"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the nose of the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... matter with Weldon, anyhow?" another of the group queried, as dispassionately as if the subject of discussion had been absent in Rhodesia. "His face is a yard long, and his lips hang down in the slack of the corners." ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... to thirst for revenge and all that, like some chap in a shilling shocker. But it makes me wild to think of that fellow masquerading as a German, and up to who knows what mischief—mischief enough to make him want to get rid of any one. I'm keen about the sea, and I think they're apt to be a bit slack at home,' he continued inconsequently. 'Those Admiralty chaps want waking up. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, it's quite natural that I should look him ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... boss," came the answer. "It will run out the cable and down the cab. I've left them plenty of slack to move around when they get ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... On entering the enclosure the youths threw down their weapons before them, and with the help of the initiated men divested themselves of the huge folds of native cloth in which they were enveloped, each man revolving slowly on his axis, while his attendant pulled at the bandage and gathered in the slack. The weapons and the cloth were the offerings presented by the novices to the ancestral spirits for the purpose of rendering themselves acceptable to these powerful beings. The offerings were repeated in like manner on four successive days; and as each youth ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... me a week from now. And leave your address with Rosey. I don't know, though, as we can afford to pay you quite the same salary at first, even if we can work you in—the season's been very slack. But I'll do what I can for you. Come in and see me in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... holding what I gained each time with a double turn until the next slap gave me more. Then the sheet gave with greater ease, and Wolf Larsen was beside me, heaving in alone while I was busied taking up the slack. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... because this is often not done in offices and warehouses that there is so little mutual goodwill between servants and masters. An employer will often treat his people as mere "hands," who are to sell his goods and do his bidding, but directly work is slack, he will turn them adrift without scruple or ruth; or if they remain for years in his service, will give no increase of wage or salary proportioned to capacity and diligence. A Christian employer, at least, should follow ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only to work,—and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... see him fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the rest ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... four steeds, without halt, without stay, Though toilsome and winding from Chow was the way. I wished to return—but the monarch's command Forbade that his business be done with slack hand; And my heart was ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... revolve with speed, Yet faster still we urge our steed, And scarcely slack the reins to feed Or ease its breath, The journey seems but short ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... curled itself around it as tight as if it had grown there. Mr. Painter couldn't have shaken him loose in a week. He hung down just like Somers, only not so far, and he didn't swing much, because that strong medicine had taken up all his slack and there was very little room for play. He didn't care for that, of course, not then. He got brave and very cheerful right off, and called out to Mr. Painter, ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... lime, and 22 gallons of water, the sulphate to be put in a piece of sacking or light cloth, and hung by a string from the top of a barrel containing 18 gallons of water, a few inches below the surface so as to dissolve. Then slack 4 lbs. of fresh lime in as small a quantity of water as possible, the water being added very slowly, until slaking is completed; then slowly make up to 4 gallons. When cool, thoroughly stir and strain slowly the milk of lime into the copper solution, stirring well while mixing for another ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... the more purely personal aspect of it, there will be the temptation to grow slack and cold in intercessions and communions, when the immediate occasion that prompted them has passed. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, let us look out for this, expect it, then we shall not be afraid to meet it. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more"; think ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... thought, elated, sending his buzzer signal up to those so far above. The icy air through his hose changed to air of normal temperature. He signaled for slack in the lowering cable, then prepared for the greatest ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... courtiers alone To this weed are not prone; Would you know what 'tis makes them so slack—O? 'Twas because it inclined To be honest the mind, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... was perhaps a brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an officer ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... later they were tumbling aboard the Follow Me, Tom to dart below to the engine, Harry to make fast their end of the line and Joe to look after the tender. Then Harry waved a hand and shouted, and the Adventurer, which had been going slowly astern, taking up the slack of the cable, settled to her task. The big rope tightened, throwing a spray of water into the sunlight along its length, strained and creaked and the Follow Me's propeller, reversed, did its part. There was an anxious two minutes. Very grudgingly the black cruiser's stern came around. Steve ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... man with a face black with soot, in a blouse and filthy frayed trousers hanging very slack, comes to the door of the van. This is the oiler, who had been creeping under the carriages and tapping the wheels ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... good an' yallah Mek me open up my eyes; Seems lak it's a-lookin' at me Jes' a-la'in' dah sayin' "Pies." Tu'key gobbler gwine 'roun' blowin', Gwine 'roun' gibbin' sass an' slack; Keep on talkin', Mistah Tu'key, You ain't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... at the very outset, in getting men to ship for service on the regular cruisers. Privateers were being fitted out in every port; and on them the life was easy, discipline slack, danger to life small, and the prospects for financial reward far greater than on the United States men-of-war. Accordingly, the seafaring men as a rule preferred to ship on the privateers. At no time in the history of the United States has the barbaric British custom of getting sailors for the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... ended we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be led ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Charles W. Slack, the editor of the Boston Commonwealth, for whom Sumner had obtained a lucrative office, turned against his benefactor in order to save his position. When I spoke of this to Sumner, he said: "Well, it is human nature. Slack is growing old, and if he keeps his office for the next ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... direction as numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and is terminated by the loop, 6, 7, 6, finally passing it over the head of the post, A. This knot holds itself, the turns being in opposite directions. To untie it, we slack the turns of the cable sufficiently to again pass the loop, 6, 7, 6, over the post, A, and turn the ends in the contrary direction to that in which they were made (as ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... it be so easy as in the navy to become slack. If the public sees a naval review it knows that its ships can steam and keep their formations; if it goes on board it knows that the ships are clean—at least, the limited part of them which it sees; and it knows that there are turrets ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... flowers bedecked Is shattered and his hauberk torn away. Through his heart's core the pennon of the Knight Is driven, bearing death,—or laugh or weep Who may. At such a blow the French exclaim: "Barons, strike ever! Strike and be not slack Against the Pagan hordes; to Carle belongs The right. With us the ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... "Is ut like?" sez I. "But ye might give me my railway fare. I'm far from my home an' I've done you a service." Bhoys, 'tis a good thing to be a priest. The ould man niver throubled himself to dhraw from a bank. As I will prove to you subsequint, he philandered all round the slack av his clothes an' began dribblin' ten-rupee notes, old gold mohurs, and rupees into my hand till I could ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... I knew CH-RL-S ST-RT, 'Twas in a happier day, The Jaunting Car he drove in Went gaily all the way. But now the Car seems all askew, Lop-wheel'd, and slack of spring; Myself and WILL, in fear of a spill, Feel little disposed to sing, As we sit on the Jaunting Car, The drivers at open war, Seem little to care For a Grand Old Fare, As they fight ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... drawn down more than a thousand fathoms of rope, the whale slackened its speed, and Parr, taking another coil round the loggerhead, held on until the boat was almost dragged under water. Then the line became loose, and the slack was hauled in rapidly. Meanwhile Grim's boat had reached the spot, and the men now lay on their oars at some distance ahead, ready to pull the instant the whale should show itself. Up it came, not twenty ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... railway station. She was delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... But to the wild forest, to hunt the hart or hind, The roebuck, the wild boar, the fallow-deer, or hare: But how poor Ragan shall dine, he hath no care. Poor I must eat acorns or berries from the tree. But if I be found slack in the suit following, Or if I do fail in blowing or hallooing; Or if I lack my staff or my horn by my side: He will be quick enough to fume, chafe, and chide. Am I not well at ease such a master to serve, As must have such service, and yet will let me starve? But, in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... hand seized the slack of Thomas's shorts and the boy was heaved up to the muscular shoulder. The two faces were now on the same level and twinkling gray blue eyes were ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... we groan beneath the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... beautiful evening. Boyton sailing with a faint wind and in slack water. He has by this time crossed two tides. The flood up channel still. 8 P.M.