"Tension" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every one seized his rifle and before you could count ten the whole line across the Peninsula had followed suit. This was only "wind up" and it died away very shortly afterwards, but it showed that all troops were at extreme tension. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... little society as Peking, all walled in together within the narrow inclosure of the legation quarter,—walled in literally, also, in the fullest sense, with soldiers from the guards of the various legations patrolling the walls and mounting guard day and night,—such a situation results in great tension and embarrassment all round. There was not one word of war talk during the dinner; it was tacitly ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... her glance challenged his, coldly, proudly, and then her features softened. The indolent look crept into her eyes once more; the tension of her lips relaxed. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Will Marion! ahoy!" shouted Josh, who was kneeling down at the edge of the shaft, his face drawn with horror and strangely mottled, as he stared down into the pit. For, without warning, Will had freed himself from the rope, the tension upon which was gone; and as Josh drew a few feet up, and let the line run down again, his eyes seemed starting from his head, and he listened for the awful splash he ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... and temper, at first moved the King to laughter, they soon exasperated him past laughing. Once he clapped his hand to his sword-hilt and declared that he would sooner have recourse to that than grant a dissolution. The tension of public feeling can best be estimated when a constitutional sovereign on the one side could dare to make such a remark; when a representative of the people like Colonel Barre on the other side could dare in the House of {134} Commons to say that disregard of public petitions might ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a cawl!" he exclaimed, loudly. His twisted frame was braced to an extreme tension. "Ise bawn wid a ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... stroke and make it. But if the bull is jealous and sly, it requires the most careful management to kill him. The disposition of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of the red flag. This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nerves of the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd was aroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreat at the moment of decision. All at once the matador seizes the favorable instant. He poises his ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... of Saturn, looking down from Ida, stretched for them the contest with equal tension, and they slaughtered one another. The son of Tydeus indeed wounded on the hip, with his spear, the hero Agastrophus, son of Paeon; for his horses were not at hand for him to take flight; but he had erred greatly in his mind, for his attendant kept them apart, whilst he rushed on foot through the ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... and solidity about this rebuke which seemed to impress even my headstrong antagonist. He did not retort upon the instant, and all who listened felt the tension upon their emotions relaxed. Some on the outskirts began talking of other things, and at least one of the principals changed his posture with a sense ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... his next step. His heart was very sore. The condition of Mile End—those gaunt-eyed women and wasted children, all the sordid details of their unjust avoidable suffering weighed upon his nerves perpetually. But he was conscious that this state of feeling was one of tension, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it was impossible he should let the matter alone, he was anxious to ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... happy, papa," said the child placidly; while a slight tension of her forehead witnessed to the shooting pains with which the whole wounded limb seemed ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... station." Here, "a short stop was made, and a successful experiment tried to remedy the unpleasant jerks. A plan was soon hit upon and put into execution. The three links in the couplings of the cars were stretched to their utmost tension, a rail from a fence in the neighbourhood was placed between each pair of cars and made fast by means of the packing yarn from the cylinders. This arrangement improved the order of things, and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the smooth bark. There he stood, his blue-brown side full toward her, unconscious of her presence. Noiselessly she cocked the piece. Noiselessly she raised it to her face, and, with every nerve drawn to its tightest tension, sighted the ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... are enlightened almost immediately. When the garrulous servant, Annette, is relating to Emily what she knows of the story of Laurentina, who had once lived in the castle, both mistress and servant are wrought up to a state of nervous tension: ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... Marion, sister Kathryn, and brother Harold. The fact that the police had been searching for him for two hours or more and had been unable to make any hopeful report, had not tended in the least to relieve the tension of suspense, which became ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... behind Yoganandaji into the courtyard within the hermitage walls. Hearts beating fast, we proceeded up some old cement steps, trod, no doubt, by myriads of truth-seekers. The tension grew keener and keener as on we strode. Before us, near the head of the stairs, quietly appeared the Great One, Swami Sri Yukteswarji, standing in the noble ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... muscles of the man's back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and his voice broke the silence of the lonely house oddly. He and Toffy had not spoken since Ross had left the room, and had not stirred from their chairs; but now the feeling of tension seemed to be broken. Toffy began to fidget with some things on a little table, and opened without thinking a carved cedar-wood work-box which had remained undisturbed until then. He found inside it a little knitted silk sock only half-finished, and with the knitting ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... anything to do to relieve the tension of waiting for the attack that didn't come. He gladly accompanied the self-reliant Westerner to the boiler house. They found, as Geisler had said, that in one of the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... She must have been seen. Certainly she had been seen by that horrible Minnie Birchington. There would be more gossip. It would be all over London that she was perpetually in this man's flat. Why had not he shut the door directly she had stepped into the hall? Her nervous tension found momentary relief in sudden violent anger against him, and when at length she heard the door shut, and his footstep outside, she turned round to meet him ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... experienced a slackening in the tension of his mind during the same year 1912. He was touched by his wife's faint suspicion of his alienated affection and by her dogged determination to be sufficient to him as a companion and a helper; and a little ashamed at his middle-aged—he was forty-seven—infatuation ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... where they stood in agitated uncertainty, walked Miss Pennington, the shopkeeper. Her face was flushed, her hair a little disordered by the wind, but she was smiling, and somehow her presence seemed at once to relieve the tension. ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... quorntity and no cheatin'," said he. "You can medger it up with a rule if you like. It'll medger, you find if it don't! Like I told you! And a 'apenny returned on the transaction." The tension of the situation did not admit of the measuring test—nor indeed had Aunt M'riar data to go upon—and as for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... small brown hands clasped tightly together in her lap now. There is something nervous in the tension of them. Where, where is Margaret? For all that, she looks back at her mother-in-law with a clear ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... poles of the magnets, M and M', there is a permanent magnet, A, movable around a vertical axis, i. Four spiral springs, f, whose tension may be regulated, permit of centering this latter piece in such a way that when the current is traversing the spirals of the polar bobbins it is equally distant from the four poles, n, s, s', ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... Meanwhile the living Achilles (who, for the purposes of this discussion, is only the abstract name of one phenomenon of impetus, just as the tortoise is of another) asks no leave of logic. The velocity of his acts is an indivisible nature in them like the expansive tension in a spring compressed. We define it conceptually as [s/t], but the s and t are only artificial cuts made after the fact, and indeed most artificial when we treat them in both runners as the same ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... impediments, every one waited anxiously to hear a decisive note in the war news, and continued to hope for the best. Lord Methuen having done his part, all eyes were now turned towards the Natal force and Sir Redvers Buller, in expectation of relief. In England the tension was becoming painful; in the Cape it was causing colourless loyalty to become tinged with doubt; in the besieged towns it was bringing patience to the snapping-point. In effect, the whole nation was standing ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... matter from open orifices, are identical. From many reasons, I believe that the frequent quakings of the earth on this line of coast are caused by the rending of the strata, necessarily consequent on the tension of the land when upraised, and their injection by fluidified rock. This rending and injection would, if repeated often enough (and we know that earthquakes repeatedly affect the same areas in the same manner), form a chain of hills; — and the linear island ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... last point of safety. Let it be affected, if necessary, in a warm bath. When she is reduced to a state of perfect asphyxy, apply a ligature to the left ankle, drawing it as tight as the bone will bear. Apply, at the same moment, another of equal tension around the right wrist. By means of plates constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy, and await ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... crying present needs of the Indians are more day schools situated in the midst of their settlements, more effective instruction in the industries pursued on their own farms, and a more liberal tension of the field-matron service, which means the education of the Indian women in the arts of home making. Until the mothers are well started in the right direction we cannot reasonably expect much from the children who are soon to form an integral part of our American citizenship. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... maneuver controls. He should have been sweating. His hands, perhaps, should have quivered with tension. But he was too much worried about too many things. Nobody can strike an attitude or go into a blue funk while they are worrying about things to be done. Joe heard the small gyro motors as their speed went up. A hum and a whine and then a shrill whistle which went up in pitch until it wasn't ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... excited, and resolved. He had taken the bit in his teeth. When substitute meets substitute in a cause like this! I would have left them to have their little talk by themselves, but Kitty signified peremptorily that she wished me to stay, with a flushed, appealing look that softened the nervous tension of ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... me all about that!" laughed Archie, glad of something to relieve the tension. "He told me without shame that he had almost fallen in love with you as a distraction from his troubles. But I didn't confess that you had started me for the penitentiary. There's the train, and you must permit me to satisfy Mrs. ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... had crossed the room and reached the hall, she paused and glanced back, held by the tension of cords which she dreaded to break. She felt that nothing would ever be the same again in the home of her childhood. Until marriage she would remain under its dear honored roof, and there would be no outward interruption ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... uttering another word for a minute or more, I staring at them both in dread expectancy of what they would next say, fancying each instant something more wonderful still would happen. At last, Hiram broke the silence, which had become well-nigh unbearable from a sort of nervous tension, that made me feel ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Park opposite our house, and reading in "Blunt's Scripture Characters" (a book in which I was then deeply interested) the chapters relating to St. Peter and Jacob. I do not know whether the nervous tension which I must have been enduring strengthened the impression made upon me by what I read, but I remember being quite absorbed by it, which I think was curious, because certainly such subjects of meditation were hardly allied to the painful undertaking so immediately pressing upon me. But I ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... while the two men looked on, Jack secured one end of the elastic to the little hook on the armature, and knotted the other about the tension thumb-screw. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... to him—new glimpses into meanings yet untold. They would come to him in great bursts of emotion, like tempests that swept him away; and these things he had to wrestle with and master. It meant toil, the like of which he had never faced before, a tension of all his faculties, that would last for hours and hours, and leave him bathed in perspiration, and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the tension was loosened; but the danger was not over. Though the garrison at Lucknow had been relieved, we were forced to evacuate it, and for months afterwards the whole country of Oude remained in the hands of those who had risen against us. Over a ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... the doctor could see that in the way she looked from her husband to him, scenting something not on the surface. He was just beginning to fear the dinner was going to be miserable for them all, when Miss McCormick broke the tension ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... there are thousands suffering for the freedom of spaces, far advanced in a losing fight of vitality against the cruel tension of city life, there are whole races of men who have yet to meet and pass through this terrifying complication of the crowds, which brings a refining gained in no other way. All growth is a passage through hollows and over hills, though ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... was drawn to its utmost tension, a second or two sufficed the warriors to steady their aim, and then, with a simultaneous twang of bowstrings, the fifty arrows sped through the air, and, rattling harmlessly against the ship's gleaming hull, glanced off ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fact, in a state of excitement and tension more critical than at any other period of her history. Side by side with Luther stood Hutten, in the forefront of the battle with Rome. The bull he published with sarcastic comments: the burning of Luther's works of devotion he denounced in Latin and German verses. Eberlin von Gunzburg, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... back toward the throng, which, momentarily stirred to hope by Kay's appearance, had fallen into the former apathy of despair. And now the monsters were beginning to enter the electrified zone at one point. As they passed the line of posts, the high tension current made their bodies luminous, but it had no appreciable effect upon them. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the next hollow," said Uncle John as she overtook him, and his voice betrayed his nervous tension. "I do wish you girls would not be ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... away he could not have heard the shout of a man. And yet he listened, gripping his club hard, every nerve in his body strained to a snapping tension. Somewhere within that small circle of the corral were Bram Johnson's wolves, and as he hesitated with his back to the door he prayed that there would come no lull in the storm during the next few minutes. It was possible that he might evade them with the crash and thunder of the gale about him. ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... extremity of some open pasture-ground, behind the hedges, he saw a white form which showed itself, disappeared, and at last remained distinctly visible upon a rising ground. D'Artagnan's heart leaped with joy. He wiped the streaming sweat from his brow, relaxed the tension of his knees—by which the horse breathed more freely—and gathering up his reins, moderated the speed of the vigorous animal, his active accomplice in this man hunt. He had then time to study the direction of ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... stress of nerve tension and long practice, some big tears gushed up and threatened to overflow Eileen's lovely eyes. That never should happen, for tears are salt water and they cut little rivers through even the most carefully ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... together at the end of the common table. Philip had already drunk much more than he was accustomed to, but the only result appeared to be some slight slackening of the tension in which he had been living. His eyes flashed, and his tongue became more nimble. He insisted upon ordering wine. He had had no opportunity yet of repaying many courtesies. They drank his health, forced him into the place of honour by the side of Honeybrook, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with tension as he inserted the first film into the chamber. He had the magnetic "lenses" set for twenty thousand power, but a quick glance showed it was too weak. He raised ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... his guard had gone out into the dark and disappeared down the rope, the Earl only waited till the tension slackened before stooping and cutting the cord at the point of juncture ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... in words: an icy splendour by moonlight, and a horrible gloomy beauty towards the fall of the day. It was at this time that Talbot stood looking out at its rugged edges and the snow-drifts turning grey as the sunlight left them, and listening with a sort of mechanical tension to the unbroken and oppressive stillness round him, when his eye caught sight of a man's figure, moving slowly towards the house. It had appeared so suddenly where for hours there had reigned unbroken silence ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... time! Bub crept back and went on sawing. Now two parts were severed. Now three. But one remained. The tension upon this was so great that it readily yielded. Splash! The freed end went overboard. He lay quietly, his heart in his mouth, listening. No one on the cruiser ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... moment of revenge had come upon her suddenly, and all that had been accumulating so long and so painfully in the offended woman's breast burst out all at once and unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya, but she betrayed herself, too. And no sooner had she given full expression to her feelings than the tension of course was over and she was overwhelmed with shame. Hysterics began again: she fell on the floor, sobbing and screaming. She was carried out. At that moment Grushenka, with a wail, rushed towards Mitya before they ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Sir Ralph Winwood; and if the King disliked him as much as ever, no animosity was shown. In the first days of 1617, Raleigh ventured upon a daring act of intrigue. He determined to work upon the growing sympathy of the English Court with Savoy and its tension with Spain, to strike a blow against the rich enemy of the one and ally of the other, Genoa. He proposed to Scarnafissi, the Savoyard envoy in London, that James I. should be induced to allow the Guiana expedition ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... of a five or ten minute session, often emerged sweating, limp and frazzled. Yet for a swift hour, at high tension, Forrest met all comers, with a master's grip handling them and all the multifarious details of their various departments. He told Thompson, the machinist, in four flashing minutes, where the fault lay in the dynamo to the Big House refrigerator, laid the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... adduce strong evidence that the earth once rotated so rapidly that the equatorial protuberance was almost at the point of separation from the planet as a ring. Before this occurred, however, the tension was so great that one large portion of the protuberance where it was weakest broke away, and began to move around the earth at some considerable distance from it. As about 1/50 of the bulk of the earth thus escaped, it must have consisted of a considerable ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a giddiness creeping over her; how close the air was. Her nerves were at their utmost tension; another strain upon the sharply strung chords would overcome her. She felt this vaguely. If she should be baffled now! She could take fresh heart, could nerve herself anew, if aid came to her, but if he should come she feared, in her now half ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... believe that, when the pack is firmly lashed, the animal supports his burden better and travels with greater ease, which seems quite probable, as the tension forms, as it were, an external sheath supporting and bracing the muscles. It also has a tendency to prevent the saddle from slipping and chafing the mule's back. With such huge cargas as the Mexicans load upon their mules, it is impossible, ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... grandfather, cramping and denying through hardship year after year, yet sustained by dreaming in the hardest times of the soft material luxuries that should some day be his. Doubtless marked in his character, too, was the slightly relaxed tension of his father; the disposition to feast as well as the capacity to fast; to take all, feel all, do all, with an avidity greater by reason of the grinding abstinence and the later indulgence of his forbears. A sage versed in the lore of heredity as modified by environment may some day trace ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a letter written to his daughter EMILY on Sunday, December 1st, 1857, will give some idea of the tension of that terrible suspense:— ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... not withdraw her fingers, but neither did she cease from weeping. Her grief seemed to be something more than that resulting from the tension of strong ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Miss Stevens rightly holds, defeats its own ends. It maintains a nervous tension in the classroom that must in the long run be injurious. More than that, it is a symptom of the fact that the real work of the hour is being done by the teacher, and the pupil's share is reduced simply to brief, punctuation-like ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... her to see her Arab pony fed in the verandah, and went out. The morning wore through, and at mid-day the tension became unendurable. Mrs. Boulte could not cry. She had finished her crying in the night, and now she did not want to be left alone. Perhaps the Vansuythen Woman would talk to her; and, since talking opens the heart, perhaps ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... and he knew he was going to die because there wasn't anything else that could happen, and he knew suddenly that he was mortally afraid. He could not lay rigidly, tensely—there were no muscles to tighten. But the tension had to go somewhere. He felt a numbness creeping up the back of his neck, felt his eyes bulging as if they would burst, heard a roaring in his ears. He opened his mouth, gasping, trying to breathe deeply, the roaring ...
— A Choice of Miracles • James A. Cox
... Average Jones' inner office. Average Jones sat at his desk sedulously polishing his left-hand fore-knuckle with the tennis callous of his right palm. Bertram lounged gracefully in the big chair. Mr. Robinson fidgeted. There was an atmosphere of tension in the room. At three-forty there came a tap-tapping across the floor of the outer room, and a knock at the door brought them all to their feet. Average Jones threw the door open, took the man who stood outside by the arm, and pushing ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lasts. No use, besides, in ducking before shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping—were that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over, and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having, perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength, seeing no honor in the struggle, and sure that no duty would be hallowed by ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... The tension relaxed. The men dropped more fuel on the fires, coaxing the flame brighter. A whispering comment ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... come this way!" said Tony, with a catch in his voice, as though he were keyed up to a nervous tension because ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... night, now appear, the smaller foliage contrasting with the large glossy leaves of the taller trees, or the feathery, fan-shaped fronds of palms. For a time the fresh breeze blows, but flags under the increasing power of the sun, and finally dies away, the heat and electric tension of the atmosphere ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... apparently English, came toward us—scattered groups had been sitting there and the inmates of the hotel were moving to and fro—and I observed the immediate charming transition, the fruit of such years of social practice, by which, as they greeted us, her tension and her impatience dropped to recognition and pleasure. They stopped to speak to her and she enquired with sweet propriety as to the "continued improvement" of their sister. I strolled on and she presently ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... switch, as if something were passing rapidly through the air, and two of the rancheroes darted out from behind a cliff, having thrown their lassoes over the bear's head and shoulders. Away they galloped in an opposite direction to which he was going, till their ropes were at their fullest tension, and then their horses drew up, planting their feet firmly on the ground and dragging against the astonished animal. Instead of seizing the prey he expected, he found himself drawn up with a halter ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... clinging to him, with the ardent fervour of her own passion, she felt the rigid tension of his arms relax, the power of his embrace weaken, the wild love-light become dim in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... supreme. It relieved the tension, and when the change was made, she drew to the edge of the seat, holding her head high like that intrepid flower to which he ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... a horrible anguish she experienced, in spite of all, a feeling of eager curiosity. What was Prince Renine going to do? What would be the outcome of the experiment on which he was venturing? What resistance would Gaston Dutreuil offer? She lived through one of those minutes of superhuman tension in which life becomes intensified until it reaches its ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... here may be useful. Supposing the break set to a given difference of tension, Q-P, and that in consequence of any cause the coefficient of friction increases 20 per cent., the difference of tensions for an ordinary value of the coefficient of friction would increase from 1.5 P to 2 P in Fig. 2, and from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... responsibility to self, in the matter of labor, necessarily implies competition with others. Ordain that, beginning January 1, 1847, labor and wages are guaranteed to all: immediately an immense relaxation will succeed the extreme tension to which industry is now subjected; real value will fall rapidly below nominal value; metallic money, in spite of its effigy and stamp, will experience the fate of the assignats; the merchant will ask more and give less; and we shall find ourselves in a still lower circle in the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... she regarded him, furtively returning when she ceased. When they left the cafe, the sheik arose and placed himself partly in the girl's way. She paused while his dark eyes caught and held hers. A long moment went before she seemed able to free herself from the hypnotic tension he put upon her. Then he bowed low, and the girl with ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... the light a little, and looked toward the door to see if the way was clear. The hail relieved the tension of his mind strain, but only for a minute. Then ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... and not through what are called the fibrous or vascular bundles. Second, the movement is a vital one, and is effected by contraction on the side toward which the bending takes place, rather than by turgescent tension of the opposite side. The tentacle is pulled over rather than pushed over. So far all accords with ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... and stretched herself like a tired child, sending a lazy tension through every noble limb and polished muscle. She sighed with a deep breathing in and out, and pressed ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hang at your sides, as they do on Earth or Luna, because the muscular tension tends to hold them out, just as it does in zero-gee, but there is still a definite sensation of up-and-down. If you push yourself off the floor, you tend to float in a long, slow, graceful arc, provided you don't push too hard. Magnetic soles ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... country girls, she made three trips to carry two plates, and puffed like a porpoise at her work, while the look of frightened amazement showed upon her face that every fibre of her intelligence was under unaccustomed tension. Before the fire, and upon the range, three or four stew-pans were bubbling. A plump chicken was turning on the spit, or, rather, the spit and its victim were turned by a bright-looking boy of about a dozen years, who with ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... fit of tension far from rare with him, Allerton stood with his nails digging into his clenched palms and his thin lips pressed together. He was sure he was looking at a "drab." All the shoddy, outcast meanings he had read into the word ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Allan and the clear ring of her voice relieved the unbearable tension. Surely, Barbara could not ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... compensator is very simple and not at all likely to get out of order. On new wire, when I fix my compensator, I usually have an adjusting screw on the lead to lever. This I remove when the wire has been stretched to its full tension. I have everything removed from lever, so there can be no meddling or altering. When once the wire is stretched so that no slack remains between lever and trigger, no ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... and with the thought the tension on my nervous system relaxed, and I was able to feel a sufficiently well-developed sense of indignation to demand an explanation. "This is a mighty cool proceeding on your part," I said, leaving the sideboard and walking into ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Kate found an outlet for the nervous tension under which she was still laboring. It helped a little, though it seemed impossible to believe that she ever again would be serene of mind and able to think clearly. Her thoughts were a jumble; as yet she could only feel and suffer terribly. Remorse took precedence over all ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... rapidly, as if to relieve the tension of the situation. He undid a pack that he had kept tied to his saddle during all ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... serenity on a serious mind, and a smile wavering betwixt sarcasm and condescension. There was softness, but of a sinister character. The prevailing characteristic of this countenance was the prodigious and continual tension of brow, eyes, mouth, and all the facial muscles; in regarding him it was perceptible that the whole of his features, like the labour of his mind, converged incessantly on a single point with such power that there was ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of the greasy hands broke the tension, and although Mr. McGowan cordially extended them neither young lady offered hers ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... that reduce tension and anxiety and include chloral hydrate, barbiturates (Amytal, Nembutal, Seconal, phenobarbital), benzodiazepines (Librium, Valium), methaqualone (Quaalude), glutethimide (Doriden), ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... awful tension to be in," said the willow-tree. "If only I don't go to pieces for sheer fright. As it is, the boy took a good pull at me; and Heaven knows I can't ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... heavens"—he began; but Mary precipitated herself upon him, and held him with both hands. The moral tension, which had held her hopeless and rigid, gave ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... But the tension was not relaxed, and on the 2nd of March, the Moravians met to decide on their further course. Should they keep quiet, and wait for times to change, or should they go away? It was referred to the lot, and the paper drawn read "GO OUT FROM AMONG ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... bladder; which is known by the external appearance of the lower part of the abdomen, which, when the bladder is full, seems as if contracted by a cord between the navel and the bladder; and by the tension on the region of the bladder distinguishable by the touch; or by the introduction of the catheter; the following methods of cure are frequently successful. Venesection to six or eight ounces, ten grains of calomel, and an infusion of senna with salts and oil, every three ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... not another day in our history that has witnessed so much nervous tension as Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that morning the newspapers electrified the North with the news that Sumter had been fired on from Confederate batteries on the shore of Charleston Harbor. In the South the issue was awaited confidently, but many minds ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... prepared cavalry and made every other arrangement for pursuit. Constancy of purpose was the salient feature of Thomas's military character. He would not fight until he was ready. The civil authorities urgently demanded that he should advance. So great was the tension that Grant finally sent General J. A. Logan to supersede Thomas; but before Logan arrived Thomas had won the Battle of Nashville (Dec. 15-16, 1864), the most crushing victory ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... cannot help thinking that this is a dispute touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important distinction in kind is marked. Some human volitions stand out very clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or the final release of tension. But how many of the decisions—I see no objection to the word,—which we make during the course of a day, are of this character! It would be ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... lying free or surrounded by a scarcely perceptible amorphous mass. [Footnote: In our note of July 16th, 1877, it is stated that the septic vibrio is not destroyed by the oxygen of the air nor by oxygen at high tension, but that under these conditions it is transformed into germ-corpuscles. This is, however, an incorrect interpretation of facts. The vibrio is destroyed by oxygen, and it is only where it is in a thick layer that it is transformed to germ-corpuscles in the presence ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... having slackened the tension between Germany and France, Bismarck displayed less desire for the alliance of Italy. Latterly, as a move in the German parliamentary game, he had coquetted with the Vatican; and as a result of this off-hand behaviour, Italy was slow in coming to accord with ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... switch, and the hum of a high tension alternator filled the laboratory. The Russian quivered for a moment and then lay still. Major Martin nodded and Dr. Bird stepped to the side of the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... The alder branches quivered, their clusters of black shadow fell like an embroidered veil over the imperfections of her dress, but what light there was shone clear on her head and throat, and the pearly moulding of her shoulder, based where her sleeve was dragged down a little by the tension of her weight upon it. All the mystery of womanhood and all its promise of life in bud and life not yet sown lay on this young girl asleep in the starshine. Lights flashed up in the house, figures were moving between the curtains: Laura had left Bernard, soon she would come out into the garden ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and sweet. A chair was placed for her beside the oldest chief, in the centre, with the one party on the right and the other on the left. But first she moved from one group to the other, drawing laughter as she went with her jokes and by-play, and trying to lessen the tension that all experienced. Then she took her seat, started her knitting, and the business began. A word from her was sufficient to check any outburst of feeling, but she only spoke now and then, in order to elicit information or to make ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... everything else. We may add a third factor. We feel that our body adjusts itself to the perception. Our head enters into the movement of listening for the sound, our eyes are fixating the point in the outer world. We hold all our muscles in tension in order to receive the fullest possible impression with our sense organs. The lens in our eye is accommodated exactly to the correct distance. In short our bodily personality works toward the fullest possible impression. But this is supplemented by a fourth factor. ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... the real thing—it was amusing to do Major Monarch's trousers. They WERE the real thing, even if he did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his wife's back hair— it was so mathematically neat—and the particular "smart" tension of her tight stays. She lent herself especially to positions in which the face was somewhat averted or blurred, she abounded in ladylike back views and profils perdus. When she stood erect she took naturally one of the attitudes ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... also took the first prize at Rotherham, at a competition open to all England. He was extremely successful in producing melons, having invented a method of suspending them in baskets of wire gauze, which, by relieving the stalk from tension, allowed nutrition to proceed more freely, and better enabled the fruit ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... she going to say?" each girl asked herself. The tension was at its height, the silence could almost be felt, when Dr. Prescott began ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... "The tension of the strange situation lasted for some minutes. I had no clear vision through my spy-hole, and knew not at the first watching whether the man I saw was asleep or awake. A finer inspection of him, made with a catlike poise as I knelt ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... commanded him to be called.' Remember that He was on His road to His Cross, and that the tension of spirit which the Evangelists notice as attaching to Him then, and which filled the disciples with awe as they followed Him, absorbed Him, no doubt, at that hour, so that He heard but little of the people's shouts. But He did hear the blind beggar's cry, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... mixed up with the baize. The damp got through, and the linen was badly stained. There was a feeling that the attack would come at dawn. People sat up all night, and only went to bed when morning was well advanced. All offices were closed and business was suspended. This state of tension lasted several days. At length, from the look-out post above the town, a warship, apparently a cruiser, was seen making straight for the wireless station. When she got within range she turned broadside on. Her ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which the war was entered on, that it should follow soon, and that the slackening of public spirit should be proportionate to the previous over-tension, might well be foreseen by all who had studied human nature or history. Men acting gregariously are always in extremes. As they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... experience was remarkable to that extent that it can be explained only on the ground that the intense mental strain prevented his seeing things as they were. He had subjected his muscles to such a tension that he was obliged to pause every few minutes and rest. One of his feet was scarified and bleeding, and the other only a little better. When he looked upward his heart sank, for a long distance still interposed between ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... of tension had for months existed between Austria-Hungary and Russia which was only prevented from developing into war by the moderation of the Powers.... Europe will feel grateful to the English Minister of Foreign Affairs for the extraordinary ability and spirit of conciliation with which ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... together, they preceding us on active service only a couple of months. Seeing them after this lapse of time, I was conscious of a change. They were keen about life at the front, but they talked of their experiences in a way which gave one a feeling of tension, a tautness of muscles, a kind of ache in the throat. It set me to thinking of a conversation I had had with an old French pilot, several months before. It came apropos of nothing. Perhaps he thought ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... before the rattle of the rifles reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away, indeed—they are making directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry is continuous, and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the exulting yell or crack of a rifle that should announce his discovery, Donald was thus obliged to paddle doggedly forward within a hundred yards of the shore. His suspense was well-nigh unbearable. Every nerve was strung to its utmost tension. In each new indentation of the coast he expected to see the waiting fleet of canoes, and with each fearful backward glance he wondered at not finding ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... its cord and its bow when it shoots with too great tension, and with less force the shaft hits the mark, so did I burst under that heavy load, pouring forth tears and sighs, and the voice slackened along its passage. Whereupon she to me, "Within those desires of mine[1] that were leading thee ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri
... rattling of the lid of a kettle, which was boiling away on the fire beside him, when, being of a philosophic vein, he commenced to inquire after the cause; and he soon reasoned himself into the conclusion that the motive power lay in the tension of the vapour, and that the maintenance of this must be due to successive additions of heat. The thought was a seed sown in a fit soil, for it led to experiments which confirmed the supposition, and inaugurated others that have ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... of the Foam looked at him, but made no reply, and Tim's head was slowly withdrawn. The crew, who had been gazing over the side with their ears at the utmost tension, gave him five minutes' grace and then, the skipper having gone aft again, walked up to ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... perceptible and agreeable. Formerly it was supposed, that the presence of God was only the thought of God, and that it was necessary to force the mind—to concentrate the thoughts with violence to find God. This is true in some sense, but, as the soul cannot long endure this tension, and as the kingdom of God is not found in the external vestments of the soul, but in its depths, this labor is of little avail. So little progress is made, the soul becomes discouraged, and the evil one, who fears nothing ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... whole body and all its organs of relation and movement are in tension. The cerebro-spinal axis virtually excites the whole muscular and peripheral system in such a way that relaxation or relative repose becomes impossible. But the brain, with all its dependencies and appendices, is not only the organ of thought, but it stimulates and directs our whole ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... moment in the half dark, facing one another, their hearts beating, their breath failing them in the tension of the instant. There in that room, high above the city, a little climax had come swiftly to a head, a crisis in two lives had suddenly developed. The moment that had been in preparation for the last few months, the ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... She closed her eyes so that she might concentrate her will sufficiently for it to penetrate his brain. She sat tense with her desire, her hands clenched for more than a minute, but he did not answer to her will, and its tension relaxed in spite of herself. "He sits there listening to the music as if he had never heard a note of it before. Why does he not come to me?" As if in answer, Ulick got out of his stall and walked toward the entrance, seemingly in the intention ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... that there are more or less objections to the use of the ordinary spring pistons, owing to the changing tension of the springs, the necessity of frequent adjustment, and the impossibility of the packing rings adapting themselves to the varying pressures of the steam on the piston. A number of attempts have been made to produce a self packing or steam expanding piston, which will act ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... not blame my father," said Charlotte. Again that look of relief had stolen over her face. The healthy tint, which was scarcely color, had returned to her cheek; and the tension of her attitude was also withdrawn, for she changed her seat, taking possession now of her favorite easy-chair. "But I like Charlotte Home," she said after a pause. "She is—whatever her mother may have been—quite a lady. I think it is hard that when ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... habit. Thus after 1231 there were in the University several theological chairs occupied by Mendicants. The prosperity and aggressiveness of the friars, and political and doctrinal differences between them and the seculars, caused great tension. Not without reason the seculars complained that they were likely to be deprived of all the theological teaching. Matters came to an issue in 1253, when, on the murder of a scholar by the municipal officers, the University in accordance with its privileges proclaimed a cessation or ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... thoroughly crushed, and that reaction would carry him into a worse peace than that which he then disdained. [366] The negotiations at the Congress of Vienna brought Great Britain and Russia, as it has been seen, into an antagonism which threatened to end in the resort to arms; and the tension which then and for some time afterwards existed between the two governments led English Ministers to speak, certainly in exaggerated and misleading language, of the mutual hostility of the English ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... determination, has developed just the habit of hardening his muscles for the time he is determined on doing a particular thing. That does not exercise his muscles sufficiently to make them firm all the time, whether under tension or not. Consequently his determination is likely to slump if his resolution is subjected to a long strain. He does not possess muscular structure sufficiently strong to support persistence ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... on the one side, the intellectual movement that seems to be spreading among our lesser brothers and, on the other, the ever more constantly repeated manifestations of our subconsciousness, we might even ask ourselves if we have not here, on two different planes, a tension, a parallel pressure, a new desire, a new attempt of the mysterious spiritual force which animates the universe and which seems to be incessantly seeking fresh outlets and fresh conducting rods. Be this as it may, when the flash has passed, we behave very much as the animals ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... that sort of thing," said Mrs. Brindley, "unless she happens to be in love with another man." She was observing the unconscious Mildred narrowly, a state of inward tension and excitement hinted in her face, but ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... up the morale of the Germans and in general to pave the way for our infantry charge that was to follow. It shattered the German trenches, plowed through their barbed wire entanglements and kept those who survived in a state of great nervous tension, because they knew a great charge was to follow. Our guns were also trained on such objects as headquarters, railroads, heavy artillery emplacements, cross roads, ammunition dumps, aviation hangars, etc., from information ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... susceptibility, charged at first with ready indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a premature reflection on certain questions of life; it had given a bias to his conscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a tension of resolve in certain directions, who marked him off from other youths much more ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 1995, and the two countries agreed to normalize relations, despite continued disagreement over F.Y.R.O.M.'s use of "Macedonia." F.Y.R.O.M.'s large Albanian minority, an ethnic Albanian armed insurgency in F.Y.R.O.M. in 2001, and the status of neighboring Kosovo continue to be sources of ethnic tension. ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... has to flow, prepared by a proper position of the larynx, the tongue, and the palate. Of a knowledge and understanding of the functions of the muscles of the abdomen and diaphragm, which regulate the breath pressure; then, of the chest-muscle tension, against which the breath is forced, and whence, under the control of the singer, after passing through the vocal cords, it beats against the resonating surfaces and vibrates in the cavities of the head. Of a highly cultivated skill and flexibility in adjusting all the vocal organs and ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... pen and reached for the inkwell. With trembling, excited fingers he unfolded the contracts. He dipped his pen into the ink; he even brought it down on the paper; and then the tension broke. He sank back in his chair, a frightened, broken ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... free is to represent it as capable of wishing what it does not wish. The will is an anxiety to act in such or such a fashion, and this anxiety, on account of its character of anxiety, of strong emotion, of tension of the soul, appears to us free, appears to us an internal force which is self-governed and independent; we feel consciousness of will in the effort. This tension must not be denied, but it must be recognised as the effect of a potent desire which the ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... of the past two years was followed by comparative languor. The deadly crisis was past, the freedom of Europe was saved, Holland and England breathed again; but tension now gave place to exhaustion. The events in the remainder of the year 1588, with those of 1589—although important in themselves—were the immediate results of that history which has been so minutely detailed in these volumes, and can be indicated ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... into Merchant Street, both felt the tension relax, Martha would have liked to sit down, even on ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... of heartiness, "Well, h' are y' all?" he said, "Glad to see me, eh?" As we could hardly, in justice, be expected to have formed an opinion on him at that early stage, we could but look at each other in silence; which scarce served to relieve the tension of the situation. Indeed, the cloud never really lifted during his stay. In talking it over later, some one put forward the suggestion that he must at some time or other have committed a stupendous crime; but I could not bring myself to believe that the man, though evidently unhappy, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... however, to drag a little on both sides, and there was developed a tension just perceptible, which lasted till the arrival of ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... say not during that part of the day time when the village was astir. For Malvina appears to have been an early riser. Somewhere about the middle of the night, as any Christian body would have timed it, Mrs. Muldoon—waking and sleeping during this period in a state of high nervous tension—would hear the sound of a softly opened door; peeping from a raised corner of the blind, would catch a glimpse of fluttering garments that seemed to melt into the dawn; would hear coming fainter and fainter from the uplands ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... at noon at a neat farmhouse, to rest herself, and buy some dinner for her child and self; for, as the danger decreased with the distance, the supernatural tension of the nervous system lessened, and she found herself both ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but I have never heard this practice defended, even though it is exceedingly common. Robust male sentiment is all against it. And the reason is that, because it is an attempt to satisfy sexual craving in an abnormal way, it always leaves psychic disturbance behind it. It may relieve a physical tension, but it does nothing to satisfy the whole man. It leaves a bad taste in the mind. Both mind and spirit as well as the body enter into true sexual experience. They have no place in this, and by reason of it the inner harmonies of a man's nature ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... door securely again he spread the blankets on the bench by the window and lay down to sleep. The tension was gone from his nerves now, and he felt that he could fall asleep at once, but he did not. A shift in the wind brought the sound of the artillery more plainly. His imagination again came into vivid play. He believed that the bench beneath him, the whole cottage, in fact, was quivering before the ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sat behind the emergency board, a vernier dial in each hand and both eyes on an oscilloscope screen. His red, beefy face was corded and knotted with tension, and his skin glistened with oily perspiration. He didn't say a word, and his fingers barely moved as he held a green line reasonably steady ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... fashioned club in his right hand, and the strongest and sharpest of his bone daggers in the left—he stood, his back to the rock wall, so as not to be taken in the rear; never relaxing for a moment in vigilance, his ears strained to their utmost tension, his eyeballs striving to pierce the black gloom. More than once a sound as of stealthy, ghostly scrapings caused his heart to beat like a hammer; and he seemed to see the horrible eyes of the monster flaming luridly ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... appearance, remained sublimely unconscious of the tension which his words and appearance seemed to have created. He had strolled a little further into the room, and was looking down at the packet ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... came she bit her nails and the sweat stood on her forehead in great drops; in her excitement she even called out as loud as she could to the victim, 'Look aht!' It caused a laugh and slackened the tension, for the whole house was holding its breath as it looked at the villains listening at the door, creeping silently forward, crawling like ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... of the regent fell upon his ears, there came into Law's heart a curious tension, a presentiment, a feeling as though some great and curious thing were about to happen. Yet ever the challenge of danger was one to draw him forward, not to hold him back. If for a moment he had hesitated, his mind ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and, yes, it was best," said Miss Milray, and for relief from the tension which was beginning to tell upon her own nerves, she asked, "I suppose you know about my poor brother? I'd better tell you to keep you from asking for Mrs. Milray, though I don't know that it's so very ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sense of tension and anxiety betrayed his presence somewhere in the great dreary house, and the master yet forbore to descend for the early meal, he would rejoice the heart of his little daughter by having her brought to his room to make tea and share ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... [European] Continent, and, in connection with the calm thus resulting, an immense colonizing movement in which all the great powers were concerned."[1] Later, in 1911, he noted that colonial rivalries had again been superseded by rivalries within Europe, but pointed out that the European tension was itself largely the product of activities and ambitions in more distant spheres. In fact the international developments of recent times, whether in the form of colonial enterprises, armament competition, or ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... districts which passionately resent your action," but that, "having regard to the intense state of feeling" which had been aroused, the Council could accept no responsibility for anything that might occur during the visit. Mr. Churchill's prudent change of plan relieved the extreme tension of the situation, and there was much speculation as to what influence had produced a result so satisfactory to the Ulster Unionist Council. The truth seems to be that the Council's Resolution had impaled the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... strike for freedom, Pierre came to breakfast with his usual atmosphere of compressed wrath. He glanced at his breakfast which Madame had placed on the table at the first sound which heralded his approach. There was nothing there to break the tension and to set free the pent-up storm within. Much meditation, with fear and trembling, had taught Madame the proper amount of butter to apply to the hot toast, the proportion of sugar and cream to add to the coffee, ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... I shall not soon forget. We all stared at the real Haggerty much after the fashion of Medusa's victims. Presently the tension relaxed, and we all sighed. I sighed because the thought of jail for the night in a dress-suit dwindled in perspective; the girl sighed for the same reason and one or two other things; the chief of the village police and his officers sighed because darkness ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... occasionally in queer spiral beds. The bird-scarers, too, were ingenious: a board hung by a cord from another cord stretched between two long and highly flexible bamboos on opposite banks of a stream, would be carried down by the current until the tension of its cord became greater than the thrust of the stream, when it would fly back and thus cause the bamboo poles to shake. This motion was repeated without end, and communicated by other cords suitably attached to other bamboo poles set here ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox |
