"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strained forwards, your hungry eyes eating through the gloom,—see emerge from the avenue two figures, sauntering lover-like side to side! How forgetful of the world they seem! Little think they of you, of the rack on which you have been outstretched. But their hour has come. This moment shall be their last of peace,—their last ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... his long, lean frame, shuddering as if it had been on the rack. He drew two deep breaths, braced himself, wiped the blood from his lip, put on the stony mask which Bridget saw when she opened her eyes and found him looking down ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... between his hands. "You make me see that there are two sides to the question, Selma. It is true that I was not myself when Elton got my promise to sign the bill. My mind had been on the rack for weeks, and I was unfit to form a correct estimate of a complicated public measure. But a ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... recalling its past, the kitchen into which Tommy and Elspeth peered was trying successfully to be something else. The plate-rack had been a fixture, and the coffin-bed and the wooden bole, or board in the wall, with its round hole through which you thrust your hand when you wanted salt, and instead of a real mantelpiece there ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... There are many good paintings, including portraits of the various presidents of the club, which adorn the entrance hall. After books, perhaps the most distinctive feature of the club is our collection of pipes. In a large rack in the smoking-room—really a superfluity, since smoking is permitted all over the house—is as complete an assortment of pipes as perhaps exists in the civilized world. Indeed, it is an unwritten rule of the club that no one is eligible for membership who cannot produce ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... tyrannies and vast, Tribes frost-bound to their past, Lands that are loud all through their length with chains, Wastes where the wind's wings break, Displumed by daylong ache And anguish of blind snows and rack-blown rains, And ice that seals the White Sea's lips, Whose monstrous weights crush flat the sides of ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the money that was in their house; for punishment of which that he be condemned to have his arms, legs, thighs and backbone broken, he alive, on a scaffold, which shall be erected for that purpose in the market place of this city, at noon, then on a rack, his face turned towards the sky, he be left to die. The said Jean Baptiste Goyer dit Belisle, being previously put to the torture ordinary and extraordinary, his dead body shall be carried by the executioners to the highway which lies between the house lately ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... by the wheel or the rack while some poor body is tortured to death; who can stand by while a human heart is breaking with the extremity of anguish? When such a grief comes to any one as to Leone, one stands by in silence; it is as though a funeral is passing, and one is breathless ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... of heresy, and their protectors. It is dreadful to think of the power placed in their hands. Already thousands of the inhabitants of the Netherlands have been burned, or drowned, or hung, or killed on the rack; those who can taking to flight, till many parts are well-nigh depopulated. Nothing can be more dreadful than the system of torture employed. The accused person is carried off to prison, often without knowing the crime he is accused of, or his accusers. He is tortured ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... side, and the candle burning a hole in the bubbly horn. Slowly recovering his wits, he strove to rise, as the deadly peril was borne in upon him. But instead of rising, he fell back again with a curse, and then a long-drawn groan; for pain (like the thrills of a man on the rack) had got hold of him and meant to keep him. His right arm was snapped at the elbow, and his left leg just above the knee, and the jar of his spine made him feel as if his core had been split out of him. He had no fat, like Shargeloes, to protect him, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... we heard the captain shouting orders, the answering cries of the sailors, and the groaning of the timbers, as if the ship were a living being stretched on a rack. Slipping out of my bunk and dressing quickly, I held on to ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... seemed quite so comforting as now. At first he thought it was as he had left it, for there was his desk where it should be, the big table in the middle of the room, the same pictures on the walls, his gun-rack filled with polished weapons, his pipes, the rugs on the floor—and then, one at a time, he began to observe things that were different. In place of dark shades there were soft curtains at his windows, and new covers on his table and the home-made couch in the corner. On his desk were two pictures ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... "There will always be problems like that here and there." He turned and stared almost reverently at the long control rack. "Be thankful we have The Computer to ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon
... him, and quickly he reached into a rack for the chart of the local sea-floor. His brow creased with puzzlement ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... distraught?" said the Queen. "Indeed we doubted not of it; her whole demeanour bears it out. I found her moping in a corner of yonder grotto; and every word she spoke—which indeed I dragged from her as by the rack—she instantly recalled and forswore. But how came she hither? Why had you her ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... matters, both important as well as unimportant, connected with the inner and outer quarters? Would I not at present have to worry my own mind, instead of leaving things to others? Why, I'd daily have to rack my brain and go and ask them to give me whatever I might need! Of those girls, who've come to my quarters and those who've gone, there only remains this single one. She's, besides other respects, somewhat older in years, and has as well a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... morrow he went thither again, and the morn was wild and stormy with drift of rain, and low clouds hurrying over the earth, though for the sunrise they lifted a little in the east, and the sun came up over the passes, amidst the red and angry rack of clouds. This morn also gave him no tidings of the token, and he was wroth and perturbed in spirit: but towards ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... The March rack hurries and hectors, The March dust heaps and blows; But the primrose flouts the daffodil, And here's the patient violet still; And the year's first crocus brought me luck, So hey ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... still rested, Mary took courage to wander round the room, looking at the books, the photographs on the walls, the rack of pipes, the carpenter's bench, and the panels of half-finished carving. Timidly, yet eagerly, she breathed in the message it seemed to bring her from its owner—of strenuous and frugal life. Was that half-faded miniature of a soldier his father—and that sweet gray-haired woman his mother? ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... first year of this course of life, his health, which had never been very good, began rapidly to fail. His cheeks became hollow, and a racking cough began to show itself. Still he went on keeping late hours, and drinking more and more freely, while his mind was all the time upon the rack. Towards the close of the second year, he was taken down with a severe illness, the result of all this abuse of mind and body. He lingered long upon the brink of the grave; but the little energy which his system retained, rallied at last, and he began slowly ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... vacant chair closer to her own, and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair, claiming it. Such a preemption, like that of a traveller's bag in the rack, was unquestionable; and, for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, with the under lip ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... drowning man, for, in truth, the very breath of his life was leaving him. A drumming came into his ears. He felt that he must call out to her before it was too late. He was counting aloud now, his voice like the moan of a man on the rack. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... examined after evensong today. If he refuse to give up the names of all to whom he has sold his books, and who have listened to his teachings, they declare he will be sent to the Tower to be examined by the rack." ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... photographs ornamented the mantelpiece and were mixed up, without attempt at classification, with curious odds and ends which Peter had sent home from South Africa during the war time. Some riding-whips hung on a rack on the wall, side by side with a few strange sketches in oil-colours of Jane's favourite hunters, painted by herself. Peter thought the sketches were among the best he had ever seen, and even Jane was rather pleased ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... excellent use of lessons learned in her few previous long journeys, took off her hat and gloves and placed them in a paper bag which Bob put in the rack ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... hold of them at all, the church had to translate its mysteries and sublimities into a very material and crude ceremonial. It brought in penalties of a substantial sort,—penance and excommunication, the rack and the stake. It constantly appealed to fear. And after all, there remained always an enormous amount of stolid and mostly silent indifference and unbelief. The priest said these things were so,—the priests all said so,—and ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... given the teachings at first, they are not naturally fulfilled. Nor, again, does it know how existing conditions may be removed or bettered. It resorts to this expedient and that to restrain evil, but it cannot attain the art of uprooting and destroying it. With the sword, rack and gallows the judge may restrain public crime, but he cannot punish more than what is known and witnessed to before the court. Whatever is done secretly and never comes before him, he cannot punish or restrain. The Word of God, however, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... so clean that they had a new beauty. Above the fireplace was a great black eagle which Gavotte had killed, the wings outspread and a bunch of arrows in the claws. In one corner near the fire was a washstand, and behind it hung the fishing-tackle. Above one door was a gun-rack, on which lay the rifle and shotgun, and over the other door was a pair of deer-antlers. In the center of the room stood the square home-made table, every inch scrubbed. In the side room, which is the bedroom, was a wide bunk ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... some of whom are alive and some of whom are gone, gathered around and congratulated the California upon its attitude. Individually, it gave me a feeling of pride and satisfaction to be the representative of a company which manfully stood up to the rack with the best traditions of American fire insurance. It may be well to recall to mind as a historical fact that it was at this meeting the term ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks
... the rack all the next day. It was the last day I should be in England, and I had a nervous dread of being detained. If I should once more succeed in quitting the country undetected, it seemed as though I might hope to be in ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... think it could become known from those ingots," said my uncle musingly, "though Garcia will rack his brains to find out how you became possessed of them. And yet I don't know; you see they have two or three characters stamped on them that the Indians might ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater
... his hat and stood irresolute, expecting some greeting. But nothing happened. On a rack against the wall he saw a gray uniform coat like that which Mr. Quimbleton had worn in the Balloon office, and a similar gray cap with the silver monogram. He glanced at the books. One was The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the other was a Bible, ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... done, the ships were found to have fine models—they rode the waves in a way that excited the admiration of all sailors. But the keelsons under the engines were only 40 inches deep, while the keels were 277 ft. long, and there was 'give' enough to rack the engines to pieces." Spears, ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... bless him! ha, ha, ha! Doesn't he harry the poor, an' drive away their cows from them—doesn't he rack them an' rob them—harry them, rack them, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... disturb the gentle confidence of his sister and her daughter? She could not make them miserable merely to lift from her own mind a portion of its anxiety. She could only lie awake, night after night, and rack her brain with a thousand gloomy forebodings. She recalled certain phrases he had used in moments of pathetic confidence. She recalled the quick look of pain with which he sometimes paused in the middle of his speech, the almost involuntary raising the hand to the region of the heart, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... them into a floor-clothed back parlour, half office and half dressing room, in which the principal useful and ornamental articles of furniture were a desk, a wash-hand stand and shaving-glass, a boot-rack and boot-jack, a high stool, four chairs, a table, and an old eight-day clock. Over the mantelpiece were the sunken doors of an iron safe, while a couple of hanging shelves for books, an almanac, and several files of dusty papers, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... account of his kind-heartedness, partly since he could never resist a bargain and he got her for almost nothing, partly, perhaps because of his canny foresight, bought a wretched, puny, sickly, little runt of a four-year-old slave-girl, a mere rack of bones covered with yellow skin. She continued sickly for some years, then, when she was more than half grown, the fresh air of Trebula, its good water, the kindness with which she was treated, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... lined with nipa booths, where senoritas play at keeping shop, presiding over the army of unattractive articles exposed for sale. Upon a rack the cans of salmon are drawn up in a battalion, a detachment of ex-whisky bottles filled with kerosene or tanduay, bringing up the rear. Certain stock articles may be invariably found at these tiendas,—boxes of matches, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Mr. Drinkwater's quarrymen. Immediately the eye before-mentioned was aflame, and in sonorous tones the owner "war-r-r-ned" the foremen and workmen from holding any converse with Mr. Charles George Mahon, whom he addressed personally as "a rack-renting landlord," and otherwise held up to scorn and derision. Perched on his crutches, the cripple defied him, and poured out a torrent of eloquence on "the fiery dthragon of hunger" and other direful creatures, including ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the morning she had made this same trip dressed in one of Mrs. Gay's gowns. On her knees Mrs. Gay's canary, extinguished beneath the black silk cover to his cage, uttered from time to time a feeble pipe of inquiry, and on the rack above her head Mrs. Gay's tea basket rattled loudly in a sudden lurch of the train. Since the hour in which she had left the overseer's cottage and moved into the "big house" at Jordan's Journey, the appealing little lady had been the dominant ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... country gentleman,' by some 'a sporting gentleman,' by some 'a thorough-bred Englishman,' by some 'a genuine John Bull;' but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day. He was in the commission of the peace, and could write his name almost legibly; but his greatest qualifications were, that he was more severe with poachers, was a better shot, a harder rider, had better horses, kept better dogs, could eat more solid food, drink ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Tell me what great sin have I committed, That thou keep'st me to the rack thus fasten'd, That thou ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... added, that there are many instances of men's suffering and dying in an obstinate denial of the truth of facts plainly proved. This observation is also true. I remember a story of a man who endured with great constancy all the tortures of the rack, denying the fact with which he was charged. When he was asked afterwards, how he could hold out against all the tortures? He answered, I had painted a gallows upon the toe of my shoe, and when the rack stretched me, ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... larger instruments other arrangements are needed, both to give the telescope steadiness, and to supply slow movements in altitude and azimuth. The student will find no difficulty in understanding the arrangement of sliding-tubes and rack-work commonly adopted. This arrangement seems to me to be in many respects defective, however. The slow movement in altitude is not uniform, but varies in effect according to the elevation of the object ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... Indian whom he should discover stealing his fruit. One day while the stout Dutchman was at his midday meal, his son ran in to tell him that he had seen an Indian squaw enter the orchard. Van Dyck sprang from the table vowing vengeance, and from the rack made of deer's horns he took down his fusee and rushed into the orchard, taking care to conceal himself until he was within easy range. The squaw saw him and, with a yell of fear, wheeled to fly for her life; but Van Dyck was a true shot and, ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... were hurried and worried and flurried at the last at the station. You look so white and tired. How your breath comes and goes! And I think you're new to our Canadian ways. I saw you didn't understand about the checks for the baggage. Let me take away this bag and put it up in the rack for you. Here's a footstool for your feet; that'll make ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... warm and muggy one threatening rain awhile Jane was resting in the court, a horseman clattered through he grove and up to the hitching-rack. He leaped off and approached Jane with the manner of a man determined to execute difficult mission, yet fearful of its reception. In the gaunt, wiry figure and the lean, brown face Jane recognized one of her Mormon riders, Blake. It was ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... painless world?" It is possible that a future society may find a way of doing without the question by hunger as we have done without the question by fire. It is equally possible, for the matter of that, that a future society may reestablish legal torture with the whole apparatus of rack and fagot. The most modern of countries, America, has introduced with a vague savor of science, a method which it calls "the third degree." This is simply the extortion of secrets by nervous fatigue; which is surely uncommonly close to their extortion by bodily pain. And this is legal and ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... before in the dungeons of Naples. They had been spoken by the Inquisitors who came to Italy with one of the Spanish princes. Instantly he recalled the scene where first he had listened to them—the dungeon draped in black—the white-hot irons which had seared his flesh; the rack which had maimed his limbs, the masked men who had ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... monk went behind him. He came from the feast at Berg Rese's house, drenched with blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his forehead. And he whispered: "Denounce him, betray him, save his soul. Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared. Leave him to the slow torture of the rack, that his soul ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the place, I found it possible to discern the outlines of the windows and locate the stairs and the arches where the side halls opened. I was even able to pick out the exact spot where the great antlers spread themselves above the hatrack, and presently the rack itself came into view, with its row of empty pegs, yesterday so full, to-day quite empty. That rack interested me,—I hardly knew why,—and regardless of the noise I made, I crossed over to it and ran my hand along the wall underneath. The result ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... technique? Assuredly we do not rise in disgust from a musical comedy because "in real life" a bevy of shapely maidens in scant attire never goes tripping and singing blithely though the streets. If then we can establish that Plautus regarded his adapted dramas merely as a rack on which to hang witticisms, merely as a medium for laugh-provoking sallies and situations, we have at once Plautus as he pretended to be, and in large measure the answer to the original question: "What manner of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Ne'er entered convent walls, and nuns were ice. A very diff'rent sentiment I hold: Girls, who in publick move, however bold, Have greater terrors lest they get a stain; For, honour lost, they never fame regain. Few enemies their modesty attack; The others have but one their minds to rack. TEMPTATION, daughter of the drowsy dame, That hates to move, and IDLENESS we name, Is ever practising each wily art, To spread her snares around the throbbing heart; And fond DESIRE, the child of lorn CONSTRAINT, Is anxious to the soul soft scenes to paint. If I've a worthy daughter ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... boat, flashed a glance at the gun-rack. The rifle was gone. The patent-clasp which held the weapon in place had been wrenched free. Her eyes traveled to the empty provision-locker, which stood open. Close by it lay a small monkey-wrench with which some one ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... and I took in the rest of my surroundings, which may be very simply described. Two long cushion-covered seats flanked the cabin, bounded at the after end by cupboards, one of which was cut low to form a sort of miniature sideboard, with glasses hung in a rack above it. The deck overhead was very low at each side but rose shoulder high for a space in the middle, where a 'coach-house roof' with a skylight gave additional cabin space. Just outside the door was a fold-up washing-stand. On either wall ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to confirm the supposition that the lifting up of a building is here in question, is the indication of engines for winding up, such as jacks, and a rack and wheel. As the lifting apparatus represented on this sheet does not seem particularly applicable to an undertaking of such magnitude, we may consider it to be a first sketch or scheme for the engines ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... came in. George found an empty compartment; helped his poor Mary to a corner; roughly dumped the cat-basket upon the rack; moodily plumped ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the vanquishers. Till then, the Right must be content to be called the Wrong, and — which is far harder — to seem the Wrong. There is no spiritual victory gained by a verbal conquest; or by any kind of torture, even should the rack employed be that of the purest logic. Nay more: so long as the wicked themselves remain impenitent, there is mourning in heaven; and when there is no longer any hope over one last remaining sinner, heaven itself must ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... each other with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, it was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my good opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. My own position, if you consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder, and that yet I lived and fattened on these questionable operations, was perhaps equally distressing. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... order. Would anybody in this trim household care in the very least whether the old Irishman broke his heart or not? whether he and the Irish girl had to go forth from the home of their ancestors? whether the wild, beautiful, rack-rent sort of place was kept in the ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... I remain shut up at Sambor with The fires of boundless longing in my breast? Beyond the Dnieper will my die be cast, While boundless space divides me from the spot; Can I endure it? Oh, the impatient spirit Will lie upon the rack of expectation And measure out this monstrous length of space With groans and anxious throbbings of ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... too hard, and you'll be too easy, too," said Hilda savagely. "You'll lose the good tenants and you'll keep the bad ones, and the houses will all go to rack and ruin, and then you'll sell all the property at a loss. That's how it will be. And what shall you do if you're not feeling well, and if it rains ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... wild eyes from one thing to another in the room—her rocking-chair at a window, her sewing close by, a book on the table, her bed made up in the corner, her washstand of curly maple—the pitcher full of water and clean towels hanging from the rack. Hale had gotten out the things she had packed away and the room was just as she had always kept it. She ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... coast chart-book in the rack. Doc took it down and began to read it. He made regular trips down to see how his wounded patient was getting on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting things in chart-books—he used to read them ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... Immediately behind it was a steel grating, firmly embedded in the sides of the tunnel, and on one of the bars the muzzle of the sniper's rifle was laid, its stock resting on an ingenious wooden fork, which could be raised or lowered by a rack and pinion. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... next. The horrors of Maurice's condemnation and the thought of her little lost sister nearby, rack her with a stinging pain in which is ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the fierce blaze. One of the other tenants came running with a fire extinguisher in either hand from wall rack down the hall on this floor. As well try to drown a blast furnace. They made ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... from a rack in the hearth, and, his face set like a mask, Paul took the crude weapon in his hand, and slowly raised his head until he was looking up at the oil-painting above the mantelpiece. The sound of a dry and discreet cough close behind him drew his attention to the presence of Davison. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... and even the succeeding winter and spring,—scarcely able to hear the far-off noises of the great struggle in which he had hitherto borne so rugged a part, and of which the victorious issue was then to be seen by him, though dimly, through many a murky rack ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... a meeting of the club," Helen took up the story, "so Roger and I came over and talked with Grandfather, and he lent us a hay rack and we dressed it up with boughs and got the carpenters to make some very large cut out letters—U. S. C.—two sets of them, so they could be read on both sides. They were painted white and stood up high among the green ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... was handy and oars were in the rack in the boathouse, and soon the pair were out on the water. Although but a boy, Jack took to the water naturally and handled the oars as ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... law against it. I made him with all his fingers out and used him as a hat-rack, but that fool Homersby got up a quarrel with him late one night and spoilt him. That was before your time. It is hard to get skins, or I ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable Rosita's admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps'-eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny McRoy galloped far ahead, wherefore ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... "because I do not understand just what you propose to do. Are you going to impoverish yourself and the whole family? Are you thinking of turning over your farms to these stupid peasants who will let them go to rack and ruin? Will you give your property to the village council who will drink it up in a month? You know how much money Peter needs; he is a member of twelve first-class clubs. And Olga's husband is not earning much. Are you going to starve your children and grandchildren ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... for cheese. To a pint of juice add a pound of anchovies, and boil them slowly till the anchovies are dissolved. Strain it; add half a pint of white wine vinegar, half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of cloves, and forty peppercorns; boil it a quarter of an hour, and, when cold, rack it off and bottle it. A quarter of a pint of vinegar put to the dregs that have been strained off, and well boiled up, makes an excellent seasoning for the cook's use in hashes, ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... here conclude my memoirs, by assuring my readers, that after a full experience of most of what are called the pleasures of life, I would not accept of all the Glenthorn and Sherwood estates, to pass another year of such misery as I endured whilst I was "stretched on the rack of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... upon the rack just now. Duckworth went after the French Squadron that I had intelligence of near Teneriffe. I am afraid the Frenchman has duped him, and by throwing false intelligence in his way has sent him to the West Indies—or ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... mentally noted that the timepiece was inaccurate—three and a half minutes behind Greenwich. As usual, the hall was untenanted, with no servant to answer questions. He searched the dark recesses of a dirty letter-rack, on the chance that he might find a telegram from his wife waiting for him. Then he went gaily up the interminable staircase, making nothing now of its five flights, enjoying their steepness ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... the landlords, who charged the peasantry six pounds an acre for their land, and yet made them work for fivepence per day. It was also found that some landlords had excited their tenants to rob the clergy, for the purpose of adding the value of the tithes to their rack-rents, and that the magistrates had in several instances connived at the outrages. These troubles passed over, but the same spirit of disaffection towards the government still existed in Ireland. And this, perhaps, was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... my dear nephew," said Mr. Bloomfield, with the voice of one on the rack. "I regard you with the most sacred affection; and I thank God I am an Englishman—and all that. But ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ditches. They were half naked, half starved, utterly destitute of all providence and of all education, liable at any time to be turned adrift from their holdings, ground to the dust by three great burdens—rack-rents, paid not to the landlord but to the middleman; tithes, paid to the clergy—often the absentee clergy—of the church to which they did not belong; and dues, paid to their own priests" ("Hist, of Ireland," vol. i., pp. 214-215, ed. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... our human relations; by the reality of our social feeling; by our practical solidarity with our fellow-men. If we lived in the presence of hunger, loneliness, and oppression, in the same country with child labor, race contempt, the long day, rack rents, prostitution, just earnings withheld by power, the price of living raised to swell swollen profit—if we saw such things and ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... instructive and interesting communication might be made by noting down the periods at which the various more revolting punishments under the English law were repealed, or fell into disuse. For instance, when torture, such as the rack, was last applied; when embowelling alive and quartering ceased to be practised; and whose was the last head that fell under the axe's bloody stroke. A word also on the use of the pillory, ducking-stool, stocks, &c. would interest. Any illustrations of the modification of our penal code would throw ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... Speaker of the Long Parliament, with an urgent request that they might be returned to him, with authority to proceed against the parties named, as outlaws. In Leinster, 4,000 similar indictments were found in the course of two days by the free use of the rack with witnesses. Sir John Read, an officer of the King's Bedchamber, and Mr. Barnwall, of Kilbrue, a gentleman of threescore and six, were among those who underwent the torture. When these were the proceedings of the tribunals in peaceable cities, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... graver business. Ever Virginia kept watch for a track that was not an animal track, a blaze on a tree that was not made by the teeth of a porcupine or grizzly, a charred cook rack over the ashes of a fire. But as yet they had found no sign of human wayfarers other than themselves. There were no cut trees, no blazed trails, no sign of a habitation. Yet she didn't despair. She had ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the anchor down there," said the other. "Are they tying her up for the night, too? How long it takes them! Oh, for an inquisition and a rack,—I am so cramped! Eve, here, is extinguished. What a day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on table, consisting of rose bowl in centre, toast rack, marmalade, entree dish, plate of bread, butter, tray of teacups, etc., sugar, pile of plates, and for each person a bread plate, a serviette, a ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... powerful counterpoise in two other fifth-form fellows, Franklin and Cradock, whose excellence was almost solely due to Walter's influence. Kenrick, on the other hand, never interfered in the house, and let things go on exactly as they liked, although they were going to rack and ruin. ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... 'bout as certain of fair fortune as a man can be. Venwell rights[6] be mine, and theer's no better moorland grazing than round these paarts. The farm-land looks a bit foul, along o' being let go to rack, but us'll soon have that clean again, an' some gude stuff into it, tu. My awn work'll be staring me in the faace before summer; an' by the time Phoebe do come to be mistress, nobody'll knaw ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Mule, where he sat in triumph with expert operators and great wits! He is at the lees of life, poor rogue; and those fingers which once transcribed improper romances are now agonisingly stretched upon the rack. We have no sure knowledge, but we may have a shrewd guess of the conclusion. Tabary, the admirer, would go the same way as ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Grethel, ties her to a rope, leads her to the rack and binds her fast. Then Hans goes to his mother. "Good evening, mother." "Good evening, Hans. Where hast thou been?" "With Grethel." "What didst thou take her?" "I took her nothing." "What did Grethel give thee?" "She gave me nothing, she came with me." "Where hast thou left Grethel?" "I led her ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the Prince; "by whom are they asserted, save by a wretch too infamous, even by his own confession, to be credited for a moment, though a beggar's character, not a prince's, were impeached? Fetch him hither, let the rack be shown to him; you will soon hear him retract the calumny which he dared ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... squadron, while eighteen were sent to look for Villeneuve under the command of Admiral Calder. In the public discontent with the latter, it was not reassuring to know that, at a moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he was again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, Nelson called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, on the 23d of August. "Yesterday," he wrote to Captain ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... all, both men and women, take off their shoes before entering. To see these shoes, or clogs, is quite a sight. They are placed in racks made for that purpose, each having their own particular place in the rack. ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... returned the musket to the rack, muttering as he did so; but what he said neither the captain nor his mates were ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... yards, and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer hover around us; everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes of the mountain the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as if in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth fall like ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... bayed the fierce, famished timber wolf. The lighter but more doleful howl of coyote seemed to reply from every point of the compass. And amidst the rack of savage chorus came the harsh human voice that had little the better of the animal world in the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the two seamen to be thrown overboard, Selak, the most courageous, entered the cabin, took a couple of muskets from the rack, and some powder and ball from the mate's berth, and returning to his followers, bade them bring ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... for its pleasure doth create The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die; The wretched gift eternity Was thine—and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee, But would not to appease him tell; And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled That in his hand ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... a new power—the "spiritual power." This power has more than once belied its origin. For ages the bishops have been princes, and the Pope has been a king. The pretended empire of souls has shown itself at various times as a frightful tyranny, employing the rack and the stake in order to maintain itself. But the day will come when the separation will bear its fruits, when the domain of things spiritual will cease to be called a "power," that it may be called a "liberty." Sprung from the conscience of a man of ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... to the rack before the store and entered the crowded place. The fumes of tobacco smoke, vinegar, cheese, and various other commodities gave a distinctive flavor to Caleb Schell's store—and not a pleasant ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... storms Rack the worn cordage of the heart, it breathes A healing essence, and a strength'ning charm, Next to the ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... it, clutching her shawl and gritting her white teeth together. "Oh, I go my ways, my rye, but I have not done with you yet, may the big devil rack my bones if I have. You win to-day—I win to-morrow, and so good day to you, and curses on you for a bad one. The devil is a nice character—and that's you!" she screamed, beside herself with rage. "The puro beng is a fino mush, if you will have the kalo jib!" and with a wild cry worthy ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... now rose and, stepping to a gun-rack, took down a rifle and laid it on the table, ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... Mr. Arthur Hill, son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000 l. per annum. Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted. They sit upon a rack-rent, and pay 5 s. or 6 s. for good ploughing land, which now is ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... and thirty-one tens," he read from the payroll change slip before him. The paymaster of the Cramer Packing Company nodded an assent and Winston turned to the stacked bills in his rear currency rack. He picked up a handful of bundles and turned back to the grill. His gaze swept the counter where, a moment before, he had stacked the twenties, and his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... and then came Uncle John. One flight up they paused at a door marked "D", upon the panel of which was a rack bearing a card printed with ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... thoroughly die to himself, that I could have wished him all the crosses and afflictions imaginable, that might conduce to this great and blessed end. Whenever he was unfaithful, or looked at things in any other light than the true one—to tend to this death of self—I felt myself on the rack, which, as I had till then been so indifferent, very much surprised me. To the Lord I made my complaint; He graciously encouraged me, both on this subject and on that entire dependence on Himself which He gave me, which was such that I was ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... In vain did I rack invention to endeavour to account for so strange an incident: my conjectures were all unsatisfactory, all improbable. I looked round to see if I could discover his lordship in the house, but without success: ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... because Thou gavest me life, and led to that which made That life for once delicious. O, great sir, The King's thy foe? Surrounded by his guards I would waylay him. Hast thou some fierce rival? I'll pluck his heart out. Yea! there is no peril I'd not confront, no rack I'll not endure, No great offence commit, to do thee service— So thou wilt spare me this, and spare thy soul ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... forsooth? dared he so asperse mine honour? Ha, here is matter for red-hot irons, the pincers and the rack, anon. But come, Sir Robert—thou dost bear news, belike; come your ways and drink a goblet ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... the gay and guileless laugh Of children with their nusses, The loud uneducated chaff Of clerks on omnibuses. Against all minor things that rack A nicely-balanced mind, I'll back The noisy chaff And ill-bred ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... down and from a rack of arms Harry chose a plain black hanger with an agate hilt. As he did it on he saw below it some heavy staves loaded with lead—just such as the ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... test the water, several toothpicks on which a little absorbent cotton is twisted, and the rolled flannel band. Then a basin containing warm water, 98 to 100 degrees F., also one with cold water. The baby-clothes should be hung on a rack close ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... vaulted over the side nearest him and began to explore the under-seat regions for a jack. The other man picked up the baby and hurried to the rear of the runabout to detach the spare tire from its dusty rack. Manifestly, he could not unstrap the tire while he was carrying a baby in his arms. So he set down his burden at the ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... characteristic big-game animals of the country. "Well," said Father Zahm, "now you've shot them both!" The storm continued heavy until after sunset. Then the rain stopped and the full moon broke through the cloud-rack. Father Zahm and I walked up and down in the moonlight, talking of many things, from Dante, and our own plans for the future, to the deeds and the wanderings of the old-time Spanish conquistadores in their search ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt |
