"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sitting against the haystack; and his musings were, ever and anon, disturbed by his racking cough. He felt indisposed to move. As he brooded over the past, his mind became uneasy, he was conscious of a vague desire to make confession of the evil he had done. Did he feel that the sands of his life were almost sped? And was conscience waking ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Towards dawn everything grew silent. At first it would be broken occasionally by the hurried trot of cavalry or the shuffling footsteps of a straggler. Then it grew into the absolute silence of death. It was nerve-racking and terrible. One could almost hear the breathing of the listening people in all the other houses. I do not know how time went or what was the hour. I could endure the suspense no longer. They might kill me, but ... Ah well, at my age after nearly three years with 'les Boches,' killing ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession—an idea hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble of racking their ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... approaching almost to delirium. She was alone. He had long wished for such an opportunity to declare his passion; and yet, now that it had arrived, he trembled to embrace it. To allow it to pass was, in all probability, to entail upon himself many more weeks or months of racking anxiety, uncertainty, and suspense; and yet to embrace it was, perhaps, to set the last seal to his despair. On such a subject he could have debated for weeks; but now, the least hesitation, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... was nervous, apprehensive, every time she thought it likely that her lover was about to visit her. She dreaded what might transpire. She dreaded lest her power should be weakened before she had accomplished her end. It was difficult; it was nerve-racking. She must keep his love at fever-heat. It was ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... own, and coined an excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the line. Will this pass, do ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something. She had never been afraid of plain speaking, it would be strange if she let convention deter her now. Convention! it had wrecked many a life—so had interference, she thought with sudden racking indecision. What if by interference she hindered now, rather than helped? What if speech did more mischief than silence? Irresolutely she wavered, and to her indecision there came suddenly the further disturbing thought—if Barry acceded to her earnest wish what ground had she for pre-supposing ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange position, but his impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... That it was worldly trouble was certain. That other trouble, which has been known to distract the minds of the dying, to fill them with agony, was absent from his. On that score he was in perfect peace. But that some very great anxiety was racking him might be seen by the most casual observer. It had been racking him for a long time past, and it was growing worse now. And it appeared to be what he could not, or would ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... neighbourhood? One spark of hope remained. Catherine had spoken kindly, even lovingly. The situation admitted no half course. Gerard's mother thus roused must either be her best friend or worst enemy. She waited then in racking anxiety to hear more. No word came. She gave up hope. Catherine was not going to be her friend. Then she would expose her, since she had no strong and kindly feeling to balance the natural ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was his nest still; and before fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range his own flight—to sing his own song—and to seek his own home and his own mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in her friend, Laura once said to Helen, "If Pen had loved me as you wished, I should have gained him, but I should have lost you, mamma, I know I should; and I like you to love me ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for it but to try to induce the lender to let him have another fifty pounds, pending the investigation of title—another fifty, of which he was to get, in fact, eighteen pounds. Somehow, the racking off of this bitter vintage from one vessel into another did not seem to improve its quality. On the contrary, things were growing ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... after again racking his brain in an effort to suggest a really appropriate name, the old man finally slapped his ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... tongue. The strain to keep his head above the waters was racking him like a torment of the Inquisition. The horror of the situation grew with every second. Why did they lower so slowly? Would release ever come in time to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... lessens courage, shortens life. It does not pay to indulge in violent temper, corroding thoughts, mental discord in any form. Life is too short, too precious, to spend any part of it in such unprofitable, soul-racking, health-destroying business. The imagination is particularly active at night, and all unpleasant, disagreeable things seem a great deal worse then than in the day, because in the silence and darkness imagination magnifies everything. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... time I hoped something would prevent my going. The time came, I was at Ocean Grove, knew I would have a great audience, for the day was ideal, and still I did not have the lecture except in skeleton form. After breakfast Sunday I began to walk the floor, working out clothing for that skeleton and racking my brain for climaxes. My wife was with me and she never would worry over my having nothing to say. Into every sentence I would weave she would inject a piece of her mind about home or children or some woman's ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... find absolute solace from his inner disquiet. For what he sought and could not find, what he listened for and could not hear, was another of those sounds which had relieved the tedium of his brief stay in the mountains, the friendly nicker of the aged mare, gone to toil out her life in the racking ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... place Gregory, to fit him into the situation; straining back over ten years of security, racking ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... this soul-searching occurred several days ago, I am still nervous, and I never catch sight of my reflection in a shop window without suspicion racking me; while to see a smile on the face of an approaching pedestrian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... exhausted with the discussion. Her brow was heavy with thought; she was still racking her brains to find some ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... racking pains shot through his stiff muscles. Only the renewed life that surged through his veins enabled him to turn and twist and bend until the pains subsided to a dull aching and he was able to command his limbs. His hands were swathed fast in bandages. He tore them off with his teeth until the fingers ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... the wall the bather finished his ablutions. His body was graceful, vigorous, and youthful, tinted a golden bronze. His nose was hawky; his eyes a Latin brown, alert and roving, though there was a hint of weariness in them, the pressure of long, racking hours of ceaseless vigilance. His top hair was a glossy black inclined to curl; but the four days' growth of beard was as blond as a ripe chestnut burr. In spite of this mark of vagabondage there were elements ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... long to repeat the efforts Mr. Prime made to lead me to reconsider my resolution. Meanwhile I was racking my brains to find a way of letting matters rest without depriving him utterly of hope. As he said, the knowledge that my heart was his only increased the bitterness of his despair. Happy as I was, I felt bewildered ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... she must not pass the church with me, lest an encounter with her father should take place. There was thus but one course open. I must induce her to take the gangway behind the other point of the cove; and how was this to be compassed? That was what I was racking my brain about. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... an exact copy of the miseries of a New England spring; a bright sun came for an hour or two in the morning, just to coax you forth without your cloak, and then came up a villanous, horrible wind, exactly like the worst east wind of Boston, breaking the heart, racking the brain, and turning hope and fancy to an irrevocable green and yellow hue, in ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... up the next morning to be aware of a racking headache, and, by the dim light of his throbbing eyes, to behold his father with solemn face at his bed-foot—a reproving conscience ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had been horrible. Their minds had had no concept of such horror, such relentless, racking pain. The blazing lights, the questions screaming in their ears, Frankle's vicious eyes burning in frustration, and their own screams, rising with each question they would not answer until their throats were scorched ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... soon told upon Watt's delicate constitution, yet he persevered with the self-imposed extra work, which brought in a little honest money and reduced the remittances from home. He caught a severe cold during the winter and was afflicted by a racking cough and severe rheumatic pains. With his father's sanction, he decided to return home to recuperate, taking good care however, forehanded as he always proved himself, to secure some new and valuable tools and a stock of materials to make many others, which "he knew he must make ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... eating her hashed chicken, Trent tossed off a glass or two of claret, which he was perfectly aware, taken on his empty stomach, would immediately produce a racking headache. Since his passion was not sincere, it occurred to him that it might at least become dramatic; but he saw presently, with aggrieved surprise, that the impression made upon his mother by his violent behavior was far slighter than he had brought himself to expect. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... had elapsed since her interview with Pierre Dumaresq—seven days of horrible, nerve-racking suspense, of anguished foreboding, of ever-creeping, leaden-footed despair. And now at last, though the suspense still held her, she knew that the end had come. Only that evening, as her carriage had been turning in at the palace gates, a bomb ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... understand it. I don't. But as I stood by the grave, I suddenly felt that there was something for me to do, something very important that had to be done. It was odd, very odd. I went back to my hotel quite harassed, puzzling and racking my brains. Then an idea struck me; and I had a hunt through the registers. I found that two days before she died a boy was born, Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh—the old Beauleigh names. She knew that I should like ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution of the mysteries. I was, indeed, so swallowed up in these considerations that the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the strong sun then beating on my head, and even the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... resourcefulness, he had never spared himself. Burning the candle at both ends, with a vitality which had seemed inexhaustible, he had won step after step of promotion until, at forty, he was made managing editor of that huge and hard-driven organization, the New York Chronicle. For five years of racking responsibility, Henry Harding Seeley had been able to maintain the pace demanded of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... city, and would detain him, probably, ten or fifteen days; and she parted with him, bestowing so affectionate, and apparently loving farewell, as almost to remove the bitter and heart-rending suspicions which were then racking the breast of the injured husband. But, resolved on carrying out his intent, he simulated departure; but instead of leaving the city he remained at the house of a trusty friend, deliberating upon and maturing plans for the carrying out of that project, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... glad indeed when we came in sight of the Golden Gate once more, and when we were safe ashore in San Francisco. It had been a nerve-racking voyage in many ways. My wife and I were torn with anxiety about our boy. And there were German raiders loose; one or two had, so far, eluded the cordon the British fleet had flung about the world. One night, soon after we left Honolulu, we were stopped. We thought it was a British cruiser ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the secret, if it was so; promising that I would do her the best offices in my power to help her out of the difficulties that might be hanging over her: but it was to no purpose. They both died of racking pains in their bowels, and of convulsions. Upon laying out of the dead bodies, in one of the cases a dead child, not come to its full time, was found laying between the unhappy mother's limbs; and in the other, a very large dead child was ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... Four weary, nerve-racking days passed. It was late afternoon of the fourth day when Mrs. McChesney entered the elevator to go to her room. She had come from another fruitless visit to the baggage-room. She sank into a leather-cushioned seat in a corner of the lift. Two men entered briskly, followed by a bellboy. Mrs. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... seething foam was blown over us in showers from the curling manes of the roaring waves. But overhead, all this while, it was as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it, and the stars shone brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a thin fleecy shred of cloud racking across the moon's disk. Oh, the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... unconsciously into another dream-land where another unreal inferno is dioramically revealed, and new agonies suffered. Oh! the many many hours, that I have groaned under the terrible incubi which the fits of real delirium evoke. Oh! the racking anguish of body that a traveller in Africa must undergo! Oh! the spite, the fretfulness, the vexation which the horrible phantasmagoria of diabolisms induce! The utmost patience fails to appease, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Byron, who never could forget himself at all; and who, with all his vivid impulses of generous sympathy for the oppressed, is nevertheless generally classed to-day as a colossal egoist. (Unjustly so, for no mere egoist would have toiled as he toiled for Greek emancipation, in the nerve-racking campaign which cost ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... and mind. The idea of the Wild Man of the West having actually saved his life, and he had not seen him, was a heavy disappointment, and the confused and conflicting accounts of those who had seen him, combined with the racking pains that shot through his own brain, rendered him incapable of forming or expressing any opinion on the subject whatever; so ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... headache Nan Tok' was full of attention and concern. When the husband had a cold and a racking toothache the wife heeded not, except to jeer. It is always the woman's part to fill and light the pipe; Nei Takauti handed hers in silence to the wedded page; but she carried it herself, as though the page were not entirely trusted. Thus she kept the money, but it was he who ran the errands, ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... stilly peace, the sacred dead repose, Afar from earth's turmoil and grief, and all of sick'ning woes; From racking pain, and withering pride, and avarice's care, Secure they rest in solitude, unaw'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... to recollect." I had often prided myself on possessing a singularly retentive memory, more especially for names and faces, but, upon the present occasion, the more I pondered the matter, the more hazy I became. So I walked on through the sweet, wet grass, racking my brain for a solution of the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... five o'clock of a crystal Yukon morning, with the world clear-cut and fresh as at the dawn of Things. I was sleep-stupid, sore, stiff in every joint. Racking pains made me groan at every movement, and the chill night air had brought on twinges of rheumatism. I looked at my location stake, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... were more emphatic in their devotion to him than ever—racking their young brains for ways in which to show their loyalty and frequently looking into his face with the expression of soft adoration and trust one sees in the eyes of a faithful dog. Edgar was touched and gratified, and his sweet, spontaneous smile often rewarded ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Jane had for an instant closed her eyes in a prayer of happy thankfulness; but then a torture, a tearing and racking mortification because she had proved herself so weak before the mountain man so strong—and in contrast to Brent! (ah, God, what sacrifice would he not make for her!)—thrust its claws into her sensitive nature, and she blindly fled to the long room whose musty silence ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... left me off,' retorted Brian. 'My wife and her step-mother have gone in for strict economy. I am not allowed a spoonful of cognac, although I tell them it is the only thing that staves off racking neuralgic pains. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... states-general. "We would gladly have brought them together in full assembly," he said, "if the armed efforts of our enemies allowed of any longer delay in finding a remedy for the plague which is racking us so violently; our intent is, pending the coming of the said states, to put a stop to all these disorders in the best and quickest way possible." "The king, moreover," says Sully, "had no idea of imitating the kings his predecessors in predilection ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of heavy golden rope, were ranged about; they formed a guard and escort ten deep about the living sacrifice. At that the drums increased their volume, and to this was added a nerve-racking, discordant and rasping jangle, when sheets of copper, paper-thin, were struck with a heavy hand. The pulsing, throbbing pandemonium was terrific as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... touched? Over that question Eleanor had been racking herself for days past. But if so it could be only a passing fancy. It made it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty. Manisty—the soul of caprice and wilfulness—could never make a woman like Lucy happy. He would ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... earnestly and lovingly into his face. The eyes were only half closed, the breathing was loud and labored, now and then the lips moved convulsively, as if in an effort to speak. Something so unnatural and so forboding dwelt on his kind, dear features, that a racking pain seized the girl's heart as she looked, her throat filled up, and hot, blinding tears welled ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... went down in a heap, falling heavily on one shoulder. The stranger sprang upon him, and now it was the ungrateful passenger who had the advantage and was mercilessly pushing him with both arms toward the edge of the boat. Slowly Tom gave way, inch by inch. He was conscious of a racking pain in his shoulder. He tried to raise his right arm; then a feeling of faintness swept over him, he reeled, and, before Madge could move to his help, Tom Curtis fell ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Cantonese of high and low degree are laid away after death, we encounter a returning funeral party that made a curious procession, and one stretching to inordinate length. In front was a ragamuffin corps of drummers and men extracting ear-racking noises from metal instruments that looked like flageolets, but were not. Twenty or thirty bedraggled Buddhist priests in pairs trotted behind, proving by their individual gaits that in China there is no union of religion ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... It was, as it has been since last Tuesday morning, incessantly raining regular mountain rain. After dinner, at a little after seven o'clock, I was walking up and down under the little colonnade in the garden, racking my brain about Dombeys and Battles of Lives, when two travel-stained-looking men approached, of whom one, in a very limp and melancholy straw hat, ducked, perpetually to me as he came up the walk. I couldn't make them out at all; and it wasn't till I got close ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet, like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... is breaking; but lonesome and eerie Is the hour of my waking, afar from the glen.[50] Alas! that I ever came a wanderer hither, Where the tongue of the stranger is racking my brain! ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... be always searching for and racking his brain about things that either irritate or torment him. The cause of it is an internal morbid depression, combined often with an inward restlessness which is temperamental; when both are developed to their utmost, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease! Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!' At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... from the island of Marmora, who, climbing out of the trench in which he and his gang had been hiding, announced that he had lived in New York for five years, in Fortieth Street, and worked for the Morgan Line, and begged that I get, him out of this nerve-racking place and where he belonged, somewhere on board ship. There were crowds like him—Greeks, Armenians, Turks, not wanted as soldiers but impressed for this sort of work. They were unloading fire-wood long after ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... late years but I have not failed. I'm about as poor as you are, I guess. I could enjoy riches, but I want to be poor so I may not forget what is due to the people among whom I was born—you who live in small houses and rack your bones with toil. I am one of you, although I am racking my brain instead of my bones in our common interest. There are so many who would crowd us down we must stand together and be watchful or we shall be reduced to an overburdened, slavish peasantry, pitied and despised. Our danger will increase as wealth ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... his wife, Foster-mother, and Head-nurse had been racking their brains how to find out where either the Heir-to-Empire or Foster-father were imprisoned until little Bija had said, "Tell Tumbu to seek for them. If you show him Mirak's cap and say, 'Go ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... had been kept alive by succeeding classes of Briarwood girls for the purpose of hazing "infants," came in very nicely now in Ruth's story. And the arrangement of this trick picture suggested another thing to Ruth Fielding, something which she had been racking her brains ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... is a very pleasant study. But how do you think practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches was racking you?" ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he sobbed and beat his portly bosom over the grief which was racking the loyal African heart. The Duke of Alva went to the captain to inquire about the ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... circle, and were soon engaged in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as we could muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much, as I felt sick and faint after my sufferings of the previous night, and had besides a racking headache. It was a curious meal. The gloom was so intense that we could scarcely see the way to cut our food and convey it to our mouths. Still we got on pretty well, till I happened to look behind me — my attention being attracted by a noise of something crawling over ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... occurred during the first day is imperishably engraved upon my memory. It was about a week previous to the day appointed for my debut in my new character as an attorney's clerk; and when I arose, I was depressed in mind, and a racking pain to which I had lately been subject, was maddening me. I could scarcely manage to crawl into the breakfast-room. I had previously procured a drachm of opium, and I took two grains with my coffee. It did not produce any change in my feelings. I took two ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... which neither Froude nor Freeman has attempted to solve. Would any Court in the reign of Elizabeth have convicted a man of a criminal offence for carrying out the express commands of the sovereign? If not, in what sense was the racking of the Jesuits illegal? But there is a law of God, as well as a law of man, and surely Elizabeth broke it. Froude's argument seems to prove too much, if it proves anything, for it would justify all the worst cruelties ever inflicted by tyrants for political objects, from the burning ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... forswearing yourself and racking your brains to stifle truth with falsehood,' I coldly replied. 'I have trusted to the testimony of no third person. I was in the shrubbery this evening, and I saw and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams; and an erotic poet of our times has composed night-hymns in churchyards with the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... entertaining the thought, except to assure himself that he could not entertain it, but it was racking him with its suddenness. The King was there—in peril. She was here—safe. Insistently these two ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... whoop of triumph and leaned forward on his pony's neck. Twenty leaps farther and the spiteful crack of a rifle echoed from where the foreman was painfully supporting himself on his elbows. The pony swept on in a spurt of nerve-racking speed, but alone. By-and-by shrieked again and crashed heavily to the ground, where he rolled inertly and then lay still. Men like Buck are dangerous until their ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... the great Italian. The former advised the students at Glasgow that, next to Demosthenes, the study of Dante was the best preparative for the eloquence of the pulpit or the bar. Robert Hall sought relief in Dante from the racking pains of spinal disease; and Sydney Smith took to the same poet for comfort and solace in his old age. It was characteristic of Goethe that his favourite book should have been Spinoza's 'Ethics,' in which he said he had found a peace and consolation ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... showed anger, Hiram went back to work in the field with a much deeper feeling racking his mind. If the option was all right—and of course it must be—this would settle their occupancy ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... heart-racking struggle ceased. He lowered the long, black rifle. He took one last look at the chieftain's dark, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... yard of their crawl the hearts of the two scouts were in their throats. To creep amidst the dark, this way, with Indians before, behind, on right, on left—who knew where?—was nerve-racking. When the stars began to pale only two miles had been covered. Slow work, careful work, fearful work! Now for a hiding-place. They would be seen instantly ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... destination that night. This irked his soul, unbearably, until he had recourse to his old briar pipe. In spite of the fact that his arm was beginning to hurt him badly he sat near the stove, where he had kindled a fire again, thinking hard. He was racking his brain to seek some motive that could have impelled any one he knew to play such a frightful joke. One after another he named every man he had ever known or even merely met in Carcajou and the surrounding, sparsely settled country. But they were nearly all friends ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... patient suffers from cough, painful and racking, from impaired digestive power, from increasing debility, fever, and night-sweats. He visits the specialist, convinced that he is consumptive, he receives confirmation of his convictions, and you see him to-day presenting ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... What racking fear, what painful grief Ensue a pleasant sin! In vain the world proffers relief For maladies within. Its blandishments and smooth deceit No real succor bring; Its remedies but irritate And pleasure leaves a sting. Confusion, shame, and slavish fear O'erwhelm a guilty ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... seemed to experience one of her cyclonic shifts. Tears came raining down her face, her sobbing cleft with great racking gulps. Then she dropped to her knees beside her daughter, and, before Lilly could prevent, reached up to drag down her face ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to place this cap on your head, and he will be wrung with such awful and intolerable agonies that though he were a thousand miles away he would hurry back with all the speed he could command to have you take it off again, so that he might be relieved from the fearful pains racking ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... of her torments, Adrian hung over her, racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who was ominously feeling ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... was far away on the road to Calcutta when Major-General Willoughby sent, posthaste, for Major Harry Hardwicke of the Corps of Engineers. The puzzled Commanding General was racking his brains to find out if his old friend Abercromby had committed any fatal error during his somewhat bacchanalian visit on ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... a little with our country landlords, who by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland; so that the whole species of what we call substantial farmers, will in a very few years be utterly at an end.[18] It ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... autumn that year was very wintry—he objected more and more to leave his bed, and at last came to sitting up only for a couple of hours in the chair by his bedroom fire. It was during one of these intervals that Katherine, who had been racking her brains for something to talk of that would interest him, bethought her of a transaction in old newspapers which Mrs. Knapp had brought to a satisfactory conclusion. She therefore took out "certain ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... A jar, a nerve-racking tilt to one side, the creaking of wood and the rattle of metal, a careening, and then the machine came to a stop, not exactly on a level keel, but at least right side up, in the midst of a ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat alleviated the tedium caused by her racking voice. "Oh, my, my!" ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... another spell of nerve-racking silence. Then the outlaw said slowly, "I reckon yo' speaks ther truth. Yo' haint smart ernough fer er revenuer. One er them wouldn't come er still-huntin' 'thout er rifle-gun, an' with ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... thank our chum here, Jack Rover, for bringing your car back to you, Mr. Bangs," remarked Gif. "If he hadn't jumped from his horse into the car the machine might be racking itself to pieces out on the prairie now. It was doing all sorts of stunts when he jumped aboard and ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... they said to wait a moment, and one policeman went forth into the night while I warmed myself at the stove, all the while racking my brains for the trap they were going to ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of Babel, the confusion of languages is only in his mouth. All the vacations he speaks as good English as any man in England, but in term times he breaks out of that hopping one-legged pace into a racking trot of issues, bills, replications, rejoinders, demures, querelles, subpoenas, &c., able to fright a simple country fellow, and make him believe he conjures. Whatsoever his complexion was before, it turns in this place to choler or deep melancholy, so that he needs every hour to take ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... I, Stephen," said Mercy. "I am often racking my brains to think what I shall say next. Half the people I meet are profoundly uninteresting to me; and half of the other half paralyze me at first sight, and I feel like such a hypocrite all the time; but, oh, what a pleasure it is to talk with ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... atonement; and while on that blasted and corpse-like wreck two men fought, one in awful, cold, remorseless silence, the other with broken screams of insane fury that availed him nothing, Mrs. Goring murmured between racking sobs: ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... pleasures, and racking pains [and oh how often have they all been felt!] no longer sway me. They have been repulsed, disdained, trodden under foot. You have taught me how shameful it is to be the slave of passion. Truth is now my object, justice ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in mad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes were faster and all three of them struck her at once. There ensued an explosion veritably space-racking in its intensity; a flash of incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding into a vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about and attached itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the space where had been the enemy ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... scorned the sentimentality of seeing him off from the station, and Mrs. Gourlay was too feckless to propose it for herself. Janet had offered to convoy him, but when the afternoon came she was down with a racking cold. He was alone as he strolled on the platform—a youth well-groomed and well-supplied, but for once in his life not a swaggerer, though the chance to swagger was unique. He was pointed out as "Young Gourlay ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... up the collar of her gray tweed coat, painfully climbed out—the muscles of her back racking—and examined the state of the rear wheels. They were buried to the axle; in front of them the mud bulked in solid, shiny blackness. She took out her jack and chains. It was too late. There was no room to get the jack under the axle. She remembered from ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... what the horror he had run from, he was more sinned against than sinning. Every line in the boy's fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange mood of longing for a son. As an end to this nerve-racking night, there was work to do—for the remainder of it, at least for a brief moment, he had a companion in his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... degree of enlightenment and the power enjoyed by the community as a whole, it is quite possible for the individual to be condemned to a life little different in essentials from that of the lowest savage. He whose feverish existence is devoted to the nerve- racking occupation of gambling in stocks, who goes to his bed at night scheming how he may with impunity exploit his fellow-man, and who rises in the morning with a strained consciousness of possible fluctuations in the market which may overwhelm him ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... about the hotel was equally friendly, racking his brains to find a way of serving Monte by serving madame. It made him feel quite like those lordly personages who used to come here with a title and turn the place topsy-turvy for themselves and for their women-folk. He ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and live more at ease than under any other form of government. Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing [Greek text omitted], his natural Anacreontics; but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... amiss. In Albania, where I was stationed most of the time, life is very strenuous. We all had to work hard and expend a great deal of nervous energy. Medical calls on foot in the scorching sun over unkind cobblestones, long distance calls on unkinder mules, long hours in nerve-racking clinics, ferocious man-eating mosquitos, scorpions, centipedes, sandflies, and fleas, and other unspeakable animals kept us hopping and slapping ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... him of the power to think. A great many voices seemed to clamour around him, but only one could be clearly heard; only one, and that the voice of a child close to him—or was that also an illusion born of the racking strain that had driven all the blood to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... sheer-poles were buried and the water was up to the coaming of the main hatch. But with way on her, her helm hard up, no after canvas set, and the hurricane dragging at her stout foresail, she could not help paying off, and after a long minute of heart-racking suspense, during which we momentarily expected her to keel-up with us, she suddenly righted and went flying away dead before the wind, with the water boiling under her bows up to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... my course as safe and sound as Mr. Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you do not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... than alive, with racking pains, shiverings and exhaustion from prolonged insomnia, he was taken ashore in a Southern city and a physician summoned, who, with a promptness characteristic of the profession, administered a preparation ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... nerve-racking experience was encountered. More than once serious leaks were started in the ship, which had to be met by working the pumps and building false bulwarks in the hold; but by the exercise of every art known to sailors, she was kept afloat and tenable until June 11, 1881, when a fierce ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... liberty: long ago, her physical vigors had been drained under stress of anguish. Now, she was well-nigh incapable of any bodily activity. There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from her lips. The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of lamentation. She merely sat there in a posture of collapse. To all outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature. Even the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite expressionless. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... different course events would have taken had he but known that the mysterious jewel which had cost old Mackwayte his life, had been in his, Desmond's, possession from the very day on which he had assumed the guise and habiliments of Mr. Bellward. He was racking his brains to think what he had done with the box of cigarettes he had purchased at the Dionysus shop on the afternoon of the day he had taken the leave train back ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... heart should be wrung with distress, and his frame be exanimated with fear, though his safety be encompassed with impregnable walls! What are the bounds of human imbecility! He that warned me of the presence of my foe refused the intimation by which so many racking fears would ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... and pretended to be racking his memory; for it would have been quite easy to say that the party had left on Saturday, on their way to Bologna. That was the answer the gentleman expected, and the innkeeper generally found that it served best to tell people what they expected to hear. But, on the ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... idea. If he wants us to get after it he'll let us know. It won't take us long to get there at this rate. But I think I'll slow down a bit, for the motor is warmed up now, and there's no use racking it to pieces. But we're ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... them would have died had not the salt water made them very sick, while the hot stones restored their suspended circulation. Still, I would advise no one to depend on such remedies under similar circumstances. They got better; but still for many days were subject to racking pains, and remained weak and ill. While they were in this state, one morning, as Tom and I were at the top of the peak taking our usual survey of the horizon, in the hopes of a vessel appearing in sight, we saw a white speck to the westward, the rays of the sun glancing brightly on it ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... gentleman?" said the Colonel, racking his brains. "The one who used to be so much in his house, and was so much interested ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... she said. "Stumpy, why don't you smoke? Ah, the music has stopped at last. It has been racking me all the evening. Yes, you love it, of course. That is natural. I loved it once. It is always sweet to those who dance. But to those who sit out—those who sit out—" Her voice sank, and ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... permits it? Every boy take his own seat at his own desk." This principal was far more to be pitied than the boys, for they had before them the prospect of "work papers" and a grind less monotonous and more productive than the principal's discipline. She was a victim of a nerve-racking system, more ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... [11] Racking is a sort of shuffling gait, easy, I believe, to both horse and rider, when both are broken to it, and much followed throughout ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... for a long time after he had left with his head bowed and his face buried in his thin, trembling hands. A racking cough shook his frame occasionally, but he did not rise to mend the dying fire. The room grew chilly, and at last Collie rose ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... man, racking his bewildered brains for some argument far enough removed from nature and common sense to have an effect on the beautiful fanatic—'but the cause of the gods! What you might do ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... some fortuitous chance you happened to hit upon an article she thought she might happen to need, and it suited her, she would buy it. But it never occurred to her to thank you for your help, or to apologize for the nerve-racking strain to which she ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... knocked up, and many of them having their shoulders severely galled by the racking motion of the drays winding up and down the heavy sandy ridges, or in and out of the dense scrubs, I determined to remain for some time in depot to recover them, whilst I reconnoitred the country to the west, as far ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and also involving two stokeholds and therefore more supervision. At one time great difficulty was found in keeping the bottoms of boilers of this kind tight. Owing to their length, the unequal expansion due to different temperatures at the top and bottom caused severe racking strains on the bottom seams and riveting—so severe in some cases as to rend the plating for a large part of the bottom circumference of the shell. This difficulty has now been to a large extent got over, in consequence of the greater attention given ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... a dozen eyes behind them leering in; the points of a dozen weapons pricking through; the muzzles of a dozen revolvers ready to bark death. Each second he expected them to open—to unmask. The suspense grew nerve-racking. And behind him the girl kept whispering, "What is it? Tell me." He felt her hands upon ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... tired sigh, and then that racking, cruel cough that seemed to rend her whole frame. No, she would not finish for another hour yet. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the industry was altered. New and complicated machinery was introduced. The shortened work day was a hundred times more fatiguing to the workers because of the increased speed and nerve-racking noise and jar of the machinery. Other grievances developed. The quality of the yarn furnished the weavers was often so bad that they spent hours of unpaid labor mending a broken warp or manipulating a rotten shuttle full of yarn. Wages, fixed according ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... indescribable. As they came in, many sunk exhausted upon the pallets, some falling at once into a deep sleep, from which it was impossible to arouse them, others able only to assume a sitting posture on account of the racking, rattling cough which, when reclining, threatened to suffocate them. Few would stop to be undressed: food and rest were all they craved. Those who crowded to the stoves soon began to suffer from their frozen feet and hands, and even ran out into the snow ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... on the grass with his back against the trunk of a spreading chestnut-tree, with his arm round his Liza's waist, and her head resting affectionately on his manly bosom. Liza, too, had foreseen the separation into couples after dinner, and had been racking her brains to find a means of ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... could not help but see that anger was a good restorative for the other's nerves. As for himself, it was the more nerve-racking strain, lying plastered against the ice with nothing to do but strive to ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... for I had a few years of experience in mothering and teaching little waifs and strays of the streets before I began to paint pictures. Never shall I regret those nerve-racking, back-breaking, heart-warming, weary, and beautiful years, when, all unconsciously, I was learning to paint children by living with them. Even now the spell still works and it is the curly head, the ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... gesture. 'Why did you not tell me? Why did you not confess to me, sir, even at the last moment? But, no more! No more!' she continued in a piteous voice; and she tried to urge her horse forward. 'I have heard enough. You are racking my heart, M. de Berault. Some day I will ask God to give me ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... discovery, I was racking my brain to invent a good practical joke, but to obtain complete revenge it was necessary that my trick should prove worse than the one he had played upon me. Unfortunately my imagination was at bay. I could not find anything. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... there are groanings diversified by sharp cries as some decayed branch is snapped or tree falls. It was amid these doleful sounds Archie swung his ax. He was not conscious of the bitter cold for his work kept him warm, but his brain was full of racking thoughts. He had toiled like a slave for nigh six months and had accomplished little, with every imaginable deprivation he had saved nothing, and for the next six months he foresaw cold and hunger, which he doubted he could survive. Here was an offer that meant comfort, and relief from a penniless ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... my own bed until I heard her heavy breathing, denoting that she slept, before I dared to leave my own room to go to my sisters. The desire of racking me off, as dear charming Mrs. Benson used to call it, might have seized her, and my absence would have ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... the male member of the chain-gang, "I done cut my woman with a razor 'cause I see her racking down the street like a proud coon with another gent, like what Sarah Jane's brother telled me he done ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... her power, and was disposed to wield it unmercifully. The brandy-bottle, her never-failing companion, was by her side, and as she mused mopingly over her sins, she took from time to time copious draughts of the potent spirits, regardless of its power to do otherwise than to rob her of these racking memories of the past. In about two hours the promenaders returned and found her lying back speechless in her chair, the bottle and glass by her side; her eyes rolled wildly as she gazed vacantly on her children, but she was unable to ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Tom. He stepped to the range finder, quickly figured the speed of the jet liner, their own speed and the angle of approach. Racking them up on the electronic tracker, he turned back to Gaillard, ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... War, infesting the seas with unaccustomed and nerve-racking dangers. I must apologise for mentioning this, as everybody knows that we ought now to forget about the War as quickly as possible and get on with more important matters, but at the time it had a certain effect upon us all, not excluding the King George. Scorning the menaces that lurked about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... latitude 8 deg. 20'. The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... down on his knees beside Prince Jan and pull the dog close to him, while racking sobs shook the boy's shoulders. Jan twisted around to lick Shorty's face and comfort him, for the dog did not know his friend was crying from happiness. At last Shorty rose to his feet, brushing away the tears with his ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... quite speechless; every one was looking, and no one could help. It was clear Jim was racking his brain, and we sat staring desperately at each other across the candles. Everything I had ever known faded from me, eight pairs of eyes bored into me, Mr. Harbison's ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... man was intense. That endless, racking pursuit had brought out all the hardness the desert had engendered in him. Almost hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words. He hauled on the lasso, pulling the stallion's head down and down. The action was the lust of capture as well as ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... about his bed watching his every move, poor Mrs. McDonald repeated to us, amid heart-racking sobs, the dire calamity that had overtaken her happy family since our departure. That Helen, the pet of the family and of the rough section men, had disappeared from her home, leaving not a trace. Further questioning elicited from the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... asked, with an assumption of carelessness, as he poured out a wine-glassful. "It's a capital thing for the headache; and this nasty lowering weather has given me a racking headache all day." ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... deathly pale, convulsed countenance of the magistrate, who renewed his shrill, screeching laugh, he comprehended the racking and terrible torture which the unfortunate man was suffering. He hastened to him, seized him by the arm, and led the tottering figure toward ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... to convey them back, she fancied a thousand times more delights at Tunbridge than in reality there were, and she did not cease in her imagination, to dance over at Summer-hill all the country dances which she thought had been danced at Tunbridge. She could no longer support the racking torments which disturbed her mind, when relenting heaven, out of pity to her pains and sufferings, caused Lord Muskerry to repair to London, and kept him there two whole days: as soon as ever he had turned his back, the Babylonian ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... two Paul lived in a whirl of telephones, telegrams, letters, scurryings across London, interviews, brain-racking questionings and reiterated declarations of political creed. But his selection was a foregone conclusion. His youth, his absurd beauty, his fire and eloquence, his unswerving definiteness of aim, his magic that had inspired so many with a belief in him and had made him ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... way. It was of course natural and inevitable that the German onslaught upon Belgium and civilisation generally should strike these recluse minds not as a monstrous ugly wickedness to be resisted and overcome at any cost, but merely as a nerve-racking experience. Guns were going off on both sides. The Genteel Whig was chiefly conscious of a repulsive vast excitement all about him, in which many people did inelegant and irrational things. They waved flags—nasty little flags. This child of the ages, this last fruit of the gigantic ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... racking hour for Axel Peterson, who had been offered a sum which was riches to him if he would file on the land described by the figures on the card, pay its purchase price to the government on the spot with the money provided ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... had been laboring so long suddenly released, the two girls locked their arms around each other in a half-hysterical outburst of relief. Margaret's meaningless words and Dorothy's incoherent praises of her lover and Crane mingled with their racking sobs as each fought ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... nerve-racking crash of thunder changed the current of conversation. It drifted from the weather immediately, however, to a one-sided discussion of ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... aptus est regno Dei. "No man that putteth his hand to the plough, and looketh back, is apt for the kingdom of God." That is to say, let no preacher be negligent in doing his office. Albeit this is one of the places that hath been racked, as I told you of racking scriptures. And I have been one of them myself that hath racked it, I cry God mercy for it; and have been one of them that have believed and expounded it against religious persons that would forsake their order which they had ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... in vain for more, and he was regretting that he had been so liberal in his use of the provender, and racking his brains for a means of keeping up the conversation without risk to his companion, when about half a biscuit fell at his feet, and he seized ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... conversation followed, and Dacres finally took his departure, full of thoughts about his new acquaintance, and racking his brains to devise some way of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... racking his brains for some explanation not too disastrous to his hopes. The man opened the door of a sitting-room and closed it quietly behind him. In the room there was only one person, a girl with the sunniest hair and the straightest little ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston |
