"Tantalizing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tantalizing, but Philip still felt afraid to appropriate one of his father's bonds. If it had been a fear of doing wrong, I should be glad to say so, but it was ...
— The Tin Box - and What it Contained • Horatio Alger
... gentlemen at the table; our only champion, George Bradburn, was too deaf to hear a word that was said. In spite of constant gentle nudgings by my husband under the table, and frowns from Mr. Birney opposite, the tantalizing tone of the conversation was too much for me to maintain silence. Calmly and skillfully Mrs. Mott parried all their attacks, now by her quiet humor turning the laugh on them, and then by her earnestness and dignity silencing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... behind them, the young folks ran down the hill, with a very lively dog gambolling beside them, and took a delightfully tantalizing survey of the external charms of the big tent. But people were beginning to go in, and it was impossible to delay when they came round ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the coffee, trying to keep her gaze away from the tantalizing tail-end of the headline at whose first ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... yet. There is something I want to ask you first," she pauses in a tantalizing fashion, and glances from the grass she is still holding to him, and from him back to the grass again, before she speaks. "It is a question," she says then, as though reluctantly, "but you look so angry with me that I am afraid to ask it." This is the rankest hypocrisy, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... as possible, and to facilitate this keep the brush soft by occasionally applying a little turpentine to it. This, however, is a slow and tantalizing process of varnishing, and there is an easier and better one. Procure a bottle of Canada balsam in benzole. It is used for mounting microscopic objects in, and can be got from any optician's. It should be quite fluid. Get a large wide-mouthed ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... a tantalizing little laugh, and a moment after was swept off into the dance by Archie, who had been seriously considering organizing ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... trailing rope, nor eyebolt, nor even the open deadlights, for they were high out of reach. The crew were locked in the forecastle, and there was only Florrie. There was no wind, and only the long, heaving ground swell, which rolled the boat slightly, but not enough to bring those tantalizing deadlights within reach; and at last, at the sound of dishes rattling in the galley, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... invaders ending in ignominious flight, the advance of the allies, finally the capture of Paris. All this while Mr. Adams at St. Petersburg witnessed first the alarm and then the exultation of the court and the people as the rumors now of defeat, anon of victory, were brought by the couriers at tantalizing intervals; and he saw the rejoicings and illuminations which rendered the Russian capital so brilliant and glorious during the last portion of his residence. It was an experience well worth having, and which is pleasantly depicted ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... eyes began to irritate him; the fearless, taunting gleam of his teeth, his audacious confidence, put him on edge. Twice again he struck out swiftly, but Jean had come and gone like a dart. His lithe body, fifty pounds lighter than Howland's, seemed to be that of a boy dodging him in some tantalizing sport. The Frenchman made no effort at attack; his were the tactics of the wolf at the heels of the bull moose, of the lynx before the prongs of a ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... perfect men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of us all. The effect of the forbidden, the tantalizing curiosity aroused and the longing to rise above the level of lust make the sex adjustment the most difficult of all and produce the queerest results. Sex is a road to power and to failure, a road to health and sickness. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... of a cargo for the S. R. & N. he was accosted by a tall, nervous man with shifting eyes and twitching lips. It was hard to recognize in this pitiable shaken creature the once resplendent Gordon, who had bent the whole northland to his ends. Some tantalizing demons inside the man's frame were jerking at his sinews. Fear was in his roving glance; he stammered; he plucked at the little captain's sleeve like a frightened woman. The open-hearted Irishman ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... very dark colored, and had an unpleasant odor, but in my eagerness I paid little attention to those things. I tried to taste it, but the mouth of the bottle was too small for my beak, and all my efforts were in vain. In my rage I vowed revenge, and, screaming loudly, I threw the tantalizing thing with ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pardon, but John Adams never made any such speech," answered Fred who, it must be confessed, was rather too fond of tantalizing ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... Bonaparte. He had often wondered what was up there; he liked to know what was in all locked-up places and out-of-the-way corners, but he was afraid to climb the ladder. So Bonaparte looked up, and in the name of all that was tantalizing, questioned what the boy did up there. The loft was used only as a lumber-room. What could the fellow find up there to keep ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... looked round in search of some other source of patronage, and feeling averse to subjecting himself to further tantalizing delays and disappointments of the court, determined to repair to Paris. He departed, therefore, and went to the Convent of La Rabida to seek his son Diego. When the worthy Friar Juan Perez de Marchena beheld Columbus arrive once more at the gate of his convent after nearly seven years ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... power had built, while high disdain I felt within to see the toiling train Striving to seize each transitory thing That fleets away on dissolution's wing; And soonest from the firmest grasp recede, Like airy forms, with tantalizing speed. O mortals! ere the vital powers decay, Or palsied eld obscures the mental ray, Raise your affections to the things above, Which time or fickle chance can never move. Had you but seen what I despair to sing, How fast his courser plied the flaming wing ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... second winter that Scotch was with me and before he was two years of age, one of the wily coyotes showed a tantalizing spirit and some interesting cunning which put Scotch on his mettle. One day when Scotch was busy driving the main pack into the woods, one that trotted lame with the right fore leg emerged from behind a rocky crag at the edge of the open and less than fifty ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... several things: the piquancy of her snub nose, the brightness of her smile, at once defiant and wistful, the lingering softness of her gloved hand, and the extraordinary charm of her sunshade, which matched her dress and formed a sort of canopy and frame for that intelligent, tantalizing face. He remembered that of late he and she had grown very intimate; and it came upon him with a shock, as though he had just opened a telegram which said so, that May, and not the other girl, was his destined mate. And he thought of her fortune, tiny but nevertheless useful, ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... having been accessible to all who cared to use it. It must be admitted that these stories are of doubtful authenticity; and further, that we have no details of the way in which books were cared for in Greece during the golden age of her literature. This dearth of information is the more tantalizing as it is obvious that private libraries must have existed in a city so cultivated as Athens; and we do, in fact, find a few notices which tell us that such was the case. Xenophon[8], for instance, speaks of the number of volumes in ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... thus keeping together, and the necessity of congregating for mutual support in an exigency has by no means entirely ceased. Now and then the cars would dart suddenly into a dark tunnel, when we skirted the mountain sides, to emerge again upon a scene of redoubled sunlight, for a moment quite tantalizing to the vision, reminding one forcibly of some Swiss and Italian roads where car-lamps are burned all day. As occasional bands of brigands appear, and, stopping the trains, rob the passengers, government kindly complimented ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... side of the trunk. All his craft forgotten on the instant, the bear sniffed and snorted and drew loud, fierce breaths, as if he thought to suck the little furry tenant forth by inhalation. The live, warm smell that came from the hole was deliciously tantalizing to his appetite. The hole, however, was barely big enough to admit the tip of his black snout, so he presently gave over his foolish sniffings, and set himself to tear an entrance with his resistless claws. The bark and dead wood flew in showers under his efforts, and it was evident ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... territory, and, to ensure her orders being obeyed, had placed a wire door to shut it off from the rest of the house. This door was kept locked, Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs each having a key. Every day, girls pressed inquisitive noses against the wire netting to peep at the tantalizing prospect beyond. They could just see round the corner of a winding oak staircase on to a dim, mysterious landing beyond. Once or twice Miss Gibbs had gone to her attic laboratory and had left the door open behind her, and a few bold spirits had ventured upstairs, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... cannon roared, and splinters flew from the boat; but its occupant, with tantalizing bravado, rose and waved his hand defiantly. The six-pounder then sent out a percussion shell, and just as the frail boat was entering the fog it was blown into a thousand fragments. Some of the observers swore positively that they saw the ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... Bertram said that the entire Strata was a-quiver. Not but that Billy and Aunt Hannah had visited there before, but that this was different. They were to come at noon this time. This visit was not to be a tantalizing little piece of stiffness an hour and a half long. It was to be a satisfying, whole-souled matter of half a day's comradeship, almost like old times. So once more the roses graced the rooms, and a flaring pink bow adorned ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... on Saturday, was due the debt of three hundred thalers to his scoffing and tantalizing money lender. Three o'clock came, and still there was but six shillings eight pence in the till. Where was his money to come from? But Loest sat still, and "possessed his soul in patience" for he knew the Lord would choose the best time, and he desired ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... Sure enough, Evelyn lay comfortably back on her pillow, her wonderful golden hair falling in long, loose waves about her. Her beauty now made little impression upon Grace, who knew only too well the tantalizing, troublesome spirit that lay behind it. "It is almost eight o'clock, Miss Ward. Remember, breakfast ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... passionately). The truth—Oh, God! what do you know about the truth? Your business is crawling up into a little power, that you may use it by tantalizing, morally and physically, people a thousand times better than you.... You sit there in your smug authority ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... from church alone early, and they could have a comfortable chat together here! Would she sing the "Ham-fat Man" for him? Would the dimples come back if she did? Should he ever know more of this quaint repressed side of her nature? After all, what a dear, graceful, tantalizing, lovable creature she was! Ought he not at all hazards try to know her better? Might it not be here that he would find a perfect realization of his boyish dreams, and in HER all that—what nonsense he ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... said, nodding—a flower on the gauzy hat set to vibrating in a tantalizing way. "I know. There are fat women who rock and rock on piazzas by the sea, and they speak of country people as the 'lower classes.' How happy this big family is in not knowing it is the lower classes!" "We haven't ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... right, among the trees, was a long military line of tents. Above the noise of construction the boy caught the silent brooding of the forest and, poured round all, the liquid glory of the sunset. Suddenly he saw the whole great picture as his own work, and it was a picture as elusive, as tantalizing, as a boy's first dreams of pirate adventure. Jim had come to his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Bob, out in the Piedmont hills, behaved like an angel. His goodness, at times, was of the spirited prancing order, but otherwise he was a lamb. Daylight, with doubled quirt ready in his right hand, ached for a whirl, just one whirl, which Bob, with an excellence of conduct that was tantalizing, refused to perform. But no Dede did Daylight encounter. He vainly circled about among the hill roads and in the afternoon took the steep grade over the divide of the second range and dropped into Maraga Valley. Just after passing the foot of the descent, he heard the hoof beats of a cantering ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... coffee drifted through the cabin door, and Rick wondered why it is that coffee, bacon, and other breakfast scents are so much more tantalizing on the water. ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... taking a nap, with a basket of stale eggs for a pillow," said the bad boy, as he took the old man by the arm and raised him up, and looked at him with a grin that was tantalizing. "What is it, sewer gas? My, but the board of health won't do a thing to you if the inspector happens in here. Those eggs must have been mislaid by a hen that had a diseased mind," and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out of the show case and began to sprinkle ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... imagined incidents which are usually broken off before they reach a satisfactory climax. They are always interrupted by the intrusion of other matters, usually of more practical interest; and the long-continued habit of satisfying myself by masturbation has made erotic dreams rather tantalizing than pleasurable. I dream very seldom at night—at least I can scarcely ever remember any dreams upon waking—and practically never of sexual relations. I have not had a nocturnal emission ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... from another world came Marcia's sweet voice, its very sweetness reminding him of that other lost voice, whose tantalizing music floated about his imagination like a string of phantom silver bells that all but sounded and then ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... indeed, of young Sheridan was peculiarly tantalizing. Born and brought up in the midst of those bright hopes, which so long encircled his father's path, he saw them all die away as he became old enough to profit by them, leaving difficulty and disappointment, his only inheritance, behind. Unprovided with any profession by which he could secure ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... World of Three Dimensions. This done, I immediately sent for my Grandson; for, to confess the truth, I felt that all that I had seen and heard was in some strange way slipping away from me, like the image of a half-grasped, tantalizing dream, and I longed to essay my skill ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... nations it is less as a historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of the feudalism and the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... It was a tantalizing problem that confronted us. As long as we were vigilant, they could not escape; and as long as they were careful, we would be unable to catch them. Charley cudgelled his brains continually, but for once his imagination failed him. It ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... release his rockets. They spurted out in long wavering lines of smoke. He missed. The balloon lay close to the ground, looking larger, riper than ever. The sight of its smooth, sleek surface was the most tantalizing of invitations. Letting it pass under me again, I waited for a second or two, then shut down the motor, and pushed forward on the control-stick until I was falling vertically. Standing upright on the rudder-bar, I felt the tugging of the shoulder-straps. Getting the bag well within the sights, ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... watch the wings of flame gilding the dark throat of the chimney, and his mind seemed drawn upward on that rush of light, up into the pure chill air where the moon was riding among sluggish thick floes of cloud. In the darkness he heard chiming voices, wheedling and tantalizing. One night he was walking on his little verandah. Between rafts of silver-edged clouds were channels of ocean-blue sky, inconceivably deep and transparent. The air was serene, with a faint acid taste. Suddenly there shrilled a soft, sweet, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... was not more successful, so far as its main object was concerned, but it actually stumbled upon Sandy Flash's trail, and only failed by giving tongue too soon and following too impetuously. Gilbert and his men had a tantalizing impression (which later intelligence proved to have been correct) that the robber was somewhere near them,—buried in the depths of the very wood they were approaching, dodging behind the next barn as it came into ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... sank in the snow we found our downward progress very trying. I suffered from thirst, but after we had divided the liquefied snow at the Petits Mulets among us we had nothing to drink. I crammed the clean snow into my mouth, but the process of melting was slow and tantalizing to a parched throat, while the chill was ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... He grinned happily at her. "But if you can stand having dinner with a man in an old-fashioned suit, I'll tell you why Mother America should be a contented cow instead of a tantalizing tigress." ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... fear that one of the lady Dewbell's spider-web silk hose would some morning have been found without a garter, and she herself hanging like a beauteous exhalation among the elm-leaves in the morning sunshine. Oh, had Sir Timothy been there then, he would have found, instead of his imperious and tantalizing coquette, the tenderest and truest of disconsolate maidens, ready to melt into his arms between the delicious pause of a sigh and a kiss. "Naughty, cruel Sir Timothy! Horrid creature! to take all my nonsense for real earnest, and to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... stood like a statue, and his face was as white. The attorney dropped his words slowly from lips that still wore the tantalizing smile. ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... he said. "So that I am near you, I am comparatively happy. It is more than this earthly wretch called Me deserves—you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom—hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air! Forgive me for being gross, as you call it! Remember that our calling cousins when really strangers was a snare. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... taken note of his features, but only to feel more deeply how little can be told in that way. Her inability to decide what impression he should have made on her was tantalizing—the aching question still remained. The face is but a likeness; you should know the original. And yet his countenance, so strongly painted on her mind, seemed always on the point of answering her profoundest query. It was as if she knew him. She now contemplated her mental image more ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... innings the scales hung in the balance. The Keio pitcher had a world of speed and a tantalizing drop, and only two safe hits were made off him. Behind him his team mates fielded like demons. No ball seemed too hard for them to get, and even when a Giant got to first base he found it difficult to advance against the accurate throwing to second ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... unconventionally upon the doorstep, her shoulder turned to him and her face turned to the trail by which a man naturally would be supposed to approach the place. Her hair was shining darkly in the sun and the shorter locks were blowing about her face in a downright tantalizing fashion; they made a man want to brush them back and kiss the spot they were caressing so wantonly. She was humming a tune softly to herself. Weary caught the words, sung absently, under ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked, it is for my sake, I take you specially to be ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... places for roasting, and these half-men had learned the taste of cooked meats. Their jaws were slavering as they waited. The scents were tantalizing. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... had discovered interposed a barrier to the further progress of ships towards his longed-for goal, as inexorable as the mountain ranges and vast steppes of Asia, was mercifully concealed from his eyes; and the elusive "secret of the strait" through which he to the last hoped to pass, though tantalizing in its constant evasion, kept in tension the springs of hope and moral energy which might have succumbed under the knowledge ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... this lucky man be? To win a woman, such as I know you to be, this man must have some extraordinary attributes." And all at once a sense of infinite relief entered into his heart: if she were indeed married, there would no longer be that tantalizing doubt on his part, that peculiar attraction which at one time resembled love and at another time was simply fascination. She would pass out of his life definitely. He perfectly recognized the fact that he admired her above all other women he knew; but it was also apparent that to see her day ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... forests, where tigers cannot be isolated, or successfully pursued, unless one has an army of men and many guns. This form of sport, which Mr. Sanderson speaks highly of, I can imagine may be very interesting, but it is also very tiresome and tantalizing. A great many years ago I remember trying it for two nights, but without any success, and never again tried it till some years ago, when I made an attempt in one of the forests at the foot of one of the passes leading down to Mangalore. My people had no ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... holes in those piles of goods. Warehouses blazed. By nightfall for a mile upriver and down they faced a solid sheet of fire, and they smelled the tantalizing odor of burning bacon, coffee, sugar, and saw blue rivers of blazing ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... beast, and one more effort brought me ahead of my wearied victim, which stood still and allowed me to approach. In vain did I now attempt to bind my fractured rifle with a pocket-handkerchief, in order to admit of my administering the coup de grace. The guard was so contracted that, as in the tantalizing phantasies of a night-mare, the hammer could not by any means be brought down upon the nipple. In vain I looked around for a stone, and sought in every pocket for my knife, with which either to strike the copper-cap and bring about ignition, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... are, there is to be found such a legend, a tale of greater riches just beyond men's knowledge. No matter how dazzling is the wealth at hand there is always that tantalizing story of the lost mine, sometimes reputed to be far and inaccessible, sometimes only just over the next hill, yet always as difficult to discover as the end of the rainbow. But, as Abner Blythe said, it is so a country grows, and when men cease from following rainbows, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... not said as are those of the Romans, out at an open altar before the people, but in a holy of holies; very holy, it may be imagined, from the manner in which the worshippers rubbed their foreheads against certain gratings, through which a tantalizing glimpse might be had of the fine things that were going on within. Had they but known it, it might all have been seen, holy of holies, head-wagging priest, idle yawning assistant, with legs stretched out, half asleep, mumblement, jumblement and all, from a little ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as the Pipes of Pan, luring as a will-o'-the-wisp. Above the bustle of departing and incoming passengers, the confusion of the station and the grinding of the wheels as the train started again that haunting peal of laughter still rang in his ears, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... tales out of school," commanded the Major in mock alarm; but Anstice noticed how the man's brown fingers closed round his wife's hand, and suddenly he felt as though this spectacle of their reunion was too tantalizing to be pleasant to a sore ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... quoted appears on p. 27 of the 2nd vol. of the 1847 edition (Forman ed., p. 252)] The passage is clearly intended—though chronology is no more than any other exact science the 'forte' of that most tantalizing of biographers—to refer to the ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... had been tantalizing his business manager, or maybe he really was doubtful about the flexibility of the bar. At any rate, when he applied pressure he did not seem surprised when the glass became straight again. Then he proceeded actually to tie a knot in it, so bendable ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... Ladye is one of those tantalizing fragments, in which Mr. Coleridge has shown us what exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated. Let us be thankful for what we have received, however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the front hall after supper he came upon a beautiful, tantalizing smell that he failed for some time to locate. He went about with his little nose up-tilted, in a persistent search. It was such a beautiful smell!—not powerful and oversweet, but faint and wonderful. The little nose searched on patiently ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... towards him with very short steps, her head a little on one side, hands on hips, with a slight balancing of her body: an approach more tantalizing than an escape. He looked on, eager—charmed. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... could not escape the lynx eyes of his comrades. Nor could the size and shape of the envelope and the neat, small handwriting fail to be noticed. Weir always stole off by himself to read his daily letter, trying to escape a merry chorus of tantalizing remarks. ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... Miss Kitty. For as his feet were tucked under him, she did not know that he had just put his shoes and stockings into the pig-tub, into which he all but fell himself from the exertion. He did not hear Miss Kitty, and thought on. He wanted to be out again, and he had a tantalizing remembrance of the ease with which the tender juicy stalks of the tulips went snap, snap, in that new place of amusement he had discovered. Thomasina looked into the kitchen and went away again. When she had gone, John ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... and had gathered it in a bewitchingly coquettish knot low on her neck, where it shone with a new richness and a new warmth with every turn of her head. But not once did she turn so that Philip could see more than the tantalizing pink of her cheek and the prettiness of her chin, which at times was partly concealed in a collarette of the same silver ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... solitude more intense even than that of naked nature; when all faces are strange to us; when no pulse of sympathy throbs from our heart to the hearts of others when each passes us by, engaged with his own destiny, and leaving us to fulfil ours. In this tantalizing solitude of the crowd, in this sense of isolation from our fellows, if never before, do we feel, with sickness of heart, that we are alone. There is a solitude of sickness,—the solitude of the watcher or of the patient,—a ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... the midst of a tantalizing equation. He was accustomed, however, to such invasions on the part of his chum, the two having lived together now for nearly three school years—-ever since they ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... remembers each tantalizing moment of approach and separation. A splendid speech of the humorous type. Xenophon himself must be credited with so much fun, and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boom that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Kuklux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes left the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... in love with Mary Kamworth, I felt prodigiously disposed thereto; she was extremely pretty; had a foot and ancle to swear by, the most silvery toned voice I almost ever heard, and a certain witchery and archness of manner that by its very tantalizing uncertainty continually provoked attention, and by suggesting a difficulty in the road to success, imparted a more than common zest in the pursuit. She was little, a very little blue, rather a dabbler in the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... soothed his wounded soul and left only the recklessness, which is a sensation not lacking in agreeableness. Through the rosy mists of the Burgundy there began to surge up other faces than that cold pallid little face which had hovered before him all the afternoon like a tantalizing phantom; at the Chartreuse stage he began to wonder what hallucination, what aberration of sense had overcome him, that he should have been stirred to his depths and distressed so hugely. Warmer faces were these that swam before him, faces fuller of the joy of life. The devil ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... of the crew frayed out in the heat. By night they slept amid tantalizing dreams of food; by day they sprawled in dreary silences under awnings which held heat like sweat boxes. The high metal walls of the dock caught the sun's rays and threw out a furnace heat. The men endured it in net undershirts clinging to dripping bodies; their eyes ached against the ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... by the action of Deerfoot, who, having spared the life of an enemy, felt himself justified in "rubbing it in," so to speak. He faced Whirlwind toward the group, held him motionless, and, swinging his rifle over his head, indulged in a series of tantalizing shouts that were anything but soothing to the chief and his friends. How they ached to get the terrible young warrior into their power! What exquisite vengeance they ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... Hippe's house cautiously, and directed their steps towards Mr. Pippel's bird-shop. Golosh Street was asleep. Nothing was stirring in that tenebrous slum, save a dog that savagely gnawed a bone which lay on a dust-heap, tantalizing him with the flavor of food without its substance. As the gypsies moved stealthily along in the darkness, they had a sinister and murderous air that would not have failed to attract the attention of the policeman of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Bensersiel, 'Can this coast be invaded?' to his denial and our fruitless survey of the dykes and polders. Was he now reverting to a fancy we had both rejected, while shrinking from giving it explicit utterance? The doubt was tantalizing. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was irresistible. The sacredness of the king's commission and the loss to the patentee of the property already embarked in the enterprise had no weight in the royal scales. De Monts's privilege was revoked, with the tantalizing salvo of six thousand livres in remuneration, to be collected at his ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal proportions as one of the natives—how flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!—he had been turned adrift by his father, to whom he had been "somewhat of a dutiful son"; he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently "to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life," in order to get into ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... and waited for some word of commendation. Morehouse merely nodded. He was thinking—thinking hard! The voice was almost as familiar to him as was his own, and yet it persisted in tantalizing his memory. He couldn't quite place it. Old Jerry sensed ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... of wind that whipped the tautly bellying sheets lashed her dark hair about her face. Her lips, vividly red like poppy-petals, were just now curved into an amused smile, which made them even more than ordinarily kissable and tantalizing. Her companion was neglecting his nominal duty of tending ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... vision hung before him, tantalizing him, maddening him, eluding him. Then came a flash of lightning, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... across the valley and sees Shaw's Cottage commanding the most beautiful view in the hills; the very eaves of her ladyship's house seem to have wrinkled into a constant scowl of annoyance. Shaw's long, low cottage seems to smile back with tantalizing security, serene in its more lofty altitude, in its more gorgeous raiment of nature. The brooks laugh with the glitter of trout, the trees chuckle with the flight of birds, the hillsides frolic in their abundance of game, but the acres are growling like dogs of war. "Love thy neighbor as ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... not be to my taste," I replied briefly. "The beautiful binding would hold out the promise of a good book, which, not being fulfilled, would be tantalizing." ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... and satiny, cut in the newest Dallas-approved style, with long, tantalizing diagonal slashes across the breast and hips. Her hair was strikingly two-toned, black and blonde. Her teeth were a blinding white, and had been ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... return to the islands, where the enemy was expected to make a vigorous aggressive campaign the following spring. Extensive preparations were in fact on foot for the reduction of Jamaica, frustrated six months before by De Grasse's mishap. Nelson thus found himself again in tantalizing contact with the stirring circumstance that preludes hostilities, in which he himself had little hope to share; for the "Albemarle" belonged to the North American station, where all active naval operations had ceased with the surrender of Cornwallis ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... houses I had to pass, to get to our chamber over Monsieur Perrier's workshop; and in an evening the dainty, savory smell of dinner, cooking in the kitchen adjoining, sometimes filled the frosty air. Both sight and scent were tantalizing, and my dreams at night were generally of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... further side of the group. The steer raised his head, with the grass hanging from his jaws, and looked quietly at the approaching Indian. He seemed to be in doubt as to his purpose, until Shackaye, when almost upon him, swung his arm above his head and uttered a tantalizing shout, as if he wished to ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... upon Gale's coming from this conference that he encountered Nell. Since the interrupted siesta episode she had been more than ordinarily elusive, and about all he had received from her was a tantalizing smile from a distance. He got the impression now, however, that she had awaited him. When he drew close to her he was certain of it, and he experienced more ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... madam, you will not be so cruel—so tantalizing, I would say. Consider, you are my first client—your business my first consultation—do not do me the displeasure of withdrawing your confidence because I am a few years younger than you seem to have expected. My attention shall make amends for my ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the latter. She had had glimpses, once, of the male world; she had made herself the only woman shorthand-writer in the Five Towns, and one of the earliest in England—dizzy thought! But the glimpses had been vain and tantalizing. She had been in the male world, but not of it, as though encircled in a glass ball which neither she nor the males could shatter. She had had money, freedom, and ambition, and somehow, through ignorance ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... not—want not." But then, papa, it is so tantalizing to know there is a letter for one, and not to be able to get at it for such a long time; particularly when it comes from Charles, for he does not write to me very often. Do pray let me cut it this once. On any other occasion, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... to be more or less excited. After mopping his perspiring forehead he once more commenced digging here and there in a most tantalizing fashion. Toby could not comprehend what it could mean. Was there gold or some other precious deposit to be found up here among these hills, and might this strange man be an old prospector from the West who had had long experience ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... It was strange how tantalizing was that goldenrod. Always just ahead she saw another bunch, and yet another, each a little finer than the one within her reach. With joyous exclamations and gay little calls back to the waiting Jamie, Pollyanna—looking particularly attractive in her scarlet ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... one's enviable position, as well as the artistic delight of being properly placed where one could miss nothing, while the brass band outside the opera-house played its third and last quick, jubilant invitation to pleasure—so tantalizing to the outsider, so gratifying to the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... weak calls for help," said Tom, unable to keep back his news any longer, though he would have liked very much to continue tantalizing the others, "and after we had kicked off our skates and hung our packs in a tree, we went over ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... seated between Mother Mayberry and the Doctor on the end of the pew, and out of the corner of her eye she essayed a view of his magnificence, but caught him in the act of making the same pass in her direction. They both blushed, and her smile was wickedly tantalizing, though she kept her eyes fixed on the Deacon's face as he began to read the words of the service in his sweet old voice, with its note of tender affection for the pair of friends for whom he read them. And she never knew why she didn't realize it or why she thought ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fascinated him; he saw a Medusa in a spider and the universe in a drop of water. He wrote his notes in mirror-writing, from right to left; he illustrated them with a thousand fragments of exquisite drawing, all unfinished and tantalizing alike to the artist and to the scientist. His mind roamed to flying machines and submarines, but he never made one; the reason given by him in the latter case being his fear that it would be put to piratical use. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... which I have spoken, when the game was not worth the trouble. The nest was in a cleft in the tree too narrow for me to get my arm into, and I could smell the honey a foot or so away from my nose without being able to reach it—than which I know nothing more tantalizing. And while you are hanging on to a tree with three paws, and trying to squeeze the fourth into a hole, the bees have you most unpleasantly at their mercy. I was horribly stung about my face, both my eyes and my nose were smarting abominably, and at last I could stand it no longer, but slid down ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... on the Garland side of the party-wall began to have a very gloomy effect by the contrast. When, about half-past nine o'clock, one of these tantalizing bursts of gaiety had resounded for a longer time than usual, Anne said, 'I believe, mother, that you ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... tantalizing undercurrent of mystery, was reenacted before his inner vision. He seemed to hear Nicol Brinn, startled from his reverie, exclaim: "I think it was an owl.... We sometimes get them over from the ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... genius does. If it exist only for connoisseurs, it is a very suspicious matter. I looked at all Turner's pictures, and at many of his drawings; and must again confess myself wholly unable to understand more than a very few of them. Even those few are tantalizing. At a certain distance you discern what appears to be a grand and beautiful picture, which you shall admire and enjoy infinitely if you can get within the range of distinct vision. You come nearer, and find only blotches of color and dabs of the brush, meaning nothing when you look closely, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ibbetson, he tried for a week to emulate that favored dreamer, throwing his arms up, clasping his hands behind his head and being most particular in the crossing of the feet. He dreamed, but only discouraging, tantalizing dreams, and the figure his magic summoned up was not the angelic one, but invariably the elfish eyes and star-pointing nose of Dennis ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... practice in thought and handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom. There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; there, if we could but send a ray of light into the darkness of ages, we must find the solution of numberless questions which suggest themselves as we go: Whence ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... good for nothing to sisters after they are married—worse! they are tantalizing. You are obliged to see what you used to have in somebody else's possession—and much more than ever you used to have; and it's tiresome. I'm glad I've no brothers. Basil is a good deal like a brother, and I am ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... delay. Talleyrand met him with his usual front of impenetrable duplicity. He calmly denied everything connected with the cession of Louisiana until even the details became public property, and then admitted them with unblushing equanimity. His delays were so tantalizing that they might well have revived unpleasant memories of the famous X. Y. Z. negotiations, in which he tried in vain to extort bribe-money from the American negotiators [Footnote: Jefferson was guilty of much weak and undignified conduct during these ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... wait," she said wearily. "We came here soon after two o'clock, thinking we would get the children on board early for their afternoon sleep; now it's after four, and we have stood here ever since. It's too tantalizing with the ship looking at us, and the poor babies are so tired. Still, I'm not the worst off. Look at that ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... meant to be married and he suffered at the thought. But he said to her, gently, after looking at her lips, her bare neck, her whole charming, fragrant and tantalizing person: ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... marriage, and he missed Babette. But then, as he often said to himself, he ought never to have married her. He did it from pure selfishness, and because he was determined to possess the most illusive, tantalizing, elegant, and utterly unmoral little creature that the sun shone upon. He wanted her because she reminded him of birds, and flowers, and summer winds, and other exquisite things created for the delectation of mankind. He neither expected nor desired her to think. He had half-frightened ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... wouldn't, because"—something had happened to her eyes, so that they did not look tantalizing—"you'd take care of me, Willard," she announced ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... there are more than twenty players, it is well to have at least two such frogs. The other players stand in a circle around the frog, repeating, "Frog in the sea, can't catch me!" They dance forward toward the frog and back, tantalizing him and taking risks in going near him, the object of the game being for the frog to tag any one of them, whereupon he changes places with such player. The frog may not at any time leave his sitting position until released ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... heart." Yet from him I had few concealments. He was my friend and bosom-counsellor, in whom I reposed the most unreserved confidence. But strange to say, this confidence was not mutual. There was a mystery about George which I could not fathom; a mental reservation which was tantalizing and inexplicable. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... certainly requested to do far more than a son usually expects of his mother, her tantalizing letters were a source of great annoyance to him, as is ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we hoisted the Reindeer's big mainsail and cast off. It was tantalizing fall weather. The sea-breeze, which had blown steadily all summer, was gone, and in its place were capricious winds and murky skies which made the time of arriving anywhere extremely problematical. We started ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... business. A curious feeling of familiarity, of physical habit, caused her to open the big mahogany door. There was no air of public festivity about the room, which was furnished with a substantial, almost shabby masculine comfort. But oh, tantalizing spectacle! Under the illumination of a tall, crimson-shaded, standard lamp, stood a little, white-covered table, reminding her irresistibly of a little table in a fairy story, which the due incantation causes to rise out of the ground. A small silver-gilt ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... raw fish. Then, just as the mawkish cold, gray dawn came nosing over the house-tops, and the poor fellow's mind had reached the point where the slam of a window or the ripping creak of a floorboard would have shattered his brittle nerves into a thousand cursing tortures—then that teasing, tantalizing little friend of all rheumatic invalids—the Morning Nap—came swooping down upon him like a sponge and wiped out of his face every single bit of the sharp, precious evidence of pain which he had been accumulating ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... battalions and independent companies.[748] Cooper, in fact, seemed bent upon tantalizing Steele and many of the Indians were behind him.[749] Colonel Tandy Walker was especially his supporter. Cooper had been Walker's choice for department commander[750] and continued so, in spite of all Steele's ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... came tantalizing glimpses of the open country running away towards shaggy gray Hymettus. Left to itself the land would be mostly arid and seared brown by the summer sun; but everywhere the friendly work of man is visible. One can count the little green oblong patches, stretching even up the mountain side, ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... unheralded. Bwana could not imagine who the approaching horseman might be. After the manner of frontier hospitality the globe round he met the newcomer at the gate, welcoming him even before he had dismounted. He saw a tall, well knit man of thirty or over, blonde of hair and smooth shaven. There was a tantalizing familiarity about him that convinced Bwana that he should be able to call the visitor by name, yet he was unable to do so. The newcomer was evidently of Scandinavian origin—both his appearance and accent denoted that. ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disgust I felt for the proprietor of the hotel at which I stopped, when, in reply to my eager inquiry for war news, he was only able to say that he believed there had been some fighting somewhere in Virginia. This to one starving for information after a week's abstinence was tantalizing. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock |
