connection with their names but the alertness, courage, tenacity, self-sacrifice, and faith with which they defended the cause of human emancipation and progress. Happily the mutual hate of the Christian factions, to which liberty owes at least as much as charity owes to their mutual love, prevented a common ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... banish the notion that the history of the Convention is only the history of the guillotine. No chamber in the whole annals of governing assemblies ever displayed so much alertness, energy, and capacity, in the face of difficulties that might well have crushed them. Besides their efforts, justly held incomparable, to hurl back the enemy from the frontiers, they at once in the spirit ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... which an artist can never without risk forget; in abbreviating his speech his utterance thickened; he created new difficulties by a legerdemain in the construction of sentences; he assumed in his public an alertness of intelligence equal to his own. When it needs a leaping-pole to pass from subject to verb across the chasm of a parenthesis, when a reader swings himself dubiously from relative to some one of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the marvelous readiness, and the headlong force of Douglas. Their set speeches were impressive, but in the quick fire, the question-and-answer, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... sweat, dust, fasting and sleeplessness had made of this a face whose horror was but increased by the alertness of the eyes, which shone with so shocking a blueness that the woman, finding them unlike any eyes which she had seen before, called them to herself, "evil eyes—the eyes of a ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... left in a body, taking the mesa trail that led to the Blue. This was significant. They usually left in groups of two or three, as their individual pleasure dictated. And there was a business-like alertness about their movements that ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... could carry on this business," she said, and her quiet assurance impressed Madame's turbulent temper. With a brief return of her mental alertness, the old ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of Zura, his alertness of manner was pleasing and the kind of joy-look in his eyes did me good. I guessed he was downright glad to see something youthful hovering around the "Misty Star." I was glad too, but the situation did not seem to call for hurrahs and fireworks. Two young American people ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... come again. The face of the clock was the only reminder she had left the room, the face of the clock and a certain alertness within herself. As she settled herself near the register and took the astronomy from the pile her eye fell on her Bible, it was on the table where Morris had laid it last night. Miss Prudence's words came ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... With the lithe alertness of a leopard she evaded him; the next instant the bed was between them and she had whipped a negligee about her. For an instant they faced each other; then she pointed a quivering arm, gasping in a voice that sounded strange and ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Ellen dance with inward delight and outward disapproval. "I don't approve of dancing, never did," she said to Andrew, but she was furious once when Ellen sat through a dance. Towards the end of the evening she saw with sudden alertness Ellen dancing with a new partner, a handsome young man, who carried himself with more assurance than the school-boys. Mrs. Zelotes hit Andrew with her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hour they plugged along the trail with an increasing alertness, and wondering how soon the drill runner would turn off. At last he looked back and gestured to them. They understood. He slipped off the trail into the brush and began going slowly. Once he stopped to whisper to them ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... remedy. An invalid will make a poorly equipped librarian. How can a dyspeptic who dwells in the darkness of a disease, be a guiding light to the multitudes who beset him every hour? There are few callings demanding as much mental and physical soundness and alertness as the care of a ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... sensitive genius did not go wrong when it selected Joubert as an eminent example of those gifts of the French mind which most commended themselves to itself—an exquisite justesse, an alertness of spirit not shaking off rule and measure, above all, a consummate propriety in the true and best, not the limited sense of the word. Nor is it difficult to observe in the shy philosopher a temperament which must have ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... England ready to back up France in war, but now comes this meeting in the Black Forest. Germany has shown England the greater advantage of a German-English coalition, and France is frozen out. England, with her shrewd alertness to make the most profitable deal, entertained if did not close the German proposition. In ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... tones, the old soldier added, his face softening into a smile: 'However, alertness and daring, my young friend, are good qualities, especially when crowned with success. If the Austrians had once succeeded in planting a battery on that hill it might have been difficult to dislodge them. Perhaps, under the circumstances, His Majesty may ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... dining with an elderly mandarin of Cochin China. It was not too much to say that "the profuse stores of knowledge brought by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of intellect." ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... not only fulfils of itself the whole of the duties formerly discharged by various authorities—extending those duties, and surpassing those authorities—but it performs them with more alertness, strength, and independence than it displayed before. All the governments of Europe have in our time singularly improved the science of administration: they do more things, and they do everything with more order, more ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... criticise at all, and nothing to criticise severely. It was creditable alike to the general who commanded and the army which had executed it. Sherman had on this campaign some bright, wide-awake division and brigade commanders whose alertness added a host to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... in his personal appearance that in the light of that memory phrased itself at once as Teddiness—a certain Teddidity. To describe it in and other terms is more difficult. It is nimbleness without grace, and alertness without intelligence. He whisked out of his shop upon the pavement, a short figure in grey and wearing grey carpet slippers; one had a sense of a young fattish face behind gilt glasses, wiry hair that stuck up and forward over the forehead, an irregular nose that had its aquiline ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... belly-appeal, the reiterated, cunning arguments, and the few simple metaphors of the prince of commercial orators, the Bantu. A New Zealander is said to speak from his diaphragm, hands clenched at the sides, as the old Maoris used. What we know of first-class Australian oratory shows us the same alertness, swift flight, and clean delivery as a thrown boomerang. I had half expected in Canadian speeches some survival of the Redskin's elaborate appeal to Suns, Moons, and Mountains—touches of grandiosity and ceremonial invocations. But nothing that I heard was referable ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... instant Helen hesitated. Her intelligence, for all its alertness, was strained exactly to appraise the value of his words, neither over, nor under, rating it. And her eyes searched his with a certain boldness and imperiousness of gaze. Richard, meanwhile, folding his arms upon the carven and ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... gaze. He must have read an expression that appalled him in those dilated eyes of mine that confronted his, for, as I sprang toward him, he bounded backward and escaped through the door of Mrs. Clayton's chamber, which he shut after him with undignified alertness. I stood smiling, and strangely cold, leaning against the mantel-shelf, while my heart beat as though it would have leaped from my throat, and I could feel the pallor of my face as ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... of every man of rank to be independent, to be a force in himself instead of a part of a unit which might be useful to the state as a whole, was one of the principal defects of the French aristocracy; poverty crushed it, idleness robbed it of its alertness, intriguing and gradual oppression reduced it to despair. Appointed to offices, its members failed in the performance of their duties; the latter fell to the under men who, while the aristocracy was busy at fetes, in society, at the table, became ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... other hand, looked upon the student end of her husband's parish with disapproving eyes. The girls annoyed her by their cocksure alertness, their little air of being primed, ready for any emergency that chanced to offer. They vexed her by their manifest absorption in her husband; they vexed her yet more by their inexplicable lack of interest ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... addition to experience, an experience sui generis. We demand that it should be something which will occupy us and engage our faculties, something not to be approached carelessly and indolently, but with energy and alertness of the mind; not because it is abstruse or difficult, but because we are demanding something which will give full play to the spirit, which will come profoundly in contact with us when we are in fullest possession of ourselves, which will not merely stir ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... in the forefront of improved modern maps, and not unworthily represents the advance made in the knowledge of the world's surface as a result of the Portuguese efforts up to that time. The scientific importance of the discoveries of the Portuguese and the intellectual alertness of the Italians are alike illustrated by an incident that occurred at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1491. Columbus having explained to the sovereigns his scheme for a western voyage to reach the Indies, most of the Spanish prelates who were present declared his ideas heretical, supporting ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... drew an arrow from over his shoulder and fitted it against the string of his bow. The fact that the missile was undoubtedly coated at the end with a virus more deadly than that of the rattlesnake or cobra was enough to render the would-be friend uncomfortable and to increase his alertness. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... an express, to inform them that apprehensions were entertained of immediate irruptions being made upon the frontiers by the Indians, and advising them to remove from the position which they then occupied; as from its exposed situation, without great vigilance and alertness, they must necessarily fall a ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... was the same as that around Westerling. Only the atmosphere of the staff was different. It had a quality of sober and buoyant alertness and fatality of determination rather than rigid confidence. Otherwise, there was the same medley of typewriters and telegraph instruments, the same types of busy officers and clerks that occupied the Galland house. To them, at least, war had brought ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... simplicity and homeliness of Jesus' teaching are not more remarkable than the alertness of mind which he showed on all occasions. The comment of the fourth gospel, "he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man" (ii. 25), doubtless refers to his supernatural insight, but it also tells ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... rode her pony through the gap in the rail fence, across the June grass, and around to the back door. On a bench beside the pump an old woman sat shelling peas. Her form was thin but erect and her hair snowy white. She moved with alertness, and as the girl dismounted and approached her she raised her head and turned a pleasant face with deep-set, sightless gray ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing suddenly to swoop down on some ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... path the cast-out stump traced in the air was seen from another veranda at a distant of some twenty yards. It was noted as a symptom of importance by an observer with his faculties greedy for signs, and in a state of alertness tense enough almost to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... moon are up to fifteen miles high, causing a state of instability that is chronic. Walking down those alabaster valleys was a more awesome experience than any galactic vista I have ever encountered. Our aesthetic sense proved stronger than common sense alertness and seven of us were ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... inimitable force and truth. But ... she no sooner opened her mouth, than all traits of severity vanished. Her voice was even musical, and her "facon de parler" most gracious. She shewed me the whole establishment with equal good humour and alertness; and I don't know when I ever made such a number of bows (to the several female patients in the wards) within such limited time and space. The whole building has the air of a convent; and there were several architectural relics, perhaps of the end of the fifteenth century, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... a representative of his country would have spurred him to acquit himself well, but also at private parties and in purely personal relations. Like many silent men he was a good listener, and his sensitiveness and mental alertness gave the impression of more sympathy than perhaps he felt. He made himself agreeable, at all events, and he submitted to an amount of human fellowship that was astonishing to himself. The novelty of the society ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... on his arm. "What's wrong with you?" she asked intently. There was alertness in the question, rather than responsive softness. Willoughby drew a hand across his mouth. "Nothing's wrong Stella. I've had a hard ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... glance was all a-quiver with alertness. "I don't ever seem tired now. Keeping one's own house—is great! and it seems like everything is waking up every minute. Sometimes I hate to go to sleep for fear ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... was bowing over her hand, was of medium height or a trifle less, dark, and dressed with the quiet exactness of an English gentleman. Only a slight narrowness of the eyes and a greater alertness of movement seemed to distinguish him in any way, as regards nationality, from the men by whom he was surrounded. His voice, when he spoke, contained no trace of accent. It was soft and singularly ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... short and of a jaundiced hue, his soft brown eyes set slightly aslant. Although lame, he had an alertness and poise unusual in the sea's spawn of these beaches. In Tahitian, Marquesan, and French, with now and then an English word, he explained that he, a Tahitian marooned on Hiva-oa from a schooner because of a ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... took of it: as if it had been something too conventional to be at the root of the matter. No. I was more struck by the other gifts he had displayed. He had proved his grasp of the unfamiliar situation, his intellectual alertness in that field of thought. There was his readiness, too! Amazing. And all this had come to him in a manner like keen scent to a well-bred hound. He was not eloquent, but there was a dignity in this constitutional reticence, there was a high seriousness in his ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... against godless and thankless quiescence, against getting used to happiness, the mystic sin by which all creation fell. He was preaching that severity which is the sign-manual of youth and hope. He was preaching that alertness, that clean agility and vigilance, which is as necessary to gain pleasure as to gain holiness, as indispensable in a lover as in a monk. A critic has truly pointed out that Savonarola could not have been fundamentally anti-aesthetic, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... know what it is; you've told it to me lots of times," Cub replied with eager alertness. "You know, dad, I always remembered what you told me, and I didn't forget that advice of yours about fire-arms. It is, 'always handle an unloaded gun as if you know it's loaded.' I promise you, dad, I'll ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... wondering how one single day could seem as long as that just past. She had no idea of admitting what part actual fatigue can play in one's perspective, neither would she have owned to nerves as the cause of her unnatural wakefulness; nevertheless these were both factors in her almost painful alertness. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... the Hillsborough Academy was a big, brawny bachelor of Scotch descent, with a stem face and cold, grey, glaring eyes. When he stood towering above us on his platform in the main room of the building where I sat, there was an alertness in his figure, and a look of responsibility in his face, that reminded me of the pictures of Napoleon at Waterloo. He always carried a stout ruler that had blistered a shank of every mischievous boy in school. As he stood ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... cook our goose, as the saying is. And as he grew absorbed in the tale the author observed out of the corner of his eye that the Head Examiner's pen paused and then was gently laid down, a new expression of alertness, as though about to deliver judgment, came over the finely cut features. And presently, as it was explained how an iron collar was made and clamped about the broken pipe, and long bolts made to pass into the solid flanges of the valve ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... harmless poet is generally accounted the King's spy and the real agent of all royal edicts, the town's master, in fact. The interest which, as a poet, he takes in all manifestations of life is popularly supposed to be the alertness of a secret agent of the government. The reams of poetry he writes are transformed into letters of information to the King. Rumor translates the poet's perfectly decent, regular, meager life ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... exceeded imagination. The Hall, when once illuminated, was noble; but they suffered the whole parade to return into it in the dark, that his Majesty might be surprised with the quickness with which the sconces catched fire. The Champion acted well; the other Paladins had neither the grace nor alertness of Rinaldo. Lord Effingham and the Duke of Bedford were but untoward knights errant; and Lord Talbot had not much more dignity than the figure of General Monk in the Abbey. The habit of the peers is unbecoming to the ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... train crawled on again through the inky darkness. Noll relieved Hal, presently, though there seemed little need of alertness. The two prisoners capable of fighting looked pretty well cowed. Down at the rear end of the car, covered with a rubber blanket, lay the rigid remains of the man killed ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... noiselessly upon the rug. It was nothing, of course, to be bored, for when she was not gay she was always bored; but there was a deeper discontent in her whole attitude that that which comes from mere ennui, an aggressive discontent, sentient rather than passive, a kind of feline alertness which needed only an immediate incentive to become dangerous. Upon the dressing-table beside her was Hermia Challoner's telegram, explaining her failure to reach Trouville; in her fingers a letter from a friend in Rouen telling ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... times a year, to sink into a state of "patriotic grief," as it was called among us, or rather really into an attack of spleen, but our estimable Varvara Petrovna preferred the former phrase. Of late years his grief had begun to be not only patriotic, but at times alcoholic too; but Varvara Petrovna's alertness succeeded in keeping him all his life from trivial inclinations. And he needed some one to look after him indeed, for he sometimes behaved very oddly: in the midst of his exalted sorrow he would begin laughing like any simple peasant. There were moments when he began to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... acquainted with a bird, it seems to lose part of its shyness, and so after a time I often had the Harris sparrows in plain view. One of their characteristic habits was to stand at full height on the top of a brush heap, with tail lifted, crest feathers erect, and eyes wide open, the picture of wild alertness. In such poses they ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... comes on you bold and strong; you know your danger right away, and have it out. So. But the puma comes—God, how the puma comes!" He broke off, his eyes burning bright under his bushy brows and his body arranging itself into an attitude of expectation and alertness. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... yet all these self-centered objections were nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling himself away, to drop out of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... actresses—that is, in so far as they have originated among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... officers and men alike are schooled in all branches of nautical duty. In port or out of it, they are not idle. Every day a prescribed routine of exercise is rigidly enforced. Great have been the results. The French sailor of 1863 is not a reproduction of the sailor of 1800. In alertness, in knowledge, in silent obedience, he is a great improvement upon his predecessor. Actual experiment shows that a French crew will weigh anchor, spread and furl sail, replace spars or running-ringing, lower or raise topmasts, or perform any other duty pertaining ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... in his reflections he was jolted into alertness by the sound of approaching hoofbeats. A moment later he heard a second set of hoofbeats and knew that Mallory II had made his presence known. Presently both sets crescendoed into staccato thunder as the two "knights" came pounding toward each other, and not long ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... cheeks catching the flame from her eyes bore out this statement. Marita, too, seemed to have "shook her cocoon," Jack said, his economy of language scarcely making up for the little difference in "shook" and "shaken." Certainly she managed to climb from one boat to another with remarkable alertness, while Bess, Belle and Cora acted like up-to-date society maidens, only they acted a little in advance of ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... impressed now by no feeling that the officer, eagerly trying to make contact, was a degenerate member of a dying race. In fact, as Raf glanced at the aliens about the room, he was conscious of an alertness, of a suppressed energy which suggested a ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... confined to the visitor and Alice, although the former carefully avoided the shutting out of the hostess from the conversation, in which she was incapable of taking a brilliant part. Jim, in the host's place, sat dumb and still, except for his alertness in anticipating his guest's little wants. Guthrie Carey, on her other hand, was equally silent. Neither of the two men heard what she talked about for listening to the mere notes ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the forest and its fierce beasts, knit them in bonds close and enduring. The sons born to them and reared in the heart of the pine forests grew up to witness that heroic struggle with stern nature and to take their part in it. And mighty men they were. Their life bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource, endurance, superb self-reliance, a courage that grew with peril, and withal a certain wildness which at times deepened into ferocity. By their fathers the forest was dreaded and hated, but the sons, with rifles in hand, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... involved? There is the fundamental principle of all business success involved," said the Idiot, warming up to his subject. "What is the basic quality in the good business man? Alertness. What is 'alertness?' Wide-awakeishness. In this town it is impossible for a man to sleep after a stated hour, and for no other reason than that the clatter of the pavements prevents him. As a promoter of alertness, ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... been herself had there appeared any neglect or unbecomingness in her costume, but she wore the least pretentious of morning gowns, close at throat and wrist, which aided her look of mental concentration and alertness. She rose with alacrity, and the visitor, using her utmost keenness in scrutiny of countenance, found that her own eyes, not Sibyl's, were ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... temples and her broad, golden brow; rather short-sighted, with large pupils, and slightly prominent eyes: with a largish nose and wide nostrils, thin cheeks, a heavy chin, strong coloring, she had a fine profile showing much energy and alertness: full face, her expression was more changing, uncertain, complex: her eyes and her cheeks were irregular. She seemed to give revelation of a strong race, and in the mold of that race, roughly thrown together, were manifold incongruous elements, of doubtful and unequal quality, beautiful ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... and the victories he had gained. His companions, who evidently had an affection for him, and who knew his prowess, had no supposition that I could withstand him for five minutes: though the hopes of those who were the most eager for the sport had been a little raised, by the alertness with which I rose, after being at first knocked down, and the skill with which I then stood ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... turned to allow of a more effective thrust of the sharp, upturned point of its murderous horn, was upon his antagonist, and I caught my breath sharply, fully expecting to see the man impaled, or at least tossed high in the air. But instead I beheld as splendid an exhibition of courage and alertness as I think I have ever witnessed, for the man, firmly standing his ground to the very last fraction of a second, sprang nimbly to one side at the precise moment when, as it seemed, the point of the horn was about to be dashed into his naked body, and then, as the great ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... lips will enunciate difficult combinations of sounds without slighting any of them, but such flexibility cannot be attained except by habitually uttering words with distinctness and accuracy. A daily exercise in enunciating a series of sounds will in a short time give flexibility to the lips and alertness to the mind, so that no word will be uttered without receiving ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... were employed by several firms to stimulate mental alertness and the instinct of imitation in their men. These trips usually supplemented some sort of suggestion system for encouraging employees to submit to the management ideas for improving methods, machines, ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the sewing-room in the rather vague way that had come to her recently, quite unlike her usual brisk alertness. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... gaiety and spirit, having much addicted himself to the company of young fellows of a like disposition, frequented dancing meetings, and taken delight in everything but his business, such inclinations as these easily betrayed him to the commission of the greatest crimes and a certain alertness in his temper made him very acceptable to those debauched young fellows who were his usual companions to such places. Whether he was at first seduced by the persuasions of others to the committing thefts and robberies, or whether those necessities to which their extravagancies ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... was pacing up and down in the library at Lostford, waiting for Magdalen and Fay, when the servant brought in the day's papers. He took them up instantly with the alertness of a man who can only make time for necessary things by ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... moving from one group or one woman to another, of paying flattering, monopolizing, brief attention to each in turn, and then disappearing, very early! His bold rather florid countenance radiated energy and quizzical good humour; his tight, closely curled hair crisped with virile alertness; he carried himself taut and eager—altogether a figure to engage the curiosities of women or the interest ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... true naval alertness, and were to be visited. Mary deplored the necessity for herself. "Nobody knew how much she should suffer. She should put it off as long as she could;" but was not easy till she had talked Charles ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... had had in defending Miggs. The evidence was clear, the witnesses sure and wary, and the prisoner universally detested save by his evil-minded companions, but these obstacles brought out in full force all David's indomitable will and alertness. He tipped up and entrapped the prosecution's witnesses with lightning dexterity. One of them chanced to be a man whom David had befriended, and he aided him by replying ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... pronounced effect upon Charlie. The air of the suppliant fell from him, even the signs of his recent debauch seemed to give way before a startling alertness of mentality. In his curious way he seemed suddenly to have become the man of action, full of a keenness of perception and shrewdness which might well have carried an added conviction to Stanley Fyles, had he ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... admiring, as I had often done before, the singular beauty of his countenance. His books, I think, do him injustice; they are cold and academic. But there was nothing of that in the man himself; never was spirit so alert; and that alertness was reflected in his person and bearing, his erect figure, his brilliant eyes, and the tumultuous sweep of his now whitening beard. He stood for a moment silent, with his eyes still fixed on the red star; then ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... his person somewhat too stout. His step was firm and his aspect manly; his voice was clear, but rather weak for so large a body. He was active in all bodily exercises, delighted in riding and hunting, and was an expert swimmer. His excellent health and his physical alertness and endurance can alone explain the astonishing swiftness with which he moved about his vast realm and conducted innumerable campaigns in widely distant ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... Trimmens," said the doctor, looking at his watch, and then sitting bolt upright in his chair with more alertness than he had yet displayed. "But, by Jove, you must look sharp! It's close on lunch time, and we haven't ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... longing which pervaded her whole being in the old days are gone. A poise and calmness of spirit have taken their place. Even her attitude as she sits there with the shadows flickering over her, is full of a suggestive alertness that expresses an awakened life. The forces that had slumbered so long in her being are fully alive to their duty and their privilege. Yes, Grace Carrington is awake, and happy as a wife and woman should be. She is thinking even now of the richness of effort and ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... that there is a telephone girl instead of a telephone boy is due to the alertness and good business sense of the company. To put a boy before a switchboard and expect him not to pull it apart to see how it was made; or to place him in a position to entertain himself by connecting the wrong parties and listening to the impolite ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... and left us, striding heavily with the strength of an ox and about the alertness of a traction engine, turning his head every once in a while to enjoy the spectacle ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Caliban's speech. Dolores herself stood motionless for a full minute after the hunchback ceased his defiance, and under her lowered, heavily lashed eyelids the dark eyes seemed to slumber; only in her lips was any trace of the alertness that governed her brain, and those scarlet petals, which seemed to have been plucked from a love flower in the garden of passion, slowly, almost imperceptibly parted, until the dazzling teeth gleamed through in a smile that none might yet determine whether soft or terrible. And as the seconds ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... when I had looked at him still I never left without sending him under the arch in order to increase his alertness. It was a relief to know that so many persons who went by wore tall hats, a safeguard against their seeing anything, for if they approached the shadow of the tall hat reached out beyond the shadow of the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... concentrating the mind on a particular object—say a red flower—so that for some time nothing else is present to the mind and the image of the flower is seen and realized in all its details, is most efficacious for producing mental calm and alertness. By such simple exercises the mind learns how to rest and refresh itself. Its quickness of apprehension and its retentive power are considerably increased, for words and facts imprinted on it when by the suppression of its ordinary activities it has thus been made ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... just arrived, and was leaning against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets. He was a very ordinary, plain-countenanced, sandy-haired, quite commercial-looking man, this, who might have been anything from a Stock Exchange clerk to a suburban house-agent. But there was a sudden alertness in his eye as he turned it on the visitors, which showed them that he was well equipped in mental acuteness, and probably as alert ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... excitement. They searched records, but no loss as heavy as this came to light. Add to the flutter a reward of two hundred pounds for the recovery of the letter, and one may readily imagine the scrutinizing alertness of the various clerks and the subsequent embarrassments of peaceful tourists who wished to draw small sums for current expenses. Even the managing director of the Bank of Burma came in for his share of annoyance. ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... the lives of all on board and the safety of the ship herself depended on the alertness of the watch, kept us wide awake and anxious, but as time went on, it grew harder and harder to resist nature's demand for sleep; therefore, when the order was given to unload the ammunition, none were gladder than the men ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... this article would mean for you." He paused again, took off his glasses, breathed on them, polished the lenses with his handkerchief and readjusted them on his nose. "I've been thinking, Governor," he began again, with renewed alertness, and quite irrelevantly, "of enlarging the scope of the 'Mercury.' You see, I'm midway between the two big centres of the State, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and I want to extend the 'Mercury's' sphere ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... very superior fashion by Fontenelle; The Dialogues of the Gods, against mythology; True History, a parody of the false or romantic histories then so fashionable, more especially about Alexander. He certainly possessed little depth, but his talent was incredible: alertness, causticity, amusing logic, burlesque dialectics, an astonishing instinct for caricature, the art of natural dialogue, gay insolence, light but vivid psychological penetration, an almost profound sense of the ridiculous, joyous fooling; above all, that first essential ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... look. He was not nearly so much like Guy as she had thought the previous night, though undoubtedly there was a strong resemblance. On a closer inspection she did not think him handsome, but the keen alertness of him attracted her. He looked as if physical endurance were a quality he had brought very near to perfection. He had the stamp of the gladiator upon him. He had wrestled ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... 22. In the absence of more tangible proof of their presence beyond that provided by white streaks and wakes on the sea surface, the incident might well have been a false alarm. It only occasioned much excitement and activity. But its interest lay in the alertness of the destroyers to danger. The officers on board the flotilla had no doubt at all that the danger was real. Admiral Gleaves, indeed, saw circumstantial evidence of the menace in alluding to a bulletin of the French General Staff which referred to the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... muscles packed so that they rippled smoothly like those of a panther, appealed to her trained eyes. So, too, did the quiet, steady eyes in the bronzed face, holding as they did the look of competent alertness that had come from years of ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... down in the chair opposite me, and stirred the fire. He had fine, large, solid hands, the softness of which, like silk, had struck me when I shook hands with him; and, though he was both elderly and bulky, he moved with a certain grace and alertness. "Tell me your tale from the beginning," he said, "Don't leave out any details—I like details. Let's have your life and death and Christian ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... torrent of thoughts that were all of the senses; the stifled senses of which he had just spoken, straining hard for release from their curbing. His splendid physical fitness; the almost gladiatorial alertness of his body; the glowing eagerness of his face were all arguing for him with an urgency greater than his words. This was the man who should ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... beforehand. He has to watch for what news he can get by himself and send it to his paper of his own accord, except occasionally when his paper instructs him to cover a particularly large story. But he gets his tips and runs down his facts just as a reporter does. Just as much alertness and just as much ability to write are required ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... brighten my faculties of enjoyment! I should run about to see all I have hitherto omitted to seek, with the ardent curiosity of a traveller newly arrived ; and I should hasten to review and consider all I have already beheld, with an alertness of vivacity that would draw information from every object I have as yet looked at with undiscerning tameness. Oh, such a gleam of light would new-model or re-model me, and I should make you present ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... spacious pavilion, apart from the house; he proposed to his friend that he should establish himself in this pavilion. Muzzio readily agreed and moved thither the same day together with his servant, a dumb Malay—dumb but not deaf, and indeed, to judge by the alertness of his expression, a very intelligent man.... His tongue had been cut out. Muzzio brought with him dozens of boxes, filled with treasures of all sorts collected by him in the course of his prolonged travels. Valeria was delighted at Muzzio's return; and he greeted her with cheerful ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... form and colour and that enchanting variability was the look of intelligence, which at the same time seemed complementary to and one with the all-seeing, all-hearing alertness appearing in her face; the alertness one remarks in a wild creature, even when in repose and fearing nothing; but seldom in man, never perhaps in intellectual or studious man. She was a wild, solitary girl of the woods, and did not understand the ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... stone toppled from a wall and fell with a crash only a few feet away. In their tense state of alertness the ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... Then all the mechanics and engineers, having completed the arrangements of the sacrifice informed king Yudhishthira of it. Hearing that everything was ready, king Yudhishthira the just, full of alertness and attention, became highly glad along with his brothers all of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... all was that soft accent, that drawl of humorous appreciation and eyes twinkling in suppressed merriment. Here they were thoroughly at home and the spirit of comradeship manifested itself in many subtle ways; the wit became more daring and sharp, Billy lost some of his pessimism, and the alertness disappeared from their manner. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... absent air that was unlike his usual alertness. The girls, watching the ponies come in, noticed nothing, and presently he drew ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from the start, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... from them across the table, was suggestive of neither resistance nor mental alertness. Above his limp collar and loosened cravat, his face looked haggard and drawn. It was without a vestige of colour save for the blue shadows under his eyes. There was a tremor on ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... as you have heard, with his Troops at New York. The People in this Colony & the Jerseys are in Motion and if the New England Militia joyn our Army with their usual Alertness & Spirit, I have no doubt but the Enemy will meet with a warm Reception. A few days may probably bring on Event which will give a favorable Turn ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... loosely in one hand, so that it will ring with every step. If desired, this bell may be hung around the neck on a string or ribbon. The blindfolded players try to catch the one with the bell, who will have to use considerable alertness to keep out of the way. Whoever catches the bellman ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... cliff. Glowing with health and excitement, Gladys Shirley was at the wheel herself. In spite of the tenseness of the situation, I could not help stopping to admire the change in the graceful, girlish figure of the night before, which was now all lithe energy and alertness in her eager devotion to carrying out the minutest detail of Kennedy's plan to aid ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... opposite end, was brought to a shock of tense balanced alertness. How much did he know? He gave no sign of emotion, but reached for a cigarette to cover any change in his breathing, ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... know, mother. Perhaps she's eating plaster again," suggested Eliza, with the alertness that even charming children sometimes show when face to face with ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... in Buck—a change to be sensed rather than definitely noted with the eye. It was a stiffening of his body—an alertness of which he was at pains to make no show. For almost immediately he began to whistle softly, idly, his eyes roving carelessly across the wall while he tilted back in his chair. Dan dropped his hand close to the ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... had he had such a good time in all his life, despite the fact that chance alone, and not his own skill and alertness and perspicacity, had saved ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... stalwart as the Boers. But he was now an old man: the powerful body had become shapeless and unwieldy; he had given up walking, and only left his stoep to drag himself clumsily into his carriage, and although he retained all his old tenacity of purpose, his mind had lost much of its former alertness. It needed all Mr. Smuts' mental resources—all that the young Afrikander had so recently learnt at Cambridge and the Temple—to enable the old President to maintain, even by the aid of his State-Attorney's ingenious paper pleadings, a decent show of defence ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... made him leap to his feet with the alertness of a wild animal on the lookout for danger. By his side stood Chaldea, and her eyes glittered, as she came to the point of explanation without any preamble. The girl was painfully direct. "I have heard every ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... all these futilities with inward impatience, waiting for his own opportunity, and when the host rose he sprang to his feet with an alertness he rarely showed. He managed to catch Lord Merivale before Sir Isaac bore him off for the final interview. He had only a few words to say, but he wanted to get ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... and before there are leaves enough on the undergrowth to conceal it we may come to know it as well as it is possible to know any bird whose home life is passed so far away. Usually it is the first warbler one sees in the spring in New York and New England. With all the alertness of a flycatcher, it will dart into the air after insects that fly near the ground, keeping up a constant chip, chip, fine and shrill, at one end of the small body, and the liveliest sort of tail motions at the other. The pine ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... more stirring sights than a French regiment upon the march. Advancing in loose order, and with a long, swinging gait, their guns at an angle of forty-five degrees, lightly carried upon the shoulder, they impart an idea of alertness and efficiency which no other soldiers present to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... this for the mother devotion in modern times, that it shows, and in exact proportion of its increasing social power, an alertness and a moral earnestness in all that concerns the welfare of children that have perpetuated and extended the protective functions of society as no other agency has done. Much of the modern legislation and social work directed toward the physical and moral safeguarding of the young ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... with the alertness peculiar to those who work on the night-shifts of restaurants, dumped a tray down on the table with a clatter. The Duchess woke up. Babe took her eyes off the ceiling. The Southern girl ceased to look at the sunshine. Already, at the mere sight of food, the extraordinary ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... they sat motionless, listening intently, Buck's face a curious mixture of alertness and surprise. Up to this moment he had taken the whole business rather casually, with small expectation that anything would come of it, but the sound of that shot changed everything. Something was happening, then, after all—something sinister, perhaps, and certainly not far away. His eyes ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... to the library. By the fire stood a keen-featured, sharp-eyed man of middle height and lithe figure, whose manner and first movements as the door opened showed alertness and energy of character. There was a certain likeness to his brother in the features and dark complexion as well as in a suggestion of unpleasant aggressiveness in the expression of his face, but where the dead man's personality had suggested determination overlaid with an easy-going, ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... built at her top-heavy edifice for her own enjoyment; and the usual fate of the robust liar had overtaken her: she was beginning to believe in her own lies. Still she never ventured to relax her critical alertness, her careful surveillance of detail. For, just a day or two before, she had seen a quick flare-up of incredulity light Tilly's face, and oddly enough this had happened when she tried her audience with a fact, ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Henley. In comparing the new England with the old, I should have said that every one now had the comfortable certainty that he was wanted—that he had a future and something to live for. But it wasn't the something to live for that accounted for this gay alertness; it was the sure foreknowledge of each least important man that he had something worth dying for ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's alertness; his heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,—it is one of the sights of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... his kind, the second bull lowered his antlers to receive the charge. But in the last fraction of a breath before the crash, he changed his mind. Leaping aside with a lightning alertness more like the action of a red buck than that of a caribou, he just evaded the shock. At the same time two of the spiky prongs of one antler ripped a long gash ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... complete silence. Jack's bonds chafed him miserably, but he could do nothing to relieve himself, and the Malay watched him with fierce alertness at every moment. Then the ricketty door was jerked open again, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... even worse, for as the natural bed of the River narrowed, we found less and less footing and swifter and swifter water. The journey to Burned Rock had been a matter of dogged hard work; this was an affair of alertness, of taking advantage of every little eddy, of breathless suspense during long seconds while the question of supremacy between our strength and the stream's was being debated. And the thermometer must have registered well towards freezing. Three times we were forced to cross the River in ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... they carried him back to the cabin, and with the quick alertness of a man accustomed to every emergency of his profession the doctor stripped off his two coats while Philip looked at the face of the man whom they had placed in his bunk. His own experience had acquainted him with violence and bloodshed, but in spite of that fact he ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... knees. He was tall and stooped slightly, but there was none of the slouching figure and gait that characterized those around him. His movements were quick, and, when standing motionless, there was something in his very pose that conveyed an impression of alertness and of latent strength. His back was turned toward Rutherford, who was watching him under a sort of subtle fascination, when suddenly he wheeled, facing him. His eyes were keen and piercing, and as he looked for an instant at Rutherford ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... the companion-way into the cabin, and quickly returned to the deck bearing in his arms the swooning form of his adored Haydee. Ali followed him. The Nubian seemed to have entirely recovered from his fear, and manifested both alertness and decision. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... welcomed with happy anticipations all the signs of his returning rugged strength. Then, as the time passed by, his anxiety came back upon him in full measure. Long days in the saddle were followed by sleepless nights; the shadow never came out of Weldon's eyes, the alertness never came back into his step. Lean, gaunt as a greyhound, he went about his work with a silent, dogged endurance which took no note of the other life about him. For Trooper Weldon, his profession had dropped to a dull, plodding ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... nearest goal post was reached you would have seen first a squad—a veritable awkward squad—arranged in a ragged circle and passing a football with much mishandling and many fumbles. Further along you would have seen a long line of youths standing. Their general expression was one of alertness bordering on alarm. The casual observer would have thought each and every one insane, as, suddenly darting from the line, one after another, they flung themselves upon the ground, rolled frantically about as though in spasms, and then arose and went back into the rank. But had you ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Dictator's private sitting-room. Still the Dictator slept, undisturbed by the slight sound. The sound was not repeated, but the door was softly opened, and a young man put his head into the room and looked at the slumbering Dictator. The young man was dark, smooth-shaven, with a look of quiet alertness in his face. He seemed to be about thirty years of age. His dark eyes watched the sleeping figure affectionately for a few seconds. 'It seems a pity to wake him,' he muttered; and he was about to draw his head back and close the door, when the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... He was a tall and splendid man, a 'black Celt' from Merionethshire, with coal-black hair, and eyes deeply sunken and lined, with fatigue or ill health. Beside him, his comrade, Philip Cuningham, had the air of a shrewd clerk or man of business—with his light alertness of frame, his reddish hair, and sharp, small features. A pleasant, serviceable ability was stamped on Cuningham's whole aspect; while Watson's large, lounging way, and dishevelled or romantic good looks suggested yet another perennial type—the dreamer entangled ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was above the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically-shaped, combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier; with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, in harmony, with his organization, which was of antique model. Of his moral qualities, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the clear gains of the War is to be found in the increased activity and alertness of our own people. The motto of to-day is, 'Let those now work who never worked before, And those who always worked now work the more.' Before the War we had a great national reputation for idleness—in this island, at least. I remember a friendly critic from Canada who, some five or six years ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... while Patsy steered. They were going up the Solway and the wind behind them was strong and equal. Still no indication of their destination had been made to Stair. At five of the afternoon they had passed all the familiar landmarks known to him, but by the alertness of young McCulloch he judged that they must be near the haunts allotted to ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... sultry South—the African's—the Arab's in his tent, Old Asia's there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins; (Greets the antique the hero new? 'tis but the same—the heir legitimate, continued ever, The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken line, Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e'en in defeat defeated not, the same:) Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night, Through teeming cities' streets, indoors or out, factories or farms, Now, or to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the beetles and flies of Central America must have learned by experience to get out of the way of the nimble Central American lizards with great agility, cunning, and alertness. But green lizards are less easy to notice beforehand than brown or red ones; and so the lizards of tropical countries are almost always bright green, with complementary shades of yellow, grey, and purple, just to fit them in with the foliage they lurk among. Everybody who has ever hunted ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... leaving St. Louis, it became necessary to abandon conciliatory friendliness, and to offset the native insolence with sternness. There were no fights, for the Indians were too low-born to possess fighting courage; but the necessity for constant alertness was even more trying than ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... to the first one, in that strange scene outside the walls of Jericho, where the earthly commander, sunk in thought, was brooding upon the hard nut which he had to crack, when suddenly he lifted up his eyes, and beheld a man with a drawn sword. With the instinctive alertness of his profession and character, his immediate question was, 'Art thou for us or for our enemies?' And he got the answer 'No! I am not on thy side, nor on the other side, but thou art on Mine. As Captain of the Lord's host ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was once the most potent among them all. I had been strangely moved at a theatre, a week or so before, as I looked at Lord Randolph Churchill. I remembered him twelve years ago—a mere boy in appearance, with clean-shaven face, dapper and slight figure, the alertness and grace of youth, and a face smooth as the cheek of a maiden. And now—bearded, slightly bowed, with lines deep as the wrinkles of an octogenarian, he sometimes looks like the grandfather of his youthful self. It is in the deep-set, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... the note of the whole man, of the quick eyes and mouth, the flexible hands and energetic movements. Even the straight, stubbly hair, its owner's passing torment, standing up round the high open brow, seemed to help the general impression of alertness and vigour. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... breakfast, Cyrus Woodbridge found himself summoned to his father's library. He presented himself at once, a round-cheeked, bright-eyed lad of fifteen, with an air of alertness in every ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... am sure you can't blame me for any want of alertness in seeking fine fishes. I sailed to the coast of Africa, from Minturnae in Campania, only to taste of one species, which I heard was larger there than it was on our coast; and finding that I had received a false information, I returned immediately, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... a keen spirit thwarted by physical defect. The man who manifests it is angered with himself because through a physical hindrance he has failed to take the place which would otherwise be his. He is proud, it may be, but not fatuous; for shyness as a rule implies a comparative quickness and alertness of intellect: its exceeding sensibility is exclusive of dulness; and it is frequently due to the presence in a reluctant body of a mind ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... energy and movement of three tall men. How M. Paul did work! How he issued directions, and, at the same time, set his own shoulder to the wheel! Half-a-dozen assistants were at his beck to remove the pianos, &c.; no matter, he must add to their strength his own. The redundancy of his alertness was half-vexing, half-ludicrous: in my mind I both disapproved and derided most of this fuss. Yet, in the midst of prejudice and annoyance, I could not, while watching, avoid perceiving a certain not disagreeable naivete in all he did and ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... moment, she only wanted to watch the slender prow, skimming the wonderful opaline waters, drawing ever nearer to those mystic islands floating over yonder like a dream within a dream. She wondered vaguely at May's vivid alertness; for her sister, claiming the privilege of youth, was enjoying the freedom of the gondola, perching here and there as her fancy prompted, in the ample forward space, that nothing might ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... were treated for defective hearing; twenty had attended the Skin Clinic; all had their eyes examined; eighty-six were fitted with glasses. In twenty-five cases where the adenoids and tonsils were removed the result was increase in weight, better breathing and heart action, alertness of mind, and a noticeable improvement in trade work. Where the obstructions of nose and throat still remain there is loss in weight and diminished chest expansion and a generally weakened condition. The extraction of decayed teeth and the providing of well-fitting ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... replied Galt with an affectionate glance that softened the shrewd alertness of his look. "My dear and valued friend, a successful politician does not have convictions; he has emotions. Convictions were all right when Madison was President, but that gentleman has been in heaven these many years, and they don't thrive under the present administration. A ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... countenances of those within hearing distance. I knew this expression of seraphic calm indicated that Kombs had been deeply annoyed about something. Such, indeed, proved to be the case, for one of the morning papers had contained an article, eulogizing the alertness and general competence of Scotland Yard. So great was Sherlaw Kombs's contempt for Scotland Yard that he never would visit Scotland during his vacations, nor would he ever admit that a Scotchman was fit ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... answer when Dick raised his head, with a queer alertness in his eyes. Then he vented a long, low whistle, and went ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... recovered consciousness she was lying upon the old horsehair sofa in the library. Ivy had gone on an errand, but Cynthia stood over her and the girl's face shocked the reviving woman into alertness. Familiarity had dulled her in the past, but now she saw the expression and outline of Theodore Starr's features bending ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... visit a new land you almost invariably discover mental alertness and progressiveness that often put the older civilizations to shame. Let me illustrate. Go to England or France today and you touch the really tragic aftermath of the war. You see thousands of demobilized officers and men vainly searching for work. Many are reduced to the extremity ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... marveling at these hieroglyphics created by the alertness of jealousy, "you are in the power of an ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... convinced, from optical evidence, that J. Augustus Redell was a gambler. He admired Redell's genius for business, the soundness of his decisions, the alertness of his mind and the brilliance of his financial coups, but—he deprecated the younger man's daring. Cappy called it recklessness. By degrees the old gentleman had come to assume a proprietary interest in Gus Redell ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... in the Senate gallery, with intense interest; and though writing for readers, who like herself hated the man for his supposed servility to the South, she said with unwonted objectivity, "This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad, and thick-set, every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head and face, thick black hair, heavy black brows and a keen eye. His figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation which constantly pervades it; as it is, it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small, handsome ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... quite enough to do to keep pace with her, so as to catch from her the orders which she rapidly issues, and then execute them in every part of the camp and city. She inspires all who behold her with her own spirit. In every soldier and leader you behold something of the same alertness and impetuosity of movement which are so remarkable in her. She is the universal model; and the confidence in the resources of her genius is universal and boundless. 'Let our courage and conduct,' they say, 'be only in some good proportion to our Queen's, and we may defy Rome ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... the White Linen Nurse very softly. With sudden alertness she turned her curly blonde head towards the road. "There's somebody coming!" she said. "I ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