—The ebb down channel to the Varne, being carried many miles north and south respectively by each, and is now in a fair way to reach England, being only four miles from Dover Castle, according to the encouraging ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... to put our Bass and Weak Fish, laid in a stock of cold provisions—among other things a Cold Shoulder—plenty of exhilarating beverages, and, with Buoyant Spirits, (every Man of us,) and plenty of ice on board, started on the slack of the Morning Tide. I regret to state that by the time we were ready to start our Skipper was half way "Over the Bay," being provided with a pocket pistol charged to the muzzle. He and his two subordinates were pretty well "Shot in the neck" by the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... upper arms, and the slack gained by Kaydessa's action made the lariat give again. He studied the Tatar outlaws. There were five of them beside Hulagur, lean men, hard-faced, narrow-eyed, the ragged clothing of three pieced out with scraps of hide. Besides the swords with the curved blades, ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... devise? Is it nothing to behold this beautiful child, and feel that she is only yours? Annabel, look on me, look on me only one moment! My frame is bowed, my hair is grey, my heart is withered; the principle of existence waxes faint and slack in this attenuated frame. I am no longer that Herbert on whom you once smiled, but a man stricken with many sorrows. The odious conviction of my life cannot long haunt you; yet a little while, and my memory will ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... ther's mostly slack time till harvest. I thought, mebbe, we could jest haul that lumber from Beacon Crossing. And cut the logs. Parker give me the 'permit.' Seems to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... Them with prayers. I do not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three Rissaldar—majors ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... have been multiplied many times. For what resources had the Government to meet invasion on three frontiers? The Treasury was again depleted; new loans brought in insufficient funds to meet current expenses; recruiting was slack because the Government could not compete with the larger bounties offered by the States; by summer the number of effective regular troops was only twenty-seven thousand all told. With this slender force, supplemented by State levies, the military authorities were ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... on why our hero was apparently so slack in permitting the girl, under all the circumstances, to go away alone. She started off and he returned to the cabin. Once inside he determined to take great chances. He did not remain in the cabin, but returned by a straight cut across the meadows ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... the weather is hot all may get spoiled before we can sell them; and the price is so low in these parts when the flocks are here that it is hard to lay by enough money to keep us and our families during the slack time. If the great cities Thebes and Memphis lay near to us, it would be different. They could consume all we could catch, and we should get better prices, but unless under very favorable circumstances ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... box, over the near wheel, raised gracefully up as it were to reward the near side horse; the thong—the thong after three twists, which appears in his hand to have been placed by the maker never to be altered or improved ...... and if the off-side horse becomes slack, to see the turn of his arm to reduce a twist, or to reverse, if necessary, is exquisite: after being placed under the rib, or upon the shoulder point, up comes the arm, and with it the thong returns to the elegant position upon the crop! I say elegant! the stick, highly polished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... Allahabad one lay still in the slack-water and let twenty go by to pick one; and, above all, the English were not cumbered with jewellery and nose-rings and anklets as my women are nowadays. To delight in ornaments is to end with a rope for a necklace, as the saying is. All the muggers of ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... shape, crystallised, caused him to see a rapid vision of de Batz sneaking into his lodgings and stealing his keys, the guard being slack, careless, inattentive, allowing the adventurer to pass barriers that should have been ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... did not answer to the musician's touch. The strings of his heart were slack and soundless; there was no response within him. He was neither shepherd, nor king, nor wise man, only an unhappy, dissatisfied, questioning youth. He was out of sympathy with the eager preacher, the joyous hearers. In their harmony he had no part. Was it for this that he had forsaken his inheritance ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... otherwise during the whole day and night of the 18th, had, on the following morning, when the wind and sea still continued unabated, so destroyed the bergs on which our sole dependance was placed, that they no longer remained aground at low water; the cables had again become slack about them, and the basin we had taken so much pains in forming had now lost all its defences, at least during a portion of every tide. After a night of most anxious consideration and consultation with Captain Hoppner, who was now my messmate in the Hecla, it appeared but too plain that, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... interests. Bill rode a good many miles that day, always beside a wire fence; and occasionally he would stop, dismount, and busy himself in some small repair, where a fence-post had sagged down, or the wire become twisted or slack. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... the musicians now leaned together for a moment. The violins wailed in sad search for the accord, the assistant instrument less tentative. All at once the slack shoulders straightened up firmly, confidently, and then, their feet beating in unison upon the floor, their faces set, stern and relentless, the three musicians fell to the work and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... Duck; she was so small-only 8 inches in slack girth—that she could easily have entered an ordinary Woodpecker hole. So that it is likely the species nest in the abandoned holes of the Flicker. A Redtailed Hawk had its nest on a leaning spruce ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... jined I worn't so wise ez thet air queen o' Sheby, Fer, come to look at 'em, they aint much diff'rent from wut we be, 80 An' here we air ascrougin' 'em out o' thir own dominions, Ashelterin' 'em, ez Caleb sez, under our eagle's pinions, Wich means to take a feller up jest by the slack o' 's trowsis An' walk him Spanish clean right out o' all his homes an' houses; Wal, it doos seem a curus way, but then hooraw fer Jackson! It must be right, fer Caleb sez it's reg'lar Anglo-Saxon, The Mex'cans don't fight fair, they say, they piz'n all the water, An' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... "Slack away!" he called to the engineers, and he cast off the rope sling. Then cautiously he stepped out to the end of the timber. It tottered, but the lithe figure moved on to within striking distance. He swung the twenty-four pound sledge in a circle against the butt of the timber. ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... two hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted several private houses, and carried ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... of night—something will snap in me—the slack, selfish, luxurious ME, that hates to be roused into action, and the craving for adventure will come. Then I'll ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... plainly that that would be very hard on me. I've come here to my native place to settle down, and if I settle I've got to marry, and I have never seen a girl whom I would rather marry and settle with than Miss Mayberry. She may be a little slack about taking care of the baby, but I'll talk to her about that, and I know she will keep a closer eye on him. Now if you want to see everybody happy, don't prejudice Mrs. Cristie against that girl. Give me a chance, and I'll win her into ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... City happened to be rather slack at this time; and it struck Mr. Fenton all at once that he could scarcely have a better opportunity for wasting two or three days in a visit of duty to the Listers, and putting an end to his sister's reproachful letters. He had a second motive for going ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... said Raffles, promptly; "we'll slack it up here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are! I'll fetch you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan't come down ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... time, I am not going anywhere in particular," Captain Wilson replied. "The chief says he thinks that things have got rather slack, since I have been away. There are several bands of bush rangers, who have been doing a deal of mischief up country; so to begin with, he wishes me to make a tour of inspection, and to report generally. After that, I think I shall be settled here for a time. At ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... "Let him think it out," as step by step Roper followed, the halter running slack on the water. When almost out of his depth, he paused just a moment, then, obeying the tightening rope, lifted himself to the flood and struck ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... meditated, not without a certain wry humor, upon the strength and the protracted potency of Manti's whiskey, for not once during his home-coming had Levins shown the slightest sign of returning consciousness. He was as slack as a meal sack now, as Trevison lifted him from the pony's back and let him slip gently to the ground at his feet. A few minutes later, Trevison was standing in the doorway of the cabin, his burden over his shoulder, the weak glare ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are sold at 1s. 8d. per pound by the gardeners, and yet this price, like that of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... a very good report I have received of you this time," continued his guardian. "It seems that you have grown slack in attention to your studies, and have not made the progress which might fairly be expected from a boy of your age and abilities. Now, it is only right to warn you that the income left you by your father very little more than covers the expense of your ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... Worcester in such labors as these. When work at his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand, when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study. After a while, he began to think ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... have drawn off a part of the lye, put the lime (whether slack or not) into two or three pails of boiling water, and add it to the ashes, and ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... slack, will you, and hear me out; if he's living, let him out, and I'll say no more about it; that's liberal, you know; it ain't terms everybody would ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... mine, but for me let the diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the performance of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... knee inseam'd remain'd the scar; Which noted token of the woodland war When Euryclea found, the ablution ceased: Down dropp'd the leg, from her slack hand released; The mingled fluids from the base redound; The vase reclining floats the floor around! Smiles dew'd with tears the pleasing strife express'd Of grief and joy, alternate in her breast. Her fluttering words in melting murmurs died; At length abrupt—"My ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... to her disgust, found that her eyes were blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... in its disorder. The one lighted burner of the gaselier, turned too high, hissed up into a long tongue of flame. The fire smoked feebly under a newly administered shovelful of 'slack', and a heap of ashes and cinders littered the grate. A pair of walking boots, caked in dry mud, lay on the hearth-rug just where they had been thrown off. On the mantelpiece, amidst a dozen other articles which had no business there, was a bedroom-candlestick; and every single article ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... will be indulgent if I write less regularly now: and by indulgent I mean that you will go on writing to me, as I do enjoy your letters so much. I expect I shall have slack times when there will be plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy, and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100 deg. in the shade. ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... abroad." The Spanish fleet was already reported as numbering from 210 sail, with 36,000 men,' to 400 or 500 ships, and 80,000 soldiers and mariners; and yet Drake was not ready with his squadron. "The fault is not in him," said Howard, "but I pray God her Majesty do not repent her slack dealing. We must all lie together, for we shall be stirred very shortly with heave ho! I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she hath believed some so much as she ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fussy—but I know 'em," said Collie, as Boyar, apparently terror-stricken at a manzanita that he had passed hundreds of times, reared, his fore feet pawing space and the traces dangerously slack. Louise bit her lower lip and quickly called Anne's attention to a spot of vivid color on the hillside. To Dr. Marshall's surprise, Collie struck Apache, who was behaving, smartly with the whip. Apache leaped ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... washstand. The chairs were in their primitive stuffing-and-burlap state, loose gray linen covers being added when the rooms were prepared for us. Any one who has ever struggled with his temper and the slack-fitting shift of a tufted armchair will require no explanation as to what took place between me and my share of those untufted receptacles before I deposited its garment under my bed, and announced that burlap and tacks were luxurious enough for me. That one item ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... "Work's purty slack," crawfished Davidson. "But I tells you I don't know. We has to find out," and he shuffled away toward ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the stump of the limb, his muscular body bent, lifted, strained. Then the front wheels rolled up across the bole; he slipped to the ground and grasped the outer one, steadying it down. After a moment, when he had taken in the slack of the line, the remaining tires slowly followed, and he began to ease the vehicle along the patched roadway. The rain of rock was renewed; fragments of granite shifted under the bulkhead of boughs; the buggy ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly to be ascribed, in the details of its rhetoric, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... will get here on Thursday afternoon. It's lucky we came up to-day. My letters are from Johnnie and Cecy Slack. Johnnie says—" ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... selection has been made for the Somerset and Devon districts, but the following varieties of cider apples are held in good repute in those parts:—Kingston Black, Jersey Chisel, Hangdowns, Fair Maid of Devon, Woodbine, Duck's Bill, Slack-my-Girdle, Bottle Stopper, Golden Ball, Sugar-loaf, Red Cluster, Royal Somerset and Cadbury (believed to be identical with the Royal Wilding of Herefordshire). As a rule the best cider apples are of small size. "Petites pommes, gros cidre," say ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the load as it can. When it gets moving, regularly under way, it has to pick it up again. But the longer it stops the more it throws down; and the slower it moves the less it picks up again. Inside the tub it is always slack water, so whatever falls there stays there. That's why the tub has filled up so quick. Nearly a foot and a half in three weeks! Why, Ted, a raise of a foot and a half along the outer slope of this cove, and we could dike in the whole ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Why didn't you take care of him while you had him? Now you've got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and hunt, or drop off the train and hunt—what's that? Now don't you give me any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I'll have the fear of God thrown into you too quick. Get out of here now! Get out of ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... all that can be said for and against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... stager who knew the way of pulling the wires would come forward and put the club in the proper groove. The old men said it was because the young men were pretentious puppies. It was, however, not to be doubted that the party of Progress had become slack, and that the Liberal politicians of the country, although a special new club had been opened for the furtherance of their views, were not at present making much way. "What we want is organization," said one of the ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... unvarying and undeviating sequences, gives no indication of His approach. Centuries have elapsed since He uttered the promise, and still He lingers; the everlasting hills wear no streak of approaching dawn; we seem to listen in vain for the noise of His chariot wheels. "But the Lord is not slack concerning His promise;" He gives you "this word" in addition to many others as a keepsake—a pledge and guarantee for the certainty of ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... well in a yard, with a rope and a windlass, and an old wooden bucket all over trailing green mosses. Off the yard there was a blacksmith's shop, with a disused anvil and disused tools in it, and a cold hearth covered with scattered slack and iron filings. A dog, whose chain allowed him to come within a yard of the door of this workshop, woke up at the clank of the tools and barked. The child cried until his mother came and took him away with some show of angry impatience, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... the stain from the honour of his family. But hard facts soon restored the equilibrium of his naturally prudent soul. The worst feature of the army was not that it had been beaten, but that it had not been commanded. The reins of discipline had been so slack that licence and indulgence had sapped its fighting strength. The tyranny of circumstances demanded a peaceful sojourn in the province, and Albinus resigned himself to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... Ursus Polaris that the curator had represented in the dramatic pose of killing a seal. A protesting wail arose from below as the young naturalist was withdrawn from his field by a capable hand on the slack of his trousers. And presently, chagrined with failure, the culprit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... showte from euery neighbouring Hill: 60 My Doghooke at my Belt, to which my Lyam's tyde, My Sheafe of Arrowes by, my Woodknife at my Syde, My Crosse-bow in my Hand, my Gaffle or my Rack To bend it when I please, or it I list to slack, My Hound then in my Lyam, I by the Woodmans art Forecast, where I may lodge the goodly Hie-palm'd Hart, To viewe the grazing Heards, so sundry times I vse, Where by the loftiest Head I know my Deare to chuse, And to vnheard him then, I gallop ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... he is a horse that thinks! And when he thinks his pace is slack; Now, though he knows poor Johnny well, Yet for his life he cannot tell What he has got upon ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... wear even the remembrance of the evil of sin, the worth of heaven, and the need I had of the blood of Christ to wash me, both out of mind and thought; but I thank Christ Jesus these things did not at present make me slack my crying, but rather did put me more upon it, like her who met with the adulterer (Deut 22:27); in which days that was a good word to me after I had suffered these things a while: "I am persuaded that neither-height, nor depth, nor life," &c., "shall—separate ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... young ladies, and one or two lapdogs, by whom it was conjointly occupied. Trying to recover myself, I slipped on the glasslike floor, and came down stern foremost; and being now regularly at the slack end, for I could not well get lower, I sat still, scratching my caput in the midst of a gay company of morning visitors, enjoying the gratifying consciousness that I was distinctly visible to them, although my dazzled optics could as yet distinguish nothing. To add to my pleasurable sensations, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... chewed tobacco and kept a wary eye on the bandit, Alvarez. Charlie sat pale, limp, gazing at nothing. The elder Menocal had lifted his eyes to Bryant, at whom he looked mistily; he appeared to have aged astonishingly, his cheeks having gone flabby, slack, and gray, while a slight tremour shook ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... with a high forehead, a straight nose, and a smallish chin. The face was good-looking, but somehow not quite attractive. About the eyes was an expression faintly unpleasant, which the neat glasses did not hide. On the somewhat slack lip was a slight twist, not agreeable, which the well-kept mustache could not conceal. Still it was an interesting face, clever, assured, half-insolent. To Varney, it was exceptionally interesting; for removing the mustache and eye-glasses, it might have passed anywhere ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... when we're out of a job. You see we're both pretty young in the profession and we aren't as well known as we hope to be later on. We have to take what we can get on the small-time circuits, and we know that if we make good there we'll get on the big-time circuit sooner or later. Just now things are slack in the theatrical line as they always are in summer. We've got our lines out for a job in the fall, but nothing definite has come of it yet. So we thought we'd come down to the seashore for a few weeks and get a little of the ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... Society. The tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came back with the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the man, and Kent felt the whole figure against which he pressed, quiver and relax; the taut muscles of chest and arms grew slack, collapsed. ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... proposes not only to guard against periods of unemployment which extend to all industries in the case of industrial crises, but also to provide more steady employment for those who are unoccupied during the slack seasons of the year or while passing from one employer to another. Above all he plans that the youth of the nation shall not waste their strength entirely in unremunerative employment or in idleness, but that every boy or girl under eighteen ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... Van der Kemp, who deftly caught it and held on tight. Another was flung to Moses, who also caught it and held on—slack. At the same moment, Nigel saw a large block with a hook attached descending ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... said, "we ought to perform, you and I. With a painter's ladder, a slack wire, and a little practice, we should do wonders. On non-matinee days I might even lift you with my teeth. That always goes well, and no one would know you were as light as ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a large tree on the shore, I took the other end, the line passing through a round hawse-hole forward, and conveyed it aft to the shaft. After winding it four or five times round the shaft, I told the boys to haul it taut; and about twenty of them laid hold of the rope to "take in the slack," if we were fortunate ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... strangely deserted look. December is a slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered automatically, received her mail, exchanged ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... nothing alow to slack his haste] His haste shall not be abated by my slowness. It might ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... vessel that was lying alongside the bank. I felt convinced that these were slaves, as I could distinguish the difference in size between the children and adults. In the mean time we were travelling at full speed (about eight miles an hour) in the broad but slack current of that portion of the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... However inoffensive the citadels may be, they are held to be dangerous; however accommodating the commanders may be, they are regarded with suspicion. The people chafe against the bridle, relaxed and slack as it is. It is broken and cast aside, that it may not be used again when occasion requires. Each municipal body, each company of the National Guard, wants to reign on its own plot of ground out of the way ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a moment upon the slack end of the rope until he felt that the stone was lodged with fair security at the shaft's top, then he swung out over the black depths beneath. The moment his full weight came upon the rope he felt it slip from above. He ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... world, to me worth naught. Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction else Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne! My time, I told thee (and that time for thee Were better farthest off), is not yet come. When that comes, think not thou to find me slack On my part aught endeavouring, or to need Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 400 Luggage of war there shewn me—argument Of human weakness rather than of strength. My brethren, as thou call'st them, those Ten Tribes, I must deliver, if I mean to ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... as that, Ned. She has only to slack away her cables and drift with the tide that turned half an hour ago, we have got to tow out and set sail. However, the night is dark, the wind is off shore, and everything is in our favour. Do you see if there be anyone about on the decks of the ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... shall not insert. But I assure you, Sir, I heartily lament this Loss of Time, and am now resolved (if possible, with double Diligence) to retrieve it, being effectually awakened by the Arguments of Mr. Slack out of the Senseless Stupidity that has so long possessed me. And to demonstrate that Penitence accompanies my Confession, and Constancy my Resolutions, I have locked my Door for a Year, and desire you would let my Companions know I am not within. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... that sort were in all her loving letters. Often and often when I have been slack in fucking a woman, and my prick not answering when called on, I had only to conjure up some of these scenes with my mother when my cock would spring to the stand instantly, to the immense satisfaction of my momentary fouteuse, and it is so yet, a thought ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... her the first night. Then I went to see Reilly, but he didn't know who she was. I made him see what it meant to me to find her, and he promised to try his best and to forward at once any letter that came to him. If I don't hear after a while, when work gets slack so you can spare me, I'm going to Chicago and go through it with a fine tooth comb. Reilly will help me follow every girl by the name of Marta that's ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... what age d'ye take me?" Cai caught up the slack of the rope and hitched it taut over his shoulder. He was rejuvenated. He made a spring for the ladder, and went up it much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... seemed hardly in the water before they could fully see the burning roundhouse. A moment later, chilled to the bone but with his mind cleared by the sharp plunge, Bucks felt his companion's arm drawing him toward the farther shore where, in the slack water of an elbow of the stream, Dancing led the way across a shoal of gravel and Bucks waded after ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... silver saucepan at dinner, garnished with lemons, to flank the roast leg of mutton. Others prefer it cooked with leeks and onions, or pickled, and eaten with oil and lemon juice. The Englishman calls this Sea Weed, Laver; the Irishman, Sloke; the Scotchman, Slack; and the student, Porphyra. It varies in size and colour between tidemarks, being sometimes long and ribbon-like, of a violet or purple hue; sometimes long and broad, whilst changing to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... chaps, before another sea comes! I can't slack away these halliards. Bob, out knife, and up in the rings; cut ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... sundering, which may yet be amended. We were on the sand of the sea nigh the Ship- stead and the Rollers of the Raven, and we were gathering the wrack and playing together; and we saw a round-ship nigh to shore lying with her sheet slack, and her sail beating the mast; but we deemed it to be none other than some bark of the Fish-biters, and thought no harm thereof, but went on running and playing amidst the little waves that fell on the sand, and the ripples that curled around our feet. At last there came a small ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... visit sped by on winged feet. To Ranald they were brimming with happiness, every one of them. It was the slack time of the year, between seeding and harvest, and there was nothing much to keep him at home. And so, with Harry, his devoted companion, Ranald roamed the woods, hitching up Lisette in Yankee's buckboard, put her through ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... They fell slack, however, when the Queen reached his channel and flapped lazily, reversing to catch the wind and nose her cautiously into the shallows. Jeff dismissed it impatiently—a change of wind or some crafty maneuver of old Charlie Mack's to ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... instant did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... had what seemed to him to be bitter experience also. An individual, notoriously slack and incompetent, ten years his junior, had been promoted over his head, because he was somebody's cousin and the kind of fatuous ass that only labours industriously in drawing-rooms and at functions, recuperating by slacking idly ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... in the treatment of fractures of the leg. When employed in the form of an immovable case, they are open to certain objections—for example, if applied immediately after the accident they are apt to become too tight if swelling occurs; and if applied while swelling is still present, they become slack when this subsides, so that ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her system. Quit ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... little detail of a man's past life. Not that I've been a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take out some girl or ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... of impression to learning has already been discussed in another chapter. In no one of the mind's activities is vividness a more important factor than in memorizing. Matter committed under the stimulus of high interest and keen attention is relatively secure, while matter committed under slack concentration is sure to fade quickly from the memory. Songs can therefore best be committed under the elation of the interesting singing of the words; a verse of poetry, when the mind is alert and the feelings aroused by a story in which the sentiment of the verse fits; a prayer when the ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... though it was also obvious that the German military leaders had succeeded in nipping his efforts in the bud. When I met Ludendorff some time afterwards in Berlin this was fully confirmed by the words he flung at me: "What have you been doing to our Crown Prince? He had turned very slack, but we have stiffened ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... the timely arrival of such unexpected assistance, the men roused the hawser on board, threw the eye over the bitts, passed two or three turns of the slack round the barrel of the windlass, and adjusted the rope in a "fair-lead" with lightning rapidity. Mildmay, who was intently watching their movements, waved his hand as a signal to the baronet the instant he saw that the hawser was properly fast on board the barque, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... painful contact with your sensibilities, to bestow pleasures in which you yourself have no immediate share. It will tell your hearts especially in the case of this very Hospital for Consumption not to be slack in giving, because so much of what you will give—it is painful to recollect how much—will be spent, not in prevention, not even in cure, but in mere alleviation, mere increased bodily ease, mere savoury food, even mere passing amusements for ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley |
