"Tense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... succeeds to revolution. All that I say in this paper is in a paulo-past tense. The Monterey of last year[2] exists no longer. A huge hotel has sprung up in the desert by the railway. Three sets of diners sit down successively to table. Invaluable toilettes figure along the beach and between the live ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Semitic language, the ancient language of the Jews, and that in which the Old Testament is written, the words of which, as indeed of others of the same stock, are derived from triliteral roots, and the verb in which has no present tense, only a past and a future, convertible, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... three in the morning, he was so tense and animate that he heard the soft, swift tread of a Chinese in the hall and the faintest possible rustle of a paper thrust under his door. He waited a moment before turning on the light.... It was another missive from ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... you, you young chump! Go on." A moment of silence, while Mrs. McChesney's face smiled and glowed like a girl's as she listened to the voice of her son. Then suddenly glow and smile faded. She grew tense. Her head, that had been leaning so carelessly on the hand that held the receiver, came up with a jerk. "Jock McChesney!" she gasped, ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... young body was strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the delight of ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... and standing on the terrace was a tall, thin man wearing a light coat over evening dress. He looked pale, gaunt, and unshaven, and although the regard of his light eyes was almost dreamy, there was something very tense in ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the reader must indulge me in a long parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already told. Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the English language is very ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense silence. ...
— A Filbert Is a Nut • Rick Raphael
... what a mess I made of it! No, Sally, there's no such person. Now I shall have to speak the truth, and then I shall have to go away from you, and it will all be spoiled...." But Sally interposes on the tense speech, and sound of growing ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... results of trade. That he is not a business man—and a successful one—my position here at the present time is a sufficient proof," she said triumphantly. "And I must also protest," she added, with a faint sigh, "against Mr. Brimmer being spoken of in the past tense by anybody. It is painfully premature ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... more. She arose, the tears blinding her, and slipped quietly out. She had seen Jean looking over the gallery railing with serious eyes, and Stuart standing by a pillar with a group of fellow-students, his face pale and tense. She dared not risk meeting them or anyone else she knew. She hurried down the stairs and out along the street struggling for her self-control. Half consciously her footsteps turned in the direction of that little street where she had seen the girl that looked like Eppie. The ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... Spartan. Every outward chance, so many an anxious heart told itself, favoured the oft-victorious giant; but then,—and here came reason for a true Hellene,—"the gods could not suffer so fair a man to meet defeat." The noonday sun beat down fiercely. The tense stillness was now and then broken by the bawling of a swarthy hawker thrusting himself amid the spectators with cups and a jar of sour wine. There was a long rest. The trainers came forward again and dusted the two remaining champions with sand that they might ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... kick-off, and Tom relieved Gafferty. The coaches raged and urged, the rival captains scolded and implored and the quarters danced around and acted like wild-men. And then, suddenly, the ball was seized, a whistle blew and it was all over. And the panting players, tense of face, dripping with perspiration, drew apart to view each other at first scowlingly and then with slowly spreading grins, taking toll of their own injuries ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sat there for several tense minutes, each one almost holding his breath in the effort to train his ears so as not to miss the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... a low, tense voice, "you love Lola! I know you do. Then will you, for her sake, reply to me openly and frankly? Have you in these past few days met a bald-headed Italian named Luigi ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... The tense eagerness in his voice might have warned her, were it not that she was shocked by the bitterness which welled up in her heart. She was amazed by this introspective glimpse; it alarmed her; she must convince herself, at all costs, that she ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... his lips when there came the sound of a chair being quickly pushed back, and Oliver stood beside Margaret. His eyes were flashing; his right shirt-cuff was rolled back, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers. Every muscle of his body was tense with anger. Margaret's quick instinct took in the situation at a glance. She saw Oliver's wrath ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... throb came up from below, instead of the swift thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced the decks; along the port railings on each deck soldiers were clustered thickly, looking out across the grey, tossing sea to a winking light that flashed and twinkled ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... great circumambient Power grew upon him at each instant, sacramentalized, it seemed, by the solemn evening light, and evoked by this tense ardour of half a million souls, and focused behind him in one ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... of girls. Girls in smocks of "artistic" shades—bilious yellow-green, or magenta-tending violet; girls with hair that, red, black or blonde, is usually either arranged in a wildly natural bird's-nest mass, or boldly clubbed after the fashion of Joan of Arc and Mrs. Vernon Castle; girls with tense little faces, slender arms and an astonishing capacity as to cigarettes. And men who, for the most part, are too busy with their ideals to cut their hair; men whose collars may be low and rolling, or high and bound with black silk stocks after the ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... change and sport and pure air, he told himself, but it was hardly to be expected that he should do more. He yawned, dozed, and surveyed his line without curiosity; beside him sat "Mistah Breckenridge," every muscle of him tense, and a light in his eyes that ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... flickered and went out I grasped the shotgun which I had laid at my side and actually turned the muzzle in the direction of the now invisible entrance, my thumb on one of the hammers, ready to cock the piece, my breath suspended, my muscles rigid and tense. But later I laid down the weapon with a sense of shame and mortification. What did I fear, and why?—I, to whom the night ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... Kinnaird, lying flat down, held out his hand, and in a moment or two Weston and the girl stood with the others close beneath the rock. He did not know how they got there. He was quivering all through, and the perspiration of tense effort dripped from him. While he stood there gasping, the packet of provisions, which had apparently rested for a few moments among the gravel dislodged by his efforts to climb up, rolled down the slope, and he watched it rush downward until he turned his eyes away. It was ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... her what I think of her," breathed Jane in a low, tense voice, shaking a clenched first "Oh, wouldn't I ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few days before publication. On the other hand—but this is a Note, not a ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... me quitaba a m esa nia; there are two idiomatic uses in this phrase: 1. cualquiera in an ironic sense nadie (a frequent use); 2. quitaba quitara, a substitution of tense often found in the main clause of a contrary to fact, ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of shacks is simply that of the forest: inept the woodsman who would not recognize it at once. The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have risen ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... evening—for he did not intend to expose himself primarily and his men in the second place, to the accurate gun of Red Jim in broad daylight—was a comfortable stretch in which to make the journey to the shack on the mountain-side. Like a good general, he kept the minds of his followers from growing tense by deftly turning the talk, on the way, to other topics, as they swung off the east trail towards Glosterville and journeyed due north over the rolling foothills. There was only one chance in three that he could have deceived the girl by his first direction, but that chance ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... driven, according to the opinion of Dr. Lowth: at the same time it may be observed, 1. that this is in many cases only an ellipsis of the letter n at the end of the word; as froze, for frozen; wove, for woven; spoke, for spoken; and that then the participle accidentally becomes similar to the past tense: 2. that the language seems gradually tending to omit the letter n in other kind of words for the sake of euphony; as housen is become houses; eyne, eyes; thine, thy, &c. and in common conversation, the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... away her tears, she fixed upon her father-in-law eyes full of tears, vindictive, squinting with wrath; her face and neck were red and tense, and she was shouting at ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... closely by Careni-Amori and Olga Obosky, and at some distance by the whispering, gesticulating Jews. The great soprano was profoundly agitated. Obosky, a pace or two behind her, was tense and silent. Her head was slightly bent. There was a strange, dog-like expression in her eyes as they regarded the back of ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the shut-in staircase and carefully unlocked its narrow door. But by the time I had reached the fourth floor, and unlocked, with the same key, the only other door that had a streak of light under it, I had gained a certain degree of tense composure born of the desperate nature of the occasion. The calmness with which I pushed open the door proved this—a calmness which made the movement noiseless, which was the reason, I suppose, why I was enabled to suppress the shriek that rose to my lips as I saw that the room had occupants, ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... German; this language, also, having its grammar and its pronunciation, to be conquered or acquired only by persistence in irksome exercise—an error in a form being as entirely and simply an error as a mistake in a tense, and an ill-drawn line as reprehensible as a ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... this as he knelt in the stern of his little craft and plied the paddle slowly and with infinite caution, his every nerve tense, and sight and hearing strained to catch any sound of movement on the rapidly nearing point. Were it white men only that they were seeking to elude, he would have felt far less apprehension, but he recognized that in the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... write a letter. One couldn't write out there, though it was so nice in other respects: the table refused to stand firm. They too then had pretexts of letters between them—I judged this a token that the situation was tense. It was the only one nevertheless that Linda gave: like Archie she was young enough to carry it off. She had been used to seeing us always together, yet she made no comment on my having come over without him. I waited in vain for her to speak of this—it would only be natural; ...
— Louisa Pallant • Henry James
... different from their present significance. Among such lapses in syntax we find the slight confusion of tenses in the first stanza, caused in the poet's mind by the necessity of making a rhyme for France, though this might have been obviated by writing "stands" for "stood" and using the present tense throughout. The necessities of rhyme troubled Drayton not a little: he must pronounce "Agincourt" as it is written to rhyme with "sort," which, by the way, is not a perfect rhyme for "fort" in the sixth stanza, and "great" does not rhyme with "seat" nor "feat"; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... human reasoning, there was no earthly necessity for any delay upon the part of the attacking Apaches, and yet, for full an hour longer, they maneuvered and reconnoitered, without striking a blow. Despite the tense condition of the lad's nerves, he began to grow drowsy and weary at the prolonged delay, and had the attack been deferred a short time longer, he would have ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... had happened, Bob seized a coil of rope, made one end fast to the stern of his boat, grasped the coil in his right hand, and, tense and expectant, scanned the sea for the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... standing radiant before us, illuminated and transfigured by the halo streaming round him. A huge man, towering far above his fellows; with Herculean shoulders, deep chest, broad back, sturdy neck, brawny arms, and massive fists; a being with vast muscle and tense nerve; of choicest make, and finest tone and temper,—robust and fine, bulky and sinewy, ponderous and agile, stalwart and elastic; a hammer to give, and a rock to receive blows; with the light tread of the deer, and the fell paw of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... William Perry Peters, and I feel a poignant sense Of grief that I'm unable to employ the present tense; But Providence disposes, be our scheming what it may, And disposed of Mr. Peters in a ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... was growing uncomfortable. Amy kept casting frightened glances at her sister's white, tense face. "Oh, dear," she sighed, finally, "if this had only been in a story it wouldn't have ended so dreadfully. Something nice would have happened just at the last minute to make up for ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... detention, retentive, pertinacity, pertinent, continent, abstinence, continuous, retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means stretching: tend, tender, tendon, tendril, tendency, extend, subtend, distend, pretend, contend, attendant, tense, tension, pretence, intense, intensive, ostensible, tent, tenterhook, portent, attention, intention, tenuous, attenuate, extenuate, antenna, tone, tonic, standard. The form of the key-syllable for the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... He spoke in a tense whisper, so low that I could hardly understand him with his mouth against my ear, so full of terror that the tone of it startled ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... and its occupant after the murder. The actor had long before become again Shakespeare's Othello. We had seen him tortured, racked, and played upon by the malignant Iago; seen him, while perplexed in the extreme, irascible, choleric, sullen, morose; but now, as with tense nerves we waited for the catastrophe, he was truly formidable. The great tragedy moved on. Desdemona's piteous entreaties had been choked in her slim throat, the smothering pillow held in place with merciless strength. Then at Emilia's disconcerting knock and demand for admission, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... will not be certain until the chancelleries of Europe have given up their secrets, if certain then; but, whatever the motive, all the world outside Germany has agreed that had she willed she could have averted the fatal ending of those tense days ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... finished the sentence, all about them Arrillians had prostrated themselves in the rather dirty street, covering their faces with their hands, lying face down. The Earthmen hesitated a moment, and a priest of Arrill appeared as though from nowhere, a wicked scimitar-like weapon in his hand and a face tense ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable
... watch, saw what had become of his time-values (he had taken hours for minutes—not, as in other tense situations, minutes for hours) and the strange air of the streets was but the weak, the sullen flush of a dawn in which everything was still locked up. His choked appeal from his own open window had been the sole note of life, and he could but break ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... of relief that her craze—if it was a craze—went to the visionary side of her own unworthiness, and was not due to any knowledge of his misdemeanors, as she might think them. "Do not speak. I have to tell you. I had forgotten it," she went on to say in the same tense, compressed manner—the manner of one who has a task to get through, and has gathered all her strength for the effort, leaving none to be squandered in emotion—"I was so happy in these last days I had forgotten it. Now I have remembered, and we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... man, his voice a tense whisper in the musty cell. "I mean that right now you are practically dead. You may not know it, but you are. You walk into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge of the natives outside of ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... tones—a woman's voice! At the same time he felt the bow of the canoe pulled in against the bank. Before he could recover sufficiently from his surprise to speak she had stepped aboard and he could hear her adjusting a cushion beneath her knees. Then came her tense whispered warning: ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... check showed the crew at their stations, the torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his teeth. His face was tense, but whether with fear ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... you, we will skip hntal, and also for the present verbs of the first conjugation, and proceed to the second. Belle, I will now select for you to conjugate the prettiest verb in Armenian; not only of the second, but also of all the four conjugations; that verb is siriel. Here is the present tense: siriem, siries, sire, siriemk, sirek, sirien. You observe that it runs on just in the same manner as hntal, save and except that e is substituted for a; and it will be as well to tell you that almost the only difference between the second, third, and fourth conjugations, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the present tense; He lends you in the conditional mood; Keeps you in the subjunctive; And is apt to ruin you in ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... happens at the expense of the less interesting parts of the design, the schedule, and other things deemed important in the {Real World}. See also {creeping featurism}, {second-system effect}, {tense}. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... him, upon the dais whereon sat the King, with the Earl of Mackworth standing at his right hand, the Comte de Vermoise upon the left, and the others ranged around and behind the throne. It was with the same tense feeling of dreamy unreality that Myles walked slowly up the length of the hall, measuring his steps by those of Gascoyne. Suddenly he felt Lord George Beaumont touch him lightly upon the arm, and almost instinctively ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... almost stunned. The blood rushed in a tumultuous flood to his thin cheeks, then receded, leaving his face mottled red and white. His steel-gray eyes suddenly glowed like hot metal. There was a moment of tense silence; then he said, his voice steady and controlled, his manner stiff but not without dignity, "Pray do not allow that to discompose you. She is ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... More than once had Bud Lee felt that he was falling only to catch his balance and come back at Trevors; more than once had Trevors gone reeling backward, smashing into the wall. Many a time did Melvin count his money won and lost. And Carson, crouching now, tense, eager, a little fearful, muttered ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his eyes from Van Meter after his first assault they rested on the face of Kate Ransom, her magnificent figure tense, rigid, her cheeks scarlet, her blue eyes flashing with tears of excitement. She was stirred to her soul's depths, and no figure in all the throbbing crowd gave to the speaker such inspiring response. Her face flashed back ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the rich young voice of our passenger, whom we'd half forgotten in our tense scanning of the horizon. Charlie and I both turned to him together in surprise—and his face certainly betrayed the confusion of one who has let something ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... enclosure came an answer, a second neighing, deeper and fuller. The swampy ground of the enclosure shook, powerful hoofs scattered the stones, to right and left and a black stallion appeared at full gallop. The tense neck carried a magnificent head, the muscles lay like ropes under the glossy skin. As he caught sight of the mare, his eyes began to flash. He stopped and stretched out his neck as if he were going to yawn, raised his upper lip and showed his teeth. ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... not half a dozen yards away, and was coming nearer. No one but Virginia suspected evil. She alone had felt the thrill of a murderer's nerves, the tense spring of his muscles. She alone guessed what the roll of ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... thought folks looked down on me for it, even when they didn't seem to intend to do it. But I guess it isn't so bad as I thought when I first began to notice it. Do you suppose it is?" His voice was suddenly tense with personal interest in the question which had ceased ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... swerved toward me. She had quite taken the breath out of him. I knew just what to do in that moment of time she had gained. I leaped to meet her, catching her about the waist and holding on hand and foot—yes, by my feet; I could hold on by them as readily as by my hands. I could feel in my tense grip the pull of the hair as her skin and her muscles ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... divers paths asunder. Like as cranes Deserting frozen Strymon for the streams Of Nile, when winter falls, in casual lines Of wedge-like figures (34) first ascend the sky; But when in loftier heaven the southern breeze Strikes on their pinions tense, in loose array Dispersed at large, in flight irregular, They wing their journey onwards. Stronger winds With day returning blew the navy on, Past Lissus' shelter which they vainly sought, Till bare to northern blasts, Nymphaeum's port, But safe in southern, gave the fleet repose, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Harriet Prescott Spofford, is a work of unique quality, being really a poem in the guise of a prose novel. The thought is tense and sublimated, and the style glowing, musical and polished. There is abundant invention in the story, and nothing of common-place and indolent imitation which in the case of ordinary raconteurs contributes so largely to swell the bulk of results. The narrative fascinates one, but ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... is by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hardwon public liberties and private interests, in the irresistible surge of their pugnacity and the tense pre-occupation of ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... moment of swift fear. And then, the mighty roar of the waters; the mad plunging of the scow between the towering walls of rock; the set, tense face of Vermilion as he stared into the gloom; the laboured breathing of the scowmen as they strained at the sweeps, veering the scow to the right, or to the left, as the rod of the pilot indicated; the splendid battle of it; ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... ago, (I am speaking of the 25th of March, A. D. 1839, in the present tense,) I succeeded in persuading my father to gratify my predilection for the sea, by putting me on board of the Gentile, under the particular care of Captain Smith, to try one voyage—so I became the ship's cousin. Contrary to the predictions of my friends, I ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... was added to Grant's lengthening score of brilliant victories; and again, as at Donelson and at Vicksburg, he had been the instrument of relieving a tense oppression of anxiety that had settled upon the nation. Sherman, with two corps, was at once sent to the relief of Knoxville; but Longstreet, having heard of Bragg's defeat, made an unsuccessful assault and retreated into Virginia. By the administration in Washington, and by the people ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... coals of the little fire to sizzle and smoke. The cry of the wolves had floated—but this new cry seemed to hurl itself through the night—a terrifying crescendo of noise that sounded at once a challenge and wail. For a full minute after the sound ceased the boy sat tense and motionless, staring wide-eyed beyond the fire, while behind him, in the farthest corner of the tent the malamutes huddled and whined. Then he shook himself and laughed. "Some howl!" he muttered, "I bet they heard that in Ten Bow. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... thoughts would run over the future, dwelling, with a tense realistic sharpness, on every detail which lay before him—the arrangements with his locum tenens, the interview with the bishop, the parting with the rectory. It even occurred to him to wonder what must be done with Martha ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ennuye beyond my usual tense of that yawning verb, which I am always conjugating; and I don't find that society much mends the matter. I am too lazy to shoot myself—and it would annoy Augusta, and perhaps * *; but it would be a good thing ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... She became tense again. She heard the slip-slip of sandals In the corridor, a key turn in the lock. The door opened, and in the dim light she ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... at his desk in the rear drawing a cheque to pay for some cotton he had bought from a farmer. Dixie walked straight toward him, but Henley did not see her till she was quite close, then he was struck by the unusual pallor and tense gravity of her face. He sprang up at once and ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... strange, tense voice, "you are mad. You do not know what you ask. Virginia is not for such as you. Tell me that she does not know of your feelings toward her. Tell me that she does not reciprocate your love. Tell me the truth, man." Professor Maxon seized von Horn roughly by both ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of her voice, tense and authoritative, came through the slit of the window and thrilled him. 'All is well now, but I will send you ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... said Margaret at last, turning to him, and speaking more quietly, but still in a kind of tense way, 'then, when 'Lias wor took bad, yo know, Davy, I had my boys. Did yo ever hear tell o' what came to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... prophet may Adopt their graphic present tense, I would remark—and so forestall A truth they'll never dare to trench on— There is no Hindenburg at all, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... impatiently, but made no answer. From the moment Hanson had spoken he had assumed an air of immobile and concentrated attention, tense as that of an Indian listening and sighting in a forest, or of a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... Bob the atmosphere was tense with excitement. The very calm of the evening was unnatural. He felt as though lightnings should be flashing, ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... for a moment or two, but stood tense and strained. His eyes, his whole attitude showed excitement, ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... secondary stresses with an intensity of hatred and bitterness that takes shape in a following series of peculiar falling rhythm waves, each one of which has a foam-covered crest 'white as the bitten lip of hate.' This rhythm, curling, hissing, tense, topful of venom, Alecto's serpents coiling and twisting through it, makes one of the most awful passages ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... as before in the maelstrom of air back of the ship. But the muffled roar was changed, punctured with a machine-gun's familiar rattle, and the stabbing flashes from Blake's ship before he threw it out of the other's path were a song of joy to the tense nerves of the men ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... while women embraced in their tears. The tense strain was over, for willing hands had clutched the lines after Paul's weight had brought the wild runaway to a staggering halt; and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... appropriate case, and as well as of, to, and from, we should have a case for deatas rumah, on top of the house. So of verbs: kallo saya buli jalan, If I could walk: this may be termed the preter-imperfect tense of the subjunctive or potential mood of the verb jalan; whereas it is in fact a sentence of which jalan, buli, etc. are constituent words. It is improper, I say, to talk of the case of a noun which does not change its termination, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... possible that she was led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp, which has often misled artists not of the very first class—the chance of an easy contrast. The light-hearted, light-minded Erfeuil was to set off the tense and serious Nelvil—a type again, as he was evidently intended to be, but a somewhat new type of Englishman. She was a devotee of Rousseau, and she undoubtedly had the egregious Bomston before her. But, though her sojourn in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of a shock to realise that an event which has been dreaded for days has at last arrived. During that tense moment wherein the blue-stockinged Briggs had cuddled the ball into position on the tee Clint had experienced just such a shock. Only yesterday the Claflin game had been of the future, only this morning he had still viewed it uneasily as a ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... these circumstances the relations between Great Britain and the United States had become tense and strained. The provincial officers at Quebec and the Indian partisans at Detroit quickly echoed the mood of the home government. In the event of a new war, England could again command the savage allies and ravage the ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... at Von Gerhard in the light of the street lamp I saw a tense, drawn look about the little group of muscles which show when the teeth are set hard. When he spoke those muscles had ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... so quiet, and I had such a tense feeling inside of me that I couldn't say a word, and didn't want to anyway. The fingers of one of Mr. Black's hands were sort of drumming on the desk, and he was looking at something in the very front of the Bible in the place where people nearly always write their names, ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... landmarks, in the course of a journey, are more frequently observed and noted as landmarks, when looking back along the journey, than when actually passing them. They belong generically to the past tense; one rarely says, "This is a landmark"; usually "That ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... averted from the single tell-tale sauce-pan upon the fire, over which Madge Hildreth had bent with sudden color, fell to bustling about with a queer lump in his throat and talking ambiguously of Aunt Ellen's Christmas orders, painfully conscious that the girl's dark face had grown pitifully white and tense and that Roger's wan little face was glowing. And when the fire was damped by the Doctor himself, and his Christmas guests hustled into dazed, protesting readiness, the Doctor deftly muffled the thin little fellow ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... not fired again, could not. With a quick, frantic wrench and twist Chris had knocked the gun from his hand, and it had slithered away, now lost in the bunching smoke. But Istafiev's other hand, steel-ribbed with tense muscles, had darted like a snake into the American's throat, and under that iron, relentless grip Chris was weakening. His head was whirling; the old wound throbbing waves of nausea through him. Desperately he tried to struggle loose, flailing with his legs—but useless. ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... reply to this; and for another long minute Susan sat tense and motionless, watching the boy's face. Then, with almost a guilty look over ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... with one eye at the slight opening gained a glimpse of the lighted room beyond. A moment, motionless, he stared in on the scene; then straightened up, and, with revolver in hand, signalled to the others to close in closer. They stood there for a tense instant, poised and eager; then the doors were flung crashing back, and they leaped recklessly forward, out of the darkness into the light. It was a furious fight—sharp, merciless, uncompromising. The thieves, startled, desperate, were hurled back by the first rush against the further ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... you when I can speak of it. But it was not wrong in itself, or in the eyes of God or man!' The old woman said not a word. No word was needed, for had she not already expressed her belief? But Stephen felt her relief in the glad pressure of her finger-tips. In a voice less strained and tense ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... face, and the dead weight of sorrow settled like lead, the heavier, upon his heart. Too well he knew the dangers of the desert. He could almost read Gardley's fears in the white, drawn look about his lips, the ashen circles under his eyes, the tense, strained pose of his whole figure. Gardley's mind was urging ahead of his steed, and his body could not relax. He was anxious to go a little faster, yet his judgment knew it would not do, for his horse would play out before he could get another. They ate their corn bread in the saddle, ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... over the whole abdomen; cardialgia, nausea, vomiting of all solid and liquid aliments, and during the empty state of the stomach, violent efforts to vomit occurring at irregular intervals; abdomen tense and tympanitic; violent intermittent pain along the course of the intestines; constipation; sensation of fatigue and lassitude in the lumbar region and in the extremities; dragging pains in the inter-scapular region; extinction ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... he said, in a low, shaking voice. "I see they mean it. There can be no possible doubt of that now." Then suddenly the note of his voice changed. It became tense, vibrating, eager. "What's that?" he said, and again, "What's that?" ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... might be killed at any moment. But great as the strain must have been, Spugg went up and down to his office and in and out of the club without a tremor. The situation gave him a new importance in our eyes, something tense. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and answered in a shrill, tense voice: "I'm not Thumbkin. I'm a foundling. I don't belong to anybody. I never had any father or mother or nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so. They stood right there—two of them; and one told the ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... came the sound of a shot. Downey straightened, and for the space of minutes stood tense as a pointer. The sound was not repeated—and swiftly the officer of the ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... bench, peering over the shoulders of the crowd. Prince Ferdinand William Otto saw him, and bent forward. "There he is!" he said, in a tense tone. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... soldiers, laborers, servants, white faces, black faces, yellow faces, brown faces, straight hair, curly hair, and kinky hair, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Indians, negroes, and many mixtures, every one eager and tense, and every eye bent upon Paul who stood, back to the gate, holding the sword in his hand, but unconscious ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... moment had gone, she rose and walked down the aisle. It was very hard to go away tonight. There had been all the time the fear that what happened the night before would happen again—that she would not see Howie, after all. That made her so tense that she was exhausted now. And then "munitions"—and "scrap-heap." Perhaps it was because of all this that tonight her moment had been so brief. Only for an instant Howie's smile had brought her into life. It was gone now. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of which had made him shudder. When he noticed the crowd, he gasped. He recovered from his astonishment quickly, however. He opened his mantle, showing his gaunt, powerful form. He raised his head and faced the crowd. His face, strong and sunburned, was tense and drawn for a moment; then it relaxed. Deep lines, expressing severe pain, were furrowed in ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... boring a hole with the toe of his boot down through the soft grass sod, while he seemed to study the cobbler's handiwork. After a few moments of tense silence, he looked ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... year again showed the value of the United Nations in bringing about the peaceful adjustment of tense international controversies. In Indonesia and in Palestine the efforts of the United Nations have put a stop to bloodshed and paved the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... she repeated in the same tense whisper, "you must—oh, you must! I've heard he has killed a man ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... you let me have it," she said, soothingly; and by dint of further coaxing, she pulled the money from the old lady's tense fingers. There were nine dollars in crisp new bills. Amanda sat looking at them ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... once, was revealed to me the cause and object of all this gaggle, and confusion, and outcry. It was revealed to the crowd, too, that stood about me, and, in the revelation, the noise of its mouthing went off and faded, till a tense silence reigned and the murmur of ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... fellow to utter the slightest sound, and thus locked together, the three went down in a bunch under the impetus of the sudden attack, the jailer being undermost. The hard pavement seemed to fairly ring with the violent impact of the man's skull upon it, and the next instant Dick felt the fellow's tense muscles relax as though the violence of the blow had either partially or wholly stunned him, whereupon the youngster, still acting upon an impulse that seemed to emanate from somewhere outside himself, pushed Phil on one side, flung himself in a kneeling posture upon the prostrate jailer's ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... face. A second he remained thus; then, going swiftly to the door, he opened it, and stood listening, followed by the surprised glances of the assembled company. But it needed not the warning cry with which he turned, to afford them the explanation of his odd behaviour. In the moment's tense silence that had followed his sudden opening of the door they had caught from without the distant fall of ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... bewildered for a moment, and stood in the gateway leaning on his rifle, his coonskin cap thrust back on his brown hair, his bright, steady gray eyes concentrated as he listened. His tall, lithe figure in his buckskin hunting shirt and leggings, the habitual garb of the frontiersmen, grew tense and gave an intimation of gathering all its forces for the defensive as he noted how the aspect of the station differed from its wonted guise. Every house of the assemblage of little log cabins stood open; here and there in the misty air, for there had been a swift, short spring shower, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... have endeavoured to deserve well of their country, by writing honor and labor for honour and labour, red for read in the preter-tense, sais for says, repete tor repeat, explane for explain, or declame for declaim. Of these it may be said, that as they have done no good they have done little harm; both because they have innovated little, and because ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... his pencil again. In the glow of the little electric lantern I saw his lean young face tense with the fierce effort of his thought. His pencil raced across the little pad, setting down symbols that I could ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... whole hall full of people held their breath in a tense uncertainty, because it was hard to believe in the broadcloth and fine linen in which he was clothed, but the brilliant hair, the ruffling crests, and the mocking, eery smile made them all certain by the second breath, which they gave forth in one long masculine hurrah mingled with ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in tense readiness to dodge back out of danger, Carmena gazed over at her late pursuers with serene fearlessness. Her rich contralto voice, no longer harsh from thirst, rang mockingly ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... orange yellow, 2 to 3 inches broad, fleshy, soft, depressed, often eccentric, with the stem between centre and margin, and wavy, somewhat tomentose and involute at the margin. Stem 2 inches long, stuffed, and then hollow, somewhat incurved and unequal, yellowish. Gills decurrent, tense, and straight, repeatedly dividing by pairs from below upward (dichotomous) and crowded, often crisped at base, orange color. This species grows in woods, and is often found there during the months of autumn. ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... coin on to number nine. Ann followed the circlings of the ball with a curious tense anxiety. She wished desperately that the ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... exactness. Stress upon basal movements is not only compensating but is of higher therapeutic value against the disorders of the accessory system; it constitutes the best core or prophylactic for fidgets and tense states, and directly develops poise, control, and psycho-physical equilibrium. Even when contractions reach choreic intensity the best treatment is to throw activities down the scale that measures the difference between primary and secondary ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... and his face went white. He compressed his lips with an effort and choked back the words. Leverage, leaning forward in tense eagerness—knowing the verbal trap that Carroll had been ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... thunder of his hoofs when he made his first mad charge. She saw again, with marvellous fidelity, the whole colour-scheme just before the death of the big, brave beast: the huge arena in its unrivalled setting of mountain, sea and sky; the eager multitude, tense with expectancy; the silver-mounted bridles and trappings of the horses; the many-hued capes of the capadors; the gaily-dressed banderilleros, poising their beribboned barbs; the red flag and long, slender, flashing sword of the cool and ever watchful matador; ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... was nothing compared with the tempest that the principal had aroused in Eleanor. The latter flushed, then turned perfectly white with rage. Still standing, she reached down, picked up a book from her desk and took from it a paper. "This," she said, in a low tense voice, "is the paper you wish to see. I do not choose to let you see it, therefore ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... thinner and paler than yesterday. There is a feverish eagerness in his eyes, a tremulousness in his voice. The doctor is to be up presently, and Grandon is persuaded to wait. After the first rejoicing is over, Grandon will not allow him to talk business, but taking up Goethe reads to him. The tense, worn face softens. Now and then he drops into a little doze. He puts his hand out to Grandon with a grateful smile, and so the two sit until nearly ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... thatch, tingled and burned and throbbed. Every faculty, too, seemed to stand straight up like a sentinel at its post, staring into dust clouds through which rode an approaching enemy. Eyes watched, ears listened, brain was hideously alert. The whole body kept itself tense, stiff, wary. For Valentine had a secret conviction at this moment that he was about to be attacked. By what? He was hardly master of himself enough to wonder. His thoughts no longer ran free. They crept like paralyzed things about his mind, and that despite the unnatural ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... fall) would now correctly describe what, at so small a distance from the days of Luther and Calvin, may be supposed to have been the feeling among the Polish Unitarians; whereas Dr. Pusey's jacet (lies low, in the present tense) does as certainly partake somewhat of the grandiloquent. That no "boast," however, was intended, becomes probable, when we consider that the distich was designed to convey a feeling of reverence towards Socinus rather than ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... was neat and cool, and all the cook had to do was to furnish dishes and hot water for tea. There was very little jesting, and what there was of it fell to the lot of Coldfield and the Frenchman. The spirit in them all was tense. Given his way, the admiral would have gone out that very ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... They separated and approached her from either side, crouching low and snarling. Li Wan had struggled with the wolf-dog for mastery from the time she toddled among the skin-bales of the teepee, and she knew a crisis was at hand. Bash had halted, his muscles stiff and tense for the spring; Olo was yet creeping into ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... and the changing tones mingled with the blue wreaths that ascended from the sanctuary in a fragrant cloud, lingering over the congregation. The celebrant offered the bread and wine to Our Father in Heaven. And all this took time; the children were tired by their tense concentration; their prayers had all been said two and three times over; and they were now vacantly waiting and longing, looking at their clothes, at the stained-glass windows in the choir or St. Anne in her crimson cloak, or counting ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the tense mob about the party. These courteous and gentle Japanese had suddenly been transformed into a fierce, ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... right of my two friends, a little more awake, perhaps, than they, and so I was the first to perceive a little shaking of the soil, and knew that some one was coming down upon our hiding. We lay tense, our breathing caught at the chest, imposing on ourselves a stillness that swelled the noises of nature round about us—the wind, the river, the distant call of the crows—to a most clamorous ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... replied. "I deny nothing of what I have said, and your attitude has made me believe less in your religion than ever. Why"—and his voice became tense and bitter—"I'm willing to allow my religion to be tested by this election. I have not uttered one wrong word about you. I have done nothing to defame your character, in spite of what has passed. And yet you have sneered at my 'ignorant atheism and blatant unbelief.' Is that religion? Is that ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... a listening, tense, resentful inhabitant of the castle. He held up the key of the room in which ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... inside of the door with her eyes wide, glancing back and forth. She took one slow step forward, then another. Then she quickened. She moved through the room looking, then putting out a slow, hesitant hand to touch very gently. Tense, as if she were waiting for the warning not to touch, Martha finally caressed the hair of a ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Latina, or would loiter for hours and hours along the Appian Way. It took him weeks to summon energy to visit S. Pietro in Vincoli, although he knew that Michelangelo's "Moses" was there, and though he was weary with longing to see it. All the tense chords of Ibsen's nature were loosened. His soul was recovering, through a long and blissful convalescence, from the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... tense, listening, her fingers spread toward the stops to push them in and close the organ and be gone before they arrived if they contemplated coming in, for she had no mind to talk to them just now. Then coldly, harshly out from the cessation of great ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... broad upper intercostal spaces, an interesting feature, due to the tense and rigid nature of the muscles closing the intervals, and their large admixture of fibrous tissue, was sometimes noticed. The bullet, especially if passing obliquely, was apt to cut a slit in the muscles far exceeding in size the opening ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... another point also. Although some manufacturers in preparing synopses of their stories for the trade journals write them in the past tense, it is always advisable to tell your story in the present tense. In the scenario, you must follow this custom, and in the synopsis you should ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a moment tense and motionless. Then he turned around. The woman who stood upon the threshold of the house, framed with a little cascade of drooping roses, sought for his eyes almost hungrily. He realised how she must be feeling. A dormant vein of cynicism parted his lips as he held her fingers for ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... afterward, went over and talked with Aunt Ruth before passing out and going round to his side of the divided house. But so long as he remained in sight, Cleek's narrowed eyes followed him and the tense creases seamed Cleek's indrawn, silent lips. But when he broke that silence it was to speak to the captain and to say some silly, pointless thing about that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... reading, but listening intently to the conversation of the men seated behind him, and particularly to young Whitcomb's share in it. Upon hearing the latter's statement that he had with him the cash returns for the shipment of bullion, Darrell saw the muscles of his face suddenly grow tense and rigid, while his hands involuntarily tightened their hold upon the paper. He grew uncomfortable under Darrell's scrutiny, moved restlessly once or twice, then turning, looked directly into the piercing dark eyes fixed upon him. His own eyes, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... propeller had wreaked on one of them, to hold them back. However, he could judge the movements of those behind and below by the synchronized movements of those in front; for the sealmen, in this tense siege, seemed to move as one—just as they would move as one when a leader got the courage to charge across the gap ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter
... On the breeze there was borne to him the sound of voices—many voices. He closed the book with a bang. His small body became tense; his eyes glittered. He scented prey. He wrapped the book in its oilcloth, laid it upon the buggy seat, and taking Irontail by the bridle, started in the ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... to Captain Strong," he paused and finished his sentence in a tense whisper, "I'll search the universe until I find Coxine. And when I do, I'll break ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... to admire her, and indeed I think that the witch was verily bent on casting a spell over me. No words can paint her as she stood in the dim-lit passage, the infinite sum of womanhood, peerless in every grace and gift; not now the tense, proud Margaret of the quick rebuke and the shattering sarcasm, but the mirthful, trustful, grateful companion ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... feeling over his neck and throat, groping for his face. "Rufus"—again came the tense ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... much longer," Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the sudden cold grew so sharp that a man's banjo strings broke in the tense contraction. That had happened to him more than once, and it only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... is no knowing what might have happened had not Fate intervened. But just as things had reached breaking-strain the door-bell rang. The prosaic sound brought us back instantly to earth, and a dramatic situation, tense with possibilities, became in ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh |
