"Keyed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that in which you look about you at the darkened forest. You have cast from you with the warm blanket the drowsiness of dreams. A coolness, physical and spiritual, bathes you from head to foot. All your senses are keyed to the last vibrations. You hear the littler night prowlers, you glimpse the greater. A faint, searching woods perfume of dampness greets your nostrils. And somehow, mysteriously, in a manner not to be understood, the forces of the world seem in suspense, as though a touch ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... adopting equal temperament, but more has been gained. To a sensitive ear, the sharp thirds and fourths, the flat fifths and other discordant intervals of our modern keyed instrument, are a constant source of pain; but the average organist has become so accustomed to the defect that he ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... quality which distinguishes this Exposition above all others in America or Europe rests on two outstanding facts: the substantial unity of its architectural scheme, and its harmony of color, keyed to Nature's coloring of the landscape in which it is placed. The site furnished the clue to the plan; co-operation made possible the great success with which ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... there; and when she had sounded the call, there could be no retreat for him. But love and longing and memory and fear all harassed him. He had as yet said nothing of this to his sister, but it weighed on him continually. Taken all in all, Robert Sumner's life, which had been keyed to so even a pitch, and to which all discord had been a stranger for so many years, was sadly jarred and out ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... wings and go one of these days," observed Archie Allaire to Rita Tevis, who was posing as Psyche for one of his clever, thinly brushed, high-keyed studies very much after the manner and palette of Chaplin when they resembled neither Chartrain nor Zier, nor any other artist temporarily in vogue. For he was an adaptable man, facile, adroit, a master navigator in trimming sail to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... felt a strange weakness, and began to lose interest. Carleton's inert body swayed to one side, and called Archie's attention to the fact that he was custodian of another life, as well as his own, if life was still in Carleton's body. Archie felt, somehow, that Carleton was not dead. That thought keyed him up to still greater effort. He throttled his engine and started downward, the warmer airs welcome as he came lower. At last he was in home air. A final decision to buck up and hang on was necessary to urge his weak muscles to act. He swayed in his seat. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... that warned him on the third day. Leaning as he did against the sled ropes he became aware of an added burden, as though the man behind had eased to shift his harness. When it did not cease he glanced over his shoulder. Keyed up as he was ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... had an odd sense of impending trouble. For an instant it seemed as if they were about to break for cover; and when they approached us there was a strained, expectant expression on each tanned face, a wariness in their actions that looked unnatural to me. The nearer they came the more did I feel keyed up for some emergency. I can't explain why; that's something that I don't think will bear logical analysis. Who can explain the sixth sense that warns a night-herder of a stampede a moment before the herd jumps off the bed-ground? But that is how ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Sol yelled, pointing. He looked as though he was having the time of his life, all keyed up and delighted. He didn't have to tell me where the noise was coming from, I could hear for myself. It sounded like D-Day at Normandy, and I didn't like the ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... understand it, aroused both her pity and her determination, was the girl's strange, dully fatalistic acquiescence in it all. The sort of circumstances that in Rose herself set the blood drumming through her arteries, keyed her will to the very highest pitch, quickened her brain, made her feel in some inexplicable way, confident and irresistible, laid on this girl a paralyzing hand. It wasn't her fault that she didn't meet her difficulties half-way with a vicious, driving offensive—rout ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... that his mental process was keyed to the highest pitch of melodrama. It was not usual for him to indulge in mental abuse. He had never quite understood the dark and moving processes of red-eyed anger. There had been something absurd in the theatrical hauteur of his manner in this last ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... less—whatever you choose to call it. A coarser touch has come upon her, and she is changed. Well, I say I believe all this, and I do, with all my soul; and yet, as you say, it's cruel hard for a young creature, all keyed up to a pitch of enthusiasm and devotion and noble aspiration, to be checked like a boy's kite, and brought down to the ground and told to mind her seam. It's cruel hard, I can see that; I can feel and sympathise intensely with all that part of it, and honour the purpose and ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... moments, Miss Hallard sat upright in the bed and watched her. Her mind was keyed with intuition. She was conscious of the presence of some influence in Sally's mind—probably more conscious of it than Sally was herself. You could not have shaken her in that belief. Even a woman cannot act ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities; they keep hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia—these do ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain dithyrambic ecstasy—a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes breaks into falsetto. His great rival, Welhaven, was soberer, clearer, more gravely melodious. He sang in beautiful, tempered strains, along the middle octaves, never ranging high ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... unshaven, his beard seemed like a million pricking needles in his blistered skin. He was so tired that once having settled himself, he did not move hand or foot. The night was dark, dismal, cloudy, windy, growing colder. A moan of wind in the mesquite was occasionally pierced by the high-keyed yelp of a coyote. There were lulls in which the silence seemed to be a thing of stifling, encroaching substance—a thing that enveloped, buried ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fool," I thought; "and James Whitcomb Riley was right when he said that the speaker who is about to make his bow to an audience is always so keyed up that at the moment he ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... three octaves. Guido d'Arezzo, the famous sight-reading music teacher of the eleventh century, advised his pupils to "exercise the hand in the use of the monochord," showing his knowledge of the keyboard. The keyed monochord gained the name clavichord. Its box-like case was first placed on a table, later on its own stand, and increased in elegance. Not until the eighteenth century was each key provided with ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... of the European coalition against revolutionary France, the principle of action was that announced by Danton,—"to dare, and to dare, and without end to dare." Genet therefore went on his mission to America keyed to measures which were audacious but which can hardly be described as reckless. By plunging heavily he might make a big winning; if he failed, he was hardly worse off than if he had not made the attempt. To draw the United States into the war as the ally of ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... planetary arrangement is found in Oldham's coupling, Fig. 44. The two sections of shafting, A and B, have each a flange or collar forged or keyed upon them; and in each flange is planed a transverse groove. A third piece, C, equal in diameter to the flanges, is provided on each side with a tongue, fitted to slide in one of the grooves, and these tongues are at right angles to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... for his sake, for I could see, when he gave me the intelligence, that it was a matter which had keyed up his ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... slowly. "You mean France. Yes, 'tis nice, an' they's certainly a great deal to see in it." She hesitated a moment, and then went on more rapidly. "You know," she continued, in her high- keyed, sibilant whisper, "it's some different with me from what 'tis with you. You can speak French. I heard you talkin' to the conductor. An' I suppose you've been here often, an' like it. But this is the first time I've come over ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... greater multitude eager for newspapers and verbal intelligence from the great Atlantic and European world. Through this crowd I made my way, along the well-built and well-lighted streets, as alive as by day, where boys in high-keyed voices were already crying the latest New York papers; and between one and two o'clock in the morning found myself comfortably abed in a commodious room, in the Oriental Hotel, which stood, as well as I could learn, on the filled-up cove, and not far from the spot ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... remember) to Music—to the harp, the lyre, the dance, the chorus, all those first necessary accompaniments which verse never quite forgets; and we concluded that, as Music ever introduces emotion, which is indeed her proper and only means of persuading, so the natural language of verse will be keyed higher than the natural language of prose; will be keyed higher throughout and even for its most ordinary purposes—as for example, to tell us that So-and-so sailed to Troy with so ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Every sheep's voice is keyed up to a different pitch; they all sound different some way or another. And every lamb has a little voice of ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... intermittent currents start their corresponding strings to answering. In this way one could send several messages at once, each message being toned to a different pitch. All that would be necessary would be to have differently keyed interrupters. This was the principle of the harmonic telegraph at which Mr. Bell was toiling outside the hours of his regular work and through which he hoped to make himself rich and famous. His intention was to break up the various sounds into the ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... professions or in stations of responsibility. They held large lands, and in the almost feudal creed of the times they gave large services in return. The curse of politics had not yet reached this land of born politicians. Quietly, smoothly, yet withal keyed to a high standard of living, the ways of this old community, as of these two representative families, went on with little change from ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... drawing his violin from his case, began sounding notes up and down the scale. He finally discovered, by the thrill that sent a tremor through the mighty structure, that he had found the note on which the great cable that upheld the mass, was keyed. He drew his bow across the string of the violin again, and the colossal wire, as if under the spell of a magician, responded with a throb that sent a wave through its enormous length. He sounded ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... looked much like an Ambassador Extraordinary from Versailles. He messed with the Lieutenants in the Ward-room, where he had a state-room, elegantly furnished as the private cabinet of Pelham. His cot-boy used to entertain the sailors with all manner of stories about the silver-keyed flutes and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Keyed up to a high pitch of enthusiasm, I played golf for ten days, and found my friend to be a fine sportsman. Like all Englishmen, he took a beating gracefully, but gave me to understand that he had been having a good deal of trouble with rheumatism or neuritis in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... a builder has built a house for a man, and has not keyed his work, and the wall has fallen, that builder shall make that wall firm at ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... travelling by the 6.28 back to Potter's Bar. I lay back in my corner with closed eyes, recalling the events of that wonderful afternoon in the darkened, scented room. It had been a strange, almost overwhelming experience. I had been keyed up to a point of tension which was almost unendurable, while my friend gazed and murmured into the glass ball. These glimpses into the occult are really too much for my system; they wring my nerves. I could have screamed when Amy said, 'Wait—wait—the ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... two papers to Harrison, and quickly stepped back till his back was against the wall of the house. Something in his manner stirred the banked suspicions of the American. Already his nerves were keyed to unusual tension, for he knew the moment of crux was hurrying toward him. Why had the troopers fallen back so far? Why was Pasquale so anxious to put a wide space between himself ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... way, and they said: "We migrated, expecting freedom, and now we are not even free from the cares of subsistence; we are not, as out leader promised, the happiest, but in truth the most unfortunate of men. After our leader's words had keyed us to the highest pitch of expectation, and had filled out ears with vain hopes, he tortures us with famine and does not provide even the necessary food. With the name of a new settlement he has deceived this great multitude; after he had succeeded in leading us from a well-known to an uninhabited ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... tensely keyed and strung, A broken music, weirdly incomplete: Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung, Lies coiled ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... book in Paris in the winter of 1917-18—in the midst of bombs, and raids, and death. Everyone was keyed up to a strange pitch, and only primitive instincts seemed to stand ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... his rifle across his knee. All appearance of laziness or relaxation disappeared instantly. He was attentive, alert, keyed to immediate action. ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ignored by both the Civil Rights Commission and the Gesell Committee. President Kennedy, however, seemed aware of the problem. Before leaving for Europe in the summer of 1963 he called on the Secretary of Defense to consider establishing training programs keyed primarily to the special problems of black servicemen found ineligible for technical training. According to Lee White, the President wanted to use new training techniques "and other methods of stimulating interest and industry" that might help thousands of men bridge "the gap that presently ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... keyed the coupling disks, Q, which are cast solid at a portion of their circumference situated at 180 deg. with respect to the parts, A squared, of the cranked shaft, the object of this being to balance the latter as well as a portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... teeth in the crimson cheek and tested the flavor deliberately, with the gravity of an epicure, while the boy watched her, his whole nervous frame keyed by her responsiveness to high pitch. "It's like nothing else in the world," she said finally. "No, wait, yes, it is. It's like condensed wine; a blend of the best; golden Angelica, red port, amber champagne, with just enough of old-fashioned ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... dead. Their hope is past. How long I stood as missing! Now, at last I'm dead. Look in my face—no likeness can you see, No tiny trace of him they knew as "me". How terrible the change! Even my eyes are strange. So keyed are they to pain, That if I chanced to meet My mother in the street She'd look at ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... clothes, searched the pockets, found in them one poor shilling and a few coppers, a black cutty pipe, a box of snuff, a screw of pigtail, a knife with a buckhorn handle and one broken blade, and a pawn-ticket for a keyed flute, on the proceeds of which he was now sleeping—a sleep how dearly purchased, when he might have had it free, as the gift of God's gentle darkness! Then he destroyed the garments, committing them to the fire as the hoped farewell to the state ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... velvet. Rather she seemed to be looking there, for the light that usually shown outward in those luminous eyes was turned inward. The little volume of poems had dropped unheeded from the white hand. It had done its office: the passion of its lines had keyed her thoughts to a harmony that suffused her whole being, until all seemed as naturally a part of the glorious day as the fleecy clouds in the sapphire sky, the cheerful hum of the bees, and the apple-blossoms' ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... of an orchestra does not nearly approximate the confusion; for the members of the orchestra are all trying to find one pitch and are gradually hitting it, whereas every sound within that cavern seemed to be pitched and keyed differently. ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... type. This man had neither square-toed shoes, nor a bull neck, nor coarseness of feature. About thirty-six years old, he was unusually slender, and straight as a dart, a peculiar and restless gracefulness characterizing all his movements. He seemed fairly to exude energy. He was keyed up to lightning-like motion. He gave the impression of having a brain that worked with the precision and force of some great machine, a machine that ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... by the arm, drew her back into the cave; she was trembling. It seemed to her that this was no storm, that something had gone wrong with the scheme of things, that this Voice steadily being keyed up was the voice of some string keeping everything together, stretched to its utmost and sure ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Carlisle glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes past six, or nearly time to begin to dress. The moment was an interlude in a day which had been full of exciting activity, keyed with the joy of journey's end and lovers' meeting. An evening in similar titillating vein waited just ahead. At this moment, Canning, bidden an revoir some ten minutes ago, was doubtless dressing at his club, ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of daylight above him. "Gee Gosh!" he panted, as he got to his feet outside the cave. "It was him!" He clambered over the circle of stones and backed away, eyeing the entrance as though he expected to see the Hopi emerge at any moment. He crouched behind a boulder, his pulses racing. He was keyed to a high tension of expectancy. In fact, he was in a decidedly receptive mood for that which immediately happened. He noticed that his horse, a hundred yards or so up the valley, was circling the cedar and pulling back on the reins. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... carpet were loosely grouped a number of solemnly smiling gentlemen in frock-coats with their top-hats genteelly resting in the hollows of their left arms, and without and beyond the station in the space usually filled by closed and open cabs was a swarm of automobiles. Then while our spirits were keyed to the highest pitch, the Queen of Spain descended from the train, wearing a long black satin cloak and a large black hat, very blond and beautiful beyond the report of her pictures. By each hand she led one of her two pretty boys, Don Jaime, the Prince of Asturias, heir apparent, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... of all thicknesses, the arrangement described above may be replaced by a system consisting of two drums having several channels to receive as many saws, or two corresponding series of channeled pulleys, b b (Fig. 4), independent of each other, but keyed to the same axles, i i. When the pulleys have been properly spaced by means of keys, the whole affair is rendered solid by a bolt, g. The extremity of the axles forms a nut into which pass vertical screws, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... As he had never run before he sped through the bush, bearing due south-east toward the deserted end-of-steel village, avoiding trees and fallen logs with uncanny ease. Some heard him and paused in their course, but they were keyed up to serious work, and there were so many of their friends abroad. Probably a messenger of ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... moment as I did choked back the cold fear that had rushed upon me. I was not insane! Holman was listening too! I seemed to feel that the tiny thread of sound which had set my pulses beating madly had also keyed him up to the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... keyed up to a rather high pitch these days, and it was difficult for those who were watching her with the anxious eyes of friendship to gauge the extent of her happiness or otherwise. From the moment of Mallory's departure she had flung herself with zest into each day's amusement behaving ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... a stereotyped front page of the paper is ripped open and a prominent blank space left, so that if the press were to print now, the paper would appear with a large unprinted space on its front page. To this blank space, however, the fudge is keyed, so that as the web of paper passes the main cylinder, the little emergency cylinder makes its impression and the page appears to all appearances ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... journey back to Darth was as anticlimactic as that. There was no trouble finding the space yacht in its remote orbit. Hoddan sent out an unlocking signal, and a keyed transmitter began to send a signal on which to home. When the liner nudged alongside it, Hoddan's last contrivance operated and the yacht clung fast to the larger ship's hull. There were four days in overdrive. There were three or four ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... great change in Pastor Drury, but he noticed no such signs of breakdown as he had expected to see. He did not know that the beloved pastor was keyed up for this meeting. He could not guess that the beaming eye, the old radiant smile, the touch of color in a face usually pale, were on special if unconscious display because the pastor's heart was thanking God that he had been permitted ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... word translated "agree" is a very suggestive one. It is, sympsonesosin, from which our word "symphony" comes. If two shall accord {150} or symphonize in what they ask, they have the promise of being heard. But, as in tuning an organ all the notes must be keyed to the standard pitch, else harmony were impossible, so in prayer. It is not enough that two disciples agree with each other; they must both accord with a Third—the righteous and holy Lord—before in the scriptural sense they can agree in intercession. There may ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... carried a rustling green Lulov—the palm-branch of the Feast of Tabernacles—and shook it piously toward every corner of the compass. At each shake the audience rolled about in spasms of merriment. A moment later a white gliding figure, moving to the measure of the cake-walk, keyed up the laughter to hysteria. It was the Ghost appearing to frighten Ophelia. His sepulchral bass notes ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the rush of relief at the news of Eleanore's safety and the strange sight of our tiny son, I felt keyed gloriously high, ready for anything under the sun. But there seemed to be nothing whatever to do, I felt in the way each time that I moved, so I took to my old refuge, work. And then into my small workroom came Eleanore's father for a long talk. He ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... clear of her clawing hands. But he had lost time, and the warriors had gained. One was very near, and if he should lay hands upon him Henry knew that he could not escape. Even if the warrior were able to hold him only a half minute the others then would be at hand. But he was still keyed up to the great tension with which he had started down the line. His effort, instead of reaching the zenith, was still increasing, and, turning sideways as he ran, he hurled the stick back into the face of the warrior ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed instrument. This was the first contrivance of the kind I had ever seen, though I have heard of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... no more. And it was characteristic of Ishmael that no one ever knew whether he were aware of that impulse of his brother's, and what it had nearly led to, or not. With cessation of physical pain and the exhaustion of the high-keyed string of his mind, came blessed reaction. Even the fact that nothing mattered ceased to matter. The suggestion, emanating simultaneously from the Parson and Killigrew that he should accompany the latter ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Ole Virginia and in such a novel as Red Rock[1] formally stated his theories in The Negro: The Southerner's Problem. The worst, however—if there could be a worst in such an array—was yet to appear. In 1905 Thomas Dixon added to a series of high-keyed novels The Clansman, a glorification of the KuKlux Klan that gave a malignant portrayal of the Negro and that was of such a quality as to arouse the most intense prejudice and hatred. Within a few months the ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... a multiplicity of small books; and the music being in full score, its intention cannot be mistaken: for it must be understood that most of these tunes are set in the manner proper for voices, but unsuitable for the piano or other keyed instrument; and the book is intended to encourage unaccompanied singing. A choir that cannot sing unaccompanied cannot sing at all; and this is not an uncommon condition in our churches, where choirs with varying success accompany the organ. A proper ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... progress of the works, as the Summit Tunnel, near Littleborough, was approaching completion, the rumour was spread abroad in Manchester that the tunnel had fallen in and buried a number of the workmen. The last arch had been keyed in, and the work was all but finished, when the accident occurred which was thus exaggerated by the lying tongue of rumour. An invert had given way through the irregular pressure of the surrounding earth and rock at a part of the tunnel where a "fault" had occurred in ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... again. To go again might deepen my impression—might better register the thrill. But then it might not be just the same. I would be keyed to such expectancy that I might be disappointed. Persons in the seats behind me might whisper. And just as Chenal got to the "Amour sacre de la patrie" some one might cough. I am confident that something of the sort would surely happen. I want always to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of what would happen if Fred should miss! What would the effect be on wild folk tortured by hunger and keyed to the pitch of frenzy by suspense? Then, even while we watched, another problem added itself. Over on the water there began to come a wind, driving ripples and little waves in front of it. The moment those came near the hippo be would vanish from view, for they only care for moonlight ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... drill. This is necessary in order to secure alertness and effort. Mere repetition is not drill. Monotonous going over the words of a poem or the list of books of the Bible with wandering or slack attention will fail of results. The learner must be keyed up, and give himself whole-heartedly to the work. Let the child come to feel a real need of mastery, and one great motive is supplied. Let him desire the words of the song because he is to sing in the chorus, or desire the words of the ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... Madeira because of her, nodded approvingly, the approval being for her honesty, her sweetness, her vitality. Something, perhaps the near climax for her father's enterprise at Canaan, seemed to have keyed her to a high pitch. Steering, who by now had had opportunities to see her often, had never seen her so beautiful, nor so quick of expression in word and look. Her voice thrilled him; and while he was thrilling, Madeira's voice came on to him: "You needn't hold back on that account," ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... be pretty well agreed," Charley said, trying in vain to shake off the vague feeling of impending evil, that had suddenly settled over him. "Speaking for myself, I feel too keyed up and anxious to do anything much until we get this thing over with. I move we get all our gear into shape and try to plan some way to get the plume birds hereafter without killing. That will take us until dark, I guess. Then let's quietly take our blankets and move ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was mostly dark—in our circle we make too much dough to be interested in overtime. I keyed myself into our waiting room, turned on the ceiling, and went into my private office. There was enough light leaking in from our foyer, so I ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... see Teddy ... besides, he'd better not. She was probably keyed up about as high as Bill was, and in no shape to do the kind of thinking he wanted of her on this stuff. Better wait a ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... It was an imitation of Roman Imperialism, and made no allowance for those limitations, both in its domestic and foreign expressions, which existed as a consequence of national growth and the international system. Their authority at all times was keyed up to the pitch of a great emergency. It was supposed to be the immediate expression of the common weal. The common weal was identified with the security of society and the state. The security of the state dictated the supreme ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... excited, exalted, and upset. Since Saturday afternoon Ranny had remained more or less in a state of tension induced by the hurdle race, by the shock of seeing Violet Usher, and by the dinner at the "Golden Eagle." And, coming straight from Violet, he had entered St. Matthias's Mission Church keyed up to his highest pitch. So that the Service for Men which subdued Wauchope and made him humble and ashamed and sent him away trying to be a better man, that very same Service worked Ranny up to a point when anything ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... I said. I keyed for Stores; the object must have hit about there. "This is the Captain," I ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... dining-room Brent and Flint, already keyed to the highest pitch, leaped to their feet ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... expectancy to see what would happen. Of quick, warm sympathies, always ready to bear with courage her own and others' burdens, she had none of that passive endurance which age and experience bring. She was keyed to the heroism of an occasion, but not yet to that which life lays as a daily burden ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... seemed as if he were cornered, but in a marvellous way he wormed himself free. I held my breath as he evaded blow after blow, some of which seemed to miss him by a mere hair's breadth. He was taking chances, I thought, so narrowly did he permit the blows to miss him. I was all keyed up, on edge with excitement, eager for my man to strike, to show he was not a mere ring-tactician. But the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the boys, "cannot be run on the low gear. You must keep her keyed up. Relax when the store is empty, but when you go to meet a customer put on the tension—take a brace—get spring into your step—learn to bunch your vitality and get it across. But ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... life, overspilling with vigor and virility. When Thornton passed a caressing hand along his back, a snapping and crackling followed the hand, each hair discharging its pent magnetism at the contact. Every part, brain and body, nerve tissue and fibre, was keyed to the most exquisite pitch; and between all the parts there was a perfect equilibrium or adjustment. To sights and sounds and events which required action, he responded with lightning-like rapidity. Quickly as a husky dog could leap to defend from attack or to attack, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... chain is passed over two sheaves, each of which is geared internally, the one having one or more teeth in excess of the other. Revolving around these internal teeth is a pinion, actuated by an eccentric, which is keyed on to a shaft passing through the center of the block, with a bearing at each end in the outside frame of the block. At one end of this shaft is a wheel with an endless hand chain passing over it; this gives the motion to the eccentric shaft. The teeth of the internal pinion ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... upon us so suddenly and we were all so keyed up that, although it seems flat enough to tell about it now, then it struck us as irresistibly funny and we laughed until tears started from our eyes. I heard Blodgett's cat-yowl of glee, Davie Paine's deep guffaw, Neddie Benson's shrill cackle of delight. But ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... novelty; I could find no trace of either in this transparent work, and an opera with a finale like that of the second act could not be named in the same breath with any of my favourite works. The only thing that impressed me was the unearthly keyed trumpet which, in the last act, represented the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and planet were two cog-wheels geared into each other, the sun being 3 feet diameter and the planet 2 feet diameter, the latter was keyed tightly on the bottom end of the connecting rod, and the sun which was keyed tightly on the end of the shaft, that was to revolve and work the machinery. But although this method did make the machinery revolve, it was not smoothly, for when the planet wheel was at either ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... terrible, and the car pitched this way and that as we tore along. But Francis had her well in hand. He sat at the wheel, very cool and deliberate and very grave, still in his officer's uniform, and his eyes had a cold glint that told me he was keyed up ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, Or at a protest meeting on the Square, Her lit eyes kindling the mob... Or dances madly at a festival. Each dawn finds her a little whiter, Though up and keyed to the long day, Alert, yet weary... like a bird That all night long has ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... longer experience of the perilous work of log-driving. Here a gap, filled with spouting foam, opened up before him; there a trunk upon which he was about to step rolled over and sank. But he worked his way forward towards the center of the fir which keyed the growing mass. This log was many feet in girth. Pressed down level with the water, it was already bending like ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... said Stanton perfectly cheerfully. "It's just those occasional humorous suggestions that keep me keyed so heroically up to the point where I'm actually infuriated if you even suggest that I might be getting really interested in this mysterious Miss Molly! You haven't said a single sentimental thing about her that I haven't ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the photoplay of painting-in-motion, need not be indoors as long as it has the native-heath mood. It is generally keyed to the hearthstone, and keeps quite close to it. But how well I remember when the first French photoplays began to come. Though unintelligent in some respects, the photography and subject-matter of many of them made one think of that painter of gentle out-of-door scenes, Jean Charles Cazin. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... And thus so well-keyed was he, that he expressed clearly his key. He had no flare for anything. He was that rare individual, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... incredible that this shaken spirit before him could be John Leaver—Leaver, whom, as he had told his wife, he had often envied his perfect self-command, his supposed steadiness of pulse, his whole strong, cool personality, unaffected by issues such as always keyed Burns himself up to a tremendous tension, making him pale with the strain. "Leaver's made of steel wires," had been his description of his friend to Ellen. Well, the steel wires were stretched and broken, now, no doubt of that. The question was whether they could ever ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... that night Shorty, strolling down Main Street, aware of many curious eyes, his ears keyed tensely, heard a faint and distant explosion. Thirty seconds later there was a second, sufficiently loud to attract the attention of others on the street. Then came a third, so violent that it rattled the windows and brought the ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... show catalogue to call Jan's attention when his turn came, and kept up direct telepathic communication with him during the whole operation. This, combined with the Master's studious care in handling—a business of which he had had considerable experience—served to keep Jan keyed up to concert-pitch while in ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... a sharp twinge of regret. He had resigned himself to this, and had made his preparations, but he hated to leave Barra to someone else. Of course, the man had no chance now. The disturbance he had keyed himself to make if he were hit with a distorter would be heard by every scholar in Ganiadur, and by ...
— The Weakling • Everett B. Cole
... things, he was not confident. He was supremely conscious of the precariousness of his situation. Though unperturbed by the footfalls of the chance pedestrian, he was as keyed up and sensitive and ready to be startled as any timorous deer. He was aware of the possibility of other intelligences prowling about in the darkness—intelligences similar to his own in movement, ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... to watch, a game in which those high school boys, keyed to a keen tension, were really outdoing themselves, performing more than once feats which would have been creditable to professionals. It was the kind of baseball that makes the blood tingle, the heart throb, and leaves many an enthusiastic spectator husky from howling. The strain ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... out Carmichael's first opportunity came. He discovered Herbeck and his daughter leaning against the rail. He watched them uneasily, wondering how he might approach without startling her. At last he keyed ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... to Alice's door and knocked, then stood there waiting for her response, keyed up for the scene he knew would ensue the moment he crossed the threshold. The next instant, in response to her voice, he opened the door and entered. To his amazement Alice raised her eyes ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... morsels,—and the bounty and providence it suggests. Or the chopper in the woods,—the prostrate tree, the white new chips scattered about, his easy triumph over the cold, coat hanging to a limb, and the clear, sharp ring of his axe. The woods are rigid and tense, keyed up by the frost, and resound like a stringed instrument. Or the road-breakers, sallying forth with oxen and sleds in the still, white world, the day after the storm, to restore the lost track and demolish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... see what Minor[20] well enough calls the hot and cold passions. Karl is a hotspur whose emotions are always keyed up to the highest pitch; he is never calm and is incapable of sober reasoning. His boiling blood and his insensate ambition are his only oracles. We may say that his motives are lofty, but in trying to set the world ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... and about the walls of his apartment are hooks to hold his fishing-tackle, whips, spurs, and a favourite fowling-piece, curiously wrought and inlaid, which he inherits from his grandfather. He has, also, a couple of old single-keyed flutes, and a fiddle which he has repeatedly patched and mended himself, affirming it to be a veritable Cremona, though I have never heard him extract a single note from it that was not enough to make ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... these services is keyed to that same idea. It is a note of "joy." There are indeed strongly marked features of penitence and need. We come before God in our worship as those who are sinful and needy. We ever make approach through the sacrifice of the Cross. But we come also as those who have confidence ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... are," he told her. "When you lived under a daily strain you were probably keyed to a sort of harmony with it. Now you are getting more normal. Life is a thing ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... has already been noted earlier in these memoirs, Mr. Bryce, when occasion required it, for all his huge bulk, could move as agilely and noiselessly as that pre-eminently silent animal, the domestic cat. He had been so keyed up by the emotional stresses of the last few days that he threw himself into the adventure with all the zest of a schoolboy just being introduced into romance. The man was dodging through the trees a hundred yards or so ahead, and there was something ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... keyed to feverish excitement, he often plays over piano scores of every number that appeared on the program. Then he may lie awake all night, worrying over two possible tempi in which he might have taken some passage—shadings in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower |
