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More "Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shop along with the men. Their busy time is during the marriage season from November to June. A village tailor is paid either in cash or grain and is not infrequently a member of the village establishment. During the rains, the tailor's slack season, he supplements his earnings by tillage, holding land which Government has continued to him on payment of one-half the ordinary rental. In south Gujarat, in the absence of Brahmans, a Darzi officiates at Bhawad marriages, and in some ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... of each small skew bevel wheel forms one part of a clutch; the other part of the clutch is slidably mounted on the spindle. When the two parts of the clutch are separated, as they are when the yarn breaks or runs slack, when it is exhausted, or when the cop reaches a predetermined length, the spindle stops; but when the two parts of the clutch are in contact, the small skew bevel wheel drives the clutch, the latter rotates the spindle, and the spindle in turn draws forward the yarn from the bobbin, and in conjunction ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... have you not known in the course of your history a slack-tide of faith, a less aspiring hour? Have not you, too, known a temporary ascendancy of material over spiritual interests, a lowering of the moral tone, a readiness, for the sake of ease and peace and secure enjoyment, to compromise with evil? Have not you, too, felt the tyranny ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... large, strong hand and took his slack, big-knuckled fingers into a tight clasp. Mrs. Marshall-Smith evidently thought a light tone best now, as always, to take. "I tell you, Barbara"—she suggested laughingly, "we'll exchange. You give me ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... their little discoveries and interests. Bill rode a good many miles that day, always beside a wire fence; and occasionally he would stop, dismount, and busy himself in some small repair, where a fence-post had sagged down, or the wire become twisted or slack. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... a very great advantage; we could always get at it. A case with a large lid, covered by the lashing, gives constant trouble; the whole lashing has to be undone for every little thing one wants out of the case. This is not always convenient; if one is tired and slack, it may sometimes happen that one will put off till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, especially when it is bitterly cold. The handier one's sledging outfit, the sooner one gets into the tent and to rest, and that is no small ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... kindred, whom they invite to partake.[28] It lasts three nights and the intermediate days; when, by command of the king, every house must new gravel the street before its door, and hang out candles all night. I was not slack in obeying this order, and I was informed that a poor man was put to death and his house shut up, for neglecting to comply with the order. On this occasion, the China captain furnished me with two very decent paper lanthorns. Being informed that the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... physic, few, I believe, would trust their souls, fortunes, or bodies to his direction; because that power is neither fit to judge or teach those qualifications which are absolutely necessary to the several professions. Put the case that walking on the slack rope were the only talent required by act of parliament for making a man a bishop; no doubt, when a man had done his feat of activity in form, he might sit in the House of Lords, put on his robes and his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... outermost canoe. The rest of us, up to our armpits and barely able to keep our footing as we slipped and stumbled among the boulders in the swift current, lifted and shoved while Kermit and his men pulled the rope and fastened the slack to a half-submerged tree. Each canoe in succession was hauled up the little rock island, baled, and then taken down in safety by two paddlers. It was nearly four o'clock before we were again ready ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... went out by the tunnel. It would take more than a monkey to go up three hundred feet on a slack rope, or thirty feet either, for ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Van der Kemp, who deftly caught it and held on tight. Another was flung to Moses, who also caught it and held on—slack. At the same moment, Nigel saw a large block with a hook attached descending towards ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... escape destruction. He did not know enough about horses to put a snaffle-bit in one's mouth, and yet he would draw the friskiest, most mettlesome animal in the corral, upon whose back he was scarcely more at home than he would be upon a slack rope. It was no uncommon thing to see a horse break out of ranks, and go past the battalion like the wind, with poor Seitz clinging to his mane like the traditional grim Death to a deceased African. We then knew that Seitz had thoughtlessly sunk the keen spurs he would persist in wearing; deep into ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... intervals during the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could quench, but a savage yearning of his whole exhausted system for ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... older man. The latter's eyes were half-closed and his pose was slack, as if he were languidly enjoying the warmth, but Jim thought he had been listening. Then he wondered why the other's short description had given him so distinct a picture; he could see the rugged ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... believed, and even the wisdom of "The Jupiter" sometimes falls on deaf ears. Though other plans did not put themselves forward in the columns of "The Jupiter," reformers of church charities were not slack to make known in various places their different nostrums for setting Hiram's Hospital on its feet again. A learned bishop took occasion, in the Upper House, to allude to the matter, intimating that he had communicated on the subject with his right reverend brother of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of the victors were broken up by private dissensions. Before leaving for France, Earl Simon violently quarrelled with Richard, Earl of Gloucester. It was currently believed that Gloucester had grown slack, and Simon rose in popular estimation as a thorough-going reformer who had no mind to substitute the rule of a baronial oligarchy for the tyranny of the king. His position was strengthened by his personal qualities which made him the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... early; the dawn had scarce begun when he appeared with the tray and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed doing another ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dashed towards him with devastating speed. The fellow turned to run, but a second later the slack of some of his garments was in Stefan's huge hand. Struggling and backing he found himself half lifted, half propelled on the ground, all the way to the sled. There he was lifted high and dumped in, like ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... mother cut them down for me; She took the slack in fore and aft, and hemmed them at the knee; They fitted rather loosely, but the things that made me glad Were the horizontal pockets that those good ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... sure, but it's the narrer part, and I can see everything she does as plain as daylight. She washed a Monday, and she ain't taken her clothes in yet, and it's Thursday. She may be bleachin' of 'em out, but it looks slack. I said to Si last night I should stand it till 'bout Friday—seein' 'em lay on the grass there—but if she didn't take 'em in then, I should go over and offer to help her. She has a fire in the settin'-room 'most every night, though we ain't ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... been spoken of. It has been described as a grin. That term may offend some sensitive eye as an epithet applicable only to something common, vulgar. To smile is proper, may even be aristocratic; only small boys and persons of slack breeding are guilty of the grin.... Ruth Frazer's grin was neither common nor vulgar. It was warming, encouraging, bright with the flashing of a quick mind, and withal sweet, womanly, delicious. Yet that it was ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the factor had them, and that they were to be reckoned as sold when they were in his hands: but would the factor truly represent to them the state of the market—that there are great quantities of goods in hand unsold, and no present demand, desiring them to slack their hands a little in making; and at the same time back their directions in a plain and positive way, though with respect too, by telling them they could accept no more bills till the goods were sold. This would bring ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... radius of four miles from Kadampur itself. Once master of the situation he drew in his horns, lending money only to people who could give ample security in land, government papers, or jewellery. He also started a tejarati business (loans of rice, for seed and maintenance during the "slack" months, repaid in kind, with heavy interest, after the harvest). Although few Khataks (customers) were able to extricate their property from his clutches or clear off their debit balances, Chandra Babu continued to be in ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... caution, Vernon had said things to render Miss Middleton more angrily determined than she had been in the scene with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for her in all of them, made her previous feelings appear slack in comparison with the energy of combat now animating her. And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she was too young, too ignorant to choose. He had wrongly used that word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... apt to be a slack morning, with not much work to do; but in intervals of idleness one could always be certain of finding something of interest to see or hear in Steve's office. Usually he would be in front of his drafting-board working on a new design for a muffler or a machine-gun turret or a self-starter, ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... construction projects. The MOSCOSO administration inherited an economy that is much more structurally sound and liberalized than the one inherited by its predecessor. Even though export demand is likely to remain slack in some key markets - especially the Andean countries - GDP growth in 2000 probably will be 3% to 4%. Key reform initiatives from the previous administration - including the privatization of public utilities - remain uncompleted. Although President MOSCOSO is unlikely to ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to commence at or near Toledo on the Maumee river, and pass through the southern counties of Michigan into Indiana, and terminate at Michigan city. A third project is, to open a water communication from the navigable waters of Grand river, to Huron river, and, by locks and slack water navigation, enter lake Erie. A canal from the mouth of Maumee Bay to lake Michigan, has also been spoken of as a feasible project;—or one from the mouth of the river Raisin to the St. Joseph, would open a similar communication. It has also been suggested to improve the river Raisin by locks ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... progress that she soon lost all sense of disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter very much as if she were back in her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cozy than Polotzk—at least, so it seemed to me; for behind the store was the kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did her cooking and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted the soup or rescued a ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... complicated trouble in the tent. The bear had tangled himself in the canvas and was blindly tossing it about, rolling himself up in the slack, and audibly complaining of the fire and smoke. The rifles, shot-guns and all but one revolver had been left in the tent, and presently they began to pop. Doughnut Bill, safe in a sycamore, hitched around ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... stationed before a man sitting at a low tripod table; and all that he had was the small table—a plain cheap table with folding legs—and three playing cards. Business was a trifle slack. I thought that his voice crisped aggressively as we elbowed through, while he sat idly skimming the three cards over the table, with a flick of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... whose aggravations drove her to her angriest protestations of how utterly impossible he was to get on with never looked dangerous as they were approached: he would ride in to them with her amicably or with a slack rein,—and suddenly, mysteriously, unexpectedly, he would be floundering, the relations between them yet a little more ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... that mysterious country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work because he was a carpenter, but at every carpenter's shop where he applied he was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stone sawer; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... which was twenty or thirty. So Gitelson left him as soon as he realized his real worth, and he had been making good wages ever since. Being an excellent tailor, he was much sought after, and although the trade had two long slack seasons he always had plenty to do. He told me that he was going to that dance-hall across the street, which greatly enhanced his importance in my eyes and seemed to give reality to the floating phantoms that I had ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... hour later they were light-heartedly demolishing an excellent dinner, and the manager of the Hotel de Loup was congratulating himself upon the acquisition of two unexpected guests during the slack season. Afterwards they made another pilgrimage up to the Roche ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... shame, Hear our song, 'old well-beloved,' What if courts and camps are tame, Pension'd beggars laced and gloved, France's love grows rather slack, Idol ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... occur. It is the business of a chief to provide against such misapprehensions by most careful previous explanation of both the letter and spirit of his plans. Especially is this so at sea, where smoke, slack wind, and intervening rigging make signals hard to read, though they are almost the only means of communication. This was Nelson's practice; nor was Suffren a stranger to the idea. "Dispositions well concerted with those who are to carry them out are needed," he wrote to D'Estaing, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... with his slack gait and carriage, strolled towards a railing and, resting both elbows on it, watched Doe at his cricket. The whole picture is very clear on my mind. A sunny afternoon seemed to have forgotten the time and only just made up its mind to merge into a mellow ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... up quietly—he was all right, he was reading. She had not given him her hand. His calmness hurt her. It was more than calmness, it was indifference, slackness. But she would not be slack, no, she would not get tired ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... stain from the honour of his family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in the province, and Albinus resigned himself to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... courtiers alone To this weed are not prone; Would you know what 'tis makes them so slack—O? 'Twas because it inclined To be honest the mind, And therefore they ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... of the dancers give themselves to the saxophone. Their feet keep a rendezvous with the umpah umps. Their thoughts dance on the slack wire of the clarinet. Their veins beat time to the whinny of the derby wreathed cornet. The fiddles and the drums are partners for their arms and their muscles. But their hearts embrace shyly the Mother Aphrodite. Their hearts listen ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... P.M. it being nearly calm came to in 17 fathoms with our broken anchor, Cape Townsend* (* Cape Townshend.) bearing south-east distant 3 or 5 miles, hill of Pines (its base) south-west distant 9 or 10 miles. A confused sea made me determined at slack water to weigh and run into better anchorage, at half-past 10 A.M. weighed and made sail up under ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... for your lives!" I shouted; and at the words the slack was taken in like lightning, the strain coming upon the tackles exactly at the right moment, namely, when the ship was pausing an instant at the steepest angle of her lee roll, prior to ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... cropt pate that erst at church or fair, So smooth and silky, shew'd his morning's care, Which all uncouth in matted locks combin'd, Now, ends erect, defies the ruffling wind; His neck-band loose, and hosen rumpled low, A careful lad, nor slack at labour shew. Nor scraping chickens chirping 'mongst the straw, Nor croaking rook o'er-head, nor chatt'ring daw; Loud-breathing cow amongst the rampy weeds, Nor grunting sow that in the furrow feeds; Nor sudden breeze that shakes the quaking leaves, And lightly rustles thro' the scatter'd ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... burst into the room in which Chester stood, but it did not hasten the lad in his desperate work. Slowly he let the sheets slip through his hands, that Hal's wound might not be opened afresh by any sudden jerks; and presently the slack of the rope told him that his chum had reached the ground. At the same ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... fireman vanished into the darkness, and the blaze of the headlamp went out before he returned and the roar of the drivers sank. The rhythmic din grew slack, and became a jarring of detached sounds again, the snow no longer beat on the glasses as it had done, and, rocking less, the great locomotive rolled slowly down the incline until it stopped, and Grant, taking the lantern handed ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... If I like, I can dae my darg wi' ony man,' he replied rather ironically. 'Pit oot the kale, Leezbeth, or we'll be burnt to daith. Are ye slack yersel' that ye can come ower here at ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of her vision Dinah never fully knew, so slack had become her grip upon material things. Her spirit seemed to be wandering aimlessly about the mountain-side while her body lay in icy chains within that miserable shelter. Of Isabel's presence she was no longer even dimly aware, and she knew neither fear nor pain, only ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... all so jumbled up, you kin hardly tell'em!— Tired, you know, but lovin' it, and smilin' jest to think 'at Any sweeter tiredness you'd fairly want to drink it. Tired o' fishin'—tired o' fun—line out slack and slacker— All you want in all the world's a little ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... and through quagmire he plashed, His pace never daring to slack; Till the hostel he neared, for greatly he feared Old Grindrod would ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... can tell," he rejoined. "Things are a bit slack now, because of this infernal drought; but a good sousing rain, or a few smart thunder showers, would fill all the dams and set the batteries working again harder than ever. It's the rainy time ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... snake compressed its body still tighter, and I thought I should be suffocated on the spot, and laid myself down. The snake again rattled its tail and lashed my feet with it. Gradually, however, the creature relaxed its hold, its coils fell slack around me, and untwisting it and throwing it from me as far as I was able, I sank down and swooned ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... called. "Let him think it out," as step by step Roper followed, the halter running slack on the water. When almost out of his depth, he paused just a moment, then, obeying the tightening rope, lifted himself to the flood and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... undertake them. For instance, they had to ascend precipices by means of ladders composed of two long poles placed upright, with sticks tied crosswise with twigs; upon the end of these others were placed, and so on to any height; add to this that the ladders were often so slack that the smallest breeze put them in motion, swinging them against the rocks, while the steps leading from scaffold to scaffold were so narrow and irregular that they could scarcely be traced by the feet without the greatest care and circumspection; but the most perilous ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... they went downstream together for a space, with the shingle slipping beneath them, and their burdens dragging them down, panting, floundering, choking, but still holding on, until they found a foothold in the slack of an eddy, and Seaforth saw that Alton was on his feet again. His hat had gone, and there was a red gash on his forehead from which the blood ran down. He said nothing until they stood less than knee-deep, when Seaforth ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... slack in London, it unfortunately occurred to me to try what I could do in the country. I had heard of Maplesworth as a place largely frequented by visitors on account of the scenery, as well as by invalids ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination carries ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... little while until the repast was ended when we were ushered in. He received us very haughtily, and in a manner not at all consistent with the kind messages he had sent us. Pipes and Coffee were served, and the conversation was rather slack. At his feet sat one of the most extraordinary figures I ever saw in my life; a countenance more devilish was never given to Dervish before. After we had been seated some time, this man, who had never opened his lips but had eyed us with the greatest attention and ferocity, at length began to mutter, ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... winter time, when people were provided with warm substantial gowns, not likely soon to wear out, and when, accordingly, business was rather slack at Miss Simmonds', Mary met Alice Wilson, coming home from her half-day's work at some tradesman's house. Mary and Alice had always liked each other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... lo' thou, when our Lord Himself did heal one that had leprosy, what quoth He? 'Show thyself to the priest,' saith He: not, 'I am the true Priest, and therefore thou mayest slack to show thee to yon other priest, which is but the emblem ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... of this job, as times were slack. So he took the cloth, and at once set to work. Half of it he made into a beautiful dress for the Thrush, with a skirt and jacket, and sleeves in the latest fashion; and as there was a little cloth left over, and he was an honest ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... though still anxious to gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... child, though inclined to be melancholy (and in later years prone to self-analysis). At preparatory school was fairly forward in studies, at public school somewhat backward, at University suddenly took a liking to intellectual pursuits. Throughout he was slack at games. Has never been able to learn to swim from nervousness. Can whistle well. Has always been fond of reading, and would like to have been an author by profession. He married at 24, and has had two children, both of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the order from M. Albert with a pleasant bow. Then he went to his inner office and consulted with his partner, Mr. Vassall, as to the best course to adopt. Both the gentlemen were desirous of doing business, for business had been very slack lately: neither wished to refuse a possible customer, or to offend Mr. Pettitt, the manager of the North-Western, who had recommended them to the Prince. But that foreign title and the vulgar little French secretary stuck in the throats of the ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... City happened to be rather slack at this time; and it struck Mr. Fenton all at once that he could scarcely have a better opportunity for wasting two or three days in a visit of duty to the Listers, and putting an end to his sister's reproachful letters. He had a second ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... is slack—draw it tight. Erni is in Mount Faigel: take this dagger And give it him! you know its caverns well. In one of them you will ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... time the Finnish sailors were hauling in the slack hawsers, and the bearded stevedores on the floating quay tugged at the gangway. Many of our presumed passengers had only come to say good-bye, which they were now waving and shouting from the shore. The rain fell dismally, and a black, hopeless sky settled down upon the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... waited a few moments, then went to the window and hauled in the slack. Presently the bag appeared over ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... and the men were disgusted with him for the remark. One remarked, "Give him the whiskey"; so the rope, which was passed over the beam above him and fastened to a side log of the building, was loosened to oblige him. "Slack off the rope, can't you," cried Gallegher, "and let a man have a parting drink." He bent his head down against the rope and drank a tumblerful of whiskey at a gulp. Then he called down curses on the men who were about him, and kept it up until they cut him short by jerking ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... in, and I hope that every day things will get better. Besides, all the vessels that have been lying in the Pool since June will want painting up and getting into trim again before they sail out of the river, so things may not be so slack after all. You will find everything in order in the store. I have had little to do but to polish up brass work and keep the metal from rusting. When do the apprentices come ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... into the pulpit in their surplices, as a sign that the clergy only had the right of preaching to the people, while they forgot that, by means of a free press (of the licence of which they, too, were not slack to avail themselves), every penny-a-liner was preaching to the people daily, and would do so, maugre their surplices, to the end of time. The man who makes the people's songs is a true popular preacher. Whatsoever, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... apply a bandage properly, and attend to these rules, there will not be any difficulty; but bear one thing in mind, without which you will never put on a bandage even decently; and that is, never to drag or pull at a bandage, but make the turns while it is slack, and you have your right forefinger placed upon the point where it is to be folded down. When a limb is properly bandaged, the folds should run in a line corresponding to the shin-bone. Use, to retain dressings, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... knife, an' begins slashin'. But he can only reach bear's rump, an' dawgs bein' ruined fast, one-two-three time. Rocky gets desperate. He don't like to lose his dawgs. He jumps on top log, grabs bear by the slack of the rump, an' heaves over back'ard right over top of that log. Down they go, kit an' kaboodle, twenty feet, bear, dawgs, an' Rocky, slidin', cussin', an' scratchin', ker-plump into ten feet of water in the bed of stream. They all swum out ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... kind of silent fall, or a less observable motion; as in slime, slide, slip, slipper, sly, sleight, slit, slow, slack, slight, ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... the slack of the weightier line was kept on board the wreck—the end being there made fast—to permit the middle of the rope being fastened round a man and of his being dragged away from the wreck through the sea into the lifeboat. A clove-hitch was put by George ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... knows, sir, as I feels more respect for you than I do for the whole regiment put together. I talks a bit, and I never come anigh you, sir, without feeling slack." ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterwards checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, and then begins again to let fall the earth it holds in suspension, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... was slack the man improved the opportunity to fashion the plough and the horseshoe at the forge, to build the boat or the cart in the shop, to hew store or cut timber for building or firewood, to erect a mill for sawing lumber or grinding ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... there is no help at hand to hold the overhead line, it is common practice to fasten the plumb line to a nail or other suitable projection. On coming down to the lower floor it is often found that the bob has been secured either too high or too low. When fastening the line give it plenty of slack and when the lower floor is reached make a double loop in the line, as shown in the sketch. Tightening up on the parts AA will bind the loop bight B, and an adjustable friction-held loop, C, will be had for adjusting the bob accurately either ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... room. When some mens' slaves was caught on another man's place he was allowed to whoop them and send them home and they would git another whooping. Some men wouldn't allow that; they said they would tend to their own slaves. So many men had to leave home to go to war times got slack. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... school and continued a tradition; only the school and tradition were Scotch, and not English. While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plunged ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... often the harp rings false. Its strings get loosened; one hangs slack and jars, and where then is ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... at some short distance from the shore. She was apparently floating down with the stream, and the fact that a horse was proceeding along the towing-path a little way ahead was not noticed, as the rope was slack and was trailing under water. The boys, therefore, as they were rowing against stream, steered their boat to pass inside of her. Just as they came abreast of the horse a man on the barge suddenly ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... this level, though expensive, are not different from similar works, and will be singularly sheltered from floods and storms. Of the distance of 169.4 miles from ocean to ocean, 142.6 miles are to be accomplished by slack- water navigation in lake, river, and basins, and only 26.8 miles by excavated canal. The greatest altitude of the ridge which divides Lake Nicaragua from the Pacific Ocean does not exceed, at any point, 42 feet ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... not seen that: but I saw Slack and Broughton at Marybone Gardens!" says Harry, gravely; and wondered if he had said something witty, as all the company laughed so? "It would require no giant," he added, "to knock over yonder ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash. From other shops, the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters—cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. Dirty fellows, who ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was only one complete and satisfying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of course," said M. Formery, taking him up quickly. "The burglars came here with their boots covered with plaster. They've swept away all the other marks of their feet from the carpet; but whoever did the sweeping was too slack to lift up that book and sweep under it. This footprint, however, is not of great importance, though it is corroborative of all the other evidence we have that they came and went by the garden. There's ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... to her disgust, found that her eyes were blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... earnestly. Or else he wants means to set her out, he hath no money, and though it be to the manifest prejudice of her body and soul's health, he cares not, he will take no notice of it, she must and shall tarry. Many slack and careless parents, iniqui patres, measure their children's affections by their own, they are now cold and decrepit themselves, past all such youthful conceits, and they will therefore starve their ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... "It takes some time to sink, for you have only one shot on; but it looks more natural, and it has not yet reached the fish. I think I'd draw in my slack line now, sir, and be ready ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... had been liberal in the matter of education. "Never mind expense," he had argued in the old days with Parkinson when that slack mariner could see no reason for making the Vega seaworthy; "you sail the schooner, I pay the bills." And so with his sons and daughters. It had been for them to get the education and never mind the expense. Harold, the eldest-born, ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... a' the house for sleep begin to grien, Their joints to slack frae industry a while; The leaden god fa's heavy on their een, And hafflins steeks them frae their daily toil; The cruizy too can only blink and bleer, The restit ingle's done the maist it dow; Tackman and cottar eke to bed maun steer, Upo' the cod to clear ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-stroem, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... now, what mean'st thou that thou help'st me not? By heavens, the duke shall know how slack you have been! ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... warmth throughout the ship. The officers of the Fury, by their own choice, pitched a tent on shore for messing and sleeping in, as our accommodation for two sets of officers was necessarily confined. On the 17th, when every preparation was completed, the cables were found again so slack, by the wasting of the bergs, in consequence of the continued sea, and possibly also in part by the masses being moved somewhat in shore, that we were obliged to occupy several hours in putting them to rights, as we should soon require all our strength at the purchases. One ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... her face, and when she sat, of an evening, with her pipe in the chimney-corner, both mother and son found her very entertaining company. In Sam she inspired at once admiration and despair. She could take him by the slack of the waist-band and lift him at arm's-length, and he felt that he should never be "a full hand," if he were obliged to equal ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... indoor baseball, and the like, he may, if it is sufficiently central and accessible, perform a useful service for the boys and establish a point of contact. It is highly desirable that shower-baths and conveniences for a complete change of clothing be provided. If Saturday afternoon is a slack time and the farmers are likely to come to the village, he should make arrangements to care for the boys then, reserving Saturday evening for the young men. Such an arrangement secures economy in heating the building and may overcome for some of the youth the Saturday evening attractions of ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... has republished The Ministry of the Beautiful, by HENRY JAMES SLACK, of the Middle Temple, London, consisting of a series of conversations on the principles of aesthetic culture. A vein of refined and pure sentiment pervades the volume; the style is often of exquisite beauty; but the discussion usually terminates in a dim, purple haze, lulling the mind to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of flour, half a pound of butter, quarter of a pound of pounded lump sugar, half a nutmeg grated, a handful of currants, two eggs, and a large pinch of carbonate of soda, or a little baking powder. To be baked in a slack oven for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. The above quantity will make about thirty ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... possible to explain the modern sense of nice, which in the course of its history has traversed nearly the whole diatonic scale between "rotten" and "ripping." In Mid. English and Old French it means foolish. Cotgrave explains it by "lither, lazie, sloathful, idle; faint, slack; dull, simple," and Shakespeare uses it in a great variety of meanings. It is supposed to come from Lat. nescius, ignorant. The transition from fond, foolish, which survives in "fond hopes," to fond, loving, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... charity-school, the fathers did not care whether their sons went or not, and he had scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was the butcher's son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with their consent. Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week, it was resented as an injustice. To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been boxed for reading Pickwick in school, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be led ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... carry out their good intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... maiden, why waxed thy faith so faint, Thy spirit so slack and slaw? Thy courage kept good till the flame waxed wud, Then thy might begun to thaw; Had ye kissed him with thy christened lip, Ye had wan him frae 'mang us a'. Now bless the fire, the elfin fire, That made thee ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... He knew that he would work violently for a month or two at a time, giving the vigorous hired man a decent test in holding his physical own, and he knew that after that he would become what the people called "slack," and a little listless; and it was in his slack times that the squirrel and grouse most suffered. Between him and the wife of his bosom had grown nothing, so grave as to be described as an armed neutrality; but more and more ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... full of water, and the amateur whalers were invited to man the pumps—namely, two tin basins—and bale the St. Lawrence out as fast as it came in. The maddened animal soon carried us beyond the area of heavy seas, and preparations were made for taking in the slack. The boat was still rushing along at an eight-knot rate; and, as the whale showed no signs of weakening, it was Captain Sam's opinion that nothing short of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... I stirred the soil, fetid and palpitating with life," and in this inmost intimacy with Nature felt myself grow strong, as Antaeus by contact with the mother earth. Thus roused from my long torpor into the most intense activity,—for all activity is slack in comparison with that of thought,—I became dissatisfied with the facility of my present surroundings. I was anxious to pit myself against the world of Paris. I wanted opposition, contradiction, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... 1806, during the slack season in London, Mr. Murray made his promised visit to Edinburgh. He was warmly received by Constable and Hunter, and enjoyed their hospitality for some days. After business matters had been disposed of, he was ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the rare houses of Boma sprawled amongst the low burnt-up hills, and every day the doctor with his bad liver came across in his boat under the blinding sunshine to within shouting distance, and put a few weary questions. The formalities were slack enough. Nilssen usually made the necessary replies (as he liked to keep himself in the doctor's good books), and then the ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... you knowed they was a reg'lar revival meeting there, and that preacher was preaching a reg'lar revival sermon. I been to more'n one camp meeting, but fur jest natcherally taking holt of the hull human race by the slack of its pants and dangling of it over hell-fire, I never hearn nothing could come up to that there sermon. Two or three old backsliders in the crowd come right up and repented all over agin on the spot. The hull kit and biling of 'em got the power good and hard, like ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... The English Channel to cruise about, When four French sail in show so stout Bore down on the Arethusa. The famed Belle Poule straight ahead did lie; The Arethusa seemed to fly— Not a sheet, or a tack, Or a brace, did she slack, Tho' the Frenchmen laugh'd and thought it stuff; But they knew not the handful of men, how tough On board of ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... night of the captivity I heard the rattle of the chain, and then made out that the old fox was there, hard at work digging a hole by the little one's kennel. When it was deep enough to half bury her, she gathered into it all the slack of the chain, and filled it again with earth. Then in triumph thinking she had gotten rid of the chain, she seized little Tip by the neck and turned to dash off up the woodpile, but alas only to have him jerked roughly from ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... and limbs, had taken from the celebrated eyry in the neighborhood, called Gledscraig. As he was by no means satisfied with the attention which had been bestowed on his favourite bird, he was not slack in testifying his displeasure to the falconer's lad, whose duty it was to have ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... I'll hold your head up. Endure it. Live through it. Don't fight it. Make yourself slack—slack in your mind; and your body will slack. Yield. Remember how you taught me ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... lassitude later, latter lawful, legal lax, slack leave, let lend, loan liable, likely libel, slander lie, lay like, love linger, loiter look, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... done my duty by poor Robert's son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though 'tis pity of the old name! Ha! what's this? 'Wedded against my will—no troth plight.' Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... when we have 2 or 3 Generals to dinner you can give us nice white table cloths but at other times it is only bare boards", "Well Sir," he hesitatingly replied, "they were two of Stewart's sheets." Sundays were usually fairly slack days. I sometimes thought that they could have been even slacker, it being so absolutely necessary to have one day's rest a week. Church Parade would be held in the early morning, and another service at 6 in the evening after the sun had set. These evening services were very impressive; ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... groan beneath the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With the Burden ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... thank you for't! It breaks my chain! I held some slack allegiance till this hour— But now, my sword's my own. Smile on, my lords! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you in your lazy dignities! But here I stand and scoff you! here I fling Hatred ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... broken away, but he cleared them neatly. Henry wanted to match the performance, but was afraid to try, so Sam dared him. He kept daring him until Henry was goaded to the attempt. He cleared the stump, but the highest splinters caught the slack of his little blue trousers, and the cloth gave way. He escaped injury, but the precious trousers were damaged almost beyond repair. Sam, with a boy's heartlessness, was fairly rolling on the ground with laughter ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... board, and so near this wondrous delicate needle, I determined to have the boat "swung" at Greenhithe, where the slack tide allows the largest vessels conveniently to adjust their compasses. This operation consumed a whole day, and a day sufficed for the Russian steamer alongside; but then the time was well bestowed,—it was ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... authoritative selection has been made for the Somerset and Devon districts, but the following varieties of cider apples are held in good repute in those parts:—Kingston Black, Jersey Chisel, Hangdowns, Fair Maid of Devon, Woodbine, Duck's Bill, Slack-my-Girdle, Bottle Stopper, Golden Ball, Sugar-loaf, Red Cluster, Royal Somerset and Cadbury (believed to be identical with the Royal Wilding of Herefordshire). As a rule the best cider apples are of small size. "Petites pommes, gros cidre," say ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... new acquaintance; "it was the manner in which he beat every one who attempted to contend with him, till, in an evil hour he entered the ring with Slack, without any training or preparation, and by a chance blow lost the battle to a man who had been beaten with ease by those who, in the hands of Broughton, appeared like so many children. It was the way of fighting of him who first ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... London Underground railway station. She was delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed those Underground ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They have lived ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you! Answer when I speak. Have you lost the use of your tongue? What are you, anyway—a lump of jelly? Didn't I tell you to clean this barn? It's fly time and no wonder the cows suffer and slack up on their milk when there is a lazy bones like you around who won't even help haul ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... little to the right, cheek against the stock, left eye closed, right eye looking through the notch of the rear sight so as to perceive the object aimed at, second joint of forefinger resting lightly against the front of the trigger and taking up the slack; top of front sight is carefully raised into, and held ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... depression, gap or pass between two hills, S3, B; slack, the low ground, HD; acommon (in Yorkshire), ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... shall I fly, To slack these flames wherein I fry? To the treasures, shall I go, Of the rain, frost, hail, and snow? Shall I search the underground, Where all damps and mists are found? Shall I seek (for speedy ease) All the floods and frozen seas? Or descend into ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. The small holder, pure ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... not satisfied about that mystery, and in a moment he was back again, trying in new ways to penetrate it. I was tired before he was. He was baffled only temporarily; he soon learned to draw up the fabric, hold the slack under one foot while he pulled it still further, and thus ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... the very heart and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... but I should think it must have been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated Dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with common sash-windows like an ordinary dwelling-house. These windows had bright-red curtains, too, hung on slack strings across the lower panes; so that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this chamber there was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get on anywhere, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... gardens; the singers, both of comic and sentimental ballads, who charmed the ears there; the country dances, formed by bouncing cockneys and cockneyesses, and executed amidst jumping, thumping and laughter; the signal which announced that Madame Saqui was about to mount skyward on a slack-rope ascending to the stars; the hermit that always sat in the illuminated hermitage; the dark walks, so favourable to the interviews of young lovers; the pots of stout handed about by the people in the shabby old liveries; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the name you put upon it when your trousers is so slack you've got to hold on to them or they'd ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... very slack in Glasgow at the time, Clement, after about a year's stay in the place, accepted a situation with Messrs. Leys, Masson, and Co., of Aberdeen, with whom he began at a guinea and a half a week, from which he gradually ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... October, sometimes the most marked in November, forming the delicious Indian summer; a truce is declared, and both forces, heat and cold, meet and mingle in friendly converse on the field. In the earlier season, this poise of the temperature, this slack-water in nature, comes in May and June; but the October calm is most marked. Day after day, and sometimes week after week, you cannot tell which way the current is setting. Indeed, there is no current, but the season seems to drift a little this way or a little that, just ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... one of those faces which begin well and end badly. He had a fine forehead, lofty and broad, a well-cut, gently-curving-nose, a slack, thick-lipped mouth, always a little open, a heavy, animal jaw, and the chin of an eagle. His fine, black hair was thin on the temples. His moustache was thin and straggled. His black eyes were as good as his brow, intelligent, observant, and alert. It was plain that had his lips been thinner ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... tired to see beauty in anything." As if mindful of a neglected duty, Glass turned upon him. "What are you waiting for? Get those dog-beds off your back." He seized the slack of a sweater and gave ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... Richard right across the head of the Serapis ended quite otherwise, in sending the enemy's jib-boom just over the Richard's great tower of Pisa, where Israel was stationed; who, catching it eagerly, stood for an instant holding to the slack of the sail, like one grasping a horse by the mane prior to vaulting into ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... brawny crew the current stem, And, slow advancing, struggle with the stream: But if they slack their hands, or cease to strive, Then down the flood with headlong haste ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his bonds like a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the worn drab oilcoth in the hall, and he smelt the smell of stale cooking which floated through the green lattice door at the back. All the sweetness of life, all the beauty, all the decency even, seemed strangled in that smell as if in some malarial air. And in the midst of it, the unkempt, slack figure of Belinda, with her bitter eyes and her sagging skirt, passed perpetually under the flickering gas-jet up and down the dimly lighted staircase. This was how one marriage had ended—one marriage among many which had started out ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of others have been, and still are, my supreme delight. It is as capital sport to me, to hear the shrieks of infants perishing in the fire as of old, when thousands of sucklings were sacrificed to me outside of Jerusalem. When was I ever slack at my work? Since the return of the crucified Enemy to the supreme abodes, I have employed myself in slaying and burning his subjects. I did all I could, to destroy the Christians from the face of the earth, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... for switches, a jamming of the whistle lever to set the canyon echoes yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it, came to life ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... will learn later on why our hero was apparently so slack in permitting the girl, under all the circumstances, to go away alone. She started off and he returned to the cabin. Once inside he determined to take great chances. He did not remain in the cabin, but returned by a straight cut across the meadows to the vicinity ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... load of new hay in which he had been awaiting the final word, tightened the lines, made an unique sound in his throat, and the horses pressed their shoulders into the collars. Linder glanced back to see each wagon or implement take up the slack with a jerk like the cars of a freight train; the cushioned rumble of wagon wheels on the soft earth, and the noisy chatter of the steel teeth of the hay-rakes came up from the rear. Transley's "outfit" was ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... laxity; relaxation; loosening &c. v.; freedom; disjunction &c. 44; rope of sand. V. make loose &c. adj.; loosen, slacken, relax; unglue &c. 46; detach &c. (disjoin) 44. Adj. nonadhesive, immiscible; incoherent, detached, loose, baggy, slack, lax, relaxed, flapping, streaming; disheveled; segregated, like grains of sand unconsolidated &c. 231, uncombined &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the Moors, Arabians, Ethiops black, Of the left wing that held the utmost marge, Spread forth their troops, and purposed at the back And side their heedless foes to assail and charge: Slingers and archers were not slow nor slack To shoot and cast, when with his battle large Rinaldo came, whose fury, haste and ire, Seemed earthquake, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... he neared the summit of the hill, he leant slightly forward and gathered up the lines which he had allowed to lie slack upon his horses' backs. A resounding "chirrup" and the weary beasts strained at their neck-yoke. Something moving in amongst the trees attracted their attention. Their snorting nostrils were suddenly thrown ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... owing to the hurry of his start for Italy, that was easily excused. And even granting that Fergus did the last bit of mischief, your friend may be romantically generous, if you please; but he must have been very slack in his work.' ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Business must be mighty slack for the great gland specialist, Stanley Fenwick. Is this all he can find for his ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... bedside now, very deliberate and calm. She acted swiftly. Bending over she found one of the braids of Marjorie's hair, followed it up with her hand to the point nearest the head, and then holding it a little slack so that the sleeper would feel no pull, she reached down with the shears and severed it. With the pigtail in her hand she held her breath. Marjorie had muttered something in her sleep. Bernice deftly amputated the other braid, paused for an instant, and then flitted swiftly and silently back ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... up to now had held slack rein on the carnival spirit, turned her loose. Masks were flung aside, hundreds of toy balloons were set afloat and tossed from hand to hand, confetti was showered from the balcony, boisterous song and laughter ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... at Chandu, a distance of ten days' journey.[NOTE 5] The clerk at each of the posts notes the time of each courier's arrival and departure; and there are often other officers whose business it is to make monthly visitations of all the posts, and to punish those runners who have been slack in their work.[NOTE 6]) The Emperor exempts these men from all tribute, and pays ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be beaten in getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when three pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed the gap hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the current as the slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became quite an institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's intimate, the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out, would honour us by partaking ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... accessible, perform a useful service for the boys and establish a point of contact. It is highly desirable that shower-baths and conveniences for a complete change of clothing be provided. If Saturday afternoon is a slack time and the farmers are likely to come to the village, he should make arrangements to care for the boys then, reserving Saturday evening for the young men. Such an arrangement secures economy in heating the building and may overcome for some of ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... it steady and high. Strong was the fisher, brave, and swift of mind and of eye— Strongly he threw in the clutch; but Rahero resisted the strain, And jerked, and the spine of life snapped with a crack in twain, And the man came slack in his hands and tumbled a lump ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor, though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and following three weeks of idleness. However, after her sex, her present overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "'cause then you had too much slack on your pins, and now you've got too much pins ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the apartment of Madame de Pompadour's famous physician, one of Quesnai's economic disciples had cried out, 'The realm is in a sore way; it will never be cured without a great internal commotion; but woe to those who have to do with it; into such work the French go with no slack hand.' Rousseau, in a passage in the Confessions, not only divines a speedy convulsion, but with striking practical sagacity enumerates the political and social causes that were unavoidably drawing France to the edge of the abyss. Lord Chesterfield, so different a man from Rousseau, declared as ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... kind o' curious how sometimes we find a great, big, awkward man who loves sech things? Bill had the biggest feet in the township, but I'll bet my wallet that he never trod on a violet in all his life. Bill never took no slack from enny man that wuz sober, but the children made him play with 'em, and he'd set for hours a-watchin' the yaller-hammer buildin' her nest ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... is ebbing, will recede from the shore; from which it would follow that the motion is only propagated in the water, like sound in air, and not the mass of water protruded. A similar species of motion is observed on shaking at one end a long cord held moderately slack, which is expressed by the word undulation. I have sometimes remarked however that a body which sinks deep and takes hold of the water appears to move towards shore with the course of the surf, as is perceptible in a boat landing ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second apart, each calling an order, "Half a cantaloupe!" "Two orders of buttered toast!" "Combination salad!" (that meant ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... a contempt for "the City," And drops little jeers about Jews, If he talks of "the People" with pity, Or rails at the Sweaters as "screws," These things prove a "popular leaning," And popular leanings are low; Soft heart, and slack purse, are their meaning— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... between him and Mr. Prime. Hints dropped in my presence by some of our less flighty looking customers revealed to me the fact that there were those who predicted for him a fall as rapid as had been his rise. But I could not help feeling a little of my former jealousy return, as I noted how slack and unprofitable our ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Maimie's visit sped by on winged feet. To Ranald they were brimming with happiness, every one of them. It was the slack time of the year, between seeding and harvest, and there was nothing much to keep him at home. And so, with Harry, his devoted companion, Ranald roamed the woods, hitching up Lisette in Yankee's buckboard, put her through her paces, and would now and then get up such bursts of speed ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... our forces in the midst of fairs, and race-days, and "slack times," have demonstrated that real soldiers of Christ can snatch victory, just when all around seems to ensure ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... dey run'd," Uncle Remus went on, "twel dey come ter Brer Tarrypin house, en dey sorter slack up 'kaze dey done mighty nigh los' der win'. Brer Tarrypin, he up'n ax um wharbouts dey gwine, en dey 'low dey wuz a monst'us tarryfyin' racket back dar in de woods. Brer Tarrypin, he ax w'at she soun' lak. One say he dunno, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... there again behind all that noble corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sustained the almost lifeless body, while the other, by means of whip-cord, exceedingly fine but very strong, tied her hands behind her back, and also fastened her feet together by the ankles, allowing slack enough to enable her walk slowly. The executioner and his other assistant performed the same operation on the widow, whose features underwent no alteration; only from time to time she coughed slightly. When the condemned were thus prevented from offering any resistance, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not undo ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... creep upon the slack stream's face When the wind skims irritably past. The current clucks smartly into each hollow place That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base; ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... slackest of theatre conductors, the slackest of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary stuff and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the Church in public; but as a reality, not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were tough and their faith weak, had little scruple in applying to a witch, and asking help from the powers below, when the saints above were slack to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold enough to learn the mysteries of nature, Algebra, Judicial Astrology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, and animals, from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville; and, like Pope Gerbert, mingle science and magic, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Halsetown. Hither Irving was brought in his fourth year, and his memories of Cornwall remained vivid to his dying day. "I recall Halsetown," he said, "as a village nestling between sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack from the mines, and with the Knill monument standing prominent as a landmark to the east. It was a wild and weird place, fascinating in its own peculiar beauty, and taking a more definite shape in my youthful imagination ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Severn at Gloucester, and the Irish Sea about the Mersey. Parties were not moved to their depths on either side, as men are by the question of existence, and the contending armies were generally small. Therefore, the struggle was slack and slow, and the Presbyterian sects became masters of the situation, and decided for the parliament. At first, through want of energy, great opportunities were lost. In Montrose Scotland produced a soldier of genius; but in England the Ironsides prevailed ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... eyes was glued on Fiddy, as if he couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... at the School. It was an absolutely inconspicuous house. There were other houses that were slack or wild or both, but the worst of these did something. Shields' never did anything. It never seemed to want to do anything. This may have been due in some degree to Mr. Shields. As the housemaster is, so the house ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... walked off indignantly. Still he was not satisfied about that mystery, and in a moment he was back again, trying in new ways to penetrate it. I was tired before he was. He was baffled only temporarily; he soon learned to draw up the fabric, hold the slack under one foot while he pulled it still further, and thus soon reach ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... behind him in the captive's place, Scarcely could see the outline of his face. I smiled, and laid my cheek against his back: "Loose thou my hands," I said. "This pace let slack. Forget we now that thou and I are foes. I like thee well, and wish to clasp thee close; I like the courage of thine eye and brow; I like thee better than ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... cool. At ten o'clock the French again exploded some mines, and for two hours renewed their cannonade as hotly as ever. The Russians could be seen pouring troops across the bridge over the harbor from their camps on the north side, to resist the expected attack. From twelve to five the firing was slack. At that hour the French again began their ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... were good for miles more at top speed. She knew if they had level ground, that meant entering the village. She decided quickly. It must be the hill. If she could only make the turn. She tightened her grip on the reins and felt the horses slack just the least little bit. She pulled hard on the left rein, and then as they came to the turn—on the right one—so as to describe a wide half circle and save the sleigh from tipping. The sudden turn frightened ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... declaring the passion which was gnawing him with the fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing more intimate than a 'Good morning, Miss Jeanne', had escaped him, till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... not too scrupulous sort, answering for capital. But there are many who would lightly adventure the pestilential perils of a tropic stream, or fever-haunted water-way or canal, who would yet shrink from being caught—owing to want of care, and cautious calculation as to the exact hours of slack and safety—by the hideous, irresistible, all-engulfing, all-wrecking whirl of the terrifying Stroem! Once drawn within the down-draught of that hideous vortex, a whole army might be destroyed more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... is ended we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be led to know ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... savagely, as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!" ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... little fussy—but I know 'em," said Collie, as Boyar, apparently terror-stricken at a manzanita that he had passed hundreds of times, reared, his fore feet pawing space and the traces dangerously slack. Louise bit her lower lip and quickly called Anne's attention to a spot of vivid color on the hillside. To Dr. Marshall's surprise, Collie struck Apache, who was behaving, smartly with the whip. Apache leaped forward, bringing ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... eye, And check'st him in mid course. Thy skeleton hand Shows to the faint of spirit the right path, And he is warned, and fears to step aside. Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his crime Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack hand Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most fearfully Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, when thy shafts Drink up the ebbing spirit—then the hard Of heart and violent of hand restores The treasure to the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... gentleman in point of fact, be absolutely prohibited from hearing a "classical" concert because he wore the Queen's uniform and did that most important and necessary work which the noble Briton is too slack-baked, too hypocritically genteel, too degenerate, to perform, each man ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and he found in this responsibility both terror and delight. The thought of the seventy-five pounds that would soon await him at the lawyer's, and of his own obligation to be present every quarter-day in Sydney, filled him for a little with divided councils. Then he made up his mind, walked in a slack moment to the inn at Clifton, ordered a sheet of paper and a bottle of beer, and wrote, explaining that he held a good appointment which he would lose if he came to Sydney, and asking the lawyer to accept this letter as an evidence of his presence in the colony, and retain the money till ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me spurs and chaps onct or twict a week and go flyin' out and whoopin' around me stock, and scarin' 'em to death, pertendin' I'm mighty interested in ridin' range. If you got a lady's goat, you want to keep it. 'Course, later on, I can kind o' slack up. Then I'm goin' to learn her to read American, and she can read that piece in the paper about me. I reckon that'll kind of cinch up the idea that her husband sure is the real thing. But I got to have them cows till she ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... barge-folk. The boats in which this class of the population live have an awning of bamboo and matting fore and aft, which is removed by day and raised at night. At sundown the boat-people anchor their craft in rows to stakes, thus forming boat-terraces as it were. When business grows slack at one part of the river, the master of the boat moves up or down stream to some other part. From the shape of these boats, resembling somewhat the half of an egg cut lengthwise, they are called in the Chinese language ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... stony, sandy soil, very favourable to the growth of cedar-trees. Having arrived at such an island, the men went ashore to cut timber. They were generally good lumbermen, for many buccaneers would go to cut logwood in Campeachy when trade was slack. As soon as a cedar had been felled, the limbs were lopped away, and the outside rudely fashioned to the likeness of a boat. If they were making a periagua, they left the stern "flat"—that is, cut off sharply without modelling; if they were making a canoa, they pointed ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... out, this time anxiously to consult sea and sky. The squall had cleared away, but the sky remained overcast. The two schooners, under all sail and joined by a third, could be seen making back. A veer in the wind induced them to slack off sheets, and five minutes afterward a sudden veer from the opposite quarter caught all three schooners aback, and those on shore could see the boom-tackles being slacked away or cast off on the jump. The sound of the surf was loud, hollow, and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the shop along with the men. Their busy time is during the marriage season from November to June. A village tailor is paid either in cash or grain and is not infrequently a member of the village establishment. During the rains, the tailor's slack season, he supplements his earnings by tillage, holding land which Government has continued to him on payment of one-half the ordinary rental. In south Gujarat, in the absence of Brahmans, a Darzi officiates at Bhawad marriages, and in some ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Jonathan, he ain't the head—for thar's his brother Abner still livin'—but, head or tail, he's the only part that counts, when it comes to that. Until the boy grew up an' took hold of things, the Revercombs warn't nothin' mo' than slack fisted, out-at-heel po' white trash, as the niggers say, though the old man, Abel's grandfather, al'ays lays claim to bein' connected with the real Revercombs, higher up in the State—However that ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... rapid physiological and psychical changes to be always equally able and fit for strenuous work. There are days in every girl's life when she is not capable of her best work, and when a wise and sympathetic teacher will see that it is better for her to do comparatively little. And yet these slack times are just those in which there is the greatest danger of a girl indulging in daydreams, and when her thoughts need to be more than usually under control. These times may be utilised for lighter subjects and for such manual work as does not need ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... A few timid Kaffirs loitering around, also a few fowls and slack-looking mongrels. Gentleman in Khaki rides up, and in the door appear two or more round-faced women wearing headgear of the baby-bonnet mode, dirty-faced children ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... seal? Have I not been industrious to provoke? From his embraces obstinately broke? Pursu'd and panted for his mortal hate, Earn'd my destruction, labour'd out my fate? And dare I on extinguish'd love exclaim? Take, take full vengeance, rouse the slack'ning flame; Just is my lot—but oh! must it transcend The reach of time, despair a distant end? With dreadful growth shoot forward, and arise, Where thought can't follow, and bold fancy dies? "Never! where falls the soul ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... passed. Wilkins worked hard at first, and his ability, his shrewdness, confounded us, as it had confounded Silas Upham. Then, he began to slack, as boys put it. Small duties were ill done or not done at all. But we liked him, were, indeed, charmed by him. As Ajax remarked, Fascination does not trot in the same class ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... are these fresh forces all aglow within their first zeal, and unless they are worse captains than I suppose them, they will attempt some mischief ere long—nor is any time so slack as cock-crow.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Equator, and had filled up with a little 'grease,' as the Yankees term it, round about the Galapagos Islands, but business grew too slack for even a whaleman's patience. Eleven months out from Whitby, and, if my memory fails me not, less than a score of full barrels in our hold! So the Captain made up his mind to try south, and working our way across the Equator, we struck in amongst ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... other shut, and the tongue lolls out. His arms are outstretched in the form of a cross: the hands open, the fingers separated. The right leg is straight. The left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... buttress was passed, and the prospector uncoiled his rope, it was to Mrs. Feversham he gave the other end, placing Morganstein next, with Elizabeth at the center and Mrs. Weatherbee second. Once, twice, Banks felt her stumble, a sinking weight on the line, but in the instant he caught a twist in the slack and fixed his heels in the crust to turn, she had, in each case, recovered and come steadily on. It was only when the gliddery passage was made, the peril behind, that she sank ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... back sack lick beck stock take slake pike Luke smoke tack slack pick luck smock rake stake peak duke croak rack stack peck duck crock lake dike speak coke cloak lack Dick ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... The nights were clear, so that both ships sailed night and day; until one day, towards the time the day turns to shorten, Karle and his people took up the land near an island, let down the sail, cast anchor, and waited until the slack-tide set in, for there was a strong rost before them. Now Thorer came up, and lay at anchor there also. Thorer and his people then put out a boat, went into it, and rowed to Karle's ship. Thorer came on board, and the brothers saluted him. Thorer told Karle to give him the ornament. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... here's a rope you hain't seed yet, I'll jist explain the use of it to you in case you want the loan of it. If this here frigate, manned with our free and enlightened citizens, gets aground, I'll give you a ride on the slack of that 'ere rope, right up to that yard by the neck, by Gum.' Well, it rub'd all the writin' out of his face, as quick as spittin' on a slate takes a sum out, you may depend. Now, they should rig up a crane over ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... men of Gibeon sent unto Joshua to the camp to Gilgal, saying, Slack not thy hand from thy servants; come up to us quickly, and save us and help us: for all the kings of the Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... those in the final stages of the disease, wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said. "I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me or ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... distinctly, and she became conscious of an astonishment which was mixed with vague misgivings as she gazed at it, for it had subtly changed since she had last seen it. The joyous sparkle that she remembered had gone out of the eyes. They were harder, bolder, than they used to be. The mouth was slack—it looked almost sensual—and the man's whole personality seemed to have grown coarser. As she thrust the disconcerting fancies ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... her almost painfully from her companions, and she felt a pang of dread lest that difference should ever grow less. While she affected to read one of the magazines which lay on a side table, she was really occupied making a number of vehement resolutions: Never to slack in her care of her personal appearance; never to give up brushing her hair at night; never to wear a flannel blouse; never to give up manicuring her hands; never, no, never to allow herself to grow short-sighted, and be obliged to submit ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... been freshly cross-cut," declared Thurston with an ominous glitter in his eyes. "I understand you are pretty slack just now. As a favor, would you hire your chopping gang to me for a few days? I'll tell you why I want ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... these things without ceasing to ply his paddle. His objective lay some six miles up-stream. But when he came at last to the upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slack water new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres of logs confined therein; also a squat motor tugboat and certain lesser craft moored to these timbers. A little back from the bank he could see the roofs ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and cry out, if admonished by them, what can a mere clerk know about it? But his relations with his prince remained undisturbed. He saw with joy how the latter was beginning to gather up the reins which his gentle-minded father had allowed to grow too slack, and he hoped that if God would grant a few years of peace, John Frederick would take in hand real and important reforms in his government, and not merely command them ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... "They 're getting slack, I'm afraid," said the little deep-eyed man. "Our principle is to amuse everyone. Excuse me a minute; I see that Carpenter is doing nothing." He crossed over to the man who had been drinking coffee, but Shelton had barely time to glance at his opponent ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... near. I had a revolver in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. I would have taken a Sam Patch leap into the water, and have wrestled with my antagonist in his own element, but I knew the slack, thus sure to occur, would probably free him; so I peered down upon the beautiful creature and enjoyed my triumph as far as it went. He was caught very lightly through his upper jaw, and I expected every struggle and somersault would break the hold. Presently I saw ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... close under the quay wall, and make fast to the ring down there,' came down from above, followed by the slack of the sodden painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. 'All fast? Any knot'll do,' I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and then a big, dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the dinghy. It was my portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled all ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... took a picnic lunch, and it was on one of these trips that I first saw the Smiling Hill-Top and knew it not for my later love. How often that happens! Jogging home, with the reins slack on the placid mare's back, Grandmother liked me to sing "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" and "Araby's Daughter," showing that she was a good deal under the spell of the palm trees and the ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... that it was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have been by transports ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... at Priesthaughswire, And warn the Currors o' the Lee; As ye come down the Hermitage Slack, Warn doughty Willie ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... Imbros. Forcing myself to work though I feel unspeakably slack; wrangling with the War Office about doctors, nurses, orderlies and ships for our August battles. A few days ago I sent the following cable and they want to cut ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... type was admitted to be frequently found readier for service in the preparation of entertainments "for the benefit of"—more especially when such benefits took the form of dancing. But the Duchess' little Miss Lawless came and went on errands, wasting no time. She never forgot things or was slack in any way. Her antelope eyes expressed a kind of yearning eagerness to do all she could without ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... through sheer imitation. A young Polish woman found herself in dire straits after the death of her mother. Her only friends in America had moved to New York, she was in debt for her mother's funeral, and as it was the slack season of the miserable sweat-shop sewing she had been doing, she was unable to find work. One evening when she was quite desperate with hunger, she stopped several men upon the street, as she had seen other girls do, and in her broken English asked them for something to eat. Only after a young ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... noted, and we saw some of the animals, but did not disturb them. In places where the river broadened out and the current was slack every rock that stuck above the water held its muskrat house, and large numbers of the rats ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... are looking ever so well and I wish I could hurry your leg on a little faster. Nature has ordained that bones will take just about so long to mend. And now I am going away to play. Practice happens to be quite slack to-day and Frenchy should be waiting outside with my rod. I am going to see whether I cannot deceive an innocent salmon into swallowing a ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Penryn, he turned up the road that ran down to the ferry there, and took his way home over the shoulder of the hill with a slack rein. It was not his usual way. He was wont ever to go round by Trefusis Point that he might take a glimpse at the walls of the house that harboured Rosamund and a glance at the window of her bower. But to-night he thought the shorter road over the hill would be the safer ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... tell," sez he. "Is ut like?" sez I. "But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service." Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could hould ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reudnitz. Leaning against the stove, he ran over several names of those who were now slack in their duty; and when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was not the Augereau of Castiglione. "Ah! give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am," retorted the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... country where workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work because he was a carpenter, but at every carpenter's shop where he applied he was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stone sawer; he split wood, lopped the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... extremity. Besides, she was wearing it in direct opposition to his expressed wishes. This I must tell you, to show how imperative it is for us to recover it; also to account for the large reward she is willing to pay. When he last looked at it he noticed that the fastening was a trifle slack, and, though he handed the trinket back, he told her distinctly that she was not to wear it till it had been either to Tiffany's or Starr's. But she considered it safe enough, and put it on to please the boys, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... bread, but that which contained "the little leaven," that having had no time to "leaven the whole lump," rendered it still heavier of digestion; butter half-worked, tea made of water that did not get time to boil, and slack-baked cakes. I supped on cucumbers, and complaining of fatigue, was conducted by my kind aunt to the sleeping apartment next her own, as it would seem like old times to have me so near. What was wanting ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... charge at Gettysburg. Yet, if I but tell the tale as it came to me, others may feel as I did the thrill of the rushing of the keel through dashing salt water, the swing of the great white sail above, the flapping of the fresh wind in the slack of it, the exhilaration of moving with power like the angels, with the great forces of nature for muscles, the joy of it all expanding, pulsing through you, till it seems as if the sky might crack if once you let your delight go free. And some may catch, too, that other ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... bow of your boat," I said. He did so. I drew in the slack until a fair towing length remained and made it fast. While he was busy I ventured to glance at Miss Colton. Her eyes were snapping with fun and she seemed to be enjoying the situation. But, catching my look, her expression changed. She turned ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... own, caressing them, kissing them. Would it be possible to forget them, to reconcile oneself to them? He must think—must get away from these crowded streets where faces seemed to grin at him. He remembered that Parliament had just risen, that work was slack in the office. He would ask that he might take his holiday now—the next day. And they ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... so much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but one had also to encounter physical violence. In those days, stones and cabbage-stalks and rotten eggs still played a considerable ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... slaves. As for the vital industries, everything prospered. The members of the great labor castes were contented and worked on merrily. For the first time in their lives they knew industrial peace. No more were they worried by slack times, strike and lockout, and the union label. They lived in more comfortable homes and in delightful cities of their own—delightful compared with the slums and ghettos in which they had formerly dwelt. They had better food to eat, less hours of labor, more holidays, and a greater amount ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... busy time of all the year, affording no leisure for those dinners and whist parties which came in the early season, when the country families had just arrived from town, or in the late season, when prune picking grew slack. Night finds one weary in the country, even when his day has brought only supervision of labor. These town-bred folk, living from the soil and still but half welded to it, fell unconsciously into farmer habits in ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... placed at considerable distance from each other; eyes not large, but brisk and lively; neck slender and long, tapering toward the head, with a little loose skin below; shoulders and fore quarters light and thin; hind quarters large and broad; back straight, and joints slack and open; carcass deep in the rib; tail small and long, reaching to the heels; legs small and short, with firm joints; udder square, but a little oblong, stretching forward, thin skinned and capacious, but not low hung; teats or paps small, pointing outward, ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... as the subject of one of those old-fashioned forms of argument, formerly much employed to convince men of error in matters of religion, must have felt when the official who superintended the stretching-machine said, "Slack up!" ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... With a slack bridle his horse was left to refresh himself on the sward, while Carlos proceeded to the execution of a design that had been matured in his mind ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... he was in the air; then he landed feet-first on a table which collapsed under him, spilling him to the floor. He got up and saw that he was in a Hadji-class living room. An old woman sat in a rocking chair less than three feet away. Her jaw was slack with terror; she kept on ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... open a door suddenly, and we looked into an underground hall, where a dozen men were carousing—Duke Casimir's Hussars of Death, black-browed, evil-faced, slack-jowled villains every man of them, cruel and sensual. A blast of ribald oaths came sulphurously up, as if the mouth of hell had ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... all well defined as compared with the career of Emma, whom he characterizes as a "moral pervert.'' The mother is a well-meaning, hard-working, moderately intelligent woman of about 45. She is said to be somewhat slack in her household, but perfectly honest. The father is desperately alcoholic and peculiar at times. It is not known that his aberrations are ever shown apart from his drinking. Years ago he was in a hospital for the insane ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... believed?—the penitent's eye twinkled with momentary vanity. "I fastened a tea-cup to an iron rake, and filled the cup with powder; then I passed it in, and spilt the powder out of cup, and raked it in to the smithy slack, and so on, filling and raking in. But I did thee one good turn, lad; I put powder as far from bellows as I could. Eh, but I was a bad 'un to do the like to thee; and thou's a good 'un to come here. When I saw thee lie there, all scorched and shaking, I didn't like my work; and now I hate it. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... all these streams is the same—slack water of moderate depth alternating with rapids. They can never be navigated by anything larger than ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... Rapid is two miles long and has, or had, a fall of 10 feet the Chte Blondeau a quarter of a mile with a fall of 4 feet and the Longue Sault six miles and a fall of 46 feet. Between the Carillon and Chte Blondeau there is or was a slack water reach of three and a half miles, and between the latter and the foot of the Longue Sault a similar reach of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... explained, "Mr. Blackett is too big a man, and too easy-going to attend to his business as he should. But I suppose he's rich enough and can afford to be a trifle slack." ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... spite of all my resistance, and all we could do was to follow. But I soon lost track of him and control of him: sometimes he was ahead, and I could feel him; sometimes he was alongside, and the line was slack and dragging on the water, most dangerous of positions; sometimes the canoe went fastest, and the salmon was behind me. My men handled the canoe admirably, and brought me through safe, fish and all; for when we emerged into the still pool below, and I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... board and lodging, and keep the rest for yourself. Let your payments be such as will do a little more than actually cover the expense of what you have. Give a thought to the general comfort of the home, and in time of need when perhaps your father's work is slack, be ready to increase your help, even though it may ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... tests as to hardness of sizing answer every ordinary purpose: Moisten with the tongue, and if the paper is slack-sized you can detect it often by the instant drawing or absorption of the moisture. Watch the spot moistened, and the longer it remains wet the better the paper is sized. Look through the spot dampened—the poorer the sizing the more transparent is the paper where it is wet. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... falls slack, his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, And their mother—"may heaven ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Robson, there followed after the memorable Condor-Stillman musicale a period of slack-water. It seemed as if a deadly stagnation was to poison her existence, so sharp and emphasized was her boredom. On the other hand, Mrs. Robson seemed to have contrived, from years of living among arid pleasures, the ability to conserve every happiness that she chanced upon to its ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... and Palmer assumed mock politeness, "I've heard enough of your slack; dry up or I'll ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Tom Spooner it can only be said that he is still a bachelor, living with his cousin Ned, and that none of the neighbours expect to see a lady at Spoon Hall. In one winter, after the period of his misfortune, he became slack about his hunting, and there were rumours that he was carrying out that terrible threat of his as to the crusade which he would go to find a cure for his love. But his cousin took him in hand somewhat sharply, ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... soil retains Our royal hero's beauteous, dear remains; Who now sails off with winds nor wishes slack, To bring his sufferings' bright companion back. But e'er such transport can our sense employ, A bitter grief must poison half our joy; 1070 Nor can our coasts restored those blessings see Without a bribe to envious destiny! Cursed Sodom's doom for ever fix the tide Where by inglorious ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of trees on the edge of the field. Their shade invited like a beckoning hand. Little beads of perspiration stood on her forehead. A warm lassitude spread through her body, turning her muscles slack. Hadn't Gertrude said Aunt Jessica didn't let them work in too ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... alone To this weed are not prone; Would you know what 'tis makes them so slack—O? 'Twas because it inclined To be honest the mind, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... neglect the cockles, which were her native trade. In busy times she could afford to hire over one of the Saltash fish-women—the Johnses or the Glanvilles; you'll have heard of them, maybe?—to lend her a hand: but in anything like a slack season she'd be down at low water, with her petticoat trussed over her knees, raking cockles with her own hands. Yes, yes, a powerful, a remarkable woman! and a pity it was (I've heard my mother say) to ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... notice a system of water and sewage purification which appears to possess several substantial advantages. Chief among these are simplicity in construction and operation, economy in first cost and working and efficiency in action. This system is the invention of Messrs. Slack & Brownlow, of Canning Works, Upper Medlock Street, Manchester, and the apparatus adopted in carrying it out is here illustrated. It consists of an iron cylindrical tank having inside a series of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... the dancers give themselves to the saxophone. Their feet keep a rendezvous with the umpah umps. Their thoughts dance on the slack wire of the clarinet. Their veins beat time to the whinny of the derby wreathed cornet. The fiddles and the drums are partners for their arms and their muscles. But their hearts embrace shyly the Mother Aphrodite. Their hearts listen sadly and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... now ran a full half-mile wide, splitting the town with its yeasty race. An annual occurrence, this was a matter of small moment to the severed halves. Each would pursue the even tenor of its way till the slack of the rains permitted communication by canoe and the rebuilding of the bridge. But it had special significance now in that Andrea ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the Lolling Table; where our Discourse is, what I fear you would not read out, therefore shall not insert. But I assure you, Sir, I heartily lament this Loss of Time, and am now resolved (if possible, with double Diligence) to retrieve it, being effectually awakened by the Arguments of Mr. Slack out of the Senseless Stupidity that has so long possessed me. And to demonstrate that Penitence accompanies my Confession, and Constancy my Resolutions, I have locked my Door for a Year, and desire you would let my Companions know I am not within. I ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dismissed, And now was travelling towards his native home. 425 This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. 430 Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my side; Nor could I, while we journeyed thus, forbear 435 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... stunning him. Hunsa, with the death-grip still on the roomal, planted a knee between the victim's shoulder-blades, and jerked the head upward—still the spine did not snap; and slowly tightening the pressure of the cloth he smothered the man beneath his knee till he felt the muscles go slack and the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more." There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth That can for long keep footing under that When its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... now, but the cold had frozen them and the going was getting constantly better. The snow was thin and in places the sleds slewed sidewise and the dogs ran on slack traces across long stretches of bare glare ice. It was while negotiating such a place as this that Rock paid the price of his earlier carelessness. Doret's dry moose-skin soles had a sure grip, hence he never hesitated, but the lieutenant's moccasins were like a pair of tin shoes now ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... demanded. "Struck it big?" he went on as the dingy gold scales were produced from the shelf at the back. Then he laughed amiably. "It needs to be big, wakin' me in my slack time." ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... day they withdrew the money from the bank, and, when business got a little slack, in the afternoon set out in search of a clothing store. Dick knew enough of the city to be able to find a place where a good bargain could be obtained. He was determined that Fosdick should have a good serviceable suit, even if it took all the money they had. The ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... the same bad tone, want of sufficient numbers of boys of equal standing in the school-work, and other disadvantages, which make the very name of a private school malodorous. The boys are rough and unmannerly, the discipline slack, the teaching staff inferior in ability and social position. The public schools of Australia may not be all that could be wished, but [Greek characters] that a boy of mine should ever go to a colonial private school, unless it were a preparatory school—a class of ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... sure that she would thrust her matrimonial happiness with Oliver unsparingly upon his attention; while he, on the other hand, being provided with no corresponding Olivette, would be left, a sort of emotional celibate, with his slack times and his afternoons and his general need for flattery and amusement dreadfully upon his own hands. He would be tormented by jealousy. In which case—and here he came to verities—his work would suffer. It wouldn't grip him while all these vague ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... I really don't want any tea. I've gone slack on purpose because that's how I want to be till nine o'clock. I've just eaten an enormous oyster stew with Rush. That's what we ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... hydrated lime I would suggest that you buy fresh burned lump lime and do the hydrating yourself, which only requires that you add eighteen pounds of water to each fifty-six pounds of quick lime; in other words, that you slack the lime by adding water in the proper proportion. Both quick lime and hydrated lime are known as caustic lime. Webster says that the word caustic means 'capable of destroying the texture of anything or eating away its substance by ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... man be not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." How will he know this? By the heart consolations and comforts it brings him. The Holy Spirit will bear witness with his spirit that he is a child of God. "God is not slack concerning his promises." When he says: "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people," do you think he has no way of letting them know they are his people? Will not a father and mother own the child they love? How ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... hired from the National Lifeboat Society. The tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... morning, as usual, on one of these swindling expeditions, and demanded of me the loan of some fine slack. Not knowing what she meant by fine slack, and weary of her importunities, I said I had none. She went away in a rage. Shortly after she came again for some pepper. I was at work, and my work-box was open ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... of the canal and military installations by the US has given rise to new construction projects. The MOSCOSO administration inherited an economy that is much more structurally sound and liberalized than the one inherited by its predecessor. Even though export demand is likely to remain slack in some key markets - especially the Andean countries - GDP growth in 2000 probably will be 3% to 4%. Key reform initiatives from the previous administration - including the privatization of public utilities - remain uncompleted. ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... namely, how the devil would have destroyed all Germany in its own blood. But now they may confidently deride it and make a mock of it, however, we shall nevertheless be a match both for themselves and the devil by prayer alone, if we only persevere diligently and not become slack. For whenever a godly Christian prays: Dear Father let Thy will be done, God speaks from on high and says: Yes, dear child, it shall be so, in spite of the devil ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... a slack day with him," she said rather gravely. "I assure you he works harder than most clergymen, and is very conscientious and painstaking. He is not at all strong, but he never ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... so to wander and so to question, for in a little while they are going to take me out and do this thing to me. If the neck of the victim be broken by the alleged shrewd arrangement of knot and noose, and by the alleged shrewd calculation of the weight of the victim and the length of slack, then why do they manacle the arms of the victim? Society, as a whole, is unable to answer this question. But I know why; so does any amateur who ever engaged in a lynching bee and saw the victim throw up his hands, clutch the rope, and ease ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the women, he was unabashed by externals. He demanded "tea" of his mother that very moment, "cos 'e 'adn't no time for dinner and 'is bloke 'ad sent 'im round to get a bit o' somethink now," at a slack hour. ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... culinary triumphs, always found their way to the prior's table, and an excellent understanding had always been maintained between the two houses. But the knight had observed of late that the prior had become more slack in those visits of friendly courtesy which once had been common enough between them; and when he had presented himself at the monastery, he had not been quite certain that his welcome was as cordial as heretofore. It was not until latterly that this had caused him any uneasiness—it had taken ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... see that all the parishioners duly resort to their Church upon all Sundays and Holy-days, and there continue the whole time of Divine Service; and none to walk or to stand idle or talking in the Church, or in the Churchyard, or in the Church-porch, during that time. And all such as shall be found slack or negligent in resorting to the Church (having no great or urgent cause of absence) they shall earnestly call upon them; and after due monition (if they amend not) they shall present them to the Ordinary ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... of that drawer an' found two letters from Milly. One was a long letter written a few months after her disappearance. She had been bound an' gagged an' dragged away from her home by three men, an' she named them—Hurd, Metzger, Slack. They was strangers to her. She was taken to the little town where I found trace of her two years after. But she didn't send the letter from that town. There she was penned in. 'Peared that the proselytes, who had, of course, come on the ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... irrespective of attractiveness, long before the development of either of the principal parties concerned; but even then the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects. The cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was an age neither of religion ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hundreds and thousands at each other in play, and call it a Comfit Battle or Battaglia di Confetti (that's real Italian). And he wanted to get up that sort of thing among the village people—but they were too beastly slack, so he ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... can only be said that he is still a bachelor, living with his cousin Ned, and that none of the neighbours expect to see a lady at Spoon Hall. In one winter, after the period of his misfortune, he became slack about his hunting, and there were rumours that he was carrying out that terrible threat of his as to the crusade which he would go to find a cure for his love. But his cousin took him in hand somewhat ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... improvin' the human race. Now look here, Mis' Carrington, let an old woman talk. I'm old and I got wrinkles in my face but there ain't none in my heart, and the only way to keep 'em out of your heart is just to fill it to bustin' with love. Keep the skin tight; don't let it git slack. Why, you'll find you been goin' without love and it's like eatin' without an appetite. It's fillin' your life with somethin' that don't satisfy. Even if you feel you ain't got the best man in the world, make the best of the one you got, and, just 'cause he's yourn, you'll believe after a while ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... It was now nearly slack water, on a high flood, and the schooner lay just above the bend of the creek. Presently a large, portly-looking man, dressed like as Yorkshire farmer, came, to the bank, and in a stentorious voice ordered the captain to haul into the creek at once! The manner in which the order was given ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... which to put our Bass and Weak Fish, laid in a stock of cold provisions—among other things a Cold Shoulder—plenty of exhilarating beverages, and, with Buoyant Spirits, (every Man of us,) and plenty of ice on board, started on the slack of the Morning Tide. I regret to state that by the time we were ready to start our Skipper was half way "Over the Bay," being provided with a pocket pistol charged to the muzzle. He and his two subordinates were pretty well "Shot in the neck" by the time ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... without personal transportation in Texas. Catherine remained in Wisconsin because she was too new at being a Mekstrom to know how to conduct herself so that the fact of her super-powerful body did not cause a lot of slack jaws and high suspicion. ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Colonel found a man who'd just settled down in Tottingham and opened a shop there. Came from Biddeford, Maine, I believe, and thought he was pretty foxy. 'Well,' he says, 'there ain't any money in it for me at those figures, Colonel, but work's slack an' I'll take the contract.' You see, he thought he could charge a little more here an' there an' make something. But he didn't know the Colonel. Every time he'd talk about things costin' more than he'd thought the Colonel would flash that contract on him. When the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... will get here on Thursday afternoon. It's lucky we came up to-day. My letters are from Johnnie and Cecy Slack. Johnnie says—" ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... dropped now. For these are coasts of quiet nights and boisterous days. The tide was almost slack. "The Last Hope" was scarcely moving, and in the shadowy light looked like a phantom ship sailing out of a dreamy ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... everybody else's. A couple of mechanics were tinkering on one of them. I decided, for the oomptieth time, to do something about cleaning it up. Say in another two or three hundred hours, when the ships would all be in port and work would be slack, and I could hire a couple ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... Civil Service which you so adorn Would lose its prestige, visibly grown slack, And all its lofty pledges be forsworn Were you to deviate from your boots of black; Were you to shed that coat of sombre dye, That ebon brain-box (imitation beaver) Whose torrid aspect strikes the passer-by With ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... his sails, but the surf was running very strong, and presently a heavy sea broke clean over her. Then came confusion and dismay: the flapping of the wet, half-lowered sails, and the whipping of the slack ropes, making all effort useless. There was no chance of her- holding. Foot by foot she was being driven towards the rocks. Sailors stood motionless on the shore. The lifeboat would be of little use: besides, it could not arrive ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of passion, To look such a lass on, Her patience distressing, The bestial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to lay ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... along the coast,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in—not properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... can'di date trap an'vil gland cal'i co plat ban'ish slack grat'i tude sham bran'dy ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... warmly did it; two-months' babies leapt Right upward in their mother's arms, whose black Wide glittering eyes looked elsewhere; lovers pressed Each before either, neither glancing back; And peasant maidens smoothly 'tired and tressed Forgot to finger on their throats the slack Great pearl-strings; while old blind men would not rest, But pattered with their staves and slid their shoes Along the stones, and smiled as if they saw. O heaven, I think that day had noble use Among God's days! So near stood Right and Law, Both mutually forborne! Law would not ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... New Republic, "has created just such a demand for the Negroes. Colored men who formerly loafed on street corners are now regularly employed. Negro girls who found it once difficult to obtain good jobs at domestic service have leaped into popularity. The market for labor has taken up all the slack. There is a demand for all, for skilled workers, unskilled, semi-employables, Negroes. The employment agencies cannot meet the demand. Construction camps which formerly relied on Italian or Polish laborers now seek to secure an alternative supply of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... elder, had worked as green hand for a dressmaker, for one shilling and sixpence per week—37.5 cents per week, or a fraction over 5 cents per day. However, when the slack season came she was discharged, though she had been taken on at such low pay with the understanding that she was to learn the trade and work up. After that she had been employed in a bicycle store ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Sometimes, when work was slack, I would walk far afield with Diana for my companion, or we would jog to market with the Tinker in the four-wheeled cart, hearkening to his shrewd animadversions upon men and life in general; and Diana's ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... top speed. She knew if they had level ground, that meant entering the village. She decided quickly. It must be the hill. If she could only make the turn. She tightened her grip on the reins and felt the horses slack just the least little bit. She pulled hard on the left rein, and then as they came to the turn—on the right one—so as to describe a wide half circle and save the sleigh from tipping. The ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... alone remained upon the wharf. As he saw the rush coming he had ordered his men to abandon their load; then he ran to the after-mooring, and, taking slack from a deck hand, cast it off. Back up the dock he went to the forward hawser, where, at a signal, he did the same, moving, toward the last, without excessive hurry, as if in a spirit of bravado. The ship was clear, and he had not cut a hawser. He had done his ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the man, and disappeared in the muddy water. He rose to the surface under the ship's quarter, and the mate, quick as lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on to the top of him. In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung with the tenacity and somewhat the attitude of a monkey. At the same instant a splash ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... dog filled the engineer with a fear that he had not anticipated. Not for an instant did the brute give slack to his tongue as they raced through the night, and Howland knew now that the storm and the darkness were of little avail in his race for life. There was but one chance, and he determined to take it. Gradually he slackened his pace, drawing and cocking his revolver; ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... shaken and very much in earnest; but he was never the man to give for any lengthy while too slack a rein to emotion; and so he now sat down upon the bench and lighted a cigarette and smiled. Yet he fully recognized himself to be the most enviable of men and an inhabitant of the most glorious world imaginable—a world wherein he very assuredly meant to marry ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... ten knots good now, and with every jerk the painter of the seine-boat chafed and groaned in the taffrail chock. The skipper from the boat called for more line. "Slack away a bit, ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... himself, said Chung-kung, and slack in his claims on the people, might do; but to be slack himself and slack with others must surely be ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... story as Yada himself was—the main point to them was that they had recovered their property. Naturally they felt remarkably grateful to Melky Rubinstein for his astuteness in circumventing Yada at what might have been the last moment. And one day, at that portion of it when business was slack and everybody was feeling comfortable after dinner, Melky called on Mrs. Goldmark and became confidentially closeted with her in a little parlour behind her establishment which she kept sacred to herself. Mrs. ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... Mendocino has a rock-bound coast, with no harbors, but she has fine forests. Here the lumber steamer secures its cargo by means of suspended wire chutes as trolleys. The outer end of the trolley wire is anchored in the ocean, the wire crosses the deck of the moored steamer, the slack being taken up to the ship's gaff, thus making a tight wire up and down which the trolley car with ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... be indulgent if I write less regularly now: and by indulgent I mean that you will go on writing to me, as I do enjoy your letters so much. I expect I shall have slack times when there will be plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy, and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100 deg. in the shade. I wrote quite happily this morning till ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... widely open, the other shut, and the tongue lolls out. His arms are outstretched in the form of a cross: the hands open, the fingers separated. The right leg is straight. The left, whence flowed the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... now the Moors, Arabians, Ethiops black, Of the left wing that held the utmost marge, Spread forth their troops, and purposed at the back And side their heedless foes to assail and charge: Slingers and archers were not slow nor slack To shoot and cast, when with his battle large Rinaldo came, whose fury, haste and ire, Seemed earthquake, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Kendal, his son; a hard, blond giant; high cheeks, raw ruddied; high bleak nose jutting out with a steep fall to the long upper lip; savage mouth under a straight blond fringe, a shark's keen tooth pointing at the dropped jaw. Arched forehead drooping to the spread ears, blond eyebrows drooping over slack lids. ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... great man's life, but no suspicions need exist. It was all told to me in strict confidence by Gooley Can in his tent at Luxor, over a cup of afternoon tea. He explained that he had dug out these facts in the museums in the slack season when tourists were scarce, and that I could rely ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... as it were reached a climax, when, instead of the line breaking or Mark going over the side, the strong cord, which had been hissing here and there through the water, suddenly grew slack, and the tension was taken off Mark's muscles and mind to give place ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... day. There is "absenteeism," which has always been affected by a reduction of hours, and which amounts to 6.6 per cent. of the working time of the mines, and there is the margin of stoppages through slack trade and other circumstances, which at present aggregates 7 per cent. of the working time of the mines. Taking these last two alone, they aggregate 13 per cent., or considerably more, as a margin, than the ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... was found, at the very outset, in getting men to ship for service on the regular cruisers. Privateers were being fitted out in every port; and on them the life was easy, discipline slack, danger to life small, and the prospects for financial reward far greater than on the United States men-of-war. Accordingly, the seafaring men as a rule preferred to ship on the privateers. At no time in the history ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of him was in fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... which the raging torrent of the highland tributaries spent itself without doing extraordinary damage in that immediate region. Bridges which might have been lost in a smaller flood like that of 1902 were actually standing in slack water by the time the mountain torrents appeared in force. These streams caused much destruction higher up in the mountains, but in the Central Basin their energy became potential—a gathering of forces to be loosed upon the lower valley. A discussion ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... herds. The horse wranglers were detailed by Priest, and fitting an axle to the spool of wire, by the aid of ropes attached to the pommels of two saddles, it was rolled up to the scene of its use at an easy canter. The stretching of the wire was less than an hour's work, the slack being taken up by the wranglers, ever upholding Texas methods, from the pommels of saddles, while Priest clinched the strands with staples at the proper tension. The gates were merely a pliable extension of the fence, the flexible character requiring ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... speaking. While giving my attention to this particular study, I was greatly impressed by the extreme importance of maintaining an erect spine, holding the chin down, inward and backward, and keeping the shoulders back and the chest expanded. I found, however, like many others who become "slack" in bodily posture, that a considerable effort was required to maintain a proper position at all times. I therefore began a series of special exercises intended really to force myself to assume a properly erect position. While experimenting ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... her a drawin' of tea and a couple of nut-cakes: mebby she'll relish 'em, for I shouldn't wonder ef she hadn't had a mouthful this blessed day. She's dreadful slack at the best of times, but no one can much wonder, seein' she's got nine children, and is jest up from a rheumatic fever. I'm sure I never grudge a meal of vittles or a hand's turn to such as she is, though she does beat all for dependin' on her neighbors. I'm a thousand times obleeged. You needn't ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... another older skilled worker, an able and clever Russian girl of twenty-one, an operative and trimmer, earned $12 a week. She had been idle twelve weeks on account of slack work. For four weeks she had night work for three nights a week, and payment for this extra time had brought her income up to $480 for the year. Of this sum she paid $312 ($6 a week) for board and lodging alone in a large, pleasant room with ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... we be all traitors unto God, and are all under the condemnation of His holy law. Shall the traitor arraign the Judge? And unto the repenting traitor, God's hand falleth not in punishment, but only in loving discipline and fatherly training. You slack not, I count, to give Honor her physic, though she cry that it is bitter and loathsome; nor will God set aside His physic for your Ladyship's crying. Yet, dear my Lady, this is not because He loveth to see you weep, but only because He ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... advancing toward us at a brisk canter and the drum turned fast, taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though not satisfied with this rate of progress, several soldiers were running back and jumping up to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took care of the telephone was hard put to it to coil down the twin wires. He skittered about ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... stretched string that gives out musical notes; the slack one is dumb. And if we desire that we may be able to be sure, as our Master was, when He said, 'I know that Thou hearest me always,' we must pray as He did, of whom it is recorded that 'He prayed the more earnestly,' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... he drove down both feet on the pedals. The indignant car stalled. Through the blackness ahead, the white ray from the lamps had picked up a weird object. And the two brethren stared at it, slack-jawed. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... the slave dig the mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... dozing. Having in mind the keenness of desert-bred stock, he watched the horse. The minutes drifted by. The horse seemed more distinct. Waring thought he could discern the picket rope. He endeavored to trace it from horse to picket. Foot by foot his eyes followed its slack outline across the ground. The head of the metal picket glimmered faintly. Waring closed his eyes, nodded, and caught himself. This time he traced the rope from picket to horse. It seemed a childish thing to do, yet it kept him awake. Did he imagine ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... fear of you was, that you would dash into debate at once, like a tumbler jumping from a precipice; and that, like him, all that you would have gained by it would be broken limbs for life. If the fellow had kept to his slack-rope and his stage, he would have been safe enough, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... strange a smell, as if we had been in the midst of a delicate garden, abounding with all kinds of odoriferous herbs and flowers, so we were assured that the land could not be far distant; and keeping good watch, and bearing but slack sail, the fourth of the same month we arrived upon the coast, which we supposed to be a continent, and firm land; and we sailed along the same a hundred and twenty miles, before we could find any entrance or river issuing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... switches, a jamming of the whistle lever to set the canyon echoes yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it, came to life ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... to sea when she was captured, and in the slack water she had not drifted at all. He went ahead slowly, and soon had the bell to stop her; but he expected this, for the channel was narrow, and it required considerable manoeuvring to get the steamer about. Then ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... which sees in all directions and is indifferent to distance. Go into one quiet, soft-carpeted room, and certain small glittering machines flash in the bright light. "Click, click—click, click!"—long strips of tape are softly unwound and fall in slack twisted piles. One of those machines is printing off a long letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Shoreditch; subdued ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... most desirable trades are seldom open to her, for they require workers of experience, or, at least, those who have had recognized instruction. Even if a green girl enters a skilled trade, she cannot rise easily in it, and is apt to be dropped out at the first slack season. The sort of positions open to her have usually little future, as they are isolated occupations that do not lead to more advanced work. Illustrations of these employments are wrapping braid, sorting silk, running errands, tying fringe, taking out and putting ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman
... reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... little grassy knoll close to the water was Chris flat on his back, his mouth open, fast asleep. A half dozen fine bass lay on the grass beside him, the end of his fishing line was tied to one ebony leg, and a coil of slack line ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... Luke, and there was no proof that he had received hers. Lucy began gradually to despond; for work became slack, and at times she only got enough to employ her half the day. Not to lose ground, however, she hired herself to the neighbouring farmers' wives to sew during her spare time, leaving Dame Damerel to the occasional care of Susan Larkin. While she was sitting at work during ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... hisn interfere with his work, ner to make it an excuse fer claimin' he's different. That's colts' talk, an' don't you fergit it, Tweezy. An', Marcus, you remember that hem' a philosopher, an' anxious to save trouble,—fer you ate,—don't excuse you from jumpin' with all your feet on a slack-jawed, crazy clay-bank like Boney here. It's leavin' 'em alone that gives 'em their chance to ruin colts an' kill folks. An', Tuck, waal, you're a mare anyways—but when a horse comes along an' covers up all his talk o' ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the rabble of men and women who had been threatened, the dwellers in those twelve houses next the inn, who came dragging our brick-faced knave of a host, with that hard-polished countenance of his slack and clammy—slate-gray in color too, all the red tan ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of the boulder. The mason who fixed it, standing waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched it round the ankle of the dead man. The dead man's brother jumped down beside him and grasped the slack of it. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mr. Slack, of the town of Kenton, was egregiously given to egotism. He was a man of ordinary education, but somewhat elevated above his neighbours in worldly circumstances. He carried himself with an air of imposing importance, as though he was lord of the entire ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... in the same place, her hands crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment was like a miser's bag stretched ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... she is, the lustre of whose eye Can blot away the sad remembrance Of all these things: Oh my Evadne, spare That tender body, let it not take cold, The vapours of the night will not fall here. To bed my Love; Hymen will punish us For being slack performers of his rites. Cam'st thou ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... fast with plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, helping ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... him. He did not make the mistake of making the end fast to his own body as he might have done in some circumstances. Instead he threw the rope over the rock, taking one quick turn about it. He had no more than taken that turn when the slack on the rope was suddenly taken up and the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... especially that of the morning, meekness, compunction, careful self-examination every evening, fasting, humility, alms, &c. In Pa. 43, p. 146, he thus apostrophizes the rich: "Hear this, you all who are slack in giving alms: hear this, you who, by hoarding up your treasures, lose them yourselves: hear me you, who, by perverting the end of your riches, are no better by them than those who are rich only in a ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... thing—to me—appears to be fairly plain. It starts out with the association of Baxter and the dishonest bank-manager. The bank-manager, left in charge of this old-fashioned bank at Blyth, where any supervision of his doings was no doubt pretty slack, and where he was, of course, fully trusted, examines the nature of the various matters committed to his care, and finds out the contents of those Forestburne chests. He then enters into a conspiracy with Baxter for purloining them and some other valuables—those jewels you mentioned, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... before the train arrived. Putting spurs to his horse, he flew down the track, the gravel flying in all directions, his sure- footed animal keeping the ties, nor did he pull rein or slack his speed until the large tank of the water station rose above him. Jumping from his horse, he walked to the keeper's shanty. The man was awake and trimming his lantern, nor did he exhibit any surprise at the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... drowsiness is at his most potent, we find, about 10:30 P. M. At this period the human carcass seems to consider that it has finished its cycle, which began with so much courage nearly sixteen hours before. It begins to slack and the mind halts on a dead centre every now and then, refusing to complete the revolution. Now there are those who hold that this is certainly the seemly and appointed time to go to bed and they do so as a matter of routine. These are, commonly, the happier creatures, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... men an' boys, an' they carted him araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school. You don't know no better, o' ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Nor was Franklin slack. Hovering with his great division in the plain below and knowing that he was beaten, he nevertheless turned one hundred and sixteen cannon that he carried with him upon Jackson's front and swept all the ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... down his slate, and going to the shaft dropped the bucket down as far as the slack rope reached; then, placing one hand on the bole of the windlass and holding the other against it underneath, he let it slip round between his palms until the bucket reached bottom. A sound of shovelling was ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... supper. Daylight's first thought was that city living had not agreed with her. And then he noted the slight tan and healthy glow that seemed added to her face, and he decided that the country was the place for her. Declining an invitation to supper, he rode on for Glen Ellen sitting slack-kneed in the saddle and softly humming forgotten songs. He dropped down the rough, winding road through covered pasture, with here and there thickets of manzanita and vistas of open glades. He listened ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... In the slack time between the seasons, Isak smooths down some new tree-trunks he has thrown; to be used for something or other, no doubt. Also he digs out a number of useful stones and gets them down to the ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... question was fairly launched into politics, by the admission, for the first time, of two women, Lucy Stone and Mary A. Livermore, as regularly accredited delegates. Both were invited to speak, and the following resolution drawn up by Henry B. Blackwell, was presented by Charles W. Slack: ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... indifference, but living creatures joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs in a leash are compelled to think of one another. A man and wife must love or hate, like or dislike, in degree as the bond connecting them is drawn tight or allowed to hang slack. By mutual desire their chains of wedlock have been fastened as loosely as respect for security will permit, with the happy consequence that her aversion to him does not obtrude itself ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... avaricious, though a prudent man. A working man himself, he was in thorough sympathy with his workmen, and in the slack season, instead of discharging his men and thus entailing want upon them, he built vessels on speculation, merely that he might keep the men busy and their families from suffering. Providentially these speculations were always successful, thus illustrating ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... time was to be lost; so, dismounting from the very fleet horse he was riding, he placed in his saddle his wife and eldest child. To the first named he gave directions "to follow on the trail that led to Taos, and let the bridle reins be a little slack, so that the horse would know what was expected of him, when he would travel at the top of his speed. He said that he intended to ride towards the Indians and engage them at first in a parley, and then if necessary offer them a single-handed ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... much trade at present. Still, a few coasters have come in, and I hope that every day things will get better. Besides, all the vessels that have been lying in the Pool since June will want painting up and getting into trim again before they sail out of the river, so things may not be so slack after all. You will find everything in order in the store. I have had little to do but to polish up brass work and keep the metal from rusting. When do the apprentices ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... poor wife. But if I continued to make the best of a bad bargain, I had no longer any illusions as to the possibility of success in Paris. Face to face with unheard-of misery, I shuddered at the smiling aspect which Paris presented in the bright sunshine of May. It was the beginning of the slack season for any sort of artistic enterprise in Paris, and from every door at which I knocked with feigned hope I was turned away with the wretchedly monotonous phrase, Monsieur ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... as I have said, have worked loyally and well, there have, I regret to say, been instances where absence, irregular timekeeping, and slack work have led to a marked diminution in the output of our factories. In some cases the temptations of drink account for this failure to work up to the high standard expected. It has been brought to my notice on more than one occasion that the restrictions ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... this debate tendeth also to this end, that the power, as well of ecclesiastical censure as of the civil sword, being in force, the licentiousness of carnal men, who desire that there be too slack ecclesiastical discipline, or none at all, may be bridled, and so men may sin less, and may live more agreeably to the gospel. Another thing here intended is, that errors on both sides being overthrown (as well the error ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... name....' There came a jagged spurt of flame; The window seemed a furnace door That gave upon a bed of ore; The thunder rumbled out the muttered Words that his failing tongue had uttered— Another flash, a rending crack— The old man crumpled like a sack; I felt his stringy arms go slack. How could he sit so dead, so still! While wind ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... tide passed, and then the ship began to swing idly as the slack came. Then with the turn of tide came little flaws of wind, and we hoisted the sail, and Kenulf hove the anchor short. Yet we heard no more sounds from ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... instant did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his bonds ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... saddle me the bonny black, Gae saddle sune, and mak' him ready, For I will down the Gatehope-slack, An' a' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sixteen to eighteen threads, between two hem-stitched edges. Fasten your thread in, 3 m/m. above the seam-edge, and wind it three times round every two clusters, passing the needle, the third time, under the two first rounds, to fasten the thread. The thread, thus drawn through, must be left rather slack. A second row of stitches, similar to the first, and at the same distance from the bottom edge, completes this pattern. To give it greater strength, you may if you like, work back over the first thread, with a second, taking care to pass it under the knot, which ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... commitments which must be liquidated at any cost. It is precisely in time of depression that the men of business ought to press their selling and organise their sales organisation to the utmost limit. If finance, commerce, and industry could only be persuaded to take this course in the slack times, then every action in this direction would cure the evil by lessening the duration of the bad times. Not till the surplus stocks have been unloaded will the winter pass and the summer come again in the enterprise of the world. Selling is the ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... boom comes, it will be using, though presumably to greater advantage, labor and materials which, but for it, would have been employed for other purposes. Meanwhile the causes making for unemployment will be unaffected. Miscalculations will still be made, the building trades will still become slack in the winter, the casual methods of engaging dock laborers will still continue, trade cycles will still recur, while beneath them, and concealed by them, some industries will expand and others will decay. Thus, like the armies ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... the cell by the motion of the car on the road. A poorly sealed battery allows electrolyte to be thrown out through the cracks left between the sealing compound and the jars or posts. The leaks may be caused by the battery cables not having sufficient slack, and pulling on ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... that of the rod against which he matches himself. The tiny hook is caught painlessly in the gristle of his jaw. The line is long and light. He has the whole lake to play in, and he uses almost all of it, running, leaping, sounding the deep water, turning suddenly to get a slack line. The Gypsy, tremendously excited, manages the boat with perfect skill, rowing this way and that way, advancing or backing water to meet the tactics of the fish, and doing the most important ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... Mynheers or Mounseers," cried Ben. "They're drowning, and want our help; so, whether enemies or friends, we'll try to haul as many of the poor fellows ashore as we can get hold of, and give them dry jackets, and a warm welcome afterwards. Slack away, mates!" And he plunged ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... man putting them into the bow of the boat, — "they can't do nothin'! I'll engage they won't hurt ye. Do you good, if you eat 'em right. Good bye! — it's pretty nigh slack water, I guess — you'll go home easy. Come again! — and you shall have some more fowls to take ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... said so much about the pugnacity of the clergy, I would not have it supposed that the Tory laity were slack or backward in political activity. To verbal abuse one soon became case-hardened; but one had also to encounter physical violence. In those days, stones and cabbage-stalks and rotten eggs still played a considerable part in electioneering. Squires hid their gamekeepers in ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the crowd began to thin. Business would be slack, now, until five, when it would again pick up until closing time at six. The fat vocalist put down his megaphone, wiped his forehead, and regarded Terry with a warm blue eye. He had just finished singing "I've Wandered Far ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... elated, sending his buzzer signal up to those so far above. The icy air through his hose changed to air of normal temperature. He signaled for slack in the lowering cable, then prepared for ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... "Belay the slack of your jaws, youngsters," growled out old Higson, who had just turned in after his watch, and being perfectly indifferent to all the rolling and pitching, and the wild uproar of the elements, wanted ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... leaves now exhibited slight spontaneous movements; and when the terminal filaments came into contact with a stick, they slowly bent round and firmly seized it. But owing to the subsequent growth of the leaf, this filament became after a time quite slack, though still remaining firmly coiled round the stick. Hence it would appear that the chief use of the coiling, at least whilst the plant is young, is to support the pitcher with its ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... employer arranged the words in his mind. Her pencil was delicately poised above the ruled page. While she waited she hit the front of her pompadour a few improving slaps with her unengaged hand and pulled out the slack of her waist front. ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler
... are sober under-estimates of what God has already given to us. For if He has given the material, He will apply what He has supplied. And if He has thus in the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and hope upon the world, He will not slack His hand, if we desire the possibility to be in our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whatever, being often four times the size of the crocus corms. Moreover, they are pear-shaped and covered with flaky wrappers of a chestnut brown colour; if examined, these coverings will be found, near the neck of the bulb, to be very numerous and slack fitting, extending above the ground, where they have the form of decayed or blackened foliage; a singular fact in connection with the roots is, they are not emitted from the base of the bulb, but from the side of the thickened or ovate part, and are short ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... meek of heart; work day by day; Tread, ever tread, the knightly way; Make lawful war; long travel dare; Tourney and joust for lady fair; To everlasting honor cling, That none the barbs of blame may fling; Be never slack in work or fight; Be ever least in self's own sight;— This is the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... That is right; now the sail is over. Slack out—slack out all it will go; the wind is nearly dead aft. Ease off the jib-sheet, Jack. That is it. ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... April 30th.—A slack day in a way, although I have been on my feet since early morning. A great number of shells have landed near our camp at W. Beach at various times to-day, coming from Krithia or Achi Baba. It is strange how many shells may land in the midst of closely packed ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... machine is termed a pentaspast. But if we have to furnish machines for heavier loads, we must use timbers of greater length and thickness, providing them with correspondingly large bolts at the top, and windlasses turning at the bottom. When these are ready, let forestays be attached and left lying slack in front; let the backstays be carried over the shoulders of the machine to some distance, and, if there is nothing to which they can be fastened, sloping piles should be driven, the ground rammed down all round to fix them firmly, and the ropes ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... had a pleasant face of the English blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of drought ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... applied, for he drew the rope in slowly, till the slack was all gathered in, tightened it more and more, and the loop glided off the projection ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... which would suit their purpose, but it stood like a peninsula in the very midst of a crevasse, and connected with the main body of ice by a neck which looked as sharp as a knife on its upper edge, so that none but tight-rope or slack-wire dancers could have proceeded along it; and even such performers would have found the edge too ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... "—if that's the name you put upon it when your trousers is so slack you've got to hold on to them or ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... smote him. It was a slack time; so he sent four Hotteatots, with shovels, to help these friendly maniacs. These worked away gayly, and the white men set up a sorting table, and sorted the stuff, and hammered the nodules, and at last ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... very severe storm off a lee-shore, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the ship, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the ship from going ashore. If we had drank with the rest, all would have been lost, for the men were too drunk to save themselves. ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... invectives at her mother. The old mother retorted; the girl joined in. All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth, driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... FOR ROOFS OF HOUSES.—Slack Stone Lime in a large tub or barrel with boiling water, covering the tub or barrel to keep in the steam. When thus slacked pass six quarts through a fine sieve. It will then be in a state of fine flour. To this add one quart Rock Salt and one gallon of Water. Boil the mixture and skim it clean. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... serious river-obstacles to an outlet south of New Orleans. Another proposal is to connect the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, and to run a canal from the latter to the Ocmulgee or Savannah River, and thence by the use of slack water to reach the harbors of Savannah and Charleston. This scheme has been clearly proved to be feasible, although the distance seems objectionable. The third (or central) water-line proposed is that so long agitated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... reason. "Well, sir," replied the lieutenant, "I will tell you my secret. As soon as the officer I relieve is gone below and out of sight, while the watch is mustering, I walk forward, look round at things generally, and say casually to the captain of the forecastle: 'Just slack off a little of this jib-sheet.' Then about ten minutes before eight bells, after the last log of the watch has been hove, while the men are rousing to go below, I go forward again and say, 'Come here, half a dozen of us, and ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... placed there on purpose to make them conspicuous; and this was a great puzzle to naturalists, because the long coarse gray or greenish hair was evidently like tree-moss and therefore protective. But an old writer, Baron von Slack, in his Voyage to Surinam (1810), had already explained the matter. He says: "The colour and even the shape of the hair are much like withered moss, and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but particularly when ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... A slack rope tightens. Smoke beats downward. Sun is red in the morning. There is a pale yellow or ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... destroying the evidences of his guilt. Then he put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, might enter ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... one that Adam gave when he first recognized Eve, Pan folded me into his arms, laid his red head on my breast, and held up his lips to mine with a "love-thirst" that it took me more than a long minute to slack ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... up his friend comfortably with the slack of the rope so that he could move neither hands ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... As a matter of fact, so far from having any wish to conceal my name from you, I went round to your house before I called here and left my card on you. You'll find it there when you get back. I always like to be strict in the observance of the rules of civilised society. I particularly dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are inclined to drift. I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the rest in that respect. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... many fewer people at Graglia than at Oropa, and they were richer. I did not see any poor about, but I may have been there during a slack time. An impression was left upon me, though I cannot say whether it was well or ill founded, as though there were a tacit understanding between the establishments at Oropa and Graglia that the one was to adapt itself to the poorer, and the other to the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... in the various barges, shallops and canoes tied to the mossy piles, left their employments and scrambled up upon the platform, and a trio of youthful darkies, fishing for crabs with a string and a piece of salt pork, allowed their lines to fall slack and their intended victims to walk coolly off with the meat, so intense was their interest in the oncoming sail. A knot of negro women had left the great house kitchen and stood, hands on hips, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... his watch. It was half-past five. It was the slack time of the day in such a region, as he well knew, yet he was curious to see. In all his score of years of wandering and studying social conditions over the world, he had carried with him the memory of his old town as a sweet and wholesome place. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... only done four days this last fortni't!' she wailed. Chippy's father was a dock-side labourer, and work had been very slack ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... firm, not a sound breaking the intense stillness closing us in like a wall. A heavy wooden post, with a pulley attachment, stood behind where we rested, probably fitted there for hauling up heavy bales of cotton. Creeping back, I wound the slack of the rope about its base, drawing it as tight as possible, and then placed the end in the hands of the observant and wondering priest, who continued to creep after me like ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... his own; and on the following morning, after going on board the hooker with me and examining her inside and out, he gave orders for the whole of the work to be proceeded with forthwith. As there were no other ships in port refitting at the moment, it was a slack time at the dockyard, and almost the whole of its resources were available to expedite the work, in consequence of which the schooner was ready for sea a fortnight from the day on which ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... for 'the long hoist' and (b) those required for 'the short pull' or 'sweating-up.' Americans called these operations the 'long' and the 'short drag.' The former was used when beginning to hoist sails, when the gear would naturally be slack and moderately easy to manipulate. It had two short choruses, with a double pull in each. In the following example, the pulls ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... "Thursday is a slack day with him," she said rather gravely. "I assure you he works harder than most clergymen, and is very conscientious and painstaking. He is not at all strong, but ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... raging torrent of the highland tributaries spent itself without doing extraordinary damage in that immediate region. Bridges which might have been lost in a smaller flood like that of 1902 were actually standing in slack water by the time the mountain torrents appeared in force. These streams caused much destruction higher up in the mountains, but in the Central Basin their energy became potential—a gathering of forces to be loosed upon the lower valley. A discussion of the effects of this will ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... about, sir; but I must say that it has been more slack than it was. We have all done our best, but we have missed you terribly; and the men don't seem to take quite as much pains with their drill as they used to do, when you were in command. However, that will be all right now that you have come ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... Captain Rogers, as they passed out to sea. "Our rigging is slack. Our decks are lumbered up. Our stores are badly stowed. Our crew is so very mixed that I must stop in Ireland to get more able sea-dogs. Was ever captain in a ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... said Patrick, "and shed your tears to the God of grace. Finn and the Fianna are slack enough now, and they will get no help for ever." "It is a great pity that would be," said Oisin, "Finn to be in pain for ever; and who was it gained the victory over him, when his own hand had made an end of so many ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... was wondering where Rowena could be. I recollected how she had always seemed to be mortified by her slack-twisted family, and I could see her as she meeched off across the prairie hack along the Old Ridge Road, as if she belonged to another outfit; and yet, I knew how much of a Fewkes she was, as she joined in the conversation when they planned their great estates in the mythical state ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... canyon echoes yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it, came to ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... "Kind of slack, aren't you?" inquired Peter, his deep-set blue eyes twinkling with humor. "I've eaten two hours back. This lying a-bed is mighty bad ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... in his fourth year, and his memories of Cornwall remained vivid to his dying day. "I recall Halsetown," he said, "as a village nestling between sloping hills, bare and desolate, disfigured by great heaps of slack from the mines, and with the Knill monument standing prominent as a landmark to the east. It was a wild and weird place, fascinating in its own peculiar beauty, and taking a more definite shape in my youthful imagination ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... "Work's purty slack," crawfished Davidson. "But I tells you I don't know. We has to find out," and he ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... Lee Fu, at the tiller, beckoned us to stand beside him; I pulled Wilbur up by the slack of his coat, and pinned ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... places in France," serving under John, Duke of Bedford, in the "Hundred Years' War," and after fighting in eleven battles within the space of two years he won knighthood at the duke's hands at St. Luce. In the churchyard was buried William Newton, the Minstrel of the Peak, and Samuel Slack, who in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was the most popular bass singer in England. When quite young Slack competed with others for a position in a college choir at Cambridge, and sang Purcell's famous air, "They that go down to the sea in ships." When he had finished, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... young girl, like the one who was just here, is willing, in her extreme poverty, to labour, instead of sinking into vice and idleness, shows her to possess both virtue and integrity of character, and these we should be willing to encourage, even at some sacrifice. Work is slack now, as you are aware, and there is but little doubt that she had been to many places seeking employment before she came to you. It may be—and this is a very probable suggestion—that she did not come to you for work until ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... ought to have accompanied the creation of life peers. Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike what it ought to be, that most people will not believe it is what it ought to be. The attendance ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh of ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... a nice racket," said Aunt M'riar. "So I lay there ain't much wrong with them." She picked up a piece of work to go on with, and explored a box for a button to meet its views. Evidently a garment of Dolly's. Probably this was a slack season for the higher needlework, and the getting up of fine linen ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bonny bird," continued the hostess, addressing a little girl of twelve years old, who had by this time appeared, "tak the gentleman's horse to the stable, and slack his girths, and tak aff the bridle, and shake down a lock o' hay before him, till the dragoons come back.—Come this way, sir," she continued; "ye'll find my house clean, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... shoulder. I could tell ye How smooth his breast was and how white his belly; And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back, but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods. Let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes, Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leaped into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen Enamoured of his beauty had he been. ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... that he was a little sorry about his own lack of ambition and want of application. He did not pretend now that it was of no moment. He told her he would like to achieve, only somehow he always found his attention wander to other things, and his desire grow slack after a week of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... shoved the boat off to a little distance from the frigate. The yard and stay-tackles fell, at the next instant were overhauled down and hooked by the man in the boat. The boatswain's mate, in the gangway, piped "haul-taut," and the slack of the tackle was pulled in; then followed a long, steady blow of the call, piping "sway-away," and the boat, with all in her, rose from the water, and ascended as high as the hammock-cloths in the waist, when the stay-tackles took the strain, the yard-tackles ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with the floral goddess's crack-jaw. I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw. I can do "John Wellington Wells" pretty patly; but to read through a horticultural article Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of meaning the words seem to have no particle. I should like to be introduced, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed those Underground ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... "Well," he said, "that is positively the worst! Good-by, Mr. Salmon. Louis, pull out that-er, er—that branch!" and he began slowly to reel in the line. But old Louis, in the stern of the canoe, had taken hold of the slack and was pulling it in hand over hand. In a second he shouted "Arretez! Arretez! M'sieu, il n'est ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... it holds firmly, is a great flattener, and is especially adapted to the securing of square boxes. It is celebrated because it is pretty and rather difficult to learn. Also it possesses the advantage for single-handed packing that it can be thrown slack throughout and then tightened, and that the last pull tightens the whole hitch. However, for ordinary purposes, with a quiet horse and a comparatively soft pack, the common Square Hitch holds well enough and is quickly made. For a load ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... injustice was resented by the country people, who were partial to their old master, and irritated against his successor. In the Baron's own words, 'The matter did not coincide with the feelings of the commons of Bradwardine, Mr. Waverley; and the tenants were slack and repugnant in payment of their mails and duties; and when my kinsman came to the village wi' the new factor, Mr. James Howie, to lift the rents, some wanchancy person—I suspect John Heatherblutter, the auld gamekeeper, that was out wi' me in the year fifteen—fired ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the housebreaking business is slack And cracksmen are finding it slow— For all the seasiders are back And a great many more didn't go— Here's excellent news from the front And joy in Bill Sikes's brigade; Things are looking up since The German CROWN PRINCE Has been giving a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... insecurely the town was established, how feeble were its roots; it was not here as it was up in the country, where a man could enjoy himself in the knowledge that the earth was working for him. Here people made themselves as small and ate as little as possible, in order to win through the slack season. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Yet, brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and Eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. Cedric the Saxon, if offended,—and he is noway slack in taking offence,—is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. And be careful how you look ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... a very nice hand," he answered, bending forward to Maggie's bridle so that he could look up in Eleanor's face. "Only you let her rein be too slack, as of old. You like ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... conviction that Deveny's order meant death to Red Linton, Barbara lay slack in Deveny's arms for a long time. A premonitory silence had settled over the valley; she heard the dull thud of hoofs behind her, regular and swift, the creaking of the saddle leather as the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... "Partner of the Father's light, light of light and day of day, we break the dusk of night with psalms; help us now, Thy suppliants. Remove the darkness of our minds; scatter the demon hosts away; expel the sin of drowsiness, lest we be slack in serving Thee."] ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... higher chiefs than Afiola in the settlement—five or six of them, at least, not to speak of the king—but none of them seemed able to do a thing to stop him. They were all a slack lot at any time, and thought excommunicating him enough, and taking away his communion ticket. I guess he had been out of the church for a matter of six years, and, as I said before, he was the scandal of the place and a terror. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and under-goes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine wildings of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... make his appearance was the bear, who took a long and steady draught; then came the deer, the opossum, and such others of the family as are noted for their comfortable case. The moose and bison were slack in their cups, and the partridge, always lean in flesh, looked on till the supply was nearly gone. There was not a drop left by the time the hare and the martin appeared on the shore of the lake, and they are, in consequence, the slenderest of ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position, have their importance, and he will give them ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up the slack. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... And the stars in their bright order burned. From stars and seas was motion caught When flesh, blood, bone and skin were wrought Into swift lovely liveliness. Oh, but beauty less and less Than beauty grows. The cheeks fall in, Colour dies from the smooth skin, And muscles slack and bones are brittle; Veins and arteries little by little Delay the tides of the blood: That is a ditch that was a flood. Then all but dry bones disappears, White bones that lie a hundred years Cheated ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... the lariat of the pony hitched to the raised muscles of his back, and was dragged in this way several times round the ring; but the force not being sufficient to tear loose from the flesh, the pony was backed up, and a slack being thus taken on the lariat, the pony was urged swiftly forward, and the sudden jerk tore the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... my business is slack—falling off, as you say. Catering is not what it used to be. You see, 30 or 40 years ago, people's homes were grand and big; big dining rooms, built for parties and banquets. But for the big affairs with 500 or 600 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... the construction of canals was the rage in Ohio. A canal was projected to connect with the great Ohio Canal at Carroll (eight miles above Lancaster), down the valley of the Hock Hocking to Athens (forty-four miles), and thence to the Ohio River by slack water. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... take his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... he. "My only fear of you was, that you would dash into debate at once, like a tumbler jumping from a precipice; and that, like him, all that you would have gained by it would be broken limbs for life. If the fellow had kept to his slack-rope and his stage, he would have been safe enough, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... together.... I've got to do my bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that's where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so desirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... make-up of the train. The train was composed of coach bodies, mostly from Thorpe and Sprague's stage coaches, placed upon trucks. The trucks were coupled together with chains, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the passengers who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping, came together with such force as to send ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... upward in their mother's arms, whose black Wide glittering eyes looked elsewhere; lovers pressed Each before either, neither glancing back; And peasant maidens smoothly 'tired and tressed Forgot to finger on their throats the slack Great pearl-strings; while old blind men would not rest, But pattered with their staves and slid their shoes Along the stones, and smiled as if they saw. O heaven, I think that day had noble use Among God's days! So near stood Right and Law, Both mutually forborne! Law would ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... in the tent. The bear had tangled himself in the canvas and was blindly tossing it about, rolling himself up in the slack, and audibly complaining of the fire and smoke. The rifles, shot-guns and all but one revolver had been left in the tent, and presently they began to pop. Doughnut Bill, safe in a sycamore, hitched around to the lee side of the trunk and said: "Mr. Brown, I seriously advise that you emulate ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... true direction, but their shafts do not lodge in the mark; their impetus carries them right through the soul, and they pass on their way, leaving only a gaping wound behind them. Others make the contrary mistake: their bows are too slack, and their shafts never reach their destination; as often as not their force is spent at half distance, and they drop to earth. Or if they reach the mark, they do but graze its surface; there can be no deep wound, where the archer lacks strength. But a good ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... pick up a small piece of board from the flooring of the boat and try to paddle back into the slack water. And she saw, too, that it was too late. The Race had got hold of the cockleshell, and a piece of board would never make it let go. Oars might, but there were ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... ain't got nothin' comin', an' he can't afford ter eat, An' he's in a fix fer lodgin', an' he wanders up an' down, An' you'd fancy he'd been boozin', he's so locoed 'bout the feet; When he's feelin' sneakin' sorry, an' his belt is hangin' slack, An' his face is peaked an' grey-like, an' his heart gits down an' whines, Then he's apt ter git a-thinkin' an' a-wishin' he was back In the little ol' log cabin in ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... he does," answered Todd. "I threw a steer with him yesterday and he held it while I made a tie. A steer can't get any slack rope on ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... see the lady dance on the slack-wire in the street at night. They throw a bright light on her and she float through the air something beautiful, like a bird! They have a dancing bear, like in the old country, and two three merry-go-around, and people in balloons, and what you call ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... when a friend marries,—and I grant he's rather young,—but I should say it's the best thing for him. A decent woman—and you have proved not one thing against her—a decent woman will keep him up to the mark and stop him getting slack. She'll make him responsible and manly, for much as I like Rickie, I always find him a little effeminate. And, really,"—his voice grew sharper, for he was irritated by Ansell's conceit, "and, really, you talk as if you were mixed up in the affair. They pay a civil visit to your rooms, and you ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... dropped. The stifling heat, the whirling dust clouds broken by whiffs of air, dry as from a kiln and impregnated with the pungent scent of the tarweed, made the men drowsy. Jim Bailey nodded, the reins drawing slack between his fingers. Leonard slipped the rifle from his knees to the floor and relaxed against the back of the seat. Through half-shut lids he watched the whitened crests of the Sierra ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... put up a fight for it, eh, Luke? You're rather apt to slack when I'm not by." Was there a hint of wistfulness in the words? It almost ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... major was not noted by Joel and his set, in the excitement of receiving so many guests, and in the movement of the wedding. But, as soon as the fact was ascertained, the overseer and miller made the pretence of a 'slack-time' in their work, and obtained permission to go to the Mohawk, on private concerns of their own. Such journeys were sufficiently common to obviate suspicion; and, the leave had, the two conspirators started off, in company, the morning of the second day, or forty-eight hours after ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... grow discouraged now, were we to weaken and slack off, the whole structure we have built, these past eight years, would come apart and fall away. Never then, no matter by what stringent means, could our free world regain the ground, the time, the sheer ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... wreathing slow, To watch the firelight flash or glow. As each soft cloud floats up on high, Some worry takes its wings to fly; And Fancy dances with the flame, Who lay so labor-crammed and lame; While the spent Will, the slack Desire, Re-kindle at the dying fire, And burn to meet the morrow's sun With all its day's work to ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... repute Stands thy fair temple 'mid the various tribes Who ply the AEgean. Though their business claims Dispatch immediate; though the inviting gales Ill brook the lingering mariners' delay: Soon as they reach thy soundings, down at once Drop the slack sails, and all the naval gear. The ship is moor'd: nor do the crew presume To quit thy sacred limits, 'till they have pass'd A painful penance; with the galling whip ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... paper, opened it, and began searching the columns. He had not far to look. It was a slack season for the newspapers, and his little trouble, which might have received a paragraph in a busy week, was set forth fully ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... and gathered in the slack. His heart was pounding like mad with the anxiety, while he waited for results. If no signal came after a certain lapse of time he meant to pull in anyway; determined that Mr. Gordon must not ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... beard out at his tail; and then tie the hook and his tail about, very neatly, with a white thread, which will make it the apter to turn quick in the water; that done, pull back that part of your line which was slack when you did put your hook into the minnow the second time; I say, pull that part of your line back, so that it shall fasten the head, so that the body of the minnow shall be almost straight on your hook: this done, try how it will turn, by drawing it across the water or against a ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter very much as if she were back in her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cozy than Polotzk—at least, so it seemed to me; for behind the store was the kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did her cooking and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted the soup or rescued a loaf from ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... of corrupt nature, have embraced the abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth."[41] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of authority, the majority of numbers, the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Goody Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the sun to sink before we get ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... cam swiftly rushing from the west; And these presadges of a future storme, Unwillinge for to trust her tendernes Unto such feares, might make him fayle his hower; And yet with purpose what hee slack't last night Howe to make goodd ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... him fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the rest of the people ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... hand, was rather a disappointment. Not that he was any way slack, and failed to sell his goods—'twas he, indeed, sold most—but he did not get enough for them. "You don't put in enough patter with ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... or night, waking or sleeping; and since they were riding cross-country anyway, miles from a trail, and since they were headed for water, and Rabbit knew as well as Starr just where it was to be found, Starr held the reins slack in his thumb and finger and let ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... Weldon, anyhow?" another of the group queried, as dispassionately as if the subject of discussion had been absent in Rhodesia. "His face is a yard long, and his lips hang down in the slack of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... with the men. Their busy time is during the marriage season from November to June. A village tailor is paid either in cash or grain and is not infrequently a member of the village establishment. During the rains, the tailor's slack season, he supplements his earnings by tillage, holding land which Government has continued to him on payment of one-half the ordinary rental. In south Gujarat, in the absence of Brahmans, a Darzi officiates at Bhawad marriages, and in some Brahman ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... very reason be attracted to him. Nobody ever wants to do anything except what they are not allowed to do. Otherwise there is no explaining the friendship that arose between them. Jack Monk was not an attractive individual. He had a slack mouth and a shifty eye, and his complexion was the sort which friends would have described as olive, enemies (with more truth) as dirty green. These defects would have mattered little, of course, in themselves. There's many a bilious countenance, so to speak, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the nose of the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... matter with Weldon, anyhow?" another of the group queried, as dispassionately as if the subject of discussion had been absent in Rhodesia. "His face is a yard long, and his lips hang down in the slack of the corners." ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... to thirst for revenge and all that, like some chap in a shilling shocker. But it makes me wild to think of that fellow masquerading as a German, and up to who knows what mischief—mischief enough to make him want to get rid of any one. I'm keen about the sea, and I think they're apt to be a bit slack at home,' he continued inconsequently. 'Those Admiralty chaps want waking up. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, it's quite natural that I should look him ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... boss," came the answer. "It will run out the cable and down the cab. I've left them plenty of slack to move around when they get ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... On entering the enclosure the youths threw down their weapons before them, and with the help of the initiated men divested themselves of the huge folds of native cloth in which they were enveloped, each man revolving slowly on his axis, while his attendant pulled at the bandage and gathered in the slack. The weapons and the cloth were the offerings presented by the novices to the ancestral spirits for the purpose of rendering themselves acceptable to these powerful beings. The offerings were repeated in like manner on four successive days; and as each youth ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... me a week from now. And leave your address with Rosey. I don't know, though, as we can afford to pay you quite the same salary at first, even if we can work you in—the season's been very slack. But I'll do what I can for you. Come in and see me in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... holding what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up the slack. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... because this is often not done in offices and warehouses that there is so little mutual goodwill between servants and masters. An employer will often treat his people as mere "hands," who are to sell his goods and do his bidding, but directly work is slack, he will turn them adrift without scruple or ruth; or if they remain for years in his service, will give no increase of wage or salary proportioned to capacity and diligence. A Christian employer, at least, should follow ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only to work,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... see him fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the rest ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... four steeds, without halt, without stay, Though toilsome and winding from Chow was the way. I wished to return—but the monarch's command Forbade that his business be done with slack hand; And my heart was ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... revolve with speed, Yet faster still we urge our steed, And scarcely slack the reins to feed Or ease its breath, The journey seems but short ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... curled itself around it as tight as if it had grown there. Mr. Painter couldn't have shaken him loose in a week. He hung down just like Somers, only not so far, and he didn't swing much, because that strong medicine had taken up all his slack and there was very little room for play. He didn't care for that, of course, not then. He got brave and very cheerful right off, and called out to Mr. Painter, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... lime, and 22 gallons of water, the sulphate to be put in a piece of sacking or light cloth, and hung by a string from the top of a barrel containing 18 gallons of water, a few inches below the surface so as to dissolve. Then slack 4 lbs. of fresh lime in as small a quantity of water as possible, the water being added very slowly, until slaking is completed; then slowly make up to 4 gallons. When cool, thoroughly stir and strain slowly the milk of lime into the copper solution, stirring well while mixing for another ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... the more purely personal aspect of it, there will be the temptation to grow slack and cold in intercessions and communions, when the immediate occasion that prompted them has passed. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, let us look out for this, expect it, then we shall not be afraid to meet it. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more"; think ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... thought, elated, sending his buzzer signal up to those so far above. The icy air through his hose changed to air of normal temperature. He signaled for slack in the lowering cable, then prepared for the greatest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... was perhaps a brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an officer ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... later they were tumbling aboard the Follow Me, Tom to dart below to the engine, Harry to make fast their end of the line and Joe to look after the tender. Then Harry waved a hand and shouted, and the Adventurer, which had been going slowly astern, taking up the slack of the cable, settled to her task. The big rope tightened, throwing a spray of water into the sunlight along its length, strained and creaked and the Follow Me's propeller, reversed, did its part. There was an anxious two minutes. Very grudgingly the black cruiser's stern came around. Steve ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... man with a face black with soot, in a blouse and filthy frayed trousers hanging very slack, comes to the door of the van. This is the oiler, who had been creeping under the carriages and tapping the wheels ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... good an' yallah Mek me open up my eyes; Seems lak it's a-lookin' at me Jes' a-la'in' dah sayin' "Pies." Tu'key gobbler gwine 'roun' blowin', Gwine 'roun' gibbin' sass an' slack; Keep on talkin', Mistah Tu'key, You ain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... at the very outset, in getting men to ship for service on the regular cruisers. Privateers were being fitted out in every port; and on them the life was easy, discipline slack, danger to life small, and the prospects for financial reward far greater than on the United States men-of-war. Accordingly, the seafaring men as a rule preferred to ship on the privateers. At no time in the history of the United States has the barbaric British custom of getting sailors for the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ended we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be led ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Charles W. Slack, the editor of the Boston Commonwealth, for whom Sumner had obtained a lucrative office, turned against his benefactor in order to save his position. When I spoke of this to Sumner, he said: "Well, it is human nature. Slack is growing old, and if he keeps his office for the next ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... direction as numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and is terminated by the loop, 6, 7, 6, finally passing it over the head of the post, A. This knot holds itself, the turns being in opposite directions. To untie it, we slack the turns of the cable sufficiently to again pass the loop, 6, 7, 6, over the post, A, and turn the ends in the contrary direction to that in which they were made (as ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... it be so easy as in the navy to become slack. If the public sees a naval review it knows that its ships can steam and keep their formations; if it goes on board it knows that the ships are clean—at least, the limited part of them which it sees; and it knows that there are turrets ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... flowers bedecked Is shattered and his hauberk torn away. Through his heart's core the pennon of the Knight Is driven, bearing death,—or laugh or weep Who may. At such a blow the French exclaim: "Barons, strike ever! Strike and be not slack Against the Pagan hordes; to Carle belongs The right. With us the ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... "Is ut like?" sez I. "But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service." Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... I knew CH-RL-S ST-RT, 'Twas in a happier day, The Jaunting Car he drove in Went gaily all the way. But now the Car seems all askew, Lop-wheel'd, and slack of spring; Myself and WILL, in fear of a spill, Feel little disposed to sing, As we sit on the Jaunting Car, The drivers at open war, Seem little to care For a Grand Old Fare, As they fight ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... drawn down more than a thousand fathoms of rope, the whale slackened its speed, and Parr, taking another coil round the loggerhead, held on until the boat was almost dragged under water. Then the line became loose, and the slack was hauled in rapidly. Meanwhile Grim's boat had reached the spot, and the men now lay on their oars at some distance ahead, ready to pull the instant the whale should show itself. Up it came, not twenty ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... railway station. She was delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... But to the wild forest, to hunt the hart or hind, The roebuck, the wild boar, the fallow-deer, or hare: But how poor Ragan shall dine, he hath no care. Poor I must eat acorns or berries from the tree. But if I be found slack in the suit following, Or if I do fail in blowing or hallooing; Or if I lack my staff or my horn by my side: He will be quick enough to fume, chafe, and chide. Am I not well at ease such a master to serve, As must have such service, and yet will let me starve? But, in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... hand seized the slack of Thomas's shorts and the boy was heaved up to the muscular shoulder. The two faces were now on the same level and twinkling gray blue eyes were ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... we groan beneath the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beautiful evening. Boyton sailing with a faint wind and in slack water. He has by this time crossed two tides. The flood up channel still. 8 P.M.—The ebb down channel to the Varne, being carried many miles north and south respectively by each, and is now in a fair way to reach England, being only four miles from Dover Castle, according to the encouraging ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... to put our Bass and Weak Fish, laid in a stock of cold provisions—among other things a Cold Shoulder—plenty of exhilarating beverages, and, with Buoyant Spirits, (every Man of us,) and plenty of ice on board, started on the slack of the Morning Tide. I regret to state that by the time we were ready to start our Skipper was half way "Over the Bay," being provided with a pocket pistol charged to the muzzle. He and his two subordinates were pretty well "Shot in the neck" by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... upper arms, and the slack gained by Kaydessa's action made the lariat give again. He studied the Tatar outlaws. There were five of them beside Hulagur, lean men, hard-faced, narrow-eyed, the ragged clothing of three pieced out with scraps of hide. Besides the swords with the curved blades, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... devise? Is it nothing to behold this beautiful child, and feel that she is only yours? Annabel, look on me, look on me only one moment! My frame is bowed, my hair is grey, my heart is withered; the principle of existence waxes faint and slack in this attenuated frame. I am no longer that Herbert on whom you once smiled, but a man stricken with many sorrows. The odious conviction of my life cannot long haunt you; yet a little while, and my memory will ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ther's mostly slack time till harvest. I thought, mebbe, we could jest haul that lumber from Beacon Crossing. And cut the logs. Parker give me the 'permit.' Seems to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... Them with prayers. I do not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three Rissaldar—majors ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... have been multiplied many times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... on why our hero was apparently so slack in permitting the girl, under all the circumstances, to go away alone. She started off and he returned to the cabin. Once inside he determined to take great chances. He did not remain in the cabin, but returned by a straight cut across the meadows ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... the weather is hot all may get spoiled before we can sell them; and the price is so low in these parts when the flocks are here that it is hard to lay by enough money to keep us and our families during the slack time. If the great cities Thebes and Memphis lay near to us, it would be different. They could consume all we could catch, and we should get better prices, but unless under very favorable circumstances ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... box, over the near wheel, raised gracefully up as it were to reward the near side horse; the thong—the thong after three twists, which appears in his hand to have been placed by the maker never to be altered or improved ...... and if the off-side horse becomes slack, to see the turn of his arm to reduce a twist, or to reverse, if necessary, is exquisite: after being placed under the rib, or upon the shoulder point, up comes the arm, and with it the thong returns to the elegant position upon the crop! I say elegant! the stick, highly polished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... Allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with jewellery and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for a necklace, as the saying is. All the muggers of ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... shape, crystallised, caused him to see a rapid vision of de Batz sneaking into his lodgings and stealing his keys, the guard being slack, careless, inattentive, allowing the adventurer to pass barriers that should have been ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... did not answer to the musician's touch. The strings of his heart were slack and soundless; there was no response within him. He was neither shepherd, nor king, nor wise man, only an unhappy, dissatisfied, questioning youth. He was out of sympathy with the eager preacher, the joyous hearers. In their harmony he had no part. Was it for this that he had forsaken his inheritance ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... otherwise during the whole day and night of the 18th, had, on the following morning, when the wind and sea still continued unabated, so destroyed the bergs on which our sole dependance was placed, that they no longer remained aground at low water; the cables had again become slack about them, and the basin we had taken so much pains in forming had now lost all its defences, at least during a portion of every tide. After a night of most anxious consideration and consultation with Captain Hoppner, who was now my messmate in the Hecla, it appeared but too plain that, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... interests. Bill rode a good many miles that day, always beside a wire fence; and occasionally he would stop, dismount, and busy himself in some small repair, where a fence-post had sagged down, or the wire become twisted or slack. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... the musicians now leaned together for a moment. The violins wailed in sad search for the accord, the assistant instrument less tentative. All at once the slack shoulders straightened up firmly, confidently, and then, their feet beating in unison upon the floor, their faces set, stern and relentless, the three musicians fell to the work and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Duck; she was so small-only 8 inches in slack girth—that she could easily have entered an ordinary Woodpecker hole. So that it is likely the species nest in the abandoned holes of the Flicker. A Redtailed Hawk had its nest on a leaning spruce ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "Slack away!" he called to the engineers, and he cast off the rope sling. Then cautiously he stepped out to the end of the timber. It tottered, but the lithe figure moved on to within striking distance. He swung the twenty-four pound sledge in a circle against the butt of the timber. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... two hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted several private houses, and carried ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... of night—something will snap in me—the slack, selfish, luxurious ME, that hates to be roused into action, and the craving for adventure will come. Then I'll ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... plainly that that would be very hard on me. I've come here to my native place to settle down, and if I settle I've got to marry, and I have never seen a girl whom I would rather marry and settle with than Miss Mayberry. She may be a little slack about taking care of the baby, but I'll talk to her about that, and I know she will keep a closer eye on him. Now if you want to see everybody happy, don't prejudice Mrs. Cristie against that girl. Give me a chance, and I'll win her into ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... said Raffles, promptly; "we'll slack it up here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are! I'll fetch you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan't come down ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... time, I am not going anywhere in particular," Captain Wilson replied. "The chief says he thinks that things have got rather slack, since I have been away. There are several bands of bush rangers, who have been doing a deal of mischief up country; so to begin with, he wishes me to make a tour of inspection, and to report generally. After that, I think I shall be settled here for a time. At ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... "Let him think it out," as step by step Roper followed, the halter running slack on the water. When almost out of his depth, he paused just a moment, then, obeying the tightening rope, lifted himself to the flood and struck ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... meditated, not without a certain wry humor, upon the strength and the protracted potency of Manti's whiskey, for not once during his home-coming had Levins shown the slightest sign of returning consciousness. He was as slack as a meal sack now, as Trevison lifted him from the pony's back and let him slip gently to the ground at his feet. A few minutes later, Trevison was standing in the doorway of the cabin, his burden over his shoulder, the weak glare ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are sold at 1s. 8d. per pound by the gardeners, and yet this price, like that of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a very good report I have received of you this time," continued his guardian. "It seems that you have grown slack in attention to your studies, and have not made the progress which might fairly be expected from a boy of your age and abilities. Now, it is only right to warn you that the income left you by your father very little more than covers the expense of your ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Worcester in such labors as these. When work at his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand, when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study. After a while, he began to think ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... have drawn off a part of the lye, put the lime (whether slack or not) into two or three pails of boiling water, and add it to the ashes, and ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the performance of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... knee inseam'd remain'd the scar; Which noted token of the woodland war When Euryclea found, the ablution ceased: Down dropp'd the leg, from her slack hand released; The mingled fluids from the base redound; The vase reclining floats the floor around! Smiles dew'd with tears the pleasing strife express'd Of grief and joy, alternate in her breast. Her fluttering words in melting murmurs died; At length abrupt—"My ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... will be indulgent if I write less regularly now: and by indulgent I mean that you will go on writing to me, as I do enjoy your letters so much. I expect I shall have slack times when there will be plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy, and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100 deg. in the shade. ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... abroad." The Spanish fleet was already reported as numbering from 210 sail, with 36,000 men,' to 400 or 500 ships, and 80,000 soldiers and mariners; and yet Drake was not ready with his squadron. "The fault is not in him," said Howard, "but I pray God her Majesty do not repent her slack dealing. We must all lie together, for we shall be stirred very shortly with heave ho! I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she hath believed some so much as she ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fussy—but I know 'em," said Collie, as Boyar, apparently terror-stricken at a manzanita that he had passed hundreds of times, reared, his fore feet pawing space and the traces dangerously slack. Louise bit her lower lip and quickly called Anne's attention to a spot of vivid color on the hillside. To Dr. Marshall's surprise, Collie struck Apache, who was behaving, smartly with the whip. Apache leaped ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... washstand. The chairs were in their primitive stuffing-and-burlap state, loose gray linen covers being added when the rooms were prepared for us. Any one who has ever struggled with his temper and the slack-fitting shift of a tufted armchair will require no explanation as to what took place between me and my share of those untufted receptacles before I deposited its garment under my bed, and announced that burlap and tacks were luxurious enough for me. That one item ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... the stump of the limb, his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one, steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments of granite shifted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the details of its rhetoric, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... selection has been made for the Somerset and Devon districts, but the following varieties of cider apples are held in good repute in those parts:—Kingston Black, Jersey Chisel, Hangdowns, Fair Maid of Devon, Woodbine, Duck's Bill, Slack-my-Girdle, Bottle Stopper, Golden Ball, Sugar-loaf, Red Cluster, Royal Somerset and Cadbury (believed to be identical with the Royal Wilding of Herefordshire). As a rule the best cider apples are of small size. "Petites pommes, gros cidre," say ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the load as it can. When it gets moving, regularly under way, it has to pick it up again. But the longer it stops the more it throws down; and the slower it moves the less it picks up again. Inside the tub it is always slack water, so whatever falls there stays there. That's why the tub has filled up so quick. Nearly a foot and a half in three weeks! Why, Ted, a raise of a foot and a half along the outer slope of this cove, and we could dike in the whole ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Why didn't you take care of him while you had him? Now you've got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and hunt, or drop off the train and hunt—what's that? Now don't you give me any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I'll have the fear of God thrown into you too quick. Get out of here now! Get out of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... all that can be said for and against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... stager who knew the way of pulling the wires would come forward and put the club in the proper groove. The old men said it was because the young men were pretentious puppies. It was, however, not to be doubted that the party of Progress had become slack, and that the Liberal politicians of the country, although a special new club had been opened for the furtherance of their views, were not at present making much way. "What we want is organization," said one of the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... unvarying and undeviating sequences, gives no indication of His approach. Centuries have elapsed since He uttered the promise, and still He lingers; the everlasting hills wear no streak of approaching dawn; we seem to listen in vain for the noise of His chariot wheels. "But the Lord is not slack concerning His promise;" He gives you "this word" in addition to many others as a keepsake—a pledge and guarantee for the certainty of ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... well in a yard, with a rope and a windlass, and an old wooden bucket all over trailing green mosses. Off the yard there was a blacksmith's shop, with a disused anvil and disused tools in it, and a cold hearth covered with scattered slack and iron filings. A dog, whose chain allowed him to come within a yard of the door of this workshop, woke up at the clank of the tools and barked. The child cried until his mother came and took him away with some show of angry impatience, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the stain from the honour of his family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in the province, and Albinus resigned himself to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Ursus Polaris that the curator had represented in the dramatic pose of killing a seal. A protesting wail arose from below as the young naturalist was withdrawn from his field by a capable hand on the slack of his trousers. And presently, chagrined with failure, the culprit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... showte from euery neighbouring Hill: 60 My Doghooke at my Belt, to which my Lyam's tyde, My Sheafe of Arrowes by, my Woodknife at my Syde, My Crosse-bow in my Hand, my Gaffle or my Rack To bend it when I please, or it I list to slack, My Hound then in my Lyam, I by the Woodmans art Forecast, where I may lodge the goodly Hie-palm'd Hart, To viewe the grazing Heards, so sundry times I vse, Where by the loftiest Head I know my Deare to chuse, And to vnheard him then, I gallop ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... he is a horse that thinks! And when he thinks his pace is slack; Now, though he knows poor Johnny well, Yet for his life he cannot tell What he has got upon ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... wear even the remembrance of the evil of sin, the worth of heaven, and the need I had of the blood of Christ to wash me, both out of mind and thought; but I thank Christ Jesus these things did not at present make me slack my crying, but rather did put me more upon it, like her who met with the adulterer (Deut 22:27); in which days that was a good word to me after I had suffered these things a while: "I am persuaded that neither-height, nor depth, nor life," &c., "shall—separate ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... young ladies, and one or two lapdogs, by whom it was conjointly occupied. Trying to recover myself, I slipped on the glasslike floor, and came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... chewed tobacco and kept a wary eye on the bandit, Alvarez. Charlie sat pale, limp, gazing at nothing. The elder Menocal had lifted his eyes to Bryant, at whom he looked mistily; he appeared to have aged astonishingly, his cheeks having gone flabby, slack, and gray, while a slight tremour shook ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... with a high forehead, a straight nose, and a smallish chin. The face was good-looking, but somehow not quite attractive. About the eyes was an expression faintly unpleasant, which the neat glasses did not hide. On the somewhat slack lip was a slight twist, not agreeable, which the well-kept mustache could not conceal. Still it was an interesting face, clever, assured, half-insolent. To Varney, it was exceptionally interesting; for removing the mustache and eye-glasses, it might have passed anywhere ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... when we're out of a job. You see we're both pretty young in the profession and we aren't as well known as we hope to be later on. We have to take what we can get on the small-time circuits, and we know that if we make good there we'll get on the big-time circuit sooner or later. Just now things are slack in the theatrical line as they always are in summer. We've got our lines out for a job in the fall, but nothing definite has come of it yet. So we thought we'd come down to the seashore for a few weeks and get a little of the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... Society. The tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came back with the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the man, and Kent felt the whole figure against which he pressed, quiver and relax; the taut muscles of chest and arms grew slack, collapsed. ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... proposes not only to guard against periods of unemployment which extend to all industries in the case of industrial crises, but also to provide more steady employment for those who are unoccupied during the slack seasons of the year or while passing from one employer to another. Above all he plans that the youth of the nation shall not waste their strength entirely in unremunerative employment or in idleness, but that every boy or girl under eighteen ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... said, "we ought to perform, you and I. With a painter's ladder, a slack wire, and a little practice, we should do wonders. On non-matinee days I might even lift you with my teeth. That always goes well, and no one would know you were as light as ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a large tree on the shore, I took the other end, the line passing through a round hawse-hole forward, and conveyed it aft to the shaft. After winding it four or five times round the shaft, I told the boys to haul it taut; and about twenty of them laid hold of the rope to "take in the slack," if we were fortunate ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... strangely deserted look. December is a slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered automatically, received her mail, exchanged ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... nothing alow to slack his haste] His haste shall not be abated by my slowness. It might ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... vessel that was lying alongside the bank. I felt convinced that these were slaves, as I could distinguish the difference in size between the children and adults. In the mean time we were travelling at full speed (about eight miles an hour) in the broad but slack current of that portion of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... However inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion. The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard, wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a moment upon the slack end of the rope until he felt that the stone was lodged with fair security at the shaft's top, then he swung out over the black depths beneath. The moment his full weight came upon the rope he felt it slip from above. He ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... world, to me worth naught. Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction else Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne! My time, I told thee (and that time for thee Were better farthest off), is not yet come. When that comes, think not thou to find me slack On my part aught endeavouring, or to need Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 400 Luggage of war there shewn me—argument Of human weakness rather than of strength. My brethren, as thou call'st them, those Ten Tribes, I must deliver, if I mean to ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... as that, Ned. She has only to slack away her cables and drift with the tide that turned half an hour ago, we have got to tow out and set sail. However, the night is dark, the wind is off shore, and everything is in our favour. Do you see if there be anyone about on the decks of the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... shall not insert. But I assure you, Sir, I heartily lament this Loss of Time, and am now resolved (if possible, with double Diligence) to retrieve it, being effectually awakened by the Arguments of Mr. Slack out of the Senseless Stupidity that has so long possessed me. And to demonstrate that Penitence accompanies my Confession, and Constancy my Resolutions, I have locked my Door for a Year, and desire you would let my Companions know I am not within. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... that sort were in all her loving letters. Often and often when I have been slack in fucking a woman, and my prick not answering when called on, I had only to conjure up some of these scenes with my mother when my cock would spring to the stand instantly, to the immense satisfaction of my momentary fouteuse, and it is so yet, a thought ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... her the first night. Then I went to see Reilly, but he didn't know who she was. I made him see what it meant to me to find her, and he promised to try his best and to forward at once any letter that came to him. If I don't hear after a while, when work gets slack so you can spare me, I'm going to Chicago and go through it with a fine tooth comb. Reilly will help me follow every girl by the name of Marta that's ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... what age d'ye take me?" Cai caught up the slack of the rope and hitched it taut over his shoulder. He was rejuvenated. He made a spring for the ladder, and went up it much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seemed hardly in the water before they could fully see the burning roundhouse. A moment later, chilled to the bone but with his mind cleared by the sharp plunge, Bucks felt his companion's arm drawing him toward the farther shore where, in the slack water of an elbow of the stream, Dancing led the way across a shoal of gravel and Bucks waded after ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... silver saucepan at dinner, garnished with lemons, to flank the roast leg of mutton. Others prefer it cooked with leeks and onions, or pickled, and eaten with oil and lemon juice. The Englishman calls this Sea Weed, Laver; the Irishman, Sloke; the Scotchman, Slack; and the student, Porphyra. It varies in size and colour between tidemarks, being sometimes long and ribbon-like, of a violet or purple hue; sometimes long and broad, whilst changing to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, and the ripples that curled around our feet. At last there came a small ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... visit sped by on winged feet. To Ranald they were brimming with happiness, every one of them. It was the slack time of the year, between seeding and harvest, and there was nothing much to keep him at home. And so, with Harry, his devoted companion, Ranald roamed the woods, hitching up Lisette in Yankee's buckboard, put her through ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... They fell slack, however, when the Queen reached his channel and flapped lazily, reversing to catch the wind and nose her cautiously into the shallows. Jeff dismissed it impatiently—a change of wind or some crafty maneuver of old Charlie Mack's to ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... had what seemed to him to be bitter experience also. An individual, notoriously slack and incompetent, ten years his junior, had been promoted over his head, because he was somebody's cousin and the kind of fatuous ass that only labours industriously in drawing-rooms and at functions, recuperating by slacking idly ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... in the treatment of fractures of the leg. When employed in the form of an immovable case, they are open to certain objections—for example, if applied immediately after the accident they are apt to become too tight if swelling occurs; and if applied while swelling is still present, they become slack when this subsides, so that ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her system. Quit ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... little detail of a man's past life. Not that I've been a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take out some girl or ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of impression to learning has already been discussed in another chapter. In no one of the mind's activities is vividness a more important factor than in memorizing. Matter committed under the stimulus of high interest and keen attention is relatively secure, while matter committed under slack concentration is sure to fade quickly from the memory. Songs can therefore best be committed under the elation of the interesting singing of the words; a verse of poetry, when the mind is alert and the feelings aroused by a story in which the sentiment of the verse fits; a prayer when the ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... though it was also obvious that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have stiffened ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the timely arrival of such unexpected assistance, the men roused the hawser on board, threw the eye over the bitts, passed two or three turns of the slack round the barrel of the windlass, and adjusted the rope in a "fair-lead" with lightning rapidity. Mildmay, who was intently watching their movements, waved his hand as a signal to the baronet the instant he saw that the hawser was properly fast on board the barque, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... painful contact with your sensibilities, to bestow pleasures in which you yourself have no immediate share. It will tell your hearts especially in the case of this very Hospital for Consumption not to be slack in giving, because so much of what you will give—it is painful to recollect how much—will be spent, not in prevention, not even in cure, but in mere alleviation, mere increased bodily ease, mere savoury food, even mere passing amusements for ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... stern of the cutter when he re-ascended on the deck, he would have discovered Smallbones hanging on by the rudder chains; for had the fog not been so thick, Mr Vanslyperken would have perceived that at the time that he cut Smallbones adrift it was slack water, and the cutter was lying across the harbour. Smallbones was not, therefore, carried away by the tide, but being a very fair swimmer, had gained the rudder chains without difficulty; but at the time that Smallbones was climbing up again by the rope, he had perceived ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the arm itself, all unprotected, in that task, it may well be that it had served me better. As it was, my preparations were far from complete when already he was upon me, with the result that the waving slack of my cloak was in my way to hamper and retard the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... on, doctor. Work's been pretty slack for two weeks now, but yesterday I got work for two days. I guess it will be ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had a slack day before them on the morrow, there being a temporary lull in the form-work which occurred about once a week, when there was no composition of any kind to be done. The Sixth did four compositions a week, two ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... call vulgarisms think they may safely go on to accuse Dickens of bad grammar. The truth is that his grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in construction than Thackeray's, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is slack. Lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens "might not always be parsed," but that we loved him for his, etc., etc. Dickens's page is to be parsed as strictly as any man's. It ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... seraphically illuminated; companions of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels; turning themselves, Proteus-like, into any shape, and having the power of working miracles. The most pious and abstracted brethren could slack the plague in cities, silence the violent winds and tempests, calm the rage of the sea and rivers, walk in the air, frustrate the malicious aspect of witches, cure all diseases, and turn all metals into gold. He had known ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... may earn 9 d. as easily as 6 d. without it; But how can that be? since every Spinner now, may have a wheel to turn with her foot, and so have both hands at liberty, as well as with your Engins: And again, its a more usual fault to over-twist the thred, than to do it too slack; therefore no need of ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... The dewy drops which glisten on his brow; His dark cropt pate that erst at church or fair, So smooth and silky, shew'd his morning's care, Which all uncouth in matted locks combin'd, Now, ends erect, defies the ruffling wind; His neck-band loose, and hosen rumpled low, A careful lad, nor slack at labour shew. Nor scraping chickens chirping 'mongst the straw, Nor croaking rook o'er-head, nor chatt'ring daw; Loud-breathing cow amongst the rampy weeds, Nor grunting sow that in the furrow feeds; Nor sudden breeze that shakes the quaking leaves, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... is very probable; most of the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. The small holder, pure and simple, without any by-industry, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... covered with oilcloth, was not of the sort to arouse the delayed and now gone appetite of a Reformer, and yet it did not lack variety: cornpone (Indian meal stirred up with water and heated through), hot biscuit, slack-baked and livid, fried salt-pork swimming in grease, apple-butter, pickled beets, onions and cucumbers raw, coffee (so-called), buttermilk, and sweet milk when specially asked for (the correct taste, however, is for buttermilk), and pie. This was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... commanded. The arms, eight muskets, and as many horse-pistols, were in good condition, and all loaded. There were additional oars, in case of accident, and that little sail called trinquet, which assists the speed of the canoe at the same time the boatmen row, and is so useful when the breeze is slack. When Aramis had seen to all these things, and appeared satisfied with the result of his inspection, "Let us consult Porthos," said he, "to know if we must endeavor to get the boat out by the unknown extremity ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thinking. If the rope snapped when it was taut, those on board would feel the spring of it, and I should be without doubt discovered before I could sever the other: whereas, if the severance was made when the rope was slack, there would be no shock, and the men would be aware of nothing until the vessel swung round on the tide. I so timed my knife work, therefore, that the last strand was cut through when the bow was dipping. The moment it was done I sank ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... "Yes, but this morning it was the same thing; and after drill the deputy sergeant-major said that slack fellows like me should be given a lesson by the ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... lightly adventure the pestilential perils of a tropic stream, or fever-haunted water-way or canal, who would yet shrink from being caught—owing to want of care, and cautious calculation as to the exact hours of slack and safety—by the hideous, irresistible, all-engulfing, all-wrecking whirl of the terrifying Stroem! Once drawn within the down-draught of that hideous vortex, a whole army might be destroyed more certainly than even by the manifold death-dealing contrivances of modern science, a whole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... for different ranks so that the officer of the deck may know how to receive the people that are coming aboard. It would make him awful mad if you gave such an answer that he would extend wardroom honors to a steerage officer. Now, stand by to slack away and haul in." ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... soil, very favourable to the growth of cedar-trees. Having arrived at such an island, the men went ashore to cut timber. They were generally good lumbermen, for many buccaneers would go to cut logwood in Campeachy when trade was slack. As soon as a cedar had been felled, the limbs were lopped away, and the outside rudely fashioned to the likeness of a boat. If they were making a periagua, they left the stern "flat"—that is, cut off sharply without modelling; if they were making a canoa, they ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... contrary, if the tide is ebbing, will recede from the shore; from which it would follow that the motion is only propagated in the water, like sound in air, and not the mass of water protruded. A similar species of motion is observed on shaking at one end a long cord held moderately slack, which is expressed by the word undulation. I have sometimes remarked however that a body which sinks deep and takes hold of the water appears to move towards shore with the course of the surf, as is perceptible in a boat ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... to a wagon, if he be wild or vicious, keep the lariat the same as I have described until you get him hitched up, then slack it gently, as nearly all mules will buck or jump stiff-legged as soon as you ease up the lariat; and be careful not to pull the rope too tight when first put on, as by so doing you might split the mule's mouth. Let me say here that I have broken thousands ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... work and yet do it justice; to give it all the strength and endurance necessary, requires one of skillful acquirements. A mechanic may persuade a proprietor into many a long day's work, as it pays well to nurse good jobs when other work is slack, but an architect who understands such things would save ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk, for although he was forward ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... all times, and under all circumstances. But these very qualities are valueless, unless they are regulated by justice. Without this, a man-of-war would very soon become worse than useless to the country, besides being what a "slack ship" has been emphatically termed, "a perfect ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... their compasses and rules? From me that helm shall conduct learn. And man his ignorance discern.' So saying, with audacious pride, He gains the boat, and climbs the side. 110 The beasts astonished, lined the strand, The anchor's weighed, he drives from land: The slack sail shifts from side to side; The boat untrimmed admits the tide, Borne down, adrift, at random toss'd, His oar breaks short, the rudder's lost. The bear, presuming in his skill, Is here and there officious still; Till striking on the dangerous sands, Aground the shattered ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... I have now," he went on as he led the way toward the men's quarters. "Not a trouble maker in the bunch, except a half breed that I'm not particularly stuck on, and that I'm going to get rid of as soon as work gets slack. But take them all together I haven't ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... regard to the face and the hands and the feet. Georgie had been conscious of walking a little lamely lately; he had been even more conscious of the need of hot towels on his face and the "tap-tap" of Mr Holroyd's fingers, and the stretchings of Mr Holroyd's thumb across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... boiler, made of wrought iron, with brass tap and steam-pipe. In other respects it resembles Fig. 4, with which it possesses similar advantages of construction. Either maybe had at varying prices, according to size, from L5. 15s. up to L23. 10s. They are supplied by Messrs. Richard & John Slack 336, Strand, London. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with the cleared fields in one or two spots, began to shew in more distinct forms and colours. The sun was very hot! So hot, that it seemed to kill the breeze. As they drew near their place of disembarkation, the motion of the vessel grew slack; the sail fluttered now and then; the propelling force just lasted till they got to shore, and then nobody said anything more of any air felt to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the boulders melted into the distance. Then he began wriggling his body and twisting his arms to see if there were any possibility of loosening the rope. It would give just enough everywhere to allow a very slight movement of limbs and body, but it was impossible to work this small slack from any two of the loops into one. Wellesly pulled and worked and wriggled for a long time without making any change in his bonds. Then he put all his attention upon his right arm, which he could move up and down a very little. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... at all know why when we have 2 or 3 Generals to dinner you can give us nice white table cloths but at other times it is only bare boards", "Well Sir," he hesitatingly replied, "they were two of Stewart's sheets." Sundays were usually fairly slack days. I sometimes thought that they could have been even slacker, it being so absolutely necessary to have one day's rest a week. Church Parade would be held in the early morning, and another service at 6 in the evening after the sun had set. ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... iron-bound master wedge, driven home with a heavy beetle weighing some twenty-five or thirty pounds. The lines of wedges were tightened in succession, the loosened line receiving an additional wedge to take up the slack after drawing back the master wedge, which was then driven home. To keep good the supply of wedges which are often crushed under the pressure a second boy, older than the one at the furnace, was working on the floor, shaping new ones, ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... desire for a "steady job'' and so generally recognized as an essential of the labor problem that several large industries have developed "side lines'' to which they can turn their organization during their slack seasons; while others in periods of depression pile up huge stocks of standard products, making heavy investments of capital, for the primary purpose of keeping ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... a thing as slack tide in the affairs of men, when a crisis seems as if it would never come, and all things stagnate. The Law Courts had as yet not concerned themselves about the will, vacation time had come and all was at a standstill, nor could any ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... work became slack in the district, Telford undertook to do small jobs on his own account such as the hewing of grave-stones and ornamental doorheads. He prided himself especially upon his hewing, and from the specimens of his workmanship ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... sailors were hauling in the slack hawsers, and the bearded stevedores on the floating quay tugged at the gangway. Many of our presumed passengers had only come to say good-bye, which they were now waving and shouting from the shore. The rain fell dismally, and a black, hopeless sky settled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... ashamed of it—with the natural contempt of strength for weakness, with the sense of physical security which makes the savage merciless. Nobody could die while they felt like that inside. The springs there were wound so tight that it would be a long while before there was any slack in them. The life in there was rooted deep. She was going to have a few things before she died. She realized that there were a great many trains dashing east and west on the face of the continent that night, and that they all carried young people who meant to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... a man thought well of. You have great provisions upon your cart. This man has nothing but the unwashed shirt which hangs on his slack back. It will not become you to march handcuffed with his like, going between two policemen to ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... sitting by Fitzgibbon's side, heard a deep groan, and before he could even look up the master's mate fell forward, shot through the head. His boat took the lead. "Now's your time," cried Dick Rogers; "we'll be the first aboard, lads." The crew were not slack to follow the suggestion. In another moment they were up to the schooner, and, leaping on her deck, led by Pearce, laid on them so fiercely with their cutlasses that the Frenchmen, deserting their guns, sprang over the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... friends hesitated. Milo, without haste, without change of countenance, dropped his irons and reached Venner with great deliberate strides. And in that momentary hesitation Tomlin and Pearse were lost with their host; for the giant stretched out one tremendous arm, seized Venner by the slack breast of his shirt, and lifted him from the ground, flailing with both hands like some puny child in the grip of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... yonner! joost t' slack,* [*Slack—Yorkshire. Anglice, Moist hollow] see thee, there!" pointing with the stout black-thorn; ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... bite on one side he could hobble around the post to the opposite side. As the flames spread he would become very active, but each revolution around the post would shorten the slack of the wrist-cord. With the entire circle of fuel ablaze he would slowly roast. Black Hoof muttered some ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... tightly into the slack of the man's coat and the torn shirt, the ex-sergeant forced the prisoner up the short stairs that conducted ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... with cinematograph and camera. In the angle at the corner near the cliffs Rennick got a sounding of 140 fathoms and Nelson some temperatures and samples. When lowering the water bottle on one occasion the line suddenly became slack at 100 metres, then after a moment's pause began to run out again. We are curious to know the cause, and imagine the bottle struck ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Philip III., a prince, no doubt, of some personal valor, since he has retained in history the nickname of The Bold, but not otherwise beyond mediocrity. His reign had an unfortunate beginning. After having passed several months before Tunis, in slack and unsuccessful continuation of his father's crusade, he gave it up, and re-embarked in November, 1270, with the remnants of an army anxious to quit "that accursed land," wrote one of the crusaders, "where we languish rather than live, exposed to torments of dust, fury of winds, corruption ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to come. For the first few days, whenever there was any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is, pulling the proper ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... ADDRESS TO A LOUSE. Yet Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and continued a tradition; only the school and tradition were Scotch, and not English. While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it fresh and supple; and, although not ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the pious make-believe, and itched to escape over here. But the fools had let me sell indulgences, and I had a goodly stock on hand, and trade was slack"—here he interrupted himself with a fervent "Amen!" conceded to the service—"in Spain just then. It's no use carrying 'em over to the Netherlands, thinks I; they're too clever over there. I must get rid of 'em in some country free for Jews, and yet containing ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... on the unfathomable distance, he observed that the fingers held a sheet of printed paper; and he remembered Florence. Instead of pressing his brow he unfolded the journal she had thrust upon him. As he began to read, his eye was lustreless, his gait slack and dreary; but soon his whole demeanour changed, it cannot be said ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... weakness, after a fashion. He knew that he would work violently for a month or two at a time, giving the vigorous hired man a decent test in holding his physical own, and he knew that after that he would become what the people called "slack," and a little listless; and it was in his slack times that the squirrel and grouse most suffered. Between him and the wife of his bosom had grown nothing, so grave as to be described as an armed neutrality; ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... hauled once a day, but sometimes twice a day in good weather. As the tide along the Maine coast is quite strong, the fishermen usually haul their pots at or about slack water, low tide generally being preferred when they are worked once a day. The number used by a fisherman varies greatly on different sections of the coast. According to the investigations of this Commission, ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... from the court? No notice? shall I not know the cause Of these my secret and suspitious ils? Accursed brother! vnkinde murderer! Why bends thou thus thy minde to martir me? Hieronimo, why writ I of they wrongs, Or why art thou so slack in thy reuenge? Andrea! O Andrea, that thou sawest Me for thy freend Horatio handled thus, And him for me thus causeles murdered! Well, force perforce, I must constraine my-selfe To patience, and apply me to the time, Till Heauen, as I haue hoped, shall ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... the long lengths of heavy rope unloaded from the waggon, then deft hands tied a bowline at one end of the hawser and quickly passed it round the lock-up, which was thus securely noosed, and two or three hundred diggers took hold of the slack of the rope. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... so heavily that I had to slack away the painter of the 'Stancomb Wills' and put her astern. Much ice was coming round the floe and had to be poled off. Then the 'Dudley Docker', being the heavier boat, began to damage the 'James Caird', and I slacked the 'Dudley Docker' away. The 'James Caird' remained moored to the ice, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... of the Heavens had not revealed himself to me. To one of my friends he had appeared as an eagle, which meant that he was to be a warrior, keen and victorious; and to another as a fox, so that he studied cunning; but without any vision I did not know what to make of myself. My heart was slack as a wetted bowstring. My father ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... carrying the end of his rope with him. He did not make the mistake of making the end fast to his own body as he might have done in some circumstances. Instead he threw the rope over the rock, taking one quick turn about it. He had no more than taken that turn when the slack on the rope was suddenly taken up and the rope ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... the brake, McGonnigle went on humorously, gesticulating spaciously while the slack of the lines swung on ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... for rain when A slack rope tightens. Smoke beats downward. Sun is red in the morning. There is a ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... purely physical. A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. It's like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii—eating, drinking and physical love-making. One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can't work together, in offices or anything, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the things that are Of moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more." There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth That can for long keep footing under that When its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... gracefully up as it were to reward the near side horse; the thong—the thong after three twists, which appears in his hand to have been placed by the maker never to be altered or improved ...... and if the off-side horse becomes slack, to see the turn of his arm to reduce a twist, or to reverse, if necessary, is exquisite: after being placed under the rib, or upon the shoulder point, up comes the arm, and with it the thong returns to the elegant position upon the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... you how I used to sneak out to buckle the horses on; an' w'en Jack Clay, a great chum of me father's, used to be driving the 'Up' coach, me father, w'en he'd be slack of passengers,—which wasn't often, there being more life and people moving in the colony then,—an' w'en I'd be good, would put me up on the box an' take me on to the next stage, an' I'd come back with Jack Clay—that was ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... my youth I had learnt, by sedulously imitating the pantaloons in the harlequinades, to drop flat on my face instinctively, and to produce the illusion of being picked up neatly by the slack of my trousers and set on my feet again."—Mr. Bernard ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... mysterious sounds, all of them musical. There were swift actions, too: a Kanaka crawled out upon the bowsprit to make taut a slack stay, while two others with pulley-blocks swarmed aloft. Occasionally the canvas snapped as the wind veered slightly. The sea was no longer rolling brass; it was bluer than anything he had ever seen. Every so often a wall of water, thin and jade-coloured, would rise ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... schoolmistress simplifies the day's itinerary, which begins with the thatched palace or kedaton of the Sultan. The tiered roofs of the royal Messighit rise above the atap dwellings of the rustic Court, still professing a slack Mohammedanism. The Dutch territory includes the Chinese and Oriental campongs divided by Fort Orange, but though the palmy days of Ternate's hereditary Ruler have long since passed away, he retains a shadowy authority over a limited area. Sir Francis ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... things without ceasing to ply his paddle. His objective lay some six miles up-stream. But when he came at last to the upper limit of the tidal reach he found in this deep, slack water new-driven piling and freshly strung boom-sticks and acres of logs confined therein; also a squat motor tugboat and certain lesser craft moored to these timbers. A little back from the bank he could ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... of flame; The window seemed a furnace door That gave upon a bed of ore; The thunder rumbled out the muttered Words that his failing tongue had uttered— Another flash, a rending crack— The old man crumpled like a sack; I felt his stringy arms go slack. How could he sit so dead, so still! While wind ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... on the ground, I took hold of the rope and shook it. I am not generally nervous, but I was a little nervous then. I did not shake the grapnel loose. Then I let the rope go slack, for a foot or two, and gave it a big sweep to one side. To my great delight, over came the grapnel, nearly falling on our heads. I think I saw Maiden's Heart make a grab at it as it came over, but ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his slack frame, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders—it's fur me. An', anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade—leastwise not on yore terms. But we'll do business all ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... having drawn down more than a thousand fathoms of rope, the whale slackened its speed, and Parr, taking another coil round the loggerhead, held on until the boat was almost dragged under water. Then the line became loose, and the slack was hauled in rapidly. Meanwhile Grim's boat had reached the spot and the men now lay on their oars at some distance ahead, ready to pull the instant the whale should show itself. Up it came, not twenty yards ahead. One short, energetic pull, and the second boat sent a harpoon deep ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... "slack" Beowulf, like the sluggish Brutus, ultimately reveals his true character, and is presented with a historic sword of honor. It is "laid on his breast" (l. 2195) as Hun laid Lfing ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack and dead!' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... wall in compas to compile About Caermerdin, and did it commend Unto these sprites to bring to perfect end; During which work the Lady of the Lake, Whom long he loved, for him in haste did send; Who, thereby forced his workmen to forsake, Them bound till his return their labor not to slack. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... more on a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. Some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness; and in such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions seem ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... otherwise, I appeal to the common sense of mankind. One late writer defines it thus: "LANGUAGE is any means by which one person communicates his ideas to another."—Sanders's Spelling-Book, p. 7. The following is the explanation of an other slack thinker: "One may, by speaking or by writing, (and sometimes by motions,) communicate his thoughts to others. The process by which this is done, is called LANGUAGE.—Language is the expression of thought and feeling."—S. W. Clark's Practical ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... broke up. The bicycles were brought round, and the four went gaily out of the front door to light lamps and see to suspiciously slack tyres. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... now, chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... very different business from the navigation in the slack waters of the bayous. The current of muddy water ran with great swiftness, and great swirls, as of a whirlpool, sometimes almost turned the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... paddle in self-defense. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more, And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore; But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack — The traveller never got hands in wool, though he tramped for a year ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... strong that he dared not express his discontent. He himself had twice been engaged with pirates, but had gained no particular credit, and indeed had, in the opinion of his comrades, been somewhat slack in the fray. He was no favourite in the auberge, though he spared no pains to ingratiate himself with the senior knights, and had a short time before been very severely reprimanded by the bailiff for striking one ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... as a drag. Click reels are an abomination. I never jerk the rod, but hook with a twist of the wrist, remembering the golden rule that from the moment a bass takes the bait until he is landed the line must be kept tight, as one second of slack line will lose him. The point of the rod I keep bent by the pull of the fish, which is made to fight for every inch of line. I reel in whenever practicable and kill the ...
— Black Bass - Where to catch them in quantity within an hour's ride from New York • Charles Barker Bradford
... the major was not noted by Joel and his set, in the excitement of receiving so many guests, and in the movement of the wedding. But, as soon as the fact was ascertained, the overseer and miller made the pretence of a 'slack-time' in their work, and obtained permission to go to the Mohawk, on private concerns of their own. Such journeys were sufficiently common to obviate suspicion; and, the leave had, the two conspirators started off, in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... came, there they were in a long disorderly line, never looking back, with canvas set, and still running. Some of our ships hung close on their heels, like dogs at a flying ox; but scarce a shot boomed, and never a tack did the Dons slack off their northward course. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... does not employ in purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from the variations of trade, occasionally in this state. A manufacturer, finding a slack demand for his commodity, forbears to employ laborers in increasing a stock which he finds it difficult to dispose of; or if he goes on until all his capital is locked up in unsold goods, then at least he must of necessity pause until he can get ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... "Things are slack here to-day, old fellow. Let's go out to the Country Club and have a few sets of tennis or a game of golf, whichever you prefer," he suggested. "I've done my little ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have made themselves your foes, and they have wasted from over against the abode of their camp (or fortress); and now behold—O Sun God of my fathers—the King of the Hittites makes them march. And know of them, my Lord—may the gods make slack their hand. As has been said there is fear. And lo! perchance the Sun God of my fathers will turn his heart toward me. My Lord's word is sure, and let the (increase or tithe of gold?) be given him, as we have purposed for the Sun ...
— Egyptian Literature
... a drawin' of tea and a couple of nut-cakes: mebby she'll relish 'em, for I shouldn't wonder ef she hadn't had a mouthful this blessed day. She's dreadful slack at the best of times, but no one can much wonder, seein' she's got nine children, and is jest up from a rheumatic fever. I'm sure I never grudge a meal of vittles or a hand's turn to such as she is, though she does beat all for dependin' on her neighbors. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... presumably to greater advantage, labor and materials which, but for it, would have been employed for other purposes. Meanwhile the causes making for unemployment will be unaffected. Miscalculations will still be made, the building trades will still become slack in the winter, the casual methods of engaging dock laborers will still continue, trade cycles will still recur, while beneath them, and concealed by them, some industries will expand and others will decay. Thus, like the armies at Salonika, the new business would in effect divert resources ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... patriarch of 'correctness.' Walsh, who was a sublime old blockhead, suggested to Pope that 'correctness' was the only tight-rope upon which a fresh literary performer in England could henceforth dance with any advantage of novelty; all other tight-ropes and slack-ropes of every description having been preoccupied by elder funambulists. Both Walsh and Pope forgot ever once to ask themselves what it was that they meant by 'correctness;' an idea that, in its application to France, Akenside afterwards sternly ridiculed. Neither ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... that as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... I know, four years ago, Against those Panama projectors. The law seemed slack, inquiry slow; How I denounced them, the Directors, Including him—in some vague fashion; But then—BONHOMME was ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... bow must have been shot from a slack string, for Rosalind could remember how quickly she forgot Arthur Fenwick as she took a good look at Gerry Palliser, his great friend, whom he had so often raved about to her, and who was to be brought to play lawn-tennis next ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... visitor bends and slides its slender fore part, a blade of exquisite suppleness, between the wall and the inhabitant, whose slack rotundity yields to the pressure of this animated wedge. It plunges into the cell, leaving no part of itself outside but its wide hind quarters, with the red dots ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... answer. Her thoughts were all on the tip of her own rod. About eleven o'clock a fine, drizzling rain set in. The fishing was very slack. All the other boats gave it up in despair; but Cornelia said she wanted to stay out a little longer, they might as well ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... not believed, and even the wisdom of the Jupiter sometimes falls on deaf ears. Though other plans did not put themselves forward in the columns of the Jupiter, reformers of church charities were not slack to make known in various places their different nostrums for setting Hiram's Hospital on its feet again. A learned bishop took occasion, in the Upper House, to allude to the matter, intimating that he had communicated on the subject with his right reverend brother of Barchester. The radical member ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... after, Neewak sent greeting and invitation to his igloo. Moosu went, but I sat alone, with the song of the still in my ears, and the air thick with the shaman's tobacco; for trade was slack that night, and no one dropped in but Angeit, a young hunter that had faith in me. Later, Moosu came back, his speech thick with chuckling and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... score. When he dammed water in his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred miles up and down the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... silk purse of a sow's ear! I've done my duty by poor Robert's son, and if he will be such a fool as to run after blood and wounds, I have no more to say! Though 'tis pity of the old name! Ha! what's this? 'Wedded against my will—no troth plight.' Forsooth, I thought my young master was mighty slack. He hath some other matter in his mind, hath he? Run into some coil mayhap with a beggar wench! Well, we need not be beholden to him. Ha, Dennet, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the money from the bank, and, when business got a little slack, in the afternoon set out in search of a clothing store. Dick knew enough of the city to be able to find a place where a good bargain could be obtained. He was determined that Fosdick should have a good serviceable suit, even if it ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... as they were working up the stream, the vessel lost headway, and the fierce current immediately swept her, stern foremost, into the bank and broke the rudder. After much labour the Bruja was finally again placed in the stream, where they waited for slack water, expecting then to ship the rudder. "But in the Rio Colorado," he declares with italics, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SLACK WATER. Before the ebb has finished running the flood commences, boiling up full eighteen ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it. The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself—a tall, stout man of sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth. His person showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish, who were ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... young woman with gold ear-rings? and is not she standing before you now? and did not she do everything in the world to make you comfortable? Did not she give you milk and eggs, and when you complained that you and meat had been but slack friends of late, did not she open her own closet, and give you as fine a piece of hunting beef as was ever set before a ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... for existence. The old mill hummed away through the day, and often late into the evening if time pressed, upon the grists which added a thin, intermittent stream of tribute to the family income. Whenever work was "slack," Friend Barton was sawing or chopping in the woodshed adjoining the kitchen; every moment he could seize or make he was there, stooping ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... for strenuous work. There are days in every girl's life when she is not capable of her best work, and when a wise and sympathetic teacher will see that it is better for her to do comparatively little. And yet these slack times are just those in which there is the greatest danger of a girl indulging in daydreams, and when her thoughts need to be more than usually under control. These times may be utilised for lighter subjects ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... upon the slack end of the rope until he felt that the stone was lodged with fair security at the shaft's top, then he swung out over the black depths beneath. The moment his full weight came upon the rope he felt it slip ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... past: That on his landing he had been dismissed, And now was travelling towards his native home. 425 This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. 430 Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my side; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... the sailor in charge of the line; he began to haul in the slack like a madman; Coke's fist fell heavily on the ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... rather thin young man with a high forehead, a straight nose, and a smallish chin. The face was good-looking, but somehow not quite attractive. About the eyes was an expression faintly unpleasant, which the neat glasses did not hide. On the somewhat slack lip was a slight twist, not agreeable, which the well-kept mustache could not conceal. Still it was an interesting face, clever, assured, half-insolent. To Varney, it was exceptionally interesting; for removing ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... It was a slack hour when Private Wakeman, in his grotesquely tattered clothes, limped through the door. Only a few men were in the hut, writing or playing draughts. A boy at the piano was laboriously beating out a discordant version of "Tennessee." Mrs. Jocelyn sat on a packing-case, a block of paper ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... not forgotten that years before she had sat in the cellar of the poor dairy-woman's mother, and there bewitched the cocks and hens, as many old people still living could testify; and the bailiff's wife is by no means slack either in helping her to the same death as the poor dairy-mother. While the whole town and adjacent country rang with these proceedings, Sidonia's disquietude became evident. Every day she sent Anna Apenborg up to the court-house, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... are we slack in our companionship in these courses. Our imagination is slower and clumsier than the French—rarer also, by far, in the average English mind. The only man of power equal to Dore's whom we have had lately among us, was William Blake, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... he cried. "If it was a mistake it's one that can be straightened out in two shakes of slack jib sheet. You stay here and rest easy. I'll be ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... stops to rest it throws down as much of the load as it can. When it gets moving, regularly under way, it has to pick it up again. But the longer it stops the more it throws down; and the slower it moves the less it picks up again. Inside the tub it is always slack water, so whatever falls there stays there. That's why the tub has filled up so quick. Nearly a foot and a half in three weeks! Why, Ted, a raise of a foot and a half along the outer slope of this cove, and we could dike in the ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... tugging at the heart of God. The heart-strings of God are tight, as tight as tight can be. For there's a tender heart that's easily tugged at one end, and an insistent tugging at the other. The tugging never ceases. The strings never slack. They give no signs of easing ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... not going anywhere in particular," Captain Wilson replied. "The chief says he thinks that things have got rather slack, since I have been away. There are several bands of bush rangers, who have been doing a deal of mischief up country; so to begin with, he wishes me to make a tour of inspection, and to report generally. ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... don't know whether 'tis thrue or not, but 'tis said that th' ancesthors iv th' prisint king, bein' hard up, was used to pick a jool out iv th' hat iv a Saturdah night an' go down to Mose at th' corner an' get something on it. An' whin times was slack an' th' ponies backward, they cudden't get th' jools out, so they cut a piece fr'm th' window an' pasted it in. It looked f'r awhile as though th' king wud have to be cawrnated be a glazier. They cudden't find th' tickets ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... it for half an hour. He had been noticing river details, and he could not fail to recognize that little boat. His hands trembled as he steered the launch to take advantage of slack current and dead water, and his throat choked with an emotion which he controlled with difficulty. He looked fearfully at the gaunt River Prophet whose own cheeks were staining with warm blood, and whose eyes gazed so keenly at the young woman who was coming, leaning ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... and core of the trade." Dr. Surtaine leaned forward, to tap with an earnest finger on his son's knee, a picture of expository enthusiasm. "Here's the theory. You see, along about March or April people begin to get slack-nerved and out-of-sortsy. They don't know what ails 'em, but they think there's something. Well, one look at that ad. sets 'em wondering if it isn't their kidneys. After wonder comes worry. He's the best little worrier in the trade, Old Lame-Boy ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... just another of those objections by which the anti-humanists show their own comparatively slack hold on the realities of the situation. If they would only follow the pragmatic method and ask: 'What is truth KNOWN-AS? What does its existence stand for in the way of concrete goods?'—they would see that the name ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... Finding business slack in London, it unfortunately occurred to me to try what I could do in the country. I had heard of Maplesworth as a place largely frequented by visitors on account of the scenery, as well as by invalids in need of taking the waters; and I opened a gallery there ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... to Mr. Kenyon's—who had a little to forgive in my slack justice to his good dinner, but was for the rest his own kind self—and I went, also, to Moxon's—who said something about my number's going off ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... his slack gait and carriage, strolled towards a railing and, resting both elbows on it, watched Doe at his cricket. The whole picture is very clear on my mind. A sunny afternoon seemed to have forgotten the time and only ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... of fellows I have now," he went on as he led the way toward the men's quarters. "Not a trouble maker in the bunch, except a half breed that I'm not particularly stuck on, and that I'm going to get rid of as soon as work gets slack. But take them all together I haven't got ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... direct opposition to his expressed wishes. This I must tell you, to show how imperative it is for us to recover it; also to account for the large reward she is willing to pay. When he last looked at it he noticed that the fastening was a trifle slack, and, though he handed the trinket back, he told her distinctly that she was not to wear it till it had been either to Tiffany's or Starr's. But she considered it safe enough, and put it on to please ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... reward the near side horse; the thong—the thong after three twists, which appears in his hand to have been placed by the maker never to be altered or improved ...... and if the off-side horse becomes slack, to see the turn of his arm to reduce a twist, or to reverse, if necessary, is exquisite: after being placed under the rib, or upon the shoulder point, up comes the arm, and with it the thong returns ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... while the small skew bevel wheels are loose on their respective spindles. The upper face of each small skew bevel wheel forms one part of a clutch; the other part of the clutch is slidably mounted on the spindle. When the two parts of the clutch are separated, as they are when the yarn breaks or runs slack, when it is exhausted, or when the cop reaches a predetermined length, the spindle stops; but when the two parts of the clutch are in contact, the small skew bevel wheel drives the clutch, the latter rotates the spindle, ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... The resty knaves are over-run with ease, As plenty ever is the nurse of faction; If in good days, like these, the headstrong herd Grow madly wanton and repine, it is Because the reins of power are held too slack, And reverend authority of late Has worn a face ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... had no shape an' they had no style; Their manners were bad an' their morals slack; They were noisy, but wonderful versatile, Andy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... upward, and Connie paid out the line. When it reached the bottom, the boy noted that there was only about ten feet of slack remaining, and he heaved a sigh of relief. He could feel the man tugging at the rope, and after a moment of silence the voice sounded ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... How smooth his breast was and how white his belly; And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint That runs along his back, but my rude pen Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful gods. Let it suffice That my slack Muse sings of Leander's eyes, Those orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That leaped into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow and, despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any. Had wild Hippolytus Leander seen Enamoured of his beauty ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... some of them he observed were in the habit of spending a great part of their wages and time in dissipation. By way of example to his workmen he laid aside some 12/-to 15/-a week for a considerable period, and when trade was occasionally slack with him, and he had no other occupation for them, he sent his horse and cart to Aston Furnaces for loads of "slag," gathering in this way by degrees a sufficient quantity of this strange building material for the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... knoll close to the water was Chris flat on his back, his mouth open, fast asleep. A half dozen fine bass lay on the grass beside him, the end of his fishing line was tied to one ebony leg, and a coil of slack line ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... an extra chain under the jutting base of the boulder. The mason who fixed it, standing waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched it round the ankle of the dead man. The dead man's brother jumped down beside him and grasped the slack of it. ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on Thursday afternoon. It's lucky we came up to-day. My letters are from Johnnie and Cecy Slack. Johnnie says—" ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... deed in this world of ours! Unheard of the pretence is. It plainly threatens the Great Powers; Is fatal in all senses. A just deed in the world! Call out The rifles! ... be not slack about The ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I would go up-town and make a call ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... generality of the enterprisers was first conceived; and being further advised of the slenderness of our strength, whereunto we be now reduced, as well in respect of the small number of able bodies, as also not a little in regard of the slack disposition of the greater part of those which remain, very many of the better minds and men being either consumed by death or weakened by sickness and hurts; and lastly, since that as yet there is not ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, "it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits—and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive needs, to work out and carry out plans. For a man who ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... burnt fell slack When lone at last stood she; Her nine-and-fifty years came back; She sank upon her knee Beside the durn, and like a dart A something arrowed through her heart ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... top speed until within range, when with that wonderful dexterity no other race has quite equalled, each pushed his bent right knee into the slack of the hair rope, seized bridle and horse's mane in the left hand, curled his left heel tightly into the horse's flank, and dropped down on the animal's right side, leaving only a hand and a foot in view from the left. Then, breaking the line of their charge, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have been by ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... every way, that Equality 68 is an excellent thing, since the Athenians while they were ruled by despots were not better in war that any of those who dwelt about them, whereas after they had got rid of despots they became far the first. This proves that when they were kept down they were wilfully slack, because they were working for a master, whereas when they had been set free each one was eager ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... crimson torrent pour'd, dim now, and soil'd, 840 Like the soil'd tissue of white violets Left, freshly gather'd, on their native bank, By romping children, whom their nurses call From the hot fields at noon: his head droop'd low, His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay— 845 White, with eyes clos'd; only when heavy gasps, Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame, Convuls'd him back to life, he open'd them, And fix'd them feebly ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... him to fight. The firm is not rich because its business is done by tragedians and walking-gentlemen, but in spite of them. If the doctor fails to give his medicine, if the fighting grows too rough for the cripple, if business grows slack, or if some good business man with competent assistants starts a strong opposition—what happens? What must inevitably happen? Why, the sick man dies, the cripple gets the worst of it, and the theatrical firm of merchants goes ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... kindred vice or weakness. I think you have sense enough to discover the line; keep it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack-rope; and, therefore, a good performer shines ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We were all standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile; but it was a short-lived smile for on the instant ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... particular spot than elsewhere? And that spot appeared to be about abreast of that part of the bank where the two men were standing. I stood a moment or two longer, seeking an explanation of the phenomenon, and then fell headlong over the man who was sitting upon the aftermost thwart gathering in the slack of the mainsail as the yard came down; for at that moment the gig grounded on the bank and shot a quarter of her length high and dry with the way that she had on her. As I picked myself up, rubbing my barked elbows ruefully, to the ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... him, Dick Smithson—mind, I'm a calling you that, Dick, but it's meant respectful—a thorough gent, every inch of him, and there's a good lot on him, too; but he is a bit slack-baked, you know. Why, if I liked, I could ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from the variations of trade, occasionally in this state. A manufacturer, finding a slack demand for his commodity, forbears to employ laborers in increasing a stock which he finds it difficult to dispose of; or if he goes on until all his capital is locked up in unsold goods, then at least he must of necessity pause until ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... my loyal faith grow slack Although you put the embargo back; No doubt once more you'll countermand it; And anyhow this party scores Since, you'll supply the arms and stores The bill for which so rudely bores ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... the ends of all the cords through another cord that could, upon being pulled, adjust their height by pulling or releasing, thus controlling the distance between the upper and the lower beams, and changing the amount of slack in the carpet that was stretched between them. I then removed the legs from the tabletop, leaving just it and the beams together, the carpet being attached to ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... gallons of water, the sulphate to be put in a piece of sacking or light cloth, and hung by a string from the top of a barrel containing 18 gallons of water, a few inches below the surface so as to dissolve. Then slack 4 lbs. of fresh lime in as small a quantity of water as possible, the water being added very slowly, until slaking is completed; then slowly make up to 4 gallons. When cool, thoroughly stir and strain slowly the milk of lime into the ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... enough; and, as a secondary dispute was still going on that had grown out of the first, he seized the very first opening which offered itself for provoking the issue of a quarrel. The other party was not backward or slack in answering the appeal; and thus, in one morning, the prospect was overcast—peace was no longer possible; and a hostile meeting was arranged. Even at this meeting much still remained in the power of the seconds: there was an absolute certainty that all fatal consequences might ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters—cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs Elysees. I can't get the smell of them out of my nostrils. Dirty fellows, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m., and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... right, ending the movement in a plunge that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from under the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... that instant did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... to the day when it will be able to command a vessel of its own. Now it would be too much to say that the club expected to be able to buy the Hauppauge (the first thing it would have done, in that case, would have been to rename her). For it was in the slack and hollow of the week—shall we say, the bight of the week?—just midway between pay-days. But at any rate, thought the club, we can look her over, which will be an adventure in itself; and we can see just how people behave when they are buying ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... crew told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was "ship-shape and Bristol fashion." There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag ends of ropes and "Irish pendants" aloft, and the yards were squared "to a t" ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... rooms of the Board of Trade. The lift used by members of the Board of Trade would be sent down to bring up from the open Board what was known as a "bucketful" of the smaller speculators, when business was slack. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... The slack red lips of the man of God were gone dry with excitement, the loose body swayed with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the evidences of his guilt. Then he put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, might enter ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... be sneeringly told to "hit a fellow one's own size," merely because, provoked beyond endurance, one just grabbed him by the slack of his trousers and gently shook him out of them onto the floor, terrified ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... The heat of the oven is of great importance for cakes, especially large ones. If not pretty quick, the batter will not rise; and if too quick, put some white paper over the cake to prevent its being burnt. If not long enough lighted to have a body of heat, or it is become slack, the cake will be heavy. To know when it is soaked, take a broad-bladed knife that is very bright, and thrust it into the centre; draw it out instantly, and if the paste in any degree adheres, return ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... be too severe in your judgments, honoured friend," sighs Finks, mopping his big bald head with his handkerchief. "Put yourself in their place: business is slack now, there's unemployment all round, a bad harvest, ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school. You don't know no better, o' course; but I've give you the ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... them," Jim shouted back. "Give me plenty of slack, and don't pull, till you see I have ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... thus will the people best the voice of their leaders obey, When neither too slack is the rein, nor violence holdeth the sway; For indulgence breedeth a child, the presumption that spurns control, When riches too great are poured ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... in the portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and even familiar in ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... all ages have testified from heaven how certain and possible it is, though many have found it in experience and left it on record to others, there is so slender belief of the reality and certainly of it, and so slack pursuit of it, as if we did not believe it at all. Truly, my beloved, there is a great mistake in this, and it is general too. All men apprehend other things more feasible and attainable than personal holiness and happiness in it, but truly, I conceive there ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... jerk that affects the aim, some genius has invented the new method. So we are taught first to grip the small of the stock with the full hand, the thumb along the side, and with the forefinger to take up the slack of the trigger till it engages the mechanism, and then to take a little more, till presently the gun will go off. At this point, while using the sling to secure a good aim, the shooter should squeeze, that is, he should slowly and steadily contract his whole ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the fairy hill[FN31] Searchest, slack I find thee still; Lovely Dechtire's son shouldst thou By thy zeal have healed ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... that and coil up the slack of your jawing-tackle; there's no time to talk now; tail on there and try to make yourself useful. But look out, my lad if this fire gets the upper hand of us; curse me, if we don't leave ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... the beer-colored river, the rare houses of Boma sprawled amongst the low burnt-up hills, and every day the doctor with his bad liver came across in his boat under the blinding sunshine to within shouting distance, and put a few weary questions. The formalities were slack enough. Nilssen usually made the necessary replies (as he liked to keep himself in the doctor's good books), and then ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... you didn't! I felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!" she cried irritably. "Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You've grown terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You're not simply getting old, you're getting decrepit.... You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite of your red tie, quelle idee rouge! Go on about Von Lembke if you've really something to tell me, and do finish some time, I entreat ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... said Chung-kung, and slack in his claims on the people, might do; but to be slack himself and slack with others ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... that the solitary horseman, walking his powerful grey with a slack rein, and lost in thought, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... his reason with firm hands he saw but one course to follow; but, when his mind went slack for a moment, the old desire to have her returned more strongly than ever, and he heard voices arguing, pleading, persuading—she was the equal of any woman in the world, they said, in mind, in purity, and in innocence. He hated himself for hesitating; ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... fools were fools, and crimes were crimes, And boys and men had work to do, And did not play till work was through. The times have changed; so have the boys! I know this, when I hear your noise, And note your slack work, day by day; Each lad must have his own small way, If it is but to loaf and loll, Or else, not to come in at all, Or not to care for what is done If so be it can yield no fun, Or else, to be as coarse and rough, As rash and rude, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... neither slack nor shy, I readily tarried. We knelt down opposite each other, and said our prayers; and he told me he was now comfortable. 'The evil one,' said he, 'hath enough to mind yonder: he ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... in the ground—not carelessly, nor even in any hurry; but as a sportsman makes all snug, when for a time he leaves off casting. For instance, the end fly was fixed in the lowest ring of the butt, and the slack of the line reeled up so that the collar lay close to the rod itself. Moreover, in such a rocky place, a bed to receive the spike could not have been found without some searching. For a moment I was reassured. ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her bewildered ear; and the poor, dumb-stricken heart had neither cry ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is the time when 'neath the stairs the pages their heads raise! The term of "pure brightness" is the meetest time this thing to make! The vagrant silk it snaps, and slack, without tension it strays! The East wind don't begrudge because ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a day. That's as far as your imagination carries ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... is only his fossil-like way of treating the subject, but certainly the Major shows a very slack interest, Sally thinks, in the identity of this namesake of hers. He does, however, ask absently, what sort of way did he speak ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... to reply, then suddenly catching sight of a strapping-looking fellow in blue overalls, a trunk on one shoulder, a carpetbag in his hand, called out: "John, dear, come here! I want ye. Here, Mike! You and Bobby get that steamer baggage out on the sidewalk, and don't be slack about it, for it goes to Hoboken, and there may be a block in the river and the ferry-boats behind time. Wait, ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... been made for the Somerset and Devon districts, but the following varieties of cider apples are held in good repute in those parts:—Kingston Black, Jersey Chisel, Hangdowns, Fair Maid of Devon, Woodbine, Duck's Bill, Slack-my-Girdle, Bottle Stopper, Golden Ball, Sugar-loaf, Red Cluster, Royal Somerset and Cadbury (believed to be identical with the Royal Wilding of Herefordshire). As a rule the best cider apples are of small size. "Petites pommes, gros ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... knew, I named, rushing past them again, "Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we paid you erewhile? Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rash Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack! ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... Mr Sudberry uttered a roar of astonishment, mingled with alarm, for the line was slack, and he thought the fish had broken off. It was still on, however, as a wild dash down stream, followed by a spurt up and across, with another fling into the air, proved beyond a doubt. The fish was very wild—fortunately it was well hooked, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the doors were open. There were not many clients present, and the clerks were enjoying a slack time. Jack had recalled to his mind the exact date of his former visit; and thus the sole difficulty was overcome. The clerk found the name of Ellen Martineau entered under that date ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... accompanied the creation of life peers. Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike what it ought to be, that most ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... anxious voices. The walls of the room were crumbling. Volumes of smoke were now pouring in underneath the door, and through the yawning fissures of the wall. Little tongues of flame were leaping out dangerously close to the spot where he must pass. He let fall the slack of the rope and leaned from the window to watch it anxiously. Then he commenced to descend, letting himself down hand over hand, always with one eye upon that length of rope that swung below. Suddenly, as he reached the second floor, a little cry from the crowd warned ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to further study the array, for he whirled about as from the Atlantean army arose a deep, horrified shout. He stood paralyzed, his jaw slack. For there, waddling slowly forward, came the most fantastic huge creature imaginable. Unspeakably repellent and horrible, it stood on short legs thick as mature trees, to tower at least thirty-five feet ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... direction, but their shafts do not lodge in the mark; their impetus carries them right through the soul, and they pass on their way, leaving only a gaping wound behind them. Others make the contrary mistake: their bows are too slack, and their shafts never reach their destination; as often as not their force is spent at half distance, and they drop to earth. Or if they reach the mark, they do but graze its surface; there can be no deep wound, where the ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols' the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job for ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... mend his ways; and this war was called the common weal, because it was undertaken under color of being for the common weal of the kingdom, the which was soon converted into private weal." The aged Duke of Burgundy, sensible and weary as he was, gave only a hesitating and slack adherence to the league; but his son Charles, Count of Charolais, entered into it passionately, and the father was no more in a condition to resist his son than he was inclined to follow him. The number of the declared malcontents increased rapidly; and the chiefs ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so. Sheet home the topsail, lads; that's well! man the halliards and up with the yard. Hoist away the jib and staysail; fore-sheets over to starboard. One hand to the wheel and put it hard-a-port. Cut the cable, forward there. Round-in upon the starboard braces—ease off your mainsheet, slack it away and let the boom go well out. Now she has stern-way upon her. Capital. Now fill your topsail—smartly, lads!— and haul aft your lee head sheets. Steady your helm. Now she draws ahead. Hard up with the helm. There she pays off! Square the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... the said James Burbage in the aforesaid lease, was reputed among his neighbors to be worth one thousand pounds at the least, and that after he had joined with the said Burbage in the matter of the building of the said Theatre, he began to slack his own trade, and gave himself to the building thereof, and the chief care thereof he took upon him, and hired workmen of all sorts for that purpose, bought timber and all other things belonging thereunto, and paid all. So as, in this deponent's conscience, he bestowed thereupon for ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... I should hope he would," put in Clover, who was still in the wildest spirits. "What a dear old goose Cecy is! I never hankered in the least for Sylvester Slack, did you, Katy?" ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... captive of your bow and spear. I'm not kicking at that. I am not a coerced alien, nor a naturalised Texas mule-tender, nor an adventurer on the instalment plan. I don't tag after our consul when he comes around, expecting the American Eagle to lift me out o' this by the slack of my pants. No, sir! If a Britisher went into Indian Territory and shot up his surroundings with a Colt automatic (not that she's any sort of weapon, but I take her for an illustration), he'd be strung up quicker'n a snowflake ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... in the early winter time, when people were provided with warm substantial gowns, not likely soon to wear out, and when, accordingly, business was rather slack at Miss Simmonds', Mary met Alice Wilson, coming home from her half-day's work at some tradesman's house. Mary and Alice had always liked each other; indeed, Alice looked with particular interest on the motherless girl, the daughter of her whose forgiving kiss had comforted ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... him; but I have heard of the raft, and there is no question as to its safety. We reached the mouth of the creek without discovering a trace of it. Then we went down the river as far as the Elbow, where we waited in the slack-water to hail up-bound steamboats. The first had seen nothing of the raft; but the second, one of the 'Diamond Jo' boats, reported that they had seen such a raft—one with three shanties on it—at daybreak, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... just here, is willing, in her extreme poverty, to labour, instead of sinking into vice and idleness, shows her to possess both virtue and integrity of character, and these we should be willing to encourage, even at some sacrifice. Work is slack now, as you are aware, and there is but little doubt that she had been to many places seeking employment before she came to you. It may be—and this is a very probable suggestion—that she did not come to you for work until she, ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... the awning before their tent, waiting for the meal which Mrs. Reed and her assistants were even then spreading on the trestle-built table. There had been a shower that afternoon, one of those gusty, blustery, desert demonstrations which had wrenched the tents and torn hundreds of them from their slack anchoring in ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... who had come over in the boat with me the day before, was on deck to receive his shipmates. The old fellow's face wrinkled with amusement at the sight of his worn-out countrymen until it looked like the slack of a bellows. There was an unholy twinkle in his ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... steadfast brain. Next to his wife and children, in Mr. Granger's regard, were the lands of Arden: the farms and homesteads, in valleys and on hill-tops; the cottages and school-houses, which he had built for the improvement of his species; the bran-new slack-baked gothic church in an outlying village, where the church had never ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... It was the slack hour at the Nineveh Hotel. The last groups about the tea-tables in the Palm Court had broken up, the Tzigane orchestra had stacked its instruments together on its little platform and gone home, and a gentle calm ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... whither shall I fly, To slack these flames wherein I fry? To the treasures, shall I go, Of the rain, frost, hail, and snow? Shall I search the underground, Where all damps and mists are found? Shall I seek (for speedy ease) All the floods and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... once went to Rome, where they throw hundreds and thousands at each other in play, and call it a Comfit Battle or Battaglia di Confetti (that's real Italian). And he wanted to get up that sort of thing among the village people—but they were too beastly slack, so ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... "A very slack day, Gabriel! Being in the winter, so few people travel. Our best time is in the spring, when they say the English come in by Gibraltar. They go first to the fair in Seville, and afterwards they come to have a look at our Cathedral. Besides, in milder ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that would be very hard on me. I've come here to my native place to settle down, and if I settle I've got to marry, and I have never seen a girl whom I would rather marry and settle with than Miss Mayberry. She may be a little slack about taking care of the baby, but I'll talk to her about that, and I know she will keep a closer eye on him. Now if you want to see everybody happy, don't prejudice Mrs. Cristie against that girl. ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... fell down as if lifeless, with slack faces and lusterless eyes, as though some one had turned off the current that had fed those dead creatures with strength from some unknown source. Some of them leaned against the trench wall white as cheese, and held their heads over, and vomited from exhaustion. Marschner also felt ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... failing to quite understand, Pulled the 'haul up' on the life-line, found it was slack in his hand; Then, like a little brown stoic, lay down and died ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... when for two or three years harvests have been bad, and corn has long been dear, every industry is impoverished, and almost every one, by becoming poorer, makes every other poorer too. All trades are slack from diminished custom, and the consequence is a vast stagnant capital, much idle labour, and a ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... when work is slack and members are unemployed, will advocate shorter hours at the same rate of pay so as to make room for their ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... me welcome; yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective, 128 degrees west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we could travel a straight line between the two points, and even slack our sheets off a goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of Hilo harbour, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... explained to her that work was unusually slack in his own yard; that, moreover, he had worked special overtime during the week in order to get an hour or two off this Saturday, and that Seaton was on night duty at a large engineering "works," and lord ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... During that slack week we took the opportunity to see a certain amount of Antwerp, and to call on many officials and the many friends who did so much to make our work there a success and our stay a pleasure. To one ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... to be acquainted with deuda, debt doloroso, painful endosar, to endorse ensenar, to teach, to show esperar, to expect, to hope, to wait estadisticas, statistics falta, want, absence of flojo, slack fundar, to found gratitud, gratitude *hacer mencion, to mention herida, wound, sting informar (de), to inform of, to acquaint with llevar chasco, to be disappointed, to be baffled *negar, to deny periodico, newspaper premio, reward, prize, premium robar, to rob, to steal ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... padded bight of the rope about his body, and the two joined ranging-rods in his hand, quite ready to be lowered down the face. Then two peons whom he had specially selected for the task, drew in the slack of the rope, passed a complete turn of it round an iron bar driven deep into a rock crevice, and waited for the command of a third who now laid himself prone on the ground, with his head projecting over the edge of the cliff, to watch and regulate the descent. ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... sort of motherly look:—broad in the beam, flush decks, and four chubby boats hanging at the breast. Her sails were furled loosely upon the yards, as if they had been worn long, and fitted easy; her shrouds swung negligently slack; and as for the "running rigging," it never worked hard as it does in some of your "dandy ships," jamming in the sheaves of blocks, like Chinese slippers, too small to be useful: on the contrary, the ropes ran glibly through, as if they had ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full grown, and of extravagant anticipation by the callow brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous line ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... managers attended at the opening, but the attendance of all others was cruelly slack. To hear the attack, the people came in crowds; to hear the defence, they scarcely came in t'ete- 'a-t'etes! 'Tis barbarous there should be so much more pleasure given by the recital of guilt than by the vindication of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... the skiff a little closer and, drawing in my oars, turned and picked up the slack of my ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Hallblithe, it is not of death that we have to tell, but of sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, and the ripples that curled around our feet. At ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... returned. "I am glad he does," Dick went on. "This is no time for slack soldiering. Greg, I'll feel consoled for working eighteen hours a day if it results in making the Ninety-ninth the best infantry ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... a Bear was trying to disengage himself from the rope, but the slip-knot about his wrist would not yield, for the Bear was all the time pulling in the slack with his paws. In the midst of his trouble the Hunter saw a Showman passing by, and managed to ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... his nettly chin With a huge, loose forefinger, crooked and black, And his wobbly, violet lips sucked in, And puffed out again and hung down slack: One fang shone through his lop-sided smile, In his little pouched eye flickered years ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... a great part non-effective. The king, elated with his success, landed his troops, and laid siege to the fort, which he battered at intervals during seventeen days. The fire of the Portuguese became very slack, and after some time totally ceased, as the governor judged it prudent to reserve his small stock of ammunition for an effort at the last extremity. The king, alarmed at this silence, which he construed into a preparation for some dangerous ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... generally, as I have said, have worked loyally and well, there have, I regret to say, been instances where absence, irregular timekeeping, and slack work have led to a marked diminution in the output of our factories. In some cases the temptations of drink account for this failure to work up to the high standard expected. It has been brought to my notice on more than one occasion that the restrictions of trade ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it,—this perfect thing,—and perhaps we never shall. But the desire, the search, the faith, must not fail us, as at times they seem to do. At times the very tides of the ocean seem to fail,—when the currents cease to run. Yet when they are at slack here, they are at flood on the other side of the world, turning ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... speed until within range, when with that wonderful dexterity no other race has quite equalled, each pushed his bent right knee into the slack of the hair rope, seized bridle and horse's mane in the left hand, curled his left heel tightly into the horse's flank, and dropped down on the animal's right side, leaving only a hand and a foot in view ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the clump of trees on the edge of the field. Their shade invited like a beckoning hand. Little beads of perspiration stood on her forehead. A warm lassitude spread through her body, turning her muscles slack. Hadn't Gertrude said Aunt Jessica didn't let them work in too hot ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... That on his landing he had been dismissed, And now was travelling towards his native home. 425 This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. 430 Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... of desert-bred stock, he watched the horse. The minutes drifted by. The horse seemed more distinct. Waring thought he could discern the picket rope. He endeavored to trace it from horse to picket. Foot by foot his eyes followed its slack outline across the ground. The head of the metal picket glimmered faintly. Waring closed his eyes, nodded, and caught himself. This time he traced the rope from picket to horse. It seemed a childish ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... height and as the ships swung idly to their cables on the slack, the Danes thronged the bridge, thinking, doubtless, that we should attack when they were ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... safely go on to accuse Dickens of bad grammar. The truth is that his grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in construction than Thackeray's, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is slack. Lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens "might not always be parsed," but that we loved him for his, etc., etc. Dickens's page is to be parsed as strictly as any man's. It is, apart ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... hour's sleep. Firing began just after daylight. It was slack for some time, but the Boers crept round. Then the firing became furious. Our men ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... by women. It is a great mistake to suppose the two qualities are incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness of our capacity, To aspire is our privilege, and a privilege which we are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, is only a proof ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the bed, by a wider channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterwards checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... pa, if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her system. Quit ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the deck-beams, savagely, as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!" ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... were unfavourable the next day for quitting our anchorage until the afternoon: in the morning Mr. Roe sounded and examined the south arm; and as he found the passage to be quite clear we weighed at slack water with the intention of proceeding through it and anchoring in the basin; but the strength of the wind obliged us to anchor under View Hill and detained us the whole of the following day which was unsuccessfully spent in examining ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... overgrown by underbrush, through fields that had lain fallow for years, now studded with bushes and briars, and the night being exceedingly dark, the men floundered and fell as they marched. But the needs were too urgent to be slack in the march now, so the men struggled with nature in their endeavor to keep in ranks. Sometimes the head of the column would lose its way, and during the time it was hunting its way back to the lost bridle path, was about the only rest we got. The men were already ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... but then, he recognized, neither was he sober. Why should he be the latter? he demanded seriously of himself. His glass was empty, the champagne was all gone. Mrs. Gilbert Bromhead was perceptibly leaning on Christian Wager, her skill blurred; Evadore's face was damply pallid, her mouth slack; she left the table, the room, hurried and unsteady, evidently about to repeat the thickness of the act that had marred her enjoyment of the night club; Claire was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the tent! Its slack ropes all undone, Its pole all broken, and its cover rent,— Its work is done. But mine—tho' spoiled and spent Mine earthly ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... vigorous stroke that might erase the stain from the honour of his family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in the province, and Albinus resigned ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... boat fast with plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, helping Jesse ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... team was advancing toward us at a brisk canter and the drum turned fast, taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though not satisfied with this rate of progress, several soldiers were running back and jumping up to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took care of the telephone was hard put to it to coil down the twin wires. He skittered about over ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... in my pocket and might have shot him through and through, but that novel proceeding did not occur to me until it was too late. I would have taken a Sam Patch leap into the water, and have wrestled with my antagonist in his own element, but I knew the slack, thus sure to occur, would probably free him; so I peered down upon the beautiful creature and enjoyed my triumph as far as it went. He was caught very lightly through his upper jaw, and I expected every struggle and somersault would break the hold. Presently ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... der Pant had not the extreme tactfulness of his so typically Catholic wife; he made it only too plain that he thought the British postal and telegraph service slow and slack, and the management of the Great Eastern branch lines wasteful and inefficient. He said the workmen in the fields and the workmen he saw upon some cottages near the junction worked slowlier and with less interest than he had ever seen any workman display in all his life before. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... at the mine there were warehouses and a company store and quarters for the men on the flats where Rimrock had once pitched his tent. But the man who built them was Abercrombie Jepson—the master hand was slack. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... rooted is this desire for a "steady job'' and so generally recognized as an essential of the labor problem that several large industries have developed "side lines'' to which they can turn their organization during their slack seasons; while others in periods of depression pile up huge stocks of standard products, making heavy investments of capital, for the primary purpose ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... the Army on the gridiron. So you had worked yourself up to where you played a better game than ever Dick Prescott thought of doing. Then you hear that poor Dick is in Coventry, and therefore not on the team. You haven't got the great Army man to beat, and, just for that reason, you slack up on your efforts." ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... educated and cultured man, a gentleman in point of fact, be absolutely prohibited from hearing a "classical" concert because he wore the Queen's uniform and did that most important and necessary work which the noble Briton is too slack-baked, too hypocritically genteel, too degenerate, to ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... remaining life, and from the day when I first felt the fascination of that humble printer's workshop, I never ceased to regard myself as in a special degree a child of the printing-press. How delightful were the hours which I and David, the journeyman aforesaid, spent together when business was slack—and it was often slack! Then it was that together we would compose the most wonderful announcements of the great enterprises to which I was to commit myself in after life. Now it was the prospectus of a "genteel academy" of which I was to be the principal, and again it was ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... at him, slack-jawed. He glanced furtively behind him at Swan, and found that guileless youth ready to poke him in the back with the muzzle of a gun. Lone, he observed, had another. He looked back at Al, whose eyes were ablaze with resentment. With an effort ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and Eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. Cedric the Saxon, if offended,—and he is noway slack in taking offence,—is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. And be careful how you look on ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... British who survived to desert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and better paid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemy to fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to make the British get slack. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of High Finance I don't presume to plumb; So year by year my back they shear, Sure that they'll find me dumb. But the oft-trodden worm will turn; "Demand Notes" never slack; And "Schedule D" fast at twice three, Breaks the wage-earner's back. So please give me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the conversation dropped. The stifling heat, the whirling dust clouds broken by whiffs of air, dry as from a kiln and impregnated with the pungent scent of the tarweed, made the men drowsy. Jim Bailey nodded, the reins drawing slack between his fingers. Leonard slipped the rifle from his knees to the floor and relaxed against the back of the seat. Through half-shut lids he watched the whitened crests of the Sierra brushed on ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the field of view commanded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phenomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high boots; some other (and much larger) fellow-creature's breeches, of a slack-baked doughy colour and a baggy form; a blue shirt, whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist-band of the said breeches; no coat; a red shoulder-belt; and a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a feathered ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... weight of the packing-cases, to which every house in the trade is liable. In the fruit market, there is positively nothing doing; and the growers, who are every day becoming less, complain bitterly. Raspberries were very slack, at 2-1/2d. per pottle; but dry goods still brought their prices. We have heard of several severe smashes in currants, and the bakers, who, it is said, generally contrive to get a finger in the pie, are among ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... other boys of their own age, when a barge was seen ahead at some short distance from the shore. She was apparently floating down with the stream, and the fact that a horse was proceeding along the towing-path a little way ahead was not noticed, as the rope was slack and was trailing under water. The boys, therefore, as they were rowing against stream, steered their boat to pass inside of her. Just as they came abreast of the horse a man on the barge suddenly shouted to the rider of the horse to go on. He did so, the rope ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... artifice. His normal thought was dispersion, sleep, dream, inconsequence; the simultaneous action of different thought-centres without central control. His artificial balance was acquired habit. He was an acrobat, with a dwarf on his back, crossing a chasm on a slack-rope, and commonly breaking ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... deep, made of thin deal, or preferably of pine, and having beech ends to hold the tuning-pins and hitch-pins. A dozen or less catgut strings of different thickness, but tuned in exact unison, and left rather slack, are attached to the pins, and stretched over two narrow bridges of hard wood, one at each end of the sound-board, which is generally provided with two rose sound-holes. To ensure a proper passage for the wind, another pine ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... meantime, being determined to mortify his rival Parrah More by a superior display of hospitality, waited upon that parsonage, and exacted a promise from him to come down and partake of the dinner—a promise which the other was not slack in fulfilling. Phaddhy's heart was now on the point of taking its rest, when it occurred to him that there yet remained one circumstance in which he might utterly eclipse his rival, and that was to ask Captain Wilson, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... that noble corn-pone and spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked me, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up another vista for the questioning philosopher. Their day is past, too, and man may cut them short to match his own, but the dog grows them longer than before. When he first took service with man, and grew careless and lazy, the muscles got slack and the ears dropped, which is in accordance with Nature. Then, instead of being allowed to wither away, they have been handed over to the milliner and shaped and trimmed in harmony with the "style" ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the dog filled the engineer with a fear that he had not anticipated. Not for an instant did the brute give slack to his tongue as they raced through the night, and Howland knew now that the storm and the darkness were of little avail in his race for life. There was but one chance, and he determined to take it. Gradually he slackened his pace, drawing ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... a 'daisy.' I was put into his pew in church the other Sunday, and the preacher described him and his methods so exactly that I didn't dare look at him. When we came out he whispered, 'That was rather hard on Slack; he must have felt it.' These men rather ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... rise suddenly beside her, and tumbled in great green masses over the bulwarks. So wild and sudden were her movements that even the oldest sailors were unable to keep their feet; and all clung on to shrouds, or belaying pins. Will and Hans had lashed themselves by the slack of a rope to the bulwarks, close to each other, and there clung on; sometimes half drowned by the waves, which poured in above them; sometimes torn from their feet by the rush of green water, as the ship plunged, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... listening. "Surely, man, the tide's slack enough by this time!" he interrupted, his irritation again overcoming him. "You needn't be fetching across sideways, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... teach you, if you like to bring your work to me, for half-an-hour on Saturdays; I'm generally slack the first half-hour after I have given your ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... get in his sails, but the surf was running very strong, and presently a heavy sea broke clean over her. Then came confusion and dismay: the flapping of the wet, half-lowered sails, and the whipping of the slack ropes, making all effort useless. There was no chance of her- holding. Foot by foot she was being driven towards the rocks. Sailors stood motionless on the shore. The lifeboat would be of little use: besides, it could ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... July we found shoal water, where we smelt so sweet and so strong a smell, as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden, abounding with all kind of odoriferous flowers; by which we were assured that the land could not be far distant. And keeping good watch and bearing but slack sail, the fourth of the same month we arrived upon the coast, which we supposed to be a continent and firm land, and we sailed along the same one hundred twenty English miles before we could find any entrance, or river issuing into the sea. The first that appeared unto us ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... in the Buffo line. When things seem getting slack, I'm to the front, with lots of go. My critics may cry "Quack!" But quacking's not confined to me. I do extremely well, And the more "I give them physic," why The more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various
... Here he was, wickedly and maliciously trapped. He jerked and slatted his head some more. This made matters worse. He was cuffed and choked. Next he tried rearing. His head was pulled savagely down, and at this point Olsen began beating him with the slack ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... pressure of the brake on the line tightened, the boat began to tear through the water, still requiring the paying out of the rope. For an instant it slackened and the winch reeled in a little line. There was a sudden jerk and then the line fell slack. Working like demons, the men made the winch handles fairly fly as the line came in, and within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly quite ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... out of my way I'll show you what I'll do. Slash you across your lying face." Her arm was already uplifted, riding crop in hand. "Let me go!" Her voice was so low that he hardly heard it, but full of a thousand threats. Then, swerving her horse quickly to one side, she jerked the bridle from his slack fingers and ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the band began to play, and the equestrians and equestriennes capered out from the dressing-tent for the "Grand Entrance," and the performance commenced. Through the long summer afternoon it went on: wonders of horsemanship and horsewomanship; hair-raising exploits on wires, tight and slack; giddy tricks on the high trapeze; feats of leaping and tumbling in the rings; while the tireless musicians blatted inspiringly through it all, only pausing long enough to allow that uproarious jester, ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... multi-colored bands Of angels to intrude and slay the beast That His good sons may have a feast of food. But as they come, Leviathan sneezes twice ... And, numb with sudden pangs, each arm hangs slack. Black terror seizes them; blood freezes into ice And every angel flees from the attack! God, with a look that spells eternal law, Compels them back. But, though they fight and smite him tail and jaw, Nothing ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... heart to alleviate the unseen woes which will never come into painful contact with your sensibilities, to bestow pleasures in which you yourself have no immediate share. It will tell your hearts especially in the case of this very Hospital for Consumption not to be slack in giving, because so much of what you will give—it is painful to recollect how much—will be spent, not in prevention, not even in cure, but in mere alleviation, mere increased bodily ease, mere savoury food, even mere passing amusements for wearied minds. Be it so. If (which ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more." There, there it dangles,—where's the little truth That can for long keep footing under that When its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... victims for the other. The "hole-in-the-wall" or "blind tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost helpless when confronted ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... purely personal aspect of it, there will be the temptation to grow slack and cold in intercessions and communions, when the immediate occasion that prompted them has passed. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, let us look out for this, expect it, then we shall not be afraid ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... currants in the window as you come in—I have an idea for something artistic in the way of patterns there; but, as you love me, do not offer to buy any. We grocers only put the currants out for show, and so that we may run our fingers through them luxuriously when business is slack. I have a good line in shortbreads, madam, if I can find the box, but no currants ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... man, a man thought well of. You have great provisions upon your cart. This man has nothing but the unwashed shirt which hangs on his slack back. It will not become you to march handcuffed with his like, going between two policemen ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... to collect the drift, and there were often logs cast ashore there which he brought home for fuel. The brothers had no need to work beyond going to the cliffs, which they did whenever they chose. The thrall began to get very slack at his work; he grumbled much and was less careful than before. It was his duty to mind the fire every night, and Grettir bade him be very careful of it as they had no boat with them. One night it came to pass that the fire went out. ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... in instinct as a usual thing, but I should advise confidence in this one. A woman with a tremendous will like that of Mrs. Ransom should be allowed a slack tether. The day will arrive when she will come to you herself. This I have said before; I can say nothing more ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... so strong a fish, one which darted here, there, and everywhere; now diving straight down, now running away out to sea, and then when I thought the line must snap, for it made tugs that cut my hands and jerked my shoulders, I uttered a cry of disappointment, for the line came in slack, and the ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... power. For a minute or more we stood motionless, gazing into each other's faces. Then I saw a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead, and I knew that he was beaten. Slowly his grip relaxed, and his hand grew limp and slack while my own tightened ever upon it, until he was forced in a surly, muttering voice to request that I ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... are eminently prosperous, and of those that, on the other hand, are as eminently decadent. I have little doubt that the reader will agree with me that the members of prospering communities are, as a rule, conspicuously strenuous, and that those of decaying or decadent ones are conspicuously slack. A prosperous community is distinguished by the alertness of its members, by their busy occupations, by their taking pleasure in their work, by their doing it thoroughly, and by an honest pride in their community as ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... these figures apply only to the well-organised trades unions, which, as a rule, comprise the best and most highly-skilled workers in the several trades, who are less likely than others to be thrown out in a "slack time," that the building and season trades are not included in the estimate, and that women's industries, notoriously more irregular than men's, are altogether ignored, it will be evident that these statistics very inadequately represent ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... just as it were reached a climax, when, instead of the line breaking or Mark going over the side, the strong cord, which had been hissing here and there through the water, suddenly grew slack, and the tension was taken off Mark's muscles and mind to give place ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... horse, as he usually did, his left hand holding a slack rein, his right resting on his hip, with bent head and dreamy eyes, he made his first steps along that incline, at once glorious and fatal, which was to lead him to a throne—and ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... fleet she went out The English Channel to cruise about, When four French sail in show so stout Bore down on the Arethusa. The famed Belle Poule straight ahead did lie; The Arethusa seemed to fly— Not a sheet, or a tack, Or a brace, did she slack, Tho' the Frenchmen laugh'd and thought it stuff; But they knew not the handful of men, how tough ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... advantage, and what was the best use that might be made of travelling. He freely told me that the first thing above all was to remember our Creator in the dayes of our youth, to be serious wt our God: not to suffer ourselfes to grow negligent and slack in our duty we ow to God, and then to seik after good and learned company whence we may learn the customes of the country, the nature and temper of the peaple, and what wast diversity of humours is to be sein in the world. He told me also a ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... one that requires pluck and endurance; no regular sleep, no regular meals; wet and cold, heat and wind and tempest, and no great gains at last. But the sturgeon fishers, who come later and are seen the whole summer through, have an indolent, lazy time of it. They fish around the 'slack-water,' catching the last of the ebb and the first of the flow, and hence drift but little either way. To a casual observer they appear as if anchored and asleep. But they wake up when they have a 'strike,' which may be every day, or not once a week. The fishermen keep their eye ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Let them not cool o'er the liquor, or their calls will grow slack. Keep feeding the fire while it blazes, and the blaze will ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... again! And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom:— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or in ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... believes—that Italy will come in. She also believes, from false information that she has gathered in this country, that under no circumstances will England fight. It isn't about that I came to you. We've become a slothful, slack, pleasure-loving people, but I still believe that when the time comes we shall fight. The only thing is that we shall be taken at a big disadvantage. We shall be open to a raid upon our fleet. Do you know that the entire German navy ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... living creatures joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs in a leash are compelled to think of one another. A man and wife must love or hate, like or dislike, in degree as the bond connecting them is drawn tight or allowed to hang slack. By mutual desire their chains of wedlock have been fastened as loosely as respect for security will permit, with the happy consequence that her aversion to him does not obtrude itself beyond ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... once to-night, that but for me you would be riding yonder. I realized all you meant, and you must not remain. The guard-lines are slack to-night, and you can get through, but if you wait until to-morrow it may be too late. Believe me, I am your friend, a friend ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... wrought any deliverance on earth; we have been weak when all Thy power was at our command; we have spoken Thy word as if it were an experiment and a peradventure whether it had might; we have let go Thy hand and lost Thy garment's hem from our slack grasp; we have been prayerless and self-indulgent. Therefore Thou hast put us to shame before our foes, and 'our enemies laugh among themselves. Thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine forth; stir up Thy strength and come and save us!' Then will the last ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Finnish sailors were hauling in the slack hawsers, and the bearded stevedores on the floating quay tugged at the gangway. Many of our presumed passengers had only come to say good-bye, which they were now waving and shouting from the shore. The rain fell dismally, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... How dare they provoke her wrath? Would she submit to lose her lands? She might do,—what might she not do? Her bones would refuse ever to work a miracle again. They had been but too slack in miracle-working for many years. She might strike the isle with barrenness, the minster with lightning. She might send a flood ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... man a miraculous assurance that the world is something he can make. In creative moments men always draw upon "some secret spring of certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmers penetrate." But this is no slack philosophy, for the chance is denied by which we can lie back upon the perfection of some mechanical contrivance. Yet in the light of it government becomes alert to a process of continual creation, an unceasing invention of forms to meet ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... dawned upon us. While waiting for slack water, in which to lift their heavy nets from the bed of the bay, the Chinese had all gone to sleep below. We were elated, and our plan ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... by and see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... sure that, if only we keep ourselves in the love, and continue in the grace of God, He will not slack nor stay His hand on which Zion is graven, until it has 'perfected that which concerneth us,' and fulfilled to each of us that 'which He has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... there long, his tall, lithe body slack, grim, serious lines in his lean face. He had thought of his conversation with Judge Graney concerning ambition—his ambition, the picture upon which his mind had dwelt many times. A little frame printing office in the West was not one of its features. He sighed with ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... darted one over the other, the slack seeming endless as I heard a low rushing sound mingled with the splashing of falling stones. Then there was a sharp jerk at my wrists, and the rope began to glide through my hands till I let one leg drop from where my foot rested against ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... salt into it with an instinctive sense that it was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... born, wrap a fold of towel around his ankles to prevent slipping and hold him up by the heels with one hand, taking care that the cord is slack. To get a good safe grip, insert one finger between the baby's ankles. Do not swing or spank the baby. Hold him over the bed so that he cannot fall far if he should slip from your grasp. The baby's body will be very slippery. Place your other hand under the baby's forehead ...
— Emergency Childbirth - A Reference Guide for Students of the Medical Self-help - Training Course, Lesson No. 11 • U. S. Department of Defense
... was to come. For the first few days, whenever there was any running aloft to be done, I noticed that Harry was indefatigable in coiling away the slack of the rigging about decks; ignoring the fact that his shipmates were springing into the shrouds. And when all hands of the watch would be engaged clewing up a t'-gallant-sail, that is, pulling the proper ropes on deck that wrapped the sail up on the yard aloft, Harry would ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... to catch at handholds and steady ourselves against rocks. I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; then a slip bothered no one but the slipper. ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... line—trailing, as the boat moves forward, a second line is fixed to the weight and passes under water to the bows of the vessel where it is attached As the vessel passes slowly through the water, the weight rises and falls according to the level of the bottom, and the counterweight hauls in the slack of the line, which is marked in the usual way by coloured tapes. At any moment therefore, the depth of water can be determined by observing the tapes. There is now only 15-1/2 feet on the bar, so it is necessary to lighten the ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... journey, when he has got squaws and baggage with him, a red-skin never goes at a walk, and the horses will keep on at this lope for hours. That is right. Don't sit so stiffly; you want your legs to be stiff and keeping a steady grip, but from your hips you want to be as slack as possible, just giving to the horse's action, the same way you give on board ship when vessels are rolling. That is better. Ah! here comes Pete. I took this way because I knew it was the ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... standing to arms while others ate; but dinner-time is slack time, even among animals, and it was ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... thing, you see, don't dovetail. Adolph couldn't possibly throw his arms around Mary if one was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the rope. As for the piano—well, you know as well as I do that an armless man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular intelligence when you talk about 'sweet poetic fervor.' ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... "Haul in your slack as she comes," he called to Huish. "Haul in your slack, put your back into it; keep your feet out of the coils." A sudden blow sent Huish flat along the deck, and the captain was in his place. "Pick yourself up and keep the wheel hard over!" he roared. "You wooden fool, you wanted to get killed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... above them. We have been steadily adding to the burdens on industrial and commercial equipment; even more have we increased the stresses and the strains on human life. A devastating war is now suddenly taking up the slack, and the slow and painful task of making the world efficient must be hastened in order that society may bear the load. In these circumstances we need not apologize for making efficiency the main support of business standards. Nor need we assume, as does ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... could not be; For luck, of late, is gone from me. No more I see the good old times When fools were fools, and crimes were crimes, And boys and men had work to do, And did not play till work was through. The times have changed; so have the boys! I know this, when I hear your noise, And note your slack work, day by day; Each lad must have his own small way, If it is but to loaf and loll, Or else, not to come in at all, Or not to care for what is done If so be it can yield no fun, Or else, to be as coarse and rough, As rash and rude, and grum and gruff, As ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... Benavides. A word from me was more to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces—rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... me? What am I thus sequestred from the court? No notice? shall I not know the cause Of these my secret and suspitious ils? Accursed brother! vnkinde murderer! Why bends thou thus thy minde to martir me? Hieronimo, why writ I of they wrongs, Or why art thou so slack in thy reuenge? Andrea! O Andrea, that thou sawest Me for thy freend Horatio handled thus, And him for me thus causeles murdered! Well, force perforce, I must constraine my-selfe To patience, and apply me to the time, Till Heauen, as I haue hoped, ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... warmly sheltered by spruce woods and sloping to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that all the slack management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it. Here Old Man Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish, watching and tending it until he came to know each tree as a child and loved it. His neighbours laughed ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... still stronger before long, Chips; you had therefore better make one job of it, and take in the topgallantsails as well. And when that is done, if the men are not better engaged, let them get to work and set up the topgallant and royal rigging fore and aft; it is shockingly slack—hanging fairly in bights, in fact—and is affording practically no support to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... gradually, there seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... illustrator's strongest asset is spirit. Technique and a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing and impatience of method will always be pardoned in an illustrator, ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... fresh unslaked lime, and 22 gallons of water, the sulphate to be put in a piece of sacking or light cloth, and hung by a string from the top of a barrel containing 18 gallons of water, a few inches below the surface so as to dissolve. Then slack 4 lbs. of fresh lime in as small a quantity of water as possible, the water being added very slowly, until slaking is completed; then slowly make up to 4 gallons. When cool, thoroughly stir and strain slowly ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... give a girl I know a chance, Mr. Strangman," she had pleaded; "she is clever and well-educated, but she needs experience. Take her, there is a good man, while your slack time is on, and she will be game for anything when ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... remorseless voice went on; only when it stopped was she aware of the mother's serene attitude of waiting, of polite regret at being present at a disagreeable scene; then the girl's lips resumed their sweetness, the beautiful hands fell slack upon her knees, the head lifted and, turning, rested peacefully against the cushion of her chair. The table was violently shaken. A small ornament upon it leaped into the air and fell in Kate's lap. She sprang to her feet with a cry of alarm, shaking the thing away as if ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... then the tumult on the bar ceases, the incoming seas rise clear and sandless, and the fierce race of the current slows down to a gentle drift; it is slack water, and the fish begin to move. One after another the foremost masses sweep round the horn of the reef and head for the smooth water inside. On the starboard hand a line of yellow sandbank is drying in the sun, and the passage has ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs Feebly, with futile reach And fingers without clutch. Her thews are slack And curved the ruined back And flesh empurpled like old meat, Yet each conspires To feed those guttering fires With ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... force recruited from such dissimilar sources must be a thing of wide and sundry experience. And obviously you are right. Could a man catch up the Z. P. by the slack of the khaki riding breeches and shake out their stories as a giant in need of carfare might shake out their loose change, then might he retire to some sunny hillside of his own and build him a sound-proof house with a swimming pool and a revolving bookcase and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... anxious to gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; there is more matter, more information, above all, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... 'n' he didn't look at the congregation; his great eyes was glued on Fiddy, as if he couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them secesh fellers'll wait on women folks long as they ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... who, when work is slack and members are unemployed, will advocate shorter hours at the same rate of pay so as to make ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... at her mother. The old mother retorted; the girl joined in. All three were scowling, flashing, showing teeth, driving the wordy javelin upon one another, indiscriminately, or two to one, without a pause; all to a sound like the slack silver string of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which time we must have drifted nearly twenty miles up the river, which was as broad as the arm of a sea at the entrance; then the tide turned, and we drifted back again till it was dusk, when it was again slack water. All this while we kept a sharp look-out to see if we could perceive any Indians, but not one was to be seen. I now proposed that we should take our oars and pull out of the river, as if we had only gone up on a survey, for the brig had got under weigh, and had anchored, for want of wind, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... bows of the leading boat, glanced over his right shoulder and beheld his line of followers, all in perfect order, extend themselves and close the mouth of the Cove. Ahead of him—ahead but a few yards only—he heard the slack tide run faintly on the shingle. From the dark beach came no sound. Overhead quivered the expectant stars. He lifted his sword-arm, and from point to hilt ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disabled the leading boat. Pearce, sitting by Fitzgibbon's side, heard a deep groan, and before he could even look up the master's mate fell forward, shot through the head. His boat took the lead. "Now's your time," cried Dick Rogers; "we'll be the first aboard, lads." The crew were not slack to follow the suggestion. In another moment they were up to the schooner, and, leaping on her deck, led by Pearce, laid on them so fiercely with their cutlasses that the Frenchmen, deserting their guns, sprang over the bulwarks into their boats on ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... as patriarch of the party. He possessed three books—the Bible, Milton's "Paradise Lost," and an odd volume of "The Turkish Spy." Just now he was reading "The Turkish Spy." The lamplight glinted on the rim of his spectacles and on the silvery hairs in his beard, the slack of which he had tucked under the edge of his blanket. His lips moved as he read, and now and then he broke off to glance mildly at Faed and the Snipe, who were busy beside the fire with a greasy pack of cards; or to listen to the peevish grumbling ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... whipped it with my line. My expectation was that as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It was ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... horse's hoofs were heard clattering along the road, and a fine-looking lad in a midshipman's uniform cantered up on a pony, holding his reins slack, and sitting with the careless air of a sailor. He had a noble broad brow, clear blue eyes, and thick, clustering, brown curls, his countenance being thoroughly bronzed by southern suns and sea air. His features ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... black mass, then the peak of a hood against the wall, and the long train of a woman's gown upon the floor, and then, between the loops of the hood, the edge of Mrs. Tailleur's white face, dim, but discernible. She sat sideways, leaning against the wall, in the slack, childlike attitude of ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... the portico of the hospital, but John Storm did not come. At seven she was ringing at the bell of a little house in St. John's Wood that stood behind a high wall and had an iron grating in the garden door. The bell was answered by a good-natured, slack-looking servant, who was friendly, and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... where none but the perfect knight could sit. A dim row of flaming swords might surround it. When the soul entitled to use this throne appears, the swords might fade away and the gray cover hanging in slack folds roll back because of an inner energy and the chair might turn from gray to white, and with a subtle change of line become ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have stiffened ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... consisting of peeled apples, pears, plums, and blackberries, in equal proportion; six pounds of raw sugar, at 4-1/2d. per pound; one quart of water. Bake three hours in a slack or slow oven. First, prepare the fruit, and put it in mixed layers of plums, pears, berries, apples, alternating each other, in stone jars. Next, put the six pounds of sugar in a clean saucepan, with the ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... its stouter brethren in the race for existence. The old mill hummed away through the day, and often late into the evening if time pressed, upon the grists which added a thin, intermittent stream of tribute to the family income. Whenever work was "slack," Friend Barton was sawing or chopping in the woodshed adjoining the kitchen; every moment he could seize or make he was there, stooping over the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the egoism of lawless passion, in the Erloesungen, 'I will fathom all pleasure to the deepest depths of thirst, ... Resign not pleasure, it waters power',—he can add, in the true spirit of Goethe and of the higher mind of Germany, 'Yet since it also makes slack, turn it into the stuff ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... did I no' think ye had come by boat," he whispered over a tendered ale-glass. "It was jist my luck to miss sic a grand ploy. I wad hae backed ye to haud the water against Black Andy and all his clan, and they're no' slack at a tulzie." ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... the fish in gently, then suddenly gave it plenty of slack line. These tactics were repeated, while Dave and Greg almost danced ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... of a certain brig came to see her on the day before sailing, and she reproached one of the lads for keeping bad company. "Avast, there, granny," interrupted another, who took the chiding to himself. "None of your slack, or I'll put a stopper on your gab." The old woman sprang erect. Levelling her skinny finger at the man, she screamed, "Moon cursers! You have set false beacons and wrecked ships for plunder. It was your fathers and mothers who decoyed a ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... not take the little craft long, running before the wind with a slack sheet, to reach the Horse Shingle shoal, beyond the outlying fort, and near the Warner light-ship, where lay the fishing-ground, or "bank," which the Captain had described as being especially ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... given very harshly, with a snapping explosiveness. Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. Way down the road, trilling like a toad, Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn, Here comes the snarl-horn, brawl-horn, lewd-horn, Followed by the prude-horn, bleak and squeaking:— (Some ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... probably remain true that the result will depend more on a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. Some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness; and in such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions seem to exert ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... brought great conviction to their hearts, and both of them sought the Lord for forgiveness of their sins, and both entered into the grace of conversion. The joy of this experience made their Bible study still more delightful. They had not been strangers to grace, but they had become slack and lukewarm, and when the light of God began to shine more brightly they felt that they should make sure work of it, and so they began at the bottom round of the ladder. They were glad afterwards that they had done this, because it gave them a ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... chief, stopping; "here, Margherita; here's a brave cloak for thee, my girl: silver enow on it to fill thy purse, if it ever grow empty; which it may, if ever the Plague grow slack." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... coming. The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of theatre conductors, the slackest of the slack old school. I may have mentioned that once I had the misfortune to play the piano part in a number of his trios; and though these are the only compositions of his known to me they suffice. A man who had the patience to plod through the task of writing such dreary stuff and the presumption ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... mankind. One late writer defines it thus: "LANGUAGE is any means by which one person communicates his ideas to another."—Sanders's Spelling-Book, p. 7. The following is the explanation of an other slack thinker: "One may, by speaking or by writing, (and sometimes by motions,) communicate his thoughts to others. The process by which this is done, is called LANGUAGE.—Language is the expression of thought and feeling."—S. W. Clark's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Play. A 3d. Inconvenience is, that oftentimes, if a High-stretch'd small String happen to slip down, 'tis in great danger to break at the next winding up, especially in wet moist weather, and that It have been long slack. The 4th. is, that when a String hath been slipt back, it will not stand in Tune, under many Amendments; for it is continually in stretching itself, till it come to Its highest stretch. A 5th. is, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Tom. That is right; now the sail is over. Slack out—slack out all it will go; the wind is nearly dead aft. Ease off the jib-sheet, Jack. That is it. Now she is ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... my chances," said Green, stepping forward. "Let me, cap'n. I can handle 'em if they haul in the slack and ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... matters of internal improvement now confronting the Government. Most of the navigable rivers of this country are comparatively long and shallow. In order that they may be made fully useful for navigation there has come into vogue a method of improvement known as canalization, or the slack-water method, which consists in building a series of dams and locks, each of which will create a long pool of deep navigable water. At each of these dams there is usually created also water power of commercial value. If the water power thus created can be made available for the further improvement ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... your wrists are enjoying too much play, that you are not holding your club with sufficient firmness, and that your arms are thrown too much upwards. Try a tighter grip. Remember that the grip with both hands should be firm. That with the right hand should not be slack, as one ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... had your mother only been a simple maid, all might have been right." But these were after-reflections when it was too late. I do not wonder at my poor father's senses being dazzled, for, as he said to me, "You see, Jack, after being used to see nothing but Point women, all so slack in stays and their rigging out of order, to fall aboard of a craft like your mother, so trim and neat, ropes all taut, stays well set up, white hammock-cloths spread every day in the week, and when under way, with a shawl streaming out like a silk ensign, ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
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