"Tentatively" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... partial to Mr. George, and he took him up when his father died; but he never would have anything to say to this younger one, bein' nothin' in the world, so folks say, but half a French, and black, like his mother. I wonder now—" began Mrs. Eccles, tentatively, with her usual love ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... resulted in the adoption of a new constitution and presidential election in 2004. On 9 October 2004, Hamid KARZAI became the first democratically elected president of Afghanistan. The new Afghan government's next task is to hold National Assembly elections, tentatively scheduled for April 2005. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... what happened. For whatever reason, Mountgomery could not obtain his colonists. Azilia remained a paper land. The years went by. The country, unsettled yet, lapsed into the Carolina from which so tentatively it had been parted. Over its spaces the Indian still roved, the tall forests still lifted their green crowns, and no axe was heard ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the blank expression of the strenuous man who has learned to utilize his momentary respites; while, stretched along the cushions of the carriage, his face hidden, his eyes wide open and attentive, lay the young Russian, his fingers tentatively caressing the treasure in the pocket of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... for me at home," he said, tentatively rising halfway from his chair. "Father isn't well, you see." He had a vague feeling that he could not go unless they formally admitted ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... said the engineer tentatively, in a low tone. There was no comment. He gradually reduced the repelling current, so that ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... we have the tacit assumption, so often made with respect to corporeal structures, that there is some innate tendency towards continued development in mind and body. But development of all kinds depends on many concurrent favourable circumstances. Natural selection acts only tentatively. Individuals and races may have acquired certain indisputable advantages, and yet have perished from failing in other characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many small states, from the small size of their ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... moved over to the cot her hand scarcely indicated. "Well, your daughter looks pretty comfortable this afternoon, in spite of the little fuss," Travers began, tentatively. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... seventeenth birthday, and reckoned himself a man. He was in love again, but tentatively. He had read 'Don Juan,' and had learned a thing or two. He conceived that he had rubbed off the first soft bloom of youth, and the idea, natural to his time of life, that he was aged and experienced had taken full hold ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Bill tentatively inspected the timbers, tapped the roof with a pick taken from the swamper's hands, heard the true ring of live rock, and backed away. The drill was drawn up to ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... has actually produced certain physical changes in things, which agree with and confirm the conception entertained. Short of such specific changes, our beliefs are only hypotheses, theories, suggestions, guesses, and are to be entertained tentatively and to be utilized as indications of experiments to be tried. (ii) On the other hand, the experimental method of thinking signifies that thinking is of avail; that it is of avail in just the degree in which the anticipation of future consequences is made on the basis of thorough observation ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... very phenomena which they afterwards serve to arrange, or, as Dr. Whewell says, to connect. They seem to be pre-existent; but this is only because the mind keeps ever forming conceptions from the facts, which at the time are before it, and then tentatively applies these conceptions (which it is always remodelling, dropping some which are found not to suit after-found facts, and generalising others by a further effort of abstraction) as types of comparison for phenomena subsequently ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... submitted to the Fifty-eighth Congress, third session, January 4, 1905.[HW] No action was had on the bill in that Congress. It was referred to the committee on commerce; reported back to the Senate with sundry amendments and a minority report against it;[HX] was debated tentatively; and finally passed over at the request of its sponsor, Senator Gallinger, who expressed himself as satisfied that the bill could not receive the consideration it deserved at that session. Meanwhile both Houses had directed a continuance of the commission's inquiry. In May the chairman, ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... thoughts suggested by it appeal to the Critical Faculty of the Soul, and, if it is perfect enough to be accepted by this faculty, we may pass, for the time being, into soul-living, but only very delicately, tentatively, and nothing to be compared to the soul-living, produced by the Touch of God. When God communicates Himself to the soul, she lives in a manner never previously conceived of, reaching an experience of living in which every perfection ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... Tentatively she pressed one of the seals. It cracked across. Another went the same way, and as she touched the third there came a sound of talking outside the door. "Open it for me with your pass-key, please," a man said. It was ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... alert now, with a supernal sense of keening. Tentatively he sent out a thought-potential that ...
— Walls of Acid • Henry Hasse
... of old Marie were not bad to look on, but I did not test them otherwise. Even in my own country I do not care to partake of souffle potatoes unless I know personally the person who blew them up. So at the conclusion of the repast we nibbled tentatively at the dessert, which was a pancake with jelly, done in the image of a medicated bandage but not so tasty as one. And then I paid the check, which was of august proportions, and we came sadly away, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... major, cheerfully but tentatively, to his wife when they were alone again, "she seems a nice girl, after all; and a good deal of pluck and character, by Jove! to push on in that broken buggy rather than linger or come in a farm ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... beneath the stars in the fragrant evening air, the Earl seated by Miss Willoughby, Scremerston smoking with Logan; while the white dress of Lady Alice flitted ghost-like on the lawn, and the tip of the Prince's cigar burned red in the neighbourhood. In the drawing-room Lady Mary was tentatively conversing with the Jesuit, that mild but probably dangerous animal. She had the curiosity which pious maiden ladies feel about the member of a community which they only know through novels. Certainly this Jesuit ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... forgot a name and its social connection. "Ironside?" she repeated tentatively, but with an air of agreeable expectation. "I am familiar with the name. One of my sons, Captain Lawrence Jennings, when his regiment was at Manchester, knew and received much kindness from ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... doctor, Bobby could see, had been made as uneasy as himself by the change in the Panamanian. The doctor cleared his throat. His voice broke the silence tentatively: ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... was like finding flat and faded flowers in a book still faintly sweet, to realize that once my mother had been loved with passion; that my remote father had once shed hot tears of tenderness in her arms. And she would sometimes even speak tentatively in those narrow, old-world phrases that her lips could rob of all ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... aware of their presence, he straightened himself up with the slow movement of one stiff with age or rheumatism and threw them a tentatively friendly look out of ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... by the river way," said Howard tentatively. "Eh, what think, Sig? It's longer, but Yorky will be expecting us to take the short cut over ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... see how well the Chevalier got on with the girls. "Must you really leave us to-morrow morning?" he enquired tentatively. "This very evening," rejoined Casanova jovially. "You know, my dear Olivo, I must consider the wishes ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... well as the amateur shop-lifter has always presented to me an interesting phase of criminality," remarked Kennedy tentatively, during a lull in their mutual commiseration. With thousands of dollars' worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters, it is really no wonder that some are tempted to reach out and take ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... difficulty that faced us was the identification of the forms seen on focusing the sight on gases.[2] We could only proceed tentatively. Thus, a very common form in the air had a sort of dumb-bell shape (see Plate I); we examined this, comparing our rough sketches, and counted its atoms; these, divided by 18—the number of ultimate atoms in hydrogen—gave us 23.22 as atomic weight, and this offered the presumption ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... calmly. 'You misunderstood my meaning. I said I would get rid of landlords—by which I meant to say, get rid of them as landlords, not as individuals. I don't even know that I'd take away the land from them all at once, you know (though I don't think it's justly theirs); I'd deprive them of it tentatively and gradually.' ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... respect for the stormier qualities of December. April in Indiana! She was just there by the wall, where now the bluebird pauses dismayed, and waits again the flash of her golden sandals. She bent there at the lakeside the splash of a raindrop ago and tentatively poked the thin, brittle ice with the pink tips of her little fingers. April in the heart! It brings back the sweet wonder and awe of those days, three years ago, when Marian and I, waiting for June to come, knew a joy that thrilled our hearts like the tumult of the first robin’s song. The marvel ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... crept to my feet, put his small dirty head on one side, lowered it to the ground, and then rolled over upon his back. With his legs in the air, he regarded me fixedly, tentatively wagging his tail. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... very amicable arrangement, and it was at a council of the head men of the various tribes of the Sari that the eventual form of government was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly, the various kingdoms were to remain virtually independent, but there was to be one great overlord, or emperor. It was decided that I should be the first of the dynasty ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suggested tentatively, forming a mind picture of the vicious reptilian danger which the colonists tried to kill on sight whenever and wherever encountered. His hand went to the knife at his belt. One met with weapons only that hissing hatred ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... had cost him Peter, whom he had come to as his oldest and best friend. Having no idea whom he could turn to next, he rose, tentatively, and for the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... ended, the family business passed into the hands of strangers. There would be no Bonbright Foote VIII who, in his turn, should become the father of Bonbright Foote IX, and so following. No, he did not hold even tentatively the ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... he announced, "we'll ride on home an' pass ther word along thet matters stands es they stud in old Caleb's day an' time." He paused then, noting the weariness on the face of Jim Rowlett, added tentatively: "All of us, thet is ter say, save Old Jim. He's sorely tuckered out, an' I reckon ef ye invited him ter stay ther night with ye, Mr. Thornton, hit would ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... 5 is offered tentatively. That a person possessed of affluence should become charitable is not wonderful. An ascetic, again, is very unwilling to exercise his power. (Witness Agastya's unwillingness to create wealth for gratifying his spouse.) What is meant by these two persons not living ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... one of the most important of his life. He had married Minna Planer, who is said to have been a very pretty woman and quite incapable of understanding her husband and his artistic aspirations; and he began, slowly and tentatively, to shape a course through life for himself. He continued to gain experience in the production of other composers' operas; he studied incessantly, and at last he hit upon the idea of writing a grand opera in the Meyerbeer style, and going to Paris with ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... years or so of acquaintance, matters at last looked like coming to a head. It would appear that Montagu, tentatively at least, had put the question, because Lady Mary gives her views as to the life they should lead after marriage. She is not averse from travelling; she has no objection to leaving London; in fact, she would be willing to spend a few months in the country, if it so ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... silenced her. Feeling told her she was in the wrong; but the beauty of her sentiment was not to be contested, and therefore she thought that she might distrust feeling: and she went against it somewhat; at first very tentatively, for it caused pain. She marked a line where the light of duty should not encroach on the light of our human desires. "But love for a parent is not merely duty," thought Cornelia. "It is also love;—and is it not the least ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... puzzles," she said, "and there is the big doll that can say 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and there is the paper doll, with lovely patterns and pieces to make more clothes out of for it, and there is a game papa just loved. Perhaps you'd like to play that best, too, 'cause you are sick, too?" she said tentatively. ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... were made smooth for him; and when he reached the age when he began to think of marriage, and was tentatively courting half a dozen girls of the district, unhoped-for great fortune had fairly dropped ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... porch admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He had noticed a house not far away, which looked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the problematical Prince Charming whose mission it would be to keep me young, then I asked tentatively:— ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... grey eyes dilated; the prospect was alluring. "I suppose there would not be enough for both of us?" she ventured tentatively—"enough for me to be taught some few things properly, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... really quite anxious to kiss Christine; he was wondering whether she, too, was anxious for him to kiss her. After a moment he turned a little, and looked at her tentatively. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... cardiac weakness develops in the presence of aortic narrowing, and digitalis may not be indicated at all. We cannot tell how far degeneration may have gone, however, and small doses of digitalis used tentatively and carefully, perhaps 5 drops of an active tincture two or three times a day, and then the drug carefully increased to a little larger dose to see whether improvement takes place, is the only way to ascertain whether or not digitalis can be used with advantage. If it increases ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... Day refused to quarrel. He took a long drink from the pail of fresh water Marty had brought. Then he said, tentatively: ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if he knew anything of the work of a man called Enoch Soames. Harland paused in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his hands towards the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met 'that absurd creature' in Paris, and this very morning had received ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... throwing open the solid wooden doors of their shops. Polite but cool were the glances they cast upon Blythe as he lounged tentatively by with the remains of his old jaunty air; for they were his creditors almost ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... In Nicaise this last word is written crapte. I have ventured to suggest crafte, since a misreading between the two letters would be so easy. In the same way I have suggested tentatively a changing of the z in the title of the Bibliotheque Nationale copy to y, making the word yere ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... had cheered him wonderfully. Now when that person observed tentatively that $1,800 was "a good little stake," Wallie ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... written, like one of the contemporary novels thrown off for the serials. The fact seems to be, however, that the poet’s power of reaching, as Scott reached, his own ideal expression per saltum, or reaching it slowly and tentatively, is simply a matter of temperament. For whose verses are more loose-jointed than Byron’s? whose diction is more commonplace than his? And yet this is what the greatest of Byron specialists, Mr John ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... of determining Good having been set aside, it is suggested that it is only by 'interrogating experience' that we can discover, tentatively, what things are good. ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Ned felt tentatively of his rifle, but changed his mind. He remembered the Panther's exploit with the firebrand, and he decided to imitate it, but on a much larger scale. He laid down his rifle, but kept his left hand on the butt of the pistol in his belt. Then selecting the largest torch from the fire he made a rush ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said tentatively, "have you made up your mind about to-morrow; is it to be Kew, or Cookham and Henley?" But to his surprise the question seemed to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have heard, you are of a studious habit. Though I suppose," he tentatively added, "the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... a man could wish to find in a woman, true as I'm here,' he said, reaching forward his hand and tentatively touching her between ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... "You know," said Nan tentatively, as they took the road, "we could ask Charlotte for a luncheon and go off over the mountain. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... The door of the front bedroom was closed as if on a mystery. He knocked and opened it tentatively, like a man who respected mysteries. The voice had left off singing, and was saying something. It was a voice he knew, but not ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... was they who filled us with the conviction of artistic sin, and who also in a manner entirely scientific tried to discover what was the nature of this sin and how it had come about. First Ruskin tentatively, and afterwards Morris systematically and out of his own vast artistic experience, connected this decay of the arts with certain social conditions. It was not merely that taste had decayed or that the arts had developed to a point beyond ...
— Progress and History • Various
... have its effect. An attempt was made by Administration leaders to force a vote on May 19, 1918. Friends interceded when it was shown that not enough votes were pledged to secure passage. Again the vote was tentatively set for June 27th and ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... to such a deduction," he said tentatively. "There's little sickness in this climate and the ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... avoidance of tedious written computation. Many medieval astrolabes have survived, and at least three medieval equatoria are known. Chaucer is well known for his treatise on the astrolabe; a manuscript in Cambridge, containing a companion treatise on the equatorium, has been tentatively suggested by the present author as also being the work of Chaucer and the only piece written in ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price
... cottages; and soon mount a short hill, pass through an open gateway, and are before the churchly pile. Not a soul is about the place, and we have to look into the building entirely unciceroned. An apartment opening wide from the main hall is evidently some priest's oratory. We venture to peer tentatively in through the doorway. The room is plain, containing beside other furniture a small crucifix, a shrine, and a praying-chair,—and nearer us a recent number of Figaro open on the table. Thus it goes: the secular blending ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... II. Yield data by years, of three seedlings tentatively proposed for variety status, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars, dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat alone in the evening, after Augustine, ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... present the constructive results of the modern historical and literary study of the Bible, not dogmatically but tentatively, so that the reader and student may be in a position to judge for himself regarding the conclusions that are held by a large number of Biblical scholars and to ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... lead the subject back to the case of men who disappeared, turned in the deck-chair where he was sitting enjoying a light breeze which had sprung up after dark, and said tentatively: 'I can't quite understand, you know, a man disappearing altogether and ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... It may therefore be tentatively suggested that early Israel had its Ahone in a Being perhaps not yet named Jehovah. Israel entertained, however, perhaps by reason of 'nomadic habits,' only the scantiest concern about ancestral ghosts. We then find an historical tradition of secular contact between Israel and Egypt, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... me holt on 't!" It was a fugitive white gleam in the bottom of the bag; she pounced upon it and brought up a letter. Midway in the act of tearing it open, she paused and looked at Solon with droll entreaty. "It's your letter, by rights!" she added tentatively. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... reconnoitring, and Macomb in 1859 had made a reconnaissance to the south and south-west of Gunnison Crossing, so that a general idea of the character of the region had been obtained and a kind of approximate topography had been tentatively thrown in, yet it was mainly an unknown wilderness so far as record went, particularly contiguous to the river. But south from the San Rafael to the Paria and west to the High Plateaus forming the southward continuation of the Wasatch Range, an area of at ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... His mood changed to a pervasive melancholy in which he recalled the lost possibilities of his early ambitions, the ambitions that, without form or encouragement, had gone down before definite developments. When he spoke of these, tentatively, to Fanny, she always replied serenely that she was thankful for him as he was, she would not have liked him ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... is beginning to talk of going home—his home, that is—but rather diffidently and tentatively, as if not quite sure whether the proposal will meet with favor in my eyes. He need not be nervous on this point. I, too, am rather anxious and eager to see my house—my house, if you please!—I, who have never hitherto possessed any larger residence ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... a jumble of emerald leaves and sweet clusters of creamy blossoms, across the path and the steps of the porch. Alix looked up at the outward curve of the reversed branches, bent almost to the splitting point in the unfamiliar direction, and whistled. She tentatively tugged at a loose spray, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... don't want to die before you and I have made friends." This was said with a strange air of feline gallantry. Then, tentatively: "But he could be brought to trust ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the office of her agents, one of the big English trading firms, to inquire how the wreck was getting along, and what the prospect was for a return to Capiz before Christmas. The man at the desk did not look characteristically English, and on my first appearance I addressed him tentatively in Spanish. He answered in that language, and we continued to use it. On one of the later visits this gentleman was not visible, but in his place a red-headed, freckled youth, with the map of Scotland outlined on his rugged countenance, presided over the collection ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... when you see him—there are many ways, some of which are very effectual." Spurling played with the butt of his revolver as he said these words, and looked at Granger tentatively, then looked aside. "For instance, the winter is breaking up and he might fall through the ice; or while he is staying here several of his dogs might die; or, at the least, you can tell him that you have not seen me and persuade him that he has passed me by. If he refuses to ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... love and Jewish tradition and Greek subtlety had at once dimmed and glorified the truth. Ah! do what we will, it is so scanty and poor, this knowledge of ours, compared with all that we yearn to know—but, such as it is, let me, very humbly and very tentatively, endeavour to put ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than the present method, and that it would do so without sacrificing any essential good quality whatever inherent in the Democratic Idea. [Footnote: There are excellent possibilities, both in the United States and in this Empire, of trying over such a method as this, and of introducing it tentatively and piecemeal. In Great Britain already there are quite different methods of election for Parliament existing side by side. In the Hythe division of Kent, for example, I vote by ballot with elaborate secrecy; in the University of London I declare my vote in a room ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... commercial advantage to England of doing her own carrying trade and of multiplying ships and seamen, Henry—tentatively at first, but with increasing confidence—adopted artificial methods of encouraging this branch of industry, at the expense of free competition. Very early in the reign a Navigation Act required that goods shipped for England from certain foreign ports ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... black curls of Susie Smith. She would have liked to take a ride in the pretty boats, herself, but the sign said "Five cents" a trip, and she did not have any money with her. She smiled hopefully into the faces of several women, and twice she spoke tentatively. But no one spoke first to her, and those whom she addressed eyed her ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... with extinction. Mr Wells' own sight of our blindness, our complacent acceptance of the sphere as an oblate or prolate spheroid, might be, he hoped, another of the marvels which we should come to accept through the medium of romance. So he began tentatively at first to introduce a vivid criticism of the futility of present-day society into his fantasies, and the first and the least of these books was that published in 1899 as When the Sleeper Wakes, a title afterwards ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... that," she said hesitatingly, "and I could have got more for a larger one, but I had to do that in my room, during recreation hours. If I had more time and a place where I could work"—she stopped timidly and looked tentatively at Jack. But he was already indulging in a characteristically reckless idea of coming back after he had left Sophy, buying the miniature at an extravagant price, and ordering half a dozen more at extraordinary figures. Here, however, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... elaborate domestic machinery creaks. There were men-servants of different nationalities, ladies' maids, and a houseful of guests coming and going as in a private hotel. Adelle shrank into the obscurest corner and her anemonelike charm, tentatively putting forth, was quite lost in the scramble. Beechwood was a much less genial home than the slipshod Mexican hacienda of the Mereldas and nobody paid any attention to the shy girl. Eveline Glynn, who expected in another year to be free from school, was too ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... has already warned you that you might expect a visit from me," he said tentatively. Carroll nodded. He was too much ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... that John Taylor went South to look after large investments and, as Mr. Easterly expressed it, "to bring back facts, not dreams." His investment matters went quickly and well, and now he turned to his wider and bigger scheme. He wrote the Cresswells tentatively, expecting no reply, or an evasive one; planning to circle around them, drawing his nets closer, and trying them again later. To ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... under the drawing-room windows. The lights in all the lower windows were not what they had been; it was the bedroom tiers that were illuminated now. But I did not realise that there was less light outside until I awoke to the fact that Mrs. Lascelles was peering tentatively toward me, and putting her question ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... talk between the proposed tour and the haunted mansion. The latter was left in abeyance, but they tentatively decided to take a long auto trip, as soon as they could arrange for a chaperone to go with them on such occasions as they would stay over night at hotels, while other nights were to be spent at the homes of relatives or friends. In a way it would be a ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... developed with endless clews, which she could not follow aloud. After waiting for her to resume, Sommers asked tentatively: ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... by the way, was not necessary, all the Governments represented tentatively agreeing with Austria. The treaty, however, was subject to signatures and if it was officially closed, ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... among the three. This was precisely the kind of information the U-League—and everybody else—had been hoping to obtain. 112-113 tentatively could be assumed to be a kind of monitor of the station's activities. It could be induced to go into action and to activate the other plasmoids. With further observation and refinement of method, its action undoubtedly ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... of interpolation, tentatively put forward, is justified, to some extent at least, by the following remarkable circumstances: that two such entries, having—as we have said—absolutely no parallel in the whole of the Diarium, should follow almost immediately the one upon the other; and that Burchard should relate them coldly, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... aged man in black-rimmed spectacles, with a distended nose and long upper lip and chin, was tentatively fumbling out ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... as a joke, Cecilia. Seeing that we are parting in a spirit of perfect understanding, why shouldn't such an arrangement be considered tentatively ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... as 'prehistoric'. Herodotus indeed puts both poets 400 years before his own time; that is, at about 830-820 B.C., and the evidence stated above points to the middle of the ninth century as the probable date for the "Works and Days". The "Theogony" might be tentatively placed a century later; and the "Catalogues" and "Eoiae" are again later, but not greatly later, than the "Theogony": the "Shield of Heracles" may be ascribed to the later half of the seventh century, but there is not evidence enough ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... of play past when I did the trick. I feigned a slight slip of the foot, and, in the recovery, feigned loss of touch with Pasquini's blade. He thrust tentatively, and again I feigned, this time making a needlessly wide parry. The consequent exposure of myself was the bait I had purposely dangled to draw him on. And draw him on I did. Like a flash he took advantage of what he deemed an involuntary exposure. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Tentatively, Brice drew aside an armful of branches, just above the waiting dog. And, as though he had pulled back a curtain, he found himself facing a well-defined path, cut through the tangled thicket of root and trunk and bough—a path that ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... and his companion expected some expression of indignation from Mr. Aram at this, some question of their right to come into his house and cross-examine him and to accuse him, tentatively at least, of literary fraud, but they were disappointed. Mr. Aram's manner was still one of absolute impassibility. Whether this manner was habitual to him they could not know, but it made them doubt their own judgment in having so quickly accused ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... releasing it. Then he called to mind that his spears always threw better when they were hurled heavy end first. So he turned the little shaft and applied the small end to the bow-string. Then he pulled the string tentatively, and let it go. The arrow, all unguided, shot straight up into the air, turned over, fell sharply, and buried its head in a bit of soft ground. Grom felt that this was progress. The spectators opened their mouths in wonder, but durst not venture any comment when Grom ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... suppose you didn't doze at all," he said tentatively, "while you were sitting up waiting ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Chief Arkwright suggested tentatively, "perhaps you can give us some information as to the diamonds that were stolen? How much were they worth? How many were there?" He held up the uncut stones that had been found on ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... tentatively, a dainty blush half rising on her rather pale and delicate little cheek. "Mrs. Hancock?" she said, in an inquiring tone, with just the faintest suspicion of an American accent in her musical, small ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... translator was Pastor Mittelstedt[33] in Braunschweig (Hirsching und Jrdens say Hofprediger), whom the partisan Bttiger calls the ever-ready manufacturer of translations (der allezeit fertige Uebersetzungsfabrikant). Behmer tentatively suggests Weis as the translator of this early rendering, an error into which he is led evidently by a remark in Bode's preface in which the apologetic translator states the rumor that Weis was engaged in translating the same book, and that he (Bode) would surely have locked up his work in his ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... difficulty of getting a special licence, if he were agreed? My father does not know, or will not believe, that Caroline's attachment has been the cause of her hopeless condition. But that it is so, and that the form of words would give her inexpressible happiness, I know well; for I whispered tentatively in her ear on such marriages, and the effect was great. Henceforth my father cannot be taken into confidence on the subject of Caroline. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they are on the eve of doing something. The women of the world may not know what it is, but they feel the approaching recurrence of a period. Their movements are not yet decisive. It is as yet only tentatively that they adopt the mode of the Directoire. It is yet uncertain—a sort of Boulangerism in dress. But if we watch it carefully we shall be able to predict with some assurance the drift in Paris. The Directoire dress points to another period of republican simplicity, anarchy, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... her—if she was obscure it was the obscurity of a star seen through a fog—and the desire to understand lost itself presently in the bewilderment of his misapprehension. At last, however, he had put her, as it were, tentatively aside, had relinquished his attempt to reduce her to a formula with the despairing admission that she was, take her as you would, a subtlety that compelled one to a mental effort. The effort which he had up to this time associated with the society of women had been of anything but a mental character. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... how it has been kept quiet so long," said Hugo, tentatively. He was feeling his way. But this remark roused ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... city, hidden in some safe corner; she might be in Europe, or in Timbuctoo. There had been time enough to smuggle her away. Every port had been watched, but there was the Canadian line stretching to the north, and the men who were "on the deal" would stop at nothing. They had been approached, tentatively, in the beginning, for a share of profits; but they had scorned the overture. "Catch me—if you can!" the voice laughed and rang off. The police were hot against them. Just one clue—the merest clue—and they would run it to earth—like bloodhounds. They chewed the ends of their cigars ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... fish had fulfilled his threat and spoken at great length on a subject which, treated by a master of oratory, would have palled on the audience after ten or fifteen minutes; and at the end of fifteen minutes this speaker had only just got past the haddocks and was feeling his way tentatively through the shrimps. 'The Rosary' had been sung and there was an uneasy doubt as to whether it was not going to be sung again after the interval—the latest rumour being that the second of the rival ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... during a period of falling prices cannot be stated so briefly. The difficulties involved have already been discussed at length.[133] The following policy based upon that analysis is tentatively suggested. The complexities of the subject are too great to permit of dogmatism. Firstly, the occasion for the price decline may be such as was termed "natural," as for example when it is brought ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... into the school-house trail. Miss Satterly raised both hands with a very feminine gesture and patted her hair tentatively, tucking in a stray ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... of surmises has been heard hinting tentatively at a possible re-grouping of European Powers. The alliance of the three Empires is supposed possible. And it may be possible. The myth of Russia's power is dying very hard—hard enough for that combination to take place—such is the fascination that ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... had tentatively approached the subject, but Magda had clearly indicated that she had no ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... toward the cabin, feeling old and uncertain, not quite knowing what to do with himself. Old Tom was over by the lean-to, sniffing and pawing tentatively at the fresh earth where Ed had filled in the hole. As Ed came up, he came over ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... slightness of the historical thread is of little moment, and we may rest safely on the solid ground of so conclusive a fact. But is it so? That the early Fathers quoted some accounts of our Lord's life is abundantly clear; but did they quote these? We proceed to examine this question—again tentatively only—we do but put forward certain considerations on which we ask ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Elliot, the organizer, Vice-President and Secretary of the Austin Organ Company, of Hartford, Conn., he decided to remain here and join that corporation, taking the office of Vice-president. Subsequently a new firm—Hope-Jones & Harrison—was tentatively formed at Bloomfield, N. J., in July, 1904, but as sufficient capital could not be obtained, Hope-Jones and his corps of skilled employees joined the Ernest M. Skinner Company, of Boston, Hope-Jones taking the office of ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... for me to take Nina into my confidence. Mrs. Faulkner's eyes were fixed on the plate and her back was turned to me; I poked out one leg tentatively and Nina understood. There was one splendid thing about Nina, you could always rely upon her in a crisis. She took up a chair at once and said that she would get the plate down; she added that unless I sat still after meals I might ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... them tentatively, with various hypotheses as to the precise manner in which they thus went together. Meantime they have figured plausibly as representative of Attic sculpture at the end of its first period, still immature indeed, but with a just claim ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the shelter of the galley whence he inspected his superior quizzically. At length, when the hands were getting their supper, eating on the forecastle head in order to maintain their attitude of alertness, the mate joined Bill and remarked tentatively: ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... no further than this during the hour he spent with her, seeing that Uncle Sim had been right in describing the case as one for ingenuity—and something more. Questioning himself as to what this something more could be, he brought up the subject tentatively with Jasper Fay, whom he met on leaving the house. Thor himself stood on the door-step, while Fay, who wore gardening overalls, confronted him from the withered grass-plot that ended in a leafless hedge ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... perhaps by the encouragement the young man had given to a second Granny, so very equivalent to his first. Moreover, there was that obscure reference in his letters to an accident—for axdnt was a mere clerical error. She worded an inquiry after Dave, tentatively. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... eagle perched on a rock, and said tentatively, "There is such a thing as being too proud to fight." He shook his bald head disgustedly, and tried, "The only enduring peace is a peace without victory," but that did not seem to content him either. Afterward he cried out, "All persons who oppose me have pygmy minds," ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... out that they were new priests; the previous ones had all been boiled for letting the Holy Waters cease. They found out I was there only to help them restore the flow of the waters. They bought this, tentatively, and we all heaved out of the tub and trickled muddy paths across the floor. There was a bolted and guarded door that led into the pyramid proper. While it was being opened, the ...
— The Repairman • Harry Harrison
... Perry tentatively gathered up the body and legs and wrapped them about him, tying the hind legs as a girdle round his waist. The effect on the whole was bad. It was even irreverent—like one of those mediaeval pictures of a monk changed into a beast ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... began to "establish" himself in his role, just as an actor does. At first he felt his way tentatively and with tact. Every store has its own tone and atmosphere: in a day or so he divined the characteristic cachet of the Beagle establishment. He saw what kind of customers were typical, and what sort of conduct they expected. And the secret ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... of short duration, for a suitor usually stood at her doorstep almost as the funeral procession ended. The most generally known, of such incidents, was the pursuit of Cicely Jordan, upon the death of her husband Samuel. Within two days Reverend Greville Pooley pressed his suit. The widow tentatively agreeing, but evidently pregnant with the unborn child of her deceased husband, insisted that she would marry no man until she was "delivered." In the meantime, William Farrar, named administrator ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... work, traffic, and war; the latter lecture, delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution at Woolwich, was also separately published under the title of "The Future of England." The two former, being addressed to working-men, laborers, and traders, discuss economic problems, and set forth tentatively their author's antagonized political ethics, with which, in drawing this essay to a close, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... a moment, and came back. She picked up a thread on the floor. Sat down again. Picked up her pencil, rolled it a moment in her palms, then, catching her toes behind either foreleg of her chair, in an attitude that was as workmanlike as it was ungraceful, she began to draw, nervously, tentatively at first, but gaining in firmness and assurance as she ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... breakfast, in a tone of gentle reproach, I announced that I was going out into the cold world, as represented by New York City, to look for a job. I had no idea of doing anything of the sort. I only threw out the suggestion tentatively, and I was exceedingly disgusted when they caught up my plan with such enthusiasm and alacrity, that I was forced to go on with it. I could not see why it was necessary for me to work. I had two thousand dollars a year my grandfather had left me, and my idea of seeking for a job, ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... however, be a genuine convenience from the point of view of science, for it does introduce, at least provisionally, a certain order into a vast number of facts, and gives a direction to investigation. Perhaps the wisest thing to do is, not to combat the doctrine, but to accept it tentatively and to examine carefully what conclusions it may seem to carry with it—how it may affect our outlook upon ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... over. "There are mines over that way, and I may stand a chance of selling a pump. Rotten luck in Peru, and I can't afford to spend all this expense money and not sell a thing. I hear that there are a few Americans over in Paraguay," he added, tentatively, smiling over ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... which they had received, concluded that Caesar might be tempted, and that if they could bring him to consent he would lose the people's hearts. They had already made him Dictator for life; they voted next that he really should be King, and, not formally perhaps, but tentatively, they offered him the crown. He was sounded as to whether he would accept it. He understood the snare, and refused. What was to be done next? He would soon be gone to the East. Rome and its hollow ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... of a third and unused glass which was found with the flask," I ventured, tentatively. "He seemed to consider it an important item, hiding some truth that would materially help this case. What do you think, or rather, what is the general opinion ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... his office, complete all but three chapters, of which she enclosed an outline. With it she sent a purely formal note, asking, in the event of the book being accepted, what terms the Company could offer her, and whether she could be paid partly in advance. She put the request tentatively, knowing nothing of the method of paying for serials. In another week she had a typewritten reply from Farraday, saying that the serial had been most favorably reported, that the Company would buy it for fifteen hundred dollars, with a guarantee to begin serialization within the year, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... to Asia Minor, leaned over the bulwark and drew a long breath of satisfaction. "We are in the East!" he said. "Can't you smell it? I feel I am going home. You are in the East so soon as you cross Adria." He added tentatively: "People don't understand. When you go back to England they say, 'How glad you must be to get home!' They made me spend most of my leave on a house-boat on the Thames, and of all the ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... of God, but neither does he posit eternal motion as Aristotle does. And the result is that he has no valid proof that this unmoved mover is a pure spirit not in any way related to body. This defect was made good by Maimonides. Let us frankly adopt tentatively, he says, the Aristotelian idea of the eternity of the world, i. e., the eternity of matter and motion. We can then prove the existence of an unmoved mover who is pure spirit, for none but a pure spirit can have an ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... built at Medinet Abou, in the vicinity of Thebes, a temple of a more elaborate character than any that had preceded it, the remains of which are still standing, and have attracted much attention from architects. Egyptian temple-architecture is here seen tentatively making almost its first advances from the simple cell of Usurtasen I. towards that richness of complication and multiplicity of parts which it ultimately reached. Pylons, courts, corridors supported by columns, pillared apartments, meet us here in their earliest germ; while there are also ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... began to catch the spirit of the thing—a trifle reluctantly and tentatively, it must be admitted, for there is a good deal of improper pride about a school house, and imitations have not quite the glamour of originals. Also the whole movement was by this time falling under a cloud, and it is now time to give ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... something, evidently thought better of it, and retrieved his pen. As he dipped the fine point into the red ink by mistake he flung another frown over his shoulder. The wireless man lingered on the threshold, swinging the door tentatively. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... at the last Aristotle, though very tentatively, leaves an opening for immortality, where, as in the case of man, there are functions of the soul, such as philosophic contemplation, which cannot be related to bodily conditions. He really was convinced that in man there was a portion ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... expressed the final determination of the testator with regard to the beneficiaries to whom the same applied; and that the words and figures written in pencil filling such blanks as aforesaid were written only deliberately and tentatively and that as to those words and figures the testator had not at the time when he executed, published or declared said instrument to be his last will and testament determined as to whom or in what proportions he would give the several shares of his ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... rather tentatively, having hardly sufficient material to go upon. It is this. You will find it more common in Italy than in England for the male offspring of a family to resemble the father and the female the mother. I cannot suggest ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... of a wood some little distance behind the German lines, and an unbroken passing of gray-covered heads behind a portion of a communication trench parapet. He also reported, and he may have been responsible for the dozen or so of shrapnel that were flung tentatively into and over the wood. An airman droning high over the lines, with fleecy white puffs of shrapnel smoke breaking about him, also saw and reported clearly "large force of Germans massing Map ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... muse—this enthusiasm we owed to Macaulay and to Buckle. Quite properly, no one reads Buckle now, and I cannot gainsay what John Morley said of Macaulay: "Macaulay seeks truth, not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, with the air of one touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by the hair of the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous triumph, a prisoner of war and not a goddess." It is, nevertheless, true that Macaulay ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... time as those who object to it have furnished us with another theory which will more nearly account for the observed facts. While entirely conscious of the possibility that there is a weak spot in the theory, we will still tentatively hold to sexual selection. The fact that beauty in women is so intensely attractive to man, and that vigor and manliness in man are so attractive to women, leads us to infer that among the lower ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... a little about Ben Stillson, the sherf, goin' out with a feller or so of ours after a boy that's broke jail down below," he began tentatively. "You folks hustled me out of town so soon, I didn't have more'n half time enough to git the news." From the corner of his eye he watched the face ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... "Life and Letters" of George Ticknor. There one has a pleasant picture of a booklover, traveler, and friend. But in his public speech he was arrogant, unsympathetic, domineering. "Sumner is my idea of a bishop," said Lincoln tentatively. There are bishops and bishops, however, and if Henry Ward Beecher, whom Lincoln and hosts of other Americans admired, had only belonged to the Church of England, what an admirable Victorian bishop he might have made! Perhaps his best service to the cause of union was rendered by his speeches ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... expression is partly lost. Now Milton, and after him Dryden and the eighteenth century, regarding poetry generally as a thing apart, followed the latter sort; but when the Romantic Revival brought poetry back to ordinary human life there reappeared, tentatively, of course, a simpler blank verse in Thomson, Crabbe, Cowper, and Wordsworth. A clear example is the opening of Landor's Iphigeneia ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... the horse that looked vaguely like Johnny turned away from the water-hole and sneezed while he appeared to be wondering what to do next. He moved slowly toward the packs that were thrown down just where they had been taken from the horses, and began nosing tentatively about. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... telling Aunt Jarvis you were here, Beth," he said one evening as he passed the chocolates to Mrs. Coulson. Annie looked interested. "I suppose Mrs. Jarvis would not recognize Elizabeth now," she said tentatively. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... rubbed his face tentatively with his bandaged hand; then smiled blandly at his mother. "Yes, there ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... and passed his fingers across his chin tentatively, and fell again to staring lazily up into the sky. "Do you happen to know anything about that most remarkable species of the 'genus homo' calling themselves 'Bucks,' or 'Corinthians'?" he ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... parliamentary majority really represents the country upon the matters at issue, the ministers are warranted in requesting the sovereign to dissolve Parliament and to order a general election. In such a situation the ministry continues tentatively in office. If at the elections there is returned a majority disposed to support the ministers, the cabinet is given a new lease of life. If, on the other hand, the new parliamentary majority is adverse, no course is open ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... it if I wasn't here?" Meg asked tentatively. The old Meg in her thrilled at the idea of dancing on a good floor with good partners. Freddy had told her of Michael's record as a dancer, so she knew that she could count on two partners, at least, for Freddy and she had learnt dancing together, and had enjoyed ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... tentatively, flexing her knees and testing her weight. Then, stepping boldly out into a clear space, she began to do a high-kicking acrobatic dance; and went on doing it as effortlessly and as rhythmically as though she were on an ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith |
