"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... garden, surrounded by a hedge of woodbines. Opening a gate at one corner of the garden, he led the way to a large shed which stood partly behind the cottage, which he said was his stable; thereupon he dismounted and led his donkey into the shed, which was without stalls, but had a long rack and manger. On one side he tied his donkey, after taking off her caparisons, and I followed his example, tying my horse at the other side with a rope halter which he gave me; he then asked me to come in and taste his mead, but I told him that I must attend to ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... 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
... we are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when he ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the doctor, and he took a bright glass measure from where it hung by its foot in a little rack, safe from falling by the rolling of the vessel; "I was just going to test these spirits, and I thought I should ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... ever when the happy laugh is dumb, All the joy gone, and all the sorrow come, When loss, despair, and soul-distracting pain, Wring the sad heart and rack the throbbing brain, The only hope—the only comfort heard— Comes in the music of a woman's word. Like beacon-bell on some wild island shore, Silverly ringing through the tempest's roar, Whose sound borne shipward ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... hospitality not to be imposed upon when one could see how limited quarters were in this small village. Some day I suppose a plaque will be put up on the door of that small house, with its narrow hall and plain hat-rack and the sitting-room turned into a dining-room, saying that General (perhaps it will be Marshal) Nivelle lived here during the battle of Verdun. It is a fine gift, simplicity. Some great men, or those who are called great, lack it; but nothing is so attractive ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon the rack. ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. "There is Henry de Spain's coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you'll find his belt of cartridges. Don't take ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Peloponnesus lost no considerable part of its original population till long after the whole had become Hellenic." (P. 54.) Herodotus had said that certain Pelasgians living in his time spoke a language different from the Greeks. Dr Thirlwall puts the passage of Herodotus upon the rack to extract from it a confession that the difference was not greater than between one dialect of Greek from another. Yet, as the narrative proceeds—if narrative it can be called—we have the Pelasgians and the Greeks represented as essentially ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... picking up the fleece enjoy the merry din, They throw the classer up the fleece, he throws it to the bin; The pressers standing by the rack are waiting for the wool, There's room for just a couple more, the press is nearly full; Now jump upon the lever, lads, and heave and heave away, Another bale of ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... consequent infiltration of steam, thereby saving passengers from the peril of death by suffocation. It was he who, thumping the table with an iron fist, had insisted vehemently that caged parrots travelling in the rack should, if capable of speech, be compelled to pay the full fare. It was he who effected one of the greatest economies that the line had ever known by using rock-cakes which had served their term of years in the refreshment-room as a substitute for the keys which hold ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... seaward swept the squall; The low sun smote through cloudy rack; The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all The trend of the coast lay hard and black. But far and wide as eye could reach, No life was seen upon wave or beach; The boat that went out at morning never Sailed back again into ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... this form of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I take the dust in my nostrils ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... charge her with being unfit for the trust Mrs. Gray had reposed in her. She stepped to the library table and, opening a drawer, took out a sheet of her own monogrammed stationery and an envelope. Seating herself at the table, she took her pen from its rack. After a little thought she began writing in the clear, strong hand that characterized her. Her letter consisted of not more than a dozen lines. When she had finished she sealed, stamped, and addressed it to President Morton with a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... floods of which flowed over from the Germany of Luther's way of thinking to mingle with the growing religious sects in Bohemia. This was not done without torture and bloodshed, so the Hrad[vs]any witnessed the sufferings, under the rack, of Augusta, the Bishop of the Unity of Bohemian Brethren, and the execution of several prominent citizens of Prague for defying royal authority in matters of conscience. Ferdinand, on the abdication of his father, succeeded him as ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... again singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man who borrows trouble Is always on the rack, For there's no way, by night or day, That he can pay ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... when she had bathed and dressed. Each detail of her domestic schedule was given an extra care this morning. The stove was carefully polished, each pot and pan placed in its rack with a precision that spoke an unusual joy within the heart ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... by a public execution. The possession of a piece of tobacco was penal, and for this offence alone multitudes were flogged; but its use was only limited by the supply: many men would have risked the rack, rather than rejected this valued indulgence. A wesleyan missionary was accustomed to reward his servant with the luxury, until he found that being distributed, others were involved in punishment. Visitors usually ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... respectable man he is, what a hard dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential man: how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the prosaic "season," he has distinctly the appearance of a man conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate him with relaxation, or ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... in the stationery rack on a small writing-table, and taking one scribbled a couple of lines to Sir Bernard, at Hove, informing him of the mysterious affair. This I folded and placed in my pocket in readiness for the re-opening of the telegraph office at ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the bow-window I observed a tribe of them standing with tiny valises and carpetbags in their hands, as though about to depart on a journey. On my writing-table another set stood around my inkstand and pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some question among themselves; while others of them appeared to be collecting and packing away in tiny trunks certain fairy treasures, preparatory to a general departure. When I looked ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... round and placed on the rack behind the wagon. It was a large black trunk, securely bound with brass bands, and showed marks of service, as if it had been considerably used. Two small strips of paper pasted on the side bore the custom-house marks of Havre and Liverpool. On one end was a large card, on which, ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Yea, that they shall separate themselves by the dictate of God, from their brethren, to do so, is that which this text knows nothing of. Sometimes many may be together, apart from others; but why Mr. K., to serve his purpose, should rack and strain this text to justify his woman's meeting, I see no reason at all. My reason against him is, for that the look here upon him whom we have pierced, which is to be the cause of this mourning, is to be by an immediate revelation of the Holy Ghost, who doth not use to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the left is a sideboard. On it are set silver salvers, candlesticks, and Christmas presents of silver. They still are in the red flannel bags in which they arrived. In the left wall is a recessed window hung with curtains. Against the right wall is a buffet on which is set a tea-caddy, toast-rack, and tea kettle. Below the buffet a door opens into the butler's pantry. A dinner table stands well down the stage with a chair at each end and on either side. Two chairs are set against the back wall to the right of the door. The walls and windows are decorated with ...
— Miss Civilization - A Comedy in One Act • Richard Harding Davis
... ROCK.—The party returned from this place on the 13th, late in the afternoon, bringing specimens of the native copper. They were nine hours in getting to the forks, and continued the rest of the day in getting to the rack, where they encamped. They had been four hours in descending what required nine in going up. The doctor brought several fine and large masses of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... person he had called. The identification number was repeated aloud, a string of figures and letters that were a meaningless jumble to Karl. The room became quiet while the police captain thumbed the pages of a huge book he had taken from among many similar ones that filled a rack behind the desk. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... than wicked, it is vulgar too; N'importe—with that we've nothing here to do. If 'twere artistic I would lie till death, And shape a falsehood with my latest breath. Parrhasius never more did pity lack, The while his model writhed upon the rack, Than I for my collaborator's pain, Who, stabbed with fibs again and yet again, Would vainly seek to move my stubborn heart If slander were, and wit were not, an art. The ill-bred and illiterate can lie As fast as you, and faster far than I. Shall I compete, ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... we got settled down on board I was delighted to find that J. P. had apparently satisfied himself in regard to my qualifications and limitations. He abandoned the searching examinations which had kept me on the rack for nearly eight months, and our relations ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... is scudding over the steppe, and beating upon the rampart of the Caucasian heights until their backbone seems to be bellying like a huge sail, and the earth to be whirling and whizzing through unfathomable depths of blue, and leaving behind it a rack of wind-torn clouds which, as their shadows glide over the surface of the land, seem ever to be striving to keep in touch with the onrush of the gale, and, failing to maintain the effort, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... hands, beautifully soft and white, flashed over the board. She dealt rapidly, unfalteringly, with the finish of one bred to the cards, handling chips and coppers with the peculiar mannerisms that spring from long practice. It was seen that she never looked at her check-rack, but, when a bet required paying, picked up a stack without turning her head; and they saw further that she never reached twice, nor took a large pile and sized it up against its mate, removing the extra disks, as is the custom. When she stretched forth her hand she grasped ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... rather 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 I ought to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... been staring at an old print by the hat-rack, thinking, 'That's got value!' murmured: "I'll go up and see ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rack and roar; We do not fear its blast; And we'll bear with faith and fortitude The ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... his return was heavy with a wet low vapor. The mail bags, as he strapped them to the rear rack, were slippery; the dawn was a slow monotonous widening of dull light. There were no passengers for Crabapple, and David, with his coat collar turned up about his throat, urged the horses to a faster gait ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... for pool and one for billiards. He hung about aimlessly, watching the game at the one occupied table. The players were slim young men like himself, their clothes replicas of his own, their faces lean and somewhat hard. Two of them dropped out. Nick took a cue from the rack, shed his tight coat. They played under a glaring electric light in the heat of the day, yet they seemed cool, aloof, immune from bodily discomfort. It was a strangely silent game and as mirthless as that of the elfin bowlers in Rip Van Winkle. The slim-waisted shirted ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... "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 for ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... letters for her in the rack. She took them down, and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing ruefully staring through ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... fearful wood. With toil and hardship yet unspent Three leagues from Janasthan they went, And speeding on their way at last Within the wood of Krauncha(515) passed: A fearful forest wild and black As some huge pile of cloudy rack, Filled with all birds and beasts, where grew Bright blooms of every varied hue. On Sita bending every thought Through all the mighty wood they sought, And at the lady's loss dismayed Here for a while and there they stayed. Then turning ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... glorious morning I have seen Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit the basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... plain but good, had been bought, piece by piece, to replace ruder articles they had made at the mill. One or two handsome skins lay upon the uncovered floor, and the walls were made of varnished cedar boards. A gun-rack occupied a corner, and the books on a shelf indicated that their owners had some literary taste, though there were works on mining and forestry. Above the shelf, the huge head of a moose, shot on a prospecting Journey to the North, hung between the smaller heads of bear ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... "Now rack your brains, my friend, over this fellow," M. Etienne said patiently, with a persuasive chink of his pouch. "Recollect now; you have been sent to this ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... many years, in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain— Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew, To thy rack'd heart and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the front door behind her, with what was almost a bang, and then throwing her coat and hat on the hall rack, she burst into the living-room, where Mrs. Maynard was sitting with ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... memory of Theodora. Her numerous spies observed, and zealously reported, every action, or word, or look, injurious to their royal mistress. Whomsoever they accused were cast into her peculiar prisons, [31] inaccessible to the inquiries of justice; and it was rumored, that the torture of the rack, or scourge, had been inflicted in the presence of the female tyrant, insensible to the voice of prayer or of pity. [32] Some of these unhappy victims perished in deep, unwholesome dungeons, while others were permitted, after the loss of their limbs, their reason, or their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Rack, or rib chops, used for French chops, rib chops, either for frying or broiling; also used ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... took the railway omnibus and went away in it. With the noble openhandedness of her class, she gave me sixpence; here it is, in proof that my words is true. And I wish her safe home, and if I was on the rack I could tell no more, except that when I got back I were laid hands on by these here bobbies, contrary to the British constitooshun, and if your ladyship will kindly go to where that constitooshun is wrote down, and find out wot it sez ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... middle-weight boxer of some pretensions, although hampered by aiguilettes and outnumbered six to one, were not easily disposed of. But they were ultimately overpowered, and carried, puffing with exhaustion and helpless with laughter, over the debris of the bridge-table, gramophone and paper-rack, out through ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... Norway, he rounded the North Cape, passed into the White Sea, and entered the Dwina River (nmicela). On his second voyage he sailed southward along the western coast of Norway, entered the Skager Rack (wds:), passed through the Cattegat, and anchored at the Danish port of Haddeby (tH:um), ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... makin' hard cider," said Anderson, with some irritation. "You don't make hard cider, Harry. It makes itself. All you do is to rack the apple juice off into a barrel, or something, with a little yeast added, and then leave it to do the work. It ferments an' then, if you want to, you rack it off again an' bottle it an'—well, gee whiz, how tight you c'n get on it if you ain't got sense enough to let it alone. But I ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... ordinary fire can effect may be accomplished at the focus of invisible rays; the air at the focus remaining at the same time perfectly cold, on account of its transparency to the heat-rays. An air thermometer, with a hollow rack-salt bulb, would be unaffected by the heat of the focus: there would be no expansion, and in the open air there is no convection. The aether at the focus, and not the air, is the substance in which the heat is embodied. A block of wood, placed at the focus, absorbs the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... time to call 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 stuff ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... of mystic longing, the thirst to find the Hidden God. His the steady inpouring of truth into every brain ready to receive it, so that hand stretched out to hand across the centuries and passed on the torch of knowledge, which thus was never extinguished. His the Form which stood beside the rack and in the flames of the burning pile, cheering His confessors and His martyrs, soothing the anguish of their pains, and filling their hearts with His peace. His the impulse which spoke in the thunder of Savonarola, which guided the calm wisdom of ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... speed to avoid the bear's first mad rushes. It speedily became so excited, however, as to render it almost impossible for the rider to take aim. Sometimes he would come up close to the bear and wait for it to charge, which it would do, first at a trot, or rather rack, and then at a lumbering but swift gallop; and he would fire one or two shots before being forced to run. At other times, if the bear stood still in a good place, he would run by it, firing as he rode. He spent many cartridges, and though most of them were wasted occasionally a bullet ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne said, when ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... dining room just as his little daughter brought in the breakfast. When he saw the steaming coffee pot and the covered dishes and toast-rack his face brightened. But he had to be told of the domestic ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... remains of the old Galwegian forest, which lines for some space the banks of the Corriewater, the storm began to abate, the wind sighed milder and milder among the trees, and here and there a star, twinkling momentarily through the sudden rack of the clouds, showed the river raging from bank to brae. As he shook the moisture from his clothes, he was not without a wish that the day would dawn, and that he might be preserved on a road which his imagination beset with greater perils than the raging river; for his superstitious ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... romances, upon which, of course, dear Robert could not bear to offend his literary and national susceptibilities by a doubt even. I, not being so humane, thought that any suffering reader would be justified (under the rack-wheel) in crying out against such a book, as the dullest, heaviest, stupidest, lengthiest. Did you ever read it? If not, don't. When a father-in-law imitates Scott, and a son-in-law imitates his father-in-law, think of the consequences! Robert, in his zeal for ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... Julia tartly. "I don't bother myself much with abstractions. I know it is you and I." And she put her things on the hall-rack, as she was going out again in the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... stopped just opposite O'Brien's hotel, store, blacksmith shop, and saloon, and by the hitching rack was a black stallion. Now, there are some men who carry tidings of their inward strength stamped on their foreheads and written in their eyes. In times of crises crowds will turn to such men and follow them as soldiers follow a captain; for ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... white or black, When bound as thou wert, to the rack, So seldom stooped to grieving; No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them men So noble ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... in council, At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door, but a gentle tap! "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... allow and pay a certain pension to the said Rajah; which pension, on the general confiscation of jaghires, made at the instigation of the said Warren Hastings, and by the letting the lands so confiscated to farmers at rack-rents, was discontinued and refused to be paid; and the discontinuance of the said pension, "on account of the personal respect borne to the Rajah, (as connections with him are sought for, and thought to confer honor,)" did cause an universal discontent and violent commotions in the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bright, A full-born beauty new and exquisite? She fled into that valley they pass o'er Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas' shore; And rested at the foot of those wild hills, The rugged founts of the Peraean rills, And of that other ridge whose barren back Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack, South-westward to Cleone. There she stood About a young bird's flutter from a wood, Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread, By a clear pool, wherein she passioned To see herself escap'd from so sore ills, While her robes ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... fortunate enough to convey my prize to the asylum I had prepared for their reception. Inexpressible was the rage of Mendoza, when he heard of their elopement. He raved like one deprived of reason—swore he would put all the servants of the family to the rack—and, in consequence of the intelligence he obtained by threats and promises, set on foot a very strict inquiry, in order to apprehend the fugitives and Orlando, who had by some means or other ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... grasp, in the stupid apathy of wretchedness, the weapon of the murderer? By neglecting the people; by draining them, with merciless rapacity, of the means of life; by goading them on under a cruel system of rack rents, ye become not their natural benefactors, but curses and scourges, nearly as much in reality as ye ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... waiting and fearing, by night he lay sleepless and thinking; and, though his stoical countenance retained its composure, the furrows deepened in it, and the iron nerves began to twitch at times, from strain of mind and want of sleep, and that rack, suspense. Not a night that he did not awaken a dozen times from his brief dozes with a start, and a dread of exposure by some ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... 'on the rack,' in an agony so unbearable that he cannot endure the sight of Iago. Anticipating the probability that Iago has spared him the whole truth, he feels that in that case his life is over and his 'occupation gone' with all its glories. But he ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... excuse for lingering longer, and she descended, the waxlight in her hand. Everything was ready in the gray parlor—the tea-tray on the table, the small urn hissing away, the tea-caddy in proximity to it. A silver rack of dry toast, butter, and a hot muffin covered with a small silver cover. The things were to her sight as old faces—the rack, the small cover, the butter-dish, the tea-service—she remembered them all; not the urn—a copper one—she had no recollection of that. It had ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... as well as temporal things, and renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate. For refusing to take this oath, many Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and many more endured within the Tower the worse horrors of the rack. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... course the walls were covered with paintings. Now it's all been let go to rack and ruin, and the old place is falling to pieces. There's been nothing done to it since the fire. But to be sure you don't remember that fire, it will ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... abused by the human devils you speak of, and who, moreover, are not a whit worse—nay, not so bad—as many civilised human devils, who, in times not long past, and under the cloak of religion, have torn men and tender women limb from limb, and bound them at the stake, and tortured them on the rack, in order to make them ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... of one side or the other; they had been ready to welcome Protestantism under Edward VI, and they were not disposed to fight against the Church of Rome under Mary. The number of zealous papists, they who were in favor of the rack and the stake, was not more than a thirtieth part of the nation. The other twenty-nine parts, though perhaps nearly equally divided on the question of religion, condemned alike the bigotry of their melancholy sovereign and looked on with sorrowful indignation while the bloody ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... wuz in the old frame meetin'-house. The meetin'-house is on the hill, and meetin' begins at half-pas' ten. Our pew is well up in front,—seems as if I could see it now. It has a long red cushion on the seat, and in the hymn-book rack there is a Bible an' a couple of Psalmodies. We walk up the aisle slow, and Mother goes in first; then comes Mary, then me, then Helen, then Amos, and then Father. Father thinks it is jest as well to have one ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... gradually-increasing thunder, "all shall go. And loike the baseless fabric o' a vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself—Yea, I say, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial payjent faded, leave not a rack behind." ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Sartoris said. "What has it done for me? You have been a good sister to me, but your attentions have been a little embarrassing sometimes. And if you had hoped to change me, you had your trouble for your pains. You may put me on the rack and torture me, but not one word ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the piano," said Maud, anxious to efface the memory of her momentary weakness. "Polly points to the right key with a little stick, and Puttel sits on the stool and pats each key as it 's touched, and it makes a tune. It 's so funny to see her, and Nick perches on the rack and sings as ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... sort of incivility. They barred the gates: and the peal of laughter, Sudden and shrill that followed after, Died off into a dismal tone, Like a parting spirit's painful moan. "I wish," said Rudolph, as he stood On foot in the deep and silent wood; "I wish, good Roland, rack and stable May be kinder ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... blue velvet seemed to still retain the impression of lordly and delicate forms which no longer existed. Two prayer books with worn edges lay upon the rack before them, as if forgotten. Jaime recognized one of the books. It had belonged to his mother, poor lady, pale and sick, who divided her life between praying and the adoration of her son, for whom ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... all gone and our bacon reduced to the last shred. We had come to expect rain every day of our lives, and were feeling a little the effects of our scanty diet of bread and bacon—hill-climbing was coming to be laborious. However, the way led downward most of the time, and we were able to rack along at a very good pace even ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... he saw the hat-rack where as a boy he had hung his cap. It now held garments over which Lane fumbled. Mel ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... outcome of the relentless and terrible mysticism of Saint John of the Cross, the art of the rack, the delirium tremens of divine intoxication here on earth; aye, but what a passion of adoration, what a voice of love stifled by anguish found utterance in ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... were afforded full survey of the lower hall where the latest comers had taken possession. Few in numbers, the gathering had come to a dead stop, regarding in surprise the broken door, and the furniture wantonly demolished. But amid this scene of rack and ruin, an object of especial wonder to the newcomers was the great lifting-stone lying in the hall amid ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... out to the corral and stood watching the saddle-stock of the Concho pull hay from the long feed-rack and munch lazily. Suddenly he jerked up his hand and jumped round. The men, loafing in front of the bunk-house, laughed. Chance, the great wolf-dog, was critically inspecting ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... the post-hour. Unfortunately, I knew it too well, and tried as vainly as assiduously to cheat myself of that knowledge; dreading the rack of expectation, and the sick collapse of disappointment which daily preceded and followed upon that ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Green through the shades the waters rush and roll, (Or whitened only by the unfrequent shoal,) Till two dark hills, with darker yet behind, Confront them,—purple mountains almost black, Each behind each self-folded and withdrawn, Beneath the umbrage of yon cloudy rack.— That orange-gleam! 't is dawn! Onward! the swan's flight with the eagle's blending, On, winged Muse! still forward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... wife may have the whole house to herself. I won't even give her the pleasure of supposing that she has thwarted me. She shall never even suspect the state of my heart. That would be bliss indeed to one like her, for then she would find herself able to put me on the rack. No, my boy; I've thought it all over. Scone Dacres is himself again. No more nonsense now. Do you understand ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... too, Don. But finding that missing gun will be as difficult as finding your father. I have searched the country over for it and made a wonderful collection of flint-lock guns, as you see by looking at yonder gun-rack; I have had dozens of arms collectors and detectives looking for guns of that description, but no Patrick Mullen rifle has turned up anywhere. There have, of course, been many false clues and many queer rifles offered ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... I first awoke, and the sun was low in the sky before I slept—slept as the tortured criminal sleeps on his rack, too worn to feel ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... mother about it, Madeline took her Candy Rabbit, and, with her two little friends, went up to the bathroom. She drew the tub full of water, and while she was doing this she set the Rabbit on a glass shelf near the towel rack. ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... portion of colour and flavour. All these substances may be rendered highly useful in giving positive qualities to insipid wines. A simple infusion alone is necessary, in such proportion as the exigencies may require; care being taken to rack and fine the wine after the desired effect has been obtained.—The ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... ravages these sufferings make in tortured body and lacerated heart; we wed these sufferings; they become our own. Nor does the witness strain after objectivity. He is the impassioned pleader who, just delivered panting from the rack, cries for vengeance. The writer of the book now under review is newly come from hell; he gasps for breath; his visions chase him; pain's claws have left their mark upon him. Andreas Latzko[42] will, in future days, keep his place ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... that is now at the castle above, the former landlord that was over us, died, see!—Then there was new times and new takes, and the widow was turned out of the inn, and these Gallaghers got it, and all wint wrong and to rack; for Mrs. Gallagher, that was, drank herself into her grave unknownst, for it was by herself in private she took it; and Christy Gallagher, the present man, is doing the same, only publicly, and running through all, and the ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... in white. There was a couch in the corner, a rug upon the floor and several easy chairs were drawn sociably toward the chimney breast; along one wall was a gun-rack and in the center of the room a table with a litter of magazines, a box of cigars, a decanter ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Percy watched Spurling's shoulders rack and twist as he threw his last ounce into his sculling. By degrees his motions became slower and more painful. Suddenly he pulled in the oar and dropped it ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... chemical corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—all met my eyes as I glanced round me. There were two occupants of the room—one Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon us both as we entered; the other the strange ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... its rack over the door he levelled it at the approaching canoe, and looked steadily for less than half a minute, and then he gave an ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... touches in the picture worth mentioning, the touches which spoke of human life. An old-fashioned hat-tree just opposite the rear door was hung full with hats. A heavy ulster lay over a chair close by, and two umbrellas stood in the corner. And over hat-rack, hats, ulster, and chair, with one end of silken fringe caught upon one of the umbrella ribs, had been flung by some careless hand, presumably feminine, a long silken scarf of the most intense rose-colour, a hue so vivid, as ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... in no way interested with the country outside—she could only contemplate her native heaven through the sky-light. Behind the desk were placed a rude shelf, where some "modern instances," and old ones too, were lying-covered with dust—and a gun-rack, where some carbines with fixed bayonets were paraded in show of authority; so that, to an imaginative mind, the aspect of the books and the fire-arms gave the notion of Justice on the shelf, ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... I will tell thy glory now aright. I will not make it thy chief wonder, King, That thou hast tied the world upon a rack; Or that thy armies be so huge, the earth Sways like a bridge of planks beneath their march, And leagues about their way out of the ground Like thunder comes the rumour of thy vengeance. These be but shows of kingship; but one thing Exclaims, inevitably as a word Announced by God, thee first ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... well! I pity AEgon. His cattle, go they must To rack and ruin, all because vain-glory was his lust. The pipe that erst he fashioned is doubtless ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... impressed Americans dined at a vast table d'hte, slept in commons and made their toilet when and where they could. Their clothes were stowed in a large canvas bag, painted black, which they could get out of the "rack" only once in twenty-four hours, and then during a time of utmost confusion, among three hundred and fifty other sailors, each diving into his bag, in the midst of ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... those children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the woman who had been her mother had possessed—that in her, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... accused by Strangways against two brethren, meaning [the] Tremaynes, who being but little men in personage, so reviled Strangways, accusing them before your honours, that because Strangways had no further proof but his only saying, and they so stoutly denying it, even to the threatening of the rack (or whether they were anything thereto constrained or no, as he said, I do not perfectly remember); but at length Strangways was in effect ready to weep, and think he had accused them wrongfully, and so they dismissed, and Strangways much of your honours rebuked."—Thomas ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... standing out of compliment to the Count, took a large key from a rack behind his desk and opened a door leading into a long, dimly-lighted corridor. Monte-Cristo followed him through this gloomy passage until they came to a cell before which the chief stopped. The large key grated in the lock, ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... with as he had dealt with others; Kerkuon, the wrestler, was slain by him in a wrestling bout; Procrustes, who enticed travellers to his house and made them fit his bed, stretching the short upon the rack and lopping the limbs of the over-tall, had his own measure meted to him; and various other plagues of society were abated by the young hero. Not long after his arrival at Athens and acknowledgment by his father, the time came round when the Minoan heralds should come to Athens to claim ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... of Villefranche. "You would scarce credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an old stocking full of gold pieces hid away in ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... every hour like him less. There were several ladies, French and English, with Miss Fermor, all on the rack to engage the Baronet's attention; you have no notion of the effect of a title in America. To do the ladies justice however, he really look'd very handsome; the ride, and the civilities he receiv'd from a circle ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... that offers at it, will sink beneath the weight of so great a work; for to relate past actions, is not so much the business of a poet, as an historian; the boundless genius of a poet strikes through all mazes, introduces gods, and puts the invention on the rack for poetick ornaments; that it may rather seem a prophetick fury, than a strict relation, with witnesses of meer truth. As for example, this rapture, tho' I have not given it the ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... repose. Lady Kirkbank. fortified by the produce of Mr. Smithson's particular clos, and by a couple of glasses of green Chartreuse, slept profoundly. She had not enjoyed herself so much for the last three months. She had been stretched on Society's rack, and she had been ground in Society's mill; and neither mind nor body had been her own to do what she liked withal. She had toiled early and late, and had spared herself in no wise. And now the trouble was over for a space. Here were rest and respite. She had done her duty as ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... searching in my bag for some food, when a distant and faint cry struck my ear. I listened; again I heard it. I knew too well what it was. The cry of a pack of wolves. Could they have gained scent of me and be following in my rack? The bare thought of such a thing made me start up, and again set forth at full speed. For what I knew to the contrary, I had both wolves and Indians following me. The wolves were gaining on me, that was certain. I could distinguish the yelps ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... fire, then, no Jesuitical rack, no cup of hemlock, no thumb-screw, no torture of any kind for David. Still, here was a duty to be done, an awful responsibility to be discharged in sorrow and with prayer; and grave good men they were. Blameless was this lad in all their eyes save in ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... should be on such terms as would warrant Mr. Prince's astounding proposal. He felt that he simply could not endure them marching off together for the evening. Her acceptance of the proposal would be an outrage. He trembled. However, she declined, and he was lifted from the rack. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... people. Over and over again has this fact been brought home to those who would labor for the good of the world. And still we hear the querulous complaint that the Inner Teaching is reserved for the Few—why not scatter it broadcast among the people? The stake, the rack, the stones, the prison cell, the cross and their modern prototypes—these are the silent answers ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... gets him by the collar, 'n' takes a bat from the rack. I works on him till the bat's wore out 'n' then reaches fur another. Micky ain't opened his face. I wears that one out 'n' grabs another. Micky looks up at the rack—there's four ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... a sheet of paper from the leathern stationery rack and fell to scribbling, while he furtively eyed the window and again put from ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... lours—his implements in bag. Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand, At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide, Though functionally here on humanity's side, The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal physician Attending the rack o' ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... passes over the pan in the furnace the proper amount of glass is sucked into the mold by vacuum; the bottle is blown and shaped in the course of one revolution, and the mold, opening, drops the finished bottle into a rack which carries it to the lehr on a belt. It passes thru the lehr to the packers; and as each rack is emptied of its bottles the packers place it again on the belt, which carries it up to the machine, where it collects its cargo of hot bottles ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... it was only a fancy just come into my head."—"My dear Youwee," says I, "you must let me know what you mean: I am in great pain till you explain yourself; for I am sure there is something more in what you say than fancy; therefore, pray, if you love me, keep me on the rack no longer."—"Ah, Peter!" says she, "there was but a span between me and death not many days ago; and when I saw the line of the last chest we took up just now, it gave so much horror I could scarce keep upon my feet."—"My ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... pen, but she said nothing. As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward. But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road over which ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... imagination, and feel that even imagination cannot reach the probable realities in a material aspect,—then our predictions and calculations stop. Beyond material glories we cannot count with certainty. The world has witnessed many powerful empires which have passed away, and left "not a rack behind." What remains of the antediluvian world?—not even a spike of Noah's ark, larger and stronger than any modern ship. What remains of Nineveh, of Babylon, of Thebes, of Tyre, of Carthage,—those great centres of wealth and power? What remains of Roman greatness even, except in laws and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... epicure. Were I a Lucian, Nature in this dress Would make me wish a Saviour, and confess. Where are you, shoreless thoughts, vast tenter'd hope, Ambitious dreams, aims of an endless scope, Whose stretch'd excess runs on a string too high, And on the rack of self-extension die? Chameleons of state, air-monging band, Whose breath—like gunpowder—blows up a land, Come see your dissolution, and weigh What a loath'd nothing you shall be one day. As th' elements by circulation pass From one to th' other, and that which ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... light to read it by, Samuel remarked that there seemed a change coming in the weather. My troubled mind had prevented me from noticing it before. But, now my attention was roused, I heard the dogs uneasy, and the wind moaning low. Looking up at the sky, I saw the rack of clouds getting blacker and blacker, and hurrying faster and faster over a watery moon. Wild weather coming—Samuel was ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins |
