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Tension   Listen
noun
Tension  n.  
1.
The act of stretching or straining; the state of being stretched or strained to stiffness; the state of being bent strained; as, the tension of the muscles, tension of the larynx.
2.
Fig.: Extreme strain of mind or excitement of feeling; intense effort.
3.
The degree of stretching to which a wire, cord, piece of timber, or the like, is strained by drawing it in the direction of its length; strain.
4.
(Mech.) The force by which a part is pulled when forming part of any system in equilibrium or in motion; as, the tension of a srting supporting a weight equals that weight.
5.
A device for checking the delivery of the thread in a sewing machine, so as to give the stitch the required degree of tightness.
6.
(Physics) Expansive force; the force with which the particles of a body, as a gas, tend to recede from each other and occupy a larger space; elastic force; elasticity; as, the tension of vapor; the tension of air.
7.
(Elec.) The quality in consequence of which an electric charge tends to discharge itself, as into the air by a spark, or to pass from a body of greater to one of less electrical potential. It varies as the quantity of electricity upon a given area.
Tension brace, or Tension member (Engin.), a brace or member designed to resist tension, or subjected to tension, in a structure.
Tension rod (Engin.), an iron rod used as a tension member to strengthen timber or metal framework, roofs, or the like.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tension" Quotes from Famous Books



... me," said Flamby, "unless you want the police in. One glass of wine and you'd be ashamed to know me." She was uncomfortably conscious of a certain tension which the presence of James had created. "Isn't it time we started?" she asked, turning to Don. "Mrs. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... would take 25,000 years of our time to see its distinct passage. From here springs the subjectivity of our perception. The different qualities correspond, roughly speaking, to the different rhythms of contraction or dilution, to the different degrees of inner tension in the perceiving consciousness. ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... tension left his voice and he settled back to a checking and rechecking of instruments, reactions and what he would see. They activated the scanner. The transmitting equipment brought us a view that was little more than a spotty blackness. But I think the equipment ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin

... and is wholly in each—the absolute proper, as the cause and support of these attributes. The original unity of the three forms is dissolved, as the first raises itself out of the condition of a mere potency and withdraws itself from pure being in order to exist for itself; the tension extends itself to the two others—the second now comes out from its selflessness, subdues the first, and so leads the third back to unity. In creation the three potencies stand related as the unlimited Can-be, the limiting ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes' frenzy—time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... grease paint, choking powder, dust, gas, old walls, bodies, and breath, and sharp perfume; the sickening, delicious, stale, enchanting, never-to-be-forgotten odour of the theatre; the nerves' sudden tension at the cry of "Ov-a-chure"; their tingling as the jaded music blares; the lift of the heart as the curtain rises; the catch in the throat as Florette runs on to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... she said, right out, and then the tension was broken, and all the children laughed, with relief, as Elaine sat up smiling and ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... still in their teens. They stood, leaning on tables and shifting on their feet; sometimes they smoked extraordinarily fast, and sometimes they let their cigars go out; some talked well, but the conversation of others was plainly the result of nervous tension, and was equally without wit or purport. As each new bottle of champagne was opened, there was a manifest improvement in gaiety. Only two were seated - one in a chair in the recess of the window, with his head hanging and his hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... considering direction. He had passed the girl's arm through his own as they left the house; and in a sort of stupefied obedience she had submitted. To her, too, one way was the same as another, as dreary and as vain. With Rainham, indeed, after the tension of the last few minutes, into which he had crowded such a wealth of suffering and of illumination, a curious stupor had succeeded. For the moment he neither thought nor suffered: simply, it was good to be out there, in the darkness—the darkness of London—after that immense plunge, which ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... to solidify it, and thus to form a film or crust over it. That crust would shrink as the cooling process went on; in consequence of the shrinking, wrinkles and folds would arise upon it, and here and there, where the tension was too great, cracks and fissures would be produced. In proportion as the surface cooled, the masses within would be affected by the change of temperature outside of them, and would consolidate internally also, the crust gradually thickening by ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... died out; he strove to speak again, but could not. The Tracer let him alone, and bent again over his desk, drawing imaginary circles on the stained blotter, while moment after moment passed under the tension of that fiercest of all struggles, when a man sits throttling his own ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... AND SOME RAT POISONS.—Symptoms: Symptoms of irritant poisoning; pain in the stomach and bowels; vomiting; diarrhoea; tenderness and tension of the abdomen. Treatment: An emetic is to be promptly given; copious draughts containing magnesia in suspension: mucilaginous drinks. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... circled about the ship like a great hovering bird, and how safe we felt; and as we cheered and cheered the swirling, glowing, beautiful thing, we knew how badly frightened we really had been. With danger gone, the tension lifted and we read the fear in our hearts. A torpedo boat destroyer came lumbering across the sky line. It also was to convoy us, but it had a most undramatic entrance; and besides we had sighted land. The deck cheered easily, so we cheered the land. And everyone ran about exclaiming to everyone ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... old," he cried, in a high nasal tone that indicated a state of extreme nervous tension, "and I never spoke in meetin' before. I ain't had no use for churches and preachers, and I guess they hadn't no use for me. You folks all know me. I've been in this burg for near eight years, and I was a drinkin', swearin', fightin' cuss. This preacher came into the barn one day when I was freezin' ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... groundcar's seat, Maya Cara Nome's opaque black eyes struggled against the surface. They struggled not from any rational motivation but from long stubbornness, from habit, as a fly kicks six-legged and constant against the surface tension of a trapping pool. ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... clock strike nine, with loud, deep notes that seemed almost at hand. Every nerve of his body seemed strung to electric tension, and all nature tuned to a higher pitch as if dark and terrible things were abroad ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... and Buntingford began to fidget. Slowly Lady Georgina rose from her seat, and again extinguished the flame under the silver kettle. Would she go, or would she not go? Cynthia dropped some stitches in the tension of the moment. Then Buntingford got up to open the door for Georgina, who, without deigning to make any conventional excuse for her departure, ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... must in silence respect it; as the expiring dove folds her wing over her mortal wound, so does the maiden jealously conceal her grief and die. Days grew into weeks, and Herman did not come. And still Nora watched and listened as she spun—every nerve strained to its utmost tension in vigilance and expectancy. Human nature—especially a girl's nature—cannot bear such a trial for any long time together. Nora's health began to fail; first she lost her spirits, and then her appetite, and finally her sleep. She grew pale, thin, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... come this way!" said Tony, with a catch in his voice, as though he were keyed up to a nervous tension because of the situation. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... the great white mountain. Sylvia lay upon the eastern slope of the Argentiere looking over the brow, not wanting to speak, and certainly not listening to any word that was uttered. Her soul was at peace. The long-continued tension of mind and muscle, the excitement of that last ice-slope, both were over and had brought their reward. She looked out upon a still and peaceful world, wonderfully bright, wonderfully beautiful, and wonderfully colored. Here a spire would pierce the sunlight with slabs of red rock interspersed ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... awakens within us a thousand sleeping germs, and as though in play, gathers round us materials for the future, and images for the use of talent. Reverie is the Sunday of thought; and who knows which is the more important and fruitful for man, the laborious tension of the week, or the life-giving repose of the Sabbath? The flanerie so exquisitely glorified and sung by Toepffer is not only delicious, but useful. It is like a bath which gives vigor and suppleness to the whole being, to the mind as ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... small-fry he took the stage himself, helping them in their groupings and exits, which kept him on his feet and keyed to high nervous tension for hours at a time, so that each day his limbs ached and his head swam at the ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... of each others' coats, and spilling the liquor from their glasses as they gesticulated. He was wholly sober now. It was the stage of dissipation which experience had taught him to dread the most—the emergence from dulled sensibility into a nervous tension upon which stimulant had no apparent effect. He was trembling again, too, and his face, as he saw it in the mirror through the clouding gauze, was as that of a stranger, a stranger of whom he was afraid. He swallowed the whiskey he ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... at Rotherham, at a competition open to all England. He was extremely successful in producing melons, having invented a method of suspending them in baskets of wire gauze, which, by relieving the stalk from tension, allowed nutrition to proceed more freely, and better enabled the fruit to grow ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... There was something oppressive in the heavy calm. The smoke went straight up and the pine twigs did not move. For a minute or two he waited with a feeling of tension and the others were silent. Then the pine tops shook and were still again. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... up his frame to an attitude of upright attention while Jem was speaking; now the tension relaxed, and he sank back in ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Secretary, Sir Ralph Winwood; and if the King disliked him as much as ever, no animosity was shown. In the first days of 1617, Raleigh ventured upon a daring act of intrigue. He determined to work upon the growing sympathy of the English Court with Savoy and its tension with Spain, to strike a blow against the rich enemy of the one and ally of the other, Genoa. He proposed to Scarnafissi, the Savoyard envoy in London, that James I. should be induced to allow the Guiana expedition ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... invention. The trials and dangers of the builders of the submarine; the triumphant thrill of the inventor who hears for the first time the vibration of the long-distance message through the air; the daring and tension of the engineer who drives a locomotive at one ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... from which it has separated. The solution is often kept warm during this period of "digestion." The small crystals gradually disappear and the larger crystals increase in size, probably as the result of the force known as surface tension, which tends to reduce the surface of a given mass of material to a minimum, combined with a very slightly greater solubility of small crystals as ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... shot, or dodging, or skulking; he that faces the storm most cheerfully, has after all the best chance of escaping—were that the object of consideration. But, as soon as this trial is over, and the energy called forth by a high tension of duty has relaxed, the very same man often shrinks from ordinary trials of his prowess. Having, perhaps, little reason for confidence in his own bodily strength, seeing no honor in the struggle, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... day, or during most of it, at least, Rosa and O'Reilly sat hand in hand, oblivious of hunger and fatigue, impatient for the coming of night, keyed to the highest tension. Now they would rejoice hysterically, assuring each other of their good fortune, again they would grow sick with the fear of disappointment. Time after time they stepped out of the hut and stared apprehensively up the slopes of La Cumbre ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... between the partly open curtains, closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn, to his seat. The very crackle with which he opened his paper added to the bursting curiosity of the car. For the passengers knew that something was amiss: I was conscious of a sudden tension. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... situation, in the poor girl and myself waiting together on the broad pavement at a corner public-house for the issue of Fyne's ridiculous mission. But the comic when it is human becomes quickly painful. Yes, she was infinitely anxious. And I was asking myself whether this poignant tension of her suspense depended—to put it plainly—on ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... wearily against it, the color soon faded from her face and the sparkle died out in her dark eyes. Pale, alert, intelligent, she stood there minute after minute, searching the single room with anxious, purposeless eyes; then, driven into restless motion by the torturing tension of anxiety, she paced the loose boards like a tigress, up and down, head lowered, hands clasped against her mouth, worrying the fingers with the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... said fearfully, and no one could escape them. He was so frankly nervous and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that the boys were well hidden, and before he climbed down the ladder he piled bundle after bundle upon them, as if preferring that they should be smothered rather than ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... the cousins shared was empty, and Susan threw her hat and coat over the foot of the large, lumpy wooden bed that seemed to take up at least one-half of the floor-space. She sat down on the side of the bed, feeling the tension of the day relax, and a certain lassitude creep over her. An old magazine lay nearby on a chair, she reached for it, and began idly ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... of tune, with the simplest harmonies arranged in a new way, resulted in practically a new melody. This device he commonly used, sometimes with fine results. The incessant series of climaxes, leading us on and keeping us in suspense until a certain point is reached, then releasing the tension for a moment, and preparing to do the same again—these he employed to an extent, but ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman

... in response to slight increases in longitudinal tension, new structural parts which take their place alongside the existing ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell

... wife seemed, conscious of our presence. We stood helpless a little apart from them. Gorman, with that unfailing tact of his, did, or tried to do the only thing which could have relieved the intolerable tension. He made an effort to get us all ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... and amuse this child!" called Aunt Anne, at her wits' end. Fauntleroy was black in the face from holding his breath, and his borrower was nervously exhausted by the tension of a day spent in attendance upon ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... phase to this lack of nerve control shown in a nervous tension, an inability to relax and enjoy life. Some people go through the day on such a nervous tension that they are unable to take cognizance of their surroundings. Eventually this tension will manifest itself in ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry

... swung across seeming great distances, till a strong arm out of the night and the vastness of things seized her, and the tension of the struggle passed from her limbs, leaving a sense of appeasement as sweet as sleep. She heard a man's voice directing her, and obeyed without understanding. Now the sea supported her like a soft and pleasant bed, she had no fear and little consciousness. A few stern words buzzed ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... sinks or floats. Yet in the case of the flat body it is not altogether inappropriate to say that the water resists penetration and thus supports the body. The modern physicist explains the phenomenon as due to surface-tension of the fluid. Of course, Galileo's disquisition on the mixing of air with the floating body is utterly fanciful. His experiments were beautifully exact; his theorizing from them was, in this instance, altogether fallacious. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... South in preparing for hostilities showed the people of the North, and the authorities at Washington, that they intended to carry on the war with no want of spirit; that every energy, every nerve, was to be taxed to its utmost tension, and that not only every white man, but, if necessary, every black man should be made to contribute to the success of the cause for which the war was inaugurated. Consequently, with the enrollment of the whites began the employment of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... the woods that intense stillness which precedes dawn—an almost painful tension resembling apprehension. Always the first faint bird-note breaks it; then silence ends like a deep sigh exhaling and death seems very ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... began to protrude from their sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy. The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand and the column of inert mortality sank mushily ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... been to bring a sense of religion home to his children. Hugh used to wonder how he had missed it; but the practical application of religion, to which the Bible lessons had led up, had been to the child a mere relief from the tension of thought, because at last he had escaped from the material teaching about which he might be questioned, and which he would be expected ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Trent. Love you? Come one step nearer and I shall hate you. Oh!" she said, recoiling, as a gleam from the lamp revealed to her the wild expression in his eyes, the tension of his white lips and nostrils, the strange transformation in those usually impassive features which revealed the brutal nature below the polished surface of the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... two, and calmly trimmed half of it to serve as a crayon. As he began to write upon the glass, his guards were hard-pressed to hold back the throng that seemed bent upon pushing the banker through his rival's window. To ease the tension the boys ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... Apart from its ethics, the book is a mistake, for a jest which could have been elaborated to tedium in a score of pages is stretched to spread through a bulky volume, and snaps into pieces under that tension. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... bachelor; had there been a Madame Jarriquez she would have had a very uncomfortable time of it. Never had a problem so taken possession of this oddity, and he had thoroughly made up his mind to get at the solution, even if his head exploded like an overheated boiler under the tension of its vapor. ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... cure or the insane ward. It is typical of our American civilization. New Yorkers are the most nervous people I ever saw. The children are nervous; little street urchins, who should not know what nerves are, tremble with nervous tension, while the exodus to the country on Friday nights fairly empties the town. Everybody wants to 'get away from the noise,' and it is an undisputed fact that men who have no right to allow themselves the luxury take every Saturday as a holiday, so that in many lines of business so many ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... usual function of relieving emotional tension by putting a strong hand on Lydia's shoulder and spinning her about. "Come! I want to see if it is you—and how ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... plainly not the psychological moment to study the highly complex and delicate problem of conscience. The strain and tension of world issues disturb our judgment. We cannot if we would turn away from the events and movements that affect the destiny of nations to dwell calmly and securely upon our own inner, private actions. It is never easy, even when the world is most normal and peaceful, ...
— The Record of a Quaker Conscience, Cyrus Pringle's Diary - With an Introduction by Rufus M. Jones • Cyrus Pringle

... to win out against you!" Blake's teeth ground together on his unlighted cigar. He jerked it from his mouth and flung it savagely into the wastebasket. But the violent movement discharged the tension of his ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... service in government has been honored through numerous awards in public service and human rights as well as honorary degrees. He is the author of A Creative Tension—The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress (2002) and How Congress Works and Why You Should Care (2004), and the coauthor of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... that had been accumulating so long and so painfully in the offended woman's breast burst out all at once and unexpectedly. She betrayed Mitya, but she betrayed herself, too. And no sooner had she given full expression to her feelings than the tension of course was over and she was overwhelmed with shame. Hysterics began again: she fell on the floor, sobbing and screaming. She was carried out. At that moment Grushenka, with a wail, rushed towards Mitya before they had time ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... effort were a pastime. With ears pricked forward, nostrils gushing, their veins standing out like whipcord through their satin coats, they moved as though every stride were an expression of the joy of living. And the man's steel muscles were held at tension to keep their gait ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... fighting somebody or going somewhere, else, their life isn't worth living to them; the activity and mercurial flashing and flickering hither and thither, which in the soul of it is set neither on war nor rapine, but only on change of place, mood—tense, and tension;—which never needs to see its spurs in the dish, but has them always bright, and on, and would ever choose rather to ride fasting than sit feasting,—this childlike dread of being put in a corner, and continual want of something ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... the wheel turned in the other direction, drawing me out and up. My arms straightened out; I was drawn closer to the wood-work. I felt that I should slip off, when my toes rested upon one of the bars, while, as I rose higher, the tension on my arms grew less, and then less, and at last, instead of hanging, I was lying upon my chest. Then a pair of great hands laid hold of me, and Piter was licking ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... shut, the work is easy. He has only to select his own stroke and make it. But if the bull is jealous and sly, it requires the most careful management to kill him. The disposition of the bull is developed by a few rapid passes of the red flag. This must not be continued too long: the tension of the nerves of the auditory will not bear trifling. I remember one day the crowd was aroused to fury by a bugler from the adjoining barracks playing retreat at the moment of decision. All at once the matador seizes the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... other?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, calmly, but controlling with enormous internal tension his self-appreciation. "Who's the other?" was really brilliant, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... the mine to its new owner was completed, John Kenyon went to the telegraph-office, and sent a short cable-message to Wentworth. Then he turned his steps to the hotel, an utterly exhausted man. The excitement and tension of the day had been too much for him, and he felt that, if he did not get out of the city of Ottawa and into the country, where there were fewer people and more air, he was going to be ill. He resolved to leave for ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... was no obstinacy in it—he wasn't a bull-dog—only set determination. No one could have failed to read in it an immensely powerful will. In a curious way he seemed "on edge" all the time. His nostrils were always distended, the muscles of his lean jaw were never lax, but continually at tension, thrusting the chin forward with his teeth hard together. His eyebrows were contracted, I think, even in his sleep, and he looked at everything with a sort of quick, fierce, appearance of scrutiny, ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... the room of his father and mother. The thick air stifled him. His brother, who slept in the same bed, used to kick him. His head burned, and he was a prey to a sort of hallucination in which all the little troubles of the day reappeared infinitely magnified. In this state of nervous tension, bordering on delirium, the least shock was an agony to him. The creaking of a plank terrified him. His father's breathing took on fantastic proportions. It seemed to be no longer a human breathing, and the monstrous sound was horrible to him; ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... tension became too much for Barrett. He picked up his cap and left the room. Reade continued to be ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... by the pulpit-stairs shuffled his feet. A sigh passed through the Chapel as he rose and relaxed the tension. It was Jacky Pascoe. He stepped up to the Squire, and, laying a hand on his shoulder, said, gently, persuasively, yet so clearly that Honoria could ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... interval during which his memory had been quite gone, the physical languor that had lasted some time after his recovery from the fever, had all combined to make the near past seem infinitely remote, to cloud his judgment of reality, and to destroy the healthy tension of his natural will. A good deal of what Corbario had called "harmless dissipation" had made matters worse, and when Regina had persuaded him to leave Paris he had really been in that dangerous moral, intellectual, and physical ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... a kind as rendered punctuality possible. I was burning with impatience to impart my news to him, and this fact, together with the ghostly proceedings of Polton, worked me up to a state of nervous tension that rendered either rest or thought equally impossible. I looked out of the window at the lamp below, glaring redly through the fog, and then, opening the door, went out on to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman

... be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and feel again ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... which I store the air under a pressure of fifty atmospheres. This reservoir is fixed on the back by means of braces, like a soldier's knapsack. Its upper part forms a box in which the air is kept by means of a bellows, and therefore cannot escape unless at its normal tension. In the Rouquayrol apparatus such as we use, two india rubber pipes leave this box and join a sort of tent which holds the nose and mouth; one is to introduce fresh air, the other to let out the foul, and the tongue closes one or ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... brassy shadow in which the features were at the moment cast, still the Israelite thought he saw the soul of the man as through a glass, darkly: cruel, cunning, desperate; not so excited as determined—a soul in a tension of watchfulness ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... splendour of colouring and his rich and clear-cut plasticity, as something more than a feaster upon colour and form. In his riot of the senses there was more of the athlete than of the voluptuary. His joy was that of one to whom nervous and muscular tension was itself a stimulating delight. In such a temperament the feeling of energy was an elementary instinct, a passionate obsession, which projected itself through eye and ear and imagination into the outer world, filling it ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... circumstances. For crying, like laughter, has the physiological effect of producing a relaxation of tense nerves. There is a fundamental basis for crying, but this applies only to exceptional instances in which there is too much nervous tension. When nerves are strained to the "breaking point," crying will bring about a state of relaxation, and one will feel better. If there are times of strain when laughter is utterly impossible, then crying might even be beneficial. The effect on the breathing is very much the ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... umbrella, and when he let himself in by his latch-key at his own house-door about half-past eight, it was no wonder that he wrung out his coat and trousers so that he should not soak his Persian rugs. But from him, as from the charged skies, some tension had passed; this tempest which had so cooled the air and restored the equilibrium of its forces had smoothed the frowning creases of his brow, and when the servant hurried up at the sound of the banged front-door, he found his master ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson

... wind, and before the rattle of the rifles reaches us he is down. No, he recovers his seat; he has but pulled his horse upon its haunches. They are up and away! A tremendous cheer bursts from our ranks, relieving the insupportable tension of our feelings. And the horse and its rider? Yes, they are up and away. Away, indeed—they are making directly to our left, parallel to the now steadily blazing and smoking wall. The rattle of the musketry is continuous, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... were steadily aware that Verdun might be lost. They knew from letters coming daily from the front how terrible the struggle was, and it is impossible to exaggerate the tension of the early days, although it was not a tension of panic or fear. Paris did not expect to see the invader, and there was nothing of this sort of moonshine abroad. But it was plain that the fall of the town would bring a tremendous wave of depression and if not despair yet a real reduction ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds

... silent, intent look. Their faces, dusky red on the side of the glow from the fire, pallid where the electric light fell slantwise upon them from above, had for a moment a mysterious something in common. Then the tension of the glance was relaxed—and on the instant no two men ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... rendered possible by the prior work of Geissler and Crookes on the luminous phenomena produced by the passage of electric discharges through high vacua in glass tubes. Roentgen discovered that the invisible rays, or radiation, emitted from certain parts of a high-vacuum tube, when high-tension discharges from induction coils were passing, possessed the curious property of traversing certain opaque substances as readily as light does glass or water. He also discovered that these rays were capable of exciting fluorescence in some substances,—that is, of causing them to emit light and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... they brought an increasing shadow on their wings. It was a shadow that was not to pass away. Little by little came indications that the health of Ann Rutledge had suffered under the prolonged strain to which she had been subjected. Her sensitive nature had been strung to too high a tension and the chords of her life were ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... be satisfactory. It is a near relative of knot grass and smartweed and Prince's feather. The small flowers are borne on a long, elastic, and rather stiff stem, and each flower stalk has a joint just at the base. As this fruit matures, the joint becomes very easy to separate. It dries with a tension, so that, if touched, the fruit goes with a snap and a bound for several feet. The shaking produced by the wind jostling several against each other is sufficient to send off a number of ripe fruits in every direction. ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... me make the songs for the weary, Amid life's fever and fret, Till hearts shall relax their tension, And careworn ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper

... whatever his own wickedness may have been, he was too madly in love with the woman to let her name be taken in vain by a man whom, though he held his "magic" in superstitious reverence, he yet ranked lower than a dog. With his nerves strung to the highest possible state of tension, and half drunk as he was, Frank Muller was no more to be played with or irritated ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... sailors. And constant instruction and practice with the various weapons of the British, French and Russian types, which were in the hands of the Americans gave them occupation during the many days of tension on this winter front, where they daily expected the same thing to happen that was overpowering their comrades on the River Fronts. And when at the very end of the winter and the break of spring, the Reds did come in great ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... the war provided a rising generation of Marine Corps officers with a first combat experience with black marines. The competence of these Negroes and the general absence of racial tension during their integration destroyed long accepted beliefs to the contrary and opened the way for general integration. Although the corps continued to place special restrictions on the employment of Negroes and was still wrestling with ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... lose his wits any instant, it is necessary those in authority should be cool. This constant state of high tension, these perpetual changes from extreme concentration to frivolity, produce, in the end, the Wall Street manners, and the desire for exciting, highly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... had a bad night. The sky of purple sulphury tint became stormy toward evening, the atmosphere became stifling, the electrical tension excessive. It meant a "highly successful" storm, to quote Caterna, who assured me he had never seen a better one except perhaps in the second act of Freyschuetz. In truth the train ran through a zone, so to speak, of vivid lightning and rolling thunder, ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... sat still with signs of tension in his face, and it was clear that he was racking his befogged brain. The few weeks of abstinence and healthful toil had made a change in him, but one cannot in that space of time get rid of the results of years of indulgence; and under stress of excitement the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... from her manner that there was anything much amiss. A slight restlessness, however, an eagerness for occupation and amusement, and a shade of impatience when any one opposed her, spoke of inward irritability. Now and then, too, there was a sharpness in her voice that betrayed nervous tension; but none dared to express sympathy by look or word. Once when she announced her intention of joining Bessie and Richard in their ride, and her mother asked her if she were not too tired, she turned on ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... flat steel bands of from 14 to 18 gauge and from 1 to 2 in. wide. The machine winds at any desired pitch and tension. At each end the spiral wind is doubled two turns, the second lying over the first and developing a frictional resistance similar to that of a double hitch of a rope around a post. The ends of the band are held by screw nails or a ...
— The Water Supply of the El Paso and Southwestern Railway from Carrizozo to Santa Rosa, N. Mex. • J. L. Campbell

... onward the tension was loosened; but the danger was not over. Though the garrison at Lucknow had been relieved, we were forced to evacuate it, and for months afterwards the whole country of Oude remained in the hands of those who had risen ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... from whom he got it. Woodrow Wilson's is an elegant and highly refined intellect, nicely balanced and capable of fine adjustment. An urbane civilization produced it, leisure has given it spaciousness, ease has made it generous. A mind without tension, its roots are not in the somewhat barbarous under-currents of the nation. Woodrow Wilson understands easily, but he does not incarnate: he has never been a part of the protest he speaks. You think of him as a good counsellor, as an excellent presiding officer. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... she gently replaced his hand. For several moments neither spoke. Then Nat broke the tension ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... melted away, and it had a look as desolate as her own heart. She stood a few minutes speechless by its side; but the painfully tight clasp in which she held Charlotte's hand expressed better than any words could have done the tension of feeling, the passion of emotion, which dominated her. And Charlotte felt that silence was her mother's safety. If she spoke, she would weep, perhaps break down completely, and be unable to reach the shelter of ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... under a parlor-lamp and read over the score of the "Meistersinger" just as easily as you or I would peruse one of the lighter novels of the day. This was one of his refuges. When his spirit was subjected to an extreme tension he relieved his soul by flying to the composers; to use his own very bad joke, when he was in need of composure he sought out the "composures." As time progressed, however, and the petty annoyances grew more numerous, the merely intellectual pleasure of the writings ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... Anita Lawton was awakened from a tortured, feverish dream by the violent ringing of the telephone bell at her bedside. The voice of Henry Blaine, fraught with a latent tension of suppressed elation, came ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... from his height, as they grew purple in the evening twilight. He has fallen to the level of an Eastern despot, and has lost his sense of the responsibilities of his office. Such loosening of the tension of his moral nature as is indicated in his absence from the field, during what was evidently a very severe as well as a long struggle, prepared the way for the ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... and fidgety, and with some increase of muscular tone. The head is held up well, the limbs are stiff, the hands clenched, the abdomen retracted, with the outline of the recti muscles unusually prominent. If we can relax this exaggerated state of nervous tension, if we can help them to become fatter and to put on weight, the dyspepsia will disappear with ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... following after them, to touch them and destroy them with the black smear of shame. The men were silent and inclined to be sulky. They seemed to hold together. They seemed to be united into a strong, four-square silence and tension. They kept to themselves—and Alvina kept to herself—and Madame kept to herself. So ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... Minnie Birchington. There would be more gossip. It would be all over London that she was perpetually in this man's flat. Why had not he shut the door directly she had stepped into the hall? Her nervous tension found momentary relief in sudden violent anger against him, and when at length she heard the door shut, and his footstep outside, she turned round to meet him ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... at last, by constructing a trap such as he said he had often caught raccoons with in 'old Vaginny.' This was arranged something on the principle of the wire mouse-trap; and the spring consisted in a young tree or sapling bent down and held in a state of tension until the trigger was touched, when it instantly flew up, and a heavy log descended upon whatever animal was at the bait, crushing or killing it instantly. By means of Cudjo's invention we succeeded in taking nearly a dozen ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... who could supply the right answers when the class was stumped. His teacher soon began to take a delight in belaboring the class for a minute before turning to Jimmy for the answer. Heaven forgive him, Jimmy enjoyed it. He began to hold back slyly, like a comedian building up the tension ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... one of which lies over, and the other under, the cloth to be sewn. This crossing point, to insure integrity of the stitch, must occur as nearly as possible in the middle of the thickness of the fabric. The crossing must also be effected while a certain strain, called tension, is imposed upon both threads. If the tension of one thread should outweigh that of the other, the locking point becomes displaced. If the tension be insignificant, the stitches will be loose. If the tension should vary, as in the long shuttle, there will occur ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various

... woman. A line is then made by cutting this piece of skin into one continuous strip, half an inch wide, by following around and around the band. The line is then about twenty-five yards long, and while still green is stretched between two large rocks, where it is submitted to the greatest tension that the limited mechanical appliances of these savages can supply. While so situated the line is carefully trimmed with a sharp knife to remove all fatty particles, and to partially round off ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... Suddenly, when the tension of watcher and watched was keenest, there came a mighty crashing at the door and a voice shouted loudly a summons to open in the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... which brought him in contact with such noble natures as Frau von Wolzogen, Koerner, Dalberg; in later years with his wife; with the Duke of Weimar, the Prince of Augustenburg, and lastly with Goethe. There was at that time a powerful tension in the minds of men, and particularly of the higher classes, which led them to do things which at other times men only aspire to do. The impulses of a most exalted morality—a morality which is so apt to end in mere declamation and deceit—were not only felt by them, but obeyed and carried out. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... were the only indications that much was at stake; social veneer concealed the real anxiety of the players, but a hush of nervous tension pervaded the room. It was a relief when the last hand was concluded. Everyone crowded around the table where the beautiful prizes were displayed and where the ...
— Mrs. Christy's Bridge Party • Sara Ware Bassett

... shifted more and more to the north that this sail was too much for her, the canvas bellying out, and the upper spars "buckling" as the vessel laboured in the heavy sea, the stays taut as fiddle-strings and everything at the utmost tension. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... to last, whether we consider his childish waywardness and outbreaks of violent passion, which persevered in a less childish form through manhood; or the fits of intense depression and melancholy, alternating with spells of high nerve-tension and feverish excitement; or the restlessness and impatient energy which showed themselves always and everywhere, and at times drove him like a wild man into the woods, "seeking rest and finding none;" or the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... more than I can say, a great sense of relief, a lessening of the tension, the unconscious strain I had been under, at this swift, jovial conversation with another ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... The tension is almost unbearable now. We have not been educated to this. We are like soldiers suddenly flung into ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... Life in the city is a stern chase after money and pleasure. Everybody hurries from morning until night, for everything moves on schedule, and twenty-four hours seem not long enough to do the world's work and enjoy the world's fun. Noise and hurry furnish a mental tension that charges the urban atmosphere with excitement. Purveyors of news and amusement have learned to cater to the love of excitement. The newspaper editor hunts continually for sensations, and sometimes does not scruple to twist sober fact ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... the moment by means of a buoyant air-chamber within. A windlass in the anchor-chamber now pays out the cable between it and the mine as the anchor-chamber sinks. On the plummet touching bottom, the tension in the cable between it and the anchor-chamber is lessened, and the windlass mentioned stops. The anchor-chamber thereupon sinks to the bottom, dragging down the spherical mine until that is at the selected depth ready for its ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... the farm she heaved a deep sigh. The tension had relaxed now that she felt herself to be doing at last. Cooped within the stockade, her plans still waiting to be set in motion, she had felt nigh to choking with nervousness. Her anxiety to be gone had been overwhelming. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... stopped, I mechanically ate, because I feared that without nourishment the unnatural tension of my nerves might incapacitate me from going through with the trying ordeal which awaited me. I at length reached the house. I dismounted at the gate, and walked up the avenue. My feet seemed glued to the ground, and I faltered like a drunken man, as I slowly drew ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... earned and gained. This one has added few notable pages to universal history, but its own personal biography would be an exciting one. It is worn with adventure, and old before its time. The quarrelings of its hot youth, the tension of strife and insecurity, the life of alarms it has lived, have aged it. They have aged many another city of Europe, and endeared the blessing ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... here. This place is one of miracle. One might know life here, living in the skies. Listen! That musician knows it!" He thrust out his hand impulsively and caught Blake's in a pressure full of nervous tension, full of magnetism. "What is it he ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... knife-edge suspension tend to pull down the lever against the resistance of the heavy helical spring. The governor is provided with an auxiliary spring on the outside of the governor dome for varying the speed while synchronizing. The tension of the auxiliary spring is regulated by a small motor wired to the switchboard. This spring should be used only to correct slight changes in speed. Any marked change should be corrected by the use of the large hexagonal nut in the upper plate of the governor frame. This nut is screwed down ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... Western and Arab troops to deploy on its soil for the liberation of Kuwait the following year. The continuing presence of foreign troops on Saudi soil after the liberation of Kuwait became a source of tension between the royal family and the public until all operational US troops left the country in 2003. Major terrorist attacks in May and November 2003 spurred a strong on-going campaign against domestic ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble—but in this case, ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... had enjoyment of mine. The little hussey importuned Miss F. to let her see me fucking her, saying that she could easily hide behind the curtains, and I would never know. Miss F., whose passions were at the utmost tension of desire, consented, and placing Lizzie where she could see without being seen, opened my door, but found an empty bed. She at first suspected that I had gone to one of the female servants, but thought she would make sure and see if Mary was not ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... shrinking still within the narrow restraints of a hieratic, conventional treatment, long after the more genuine Olympians had broken out of them. The school of Praxiteles, as distinguished from that of Pheidias, is especially the school of grace, relaxing a little the severe ethical tension of the latter, in favour of a slightly Asiatic sinuosity and tenderness. Pausanias tells us that he carved the two goddesses for the temple of Demeter at Athens; and Pliny speaks of two groups of his in brass, the one representing ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... wherever the echo of the wail was heard, a tension fell upon everything. Even the saplings were tense, and you could almost hear the cracking of the muscles of the animals holding themselves together and watching which way the tiger would pass. It was as if the horn of the chase ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji

... Dinville's exact instructions, Stuart found the newspaper office without difficulty. The minute he stepped out of the elevator and on the floor, a driving expectancy possessed him. The disorderliness, the sense of tension, the combination of patient waiting and driving speed, the distant and yet perceptible smell of type metal and printers' ink, in short, the atmosphere of a newspaper, struck him with a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... trip of this kind a vacation;' then with a countenance of sudden gravity he added: 'We no sooner get through one great question than another comes.' It made me think of the tension on the President's mind at that time. There was the Venezuelan question. There were suggestions of war with England, and then there was the Cuban matter with suggestions of war with Spain, and all the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... the strain upon his nerves and the sense of his desperate state, but only by the evident tension of the muscles of the jaw and the unnatural calm of his manner and low, forced tone. "Very likely," he said; and added slowly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... crushed, and that reaction would carry him into a worse peace than that which he then disdained. [366] The negotiations at the Congress of Vienna brought Great Britain and Russia, as it has been seen, into an antagonism which threatened to end in the resort to arms; and the tension which then and for some time afterwards existed between the two governments led English Ministers to speak, certainly in exaggerated and misleading language, of the mutual hostility of the English and ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... Creagan and the heavy-jawed sheriff into unwise speech. And inattentive Anastacio had a shrewd surmise at Pringle's design. He knew nothing of the fight at the Gadsden House, but he sensed an unexplained tension—and he knew his chief. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... on pretending to read, but in reality listening with acute tension of ear to every little sound. His perceptions became so sensitive in this respect that he was incapable of measuring time, every moment had seemed so full of noises, from the beating of his heart up to the roll of the heavy carts in the distance. He wondered whether Virginie would have reached the ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... a vast concentration camp for supplies, and amid its feverish activity there was no rest, no Sundays or holidays; the work went on at top tension night and day amid a clangor of metal, a ceaseless roar of motors, a bedlam of hammers and saws and riveters. Men lived in greasy clothes, breathing dust and the odors of burnt gas mainly, eating poor food and drinking warm, fetid water when they were lucky enough ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... in later times astutely used its phrases as shibboleths to cloak his acts of despotism. But in that terrible revolutionary decade the Jacobins had spent their lives and their energies. A profound weariness of the long and severe tension, and a yearning for a return to orderly civil life came over men's minds. The masses were still sincerely attached to the Catholic faith: the middle-classes hailed with relief the advent of the strong man who proved himself able to crush ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... whilst her lips wore never so faint a smile. For a second La Boulaye looked the very picture of foolishness and alarm. Then it seemed as if he drew a curtain, and his face assumed the expressionless mask that was habitual to it in moments of great tension. Instinctively he put behind him his hands which held the paper. Cecile's lips took on an added curl of scorn as ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... following: First you attach a stout, fine fish-line firmly to the tooth. Next you lash the other end to the latch of the door—we do not use knobs in this country. You then make the patient stand back till there is a nice tension on the line, when suddenly you make a feint as if to strike him in the eye. Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid the blow. Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... questioning, Miss Stevens rightly holds, defeats its own ends. It maintains a nervous tension in the classroom that must in the long run be injurious. More than that, it is a symptom of the fact that the real work of the hour is being done by the teacher, and the pupil's share is reduced simply to brief, punctuation-like answers to the teacher's ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion

... pointed out the qualifications which were lacking in me, which were necessary to a politician. Shortly after, I was nominated as a candidate for the City Council, and I addressed a number of meetings, although always coldly, and never at high tension. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... ascertain at a glance how hard the wind was blowing and had been blowing, how the barometer was varying, to what degree of cold the thermometer had descended; if one were still more inquisitive he could further inform himself as to the electrical tension of the atmosphere and other matters of like import. That such knowledge could be gleaned without a visit to the open air was an obvious advantage to those who were clothing themselves to face it, whilst the ability to study the variation ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... according to the weights of the hammers; and he ascertained by experiment that such was the case when different weights were hung by strings of the same size. The next discovery was that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave the diapason-interval, or an eighth; and the same was effected from two strings of similar length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other. Belonging to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... regards the course of events I am to relate. Though most readers will recognise it at once when I say that the war, had it come to that, would have been a naval war of great magnitude; and that during the time of tension swift but quiet preparations were going forward at all naval depots, and movements and dispositions of our fleet were arranged that extended to the remotest ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... prepared for so sudden an assumption of importance. Her nerves, never of the strongest, had been strung to their highest tension by the event of the morning. She wanted to escape observation; she was conscious of looking a little older than she quite liked to look as a bride who had been married that morning; she feared the landlady, the chamber-maid, the waiter—everybody ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler



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