"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gay vase, that Rose would have slipped silently away if they had not seen and called to her. "He's not gone I guess you'll find him in the parlor," said Steve, divining with a lover's instinct the meaning of the quick look she had cast at the hat rack as she shut the ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... were ice. A very diff'rent sentiment I hold: Girls, who in publick move, however bold, Have greater terrors lest they get a stain; For, honour lost, they never fame regain. Few enemies their modesty attack; The others have but one their minds to rack. TEMPTATION, daughter of the drowsy dame, That hates to move, and IDLENESS we name, Is ever practising each wily art, To spread her snares around the throbbing heart; And fond DESIRE, the child of lorn CONSTRAINT, Is anxious to the soul soft scenes to paint. If I've a worthy daughter made ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... and envelope from the rack in front of me. I was about to address the envelope to myself, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... small room, dimly lighted and very disorderly. Scraps of paper were strewn around the floor. Dust had settled on the ink-rollers of the foot-press. A single case of type stood on a rack and the form of a bill-of-fare—partly "pied"—was on a marble slab which formed the top of a small table. On an upturned soap-box was a pile of unprinted menu cards. Josie noted a few cans of ink, a bottle of benzine, and a few printing tools lying ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... College. He is to be strictly examined after evensong today. If he refuse to give up the names of all to whom he has sold his books, and who have listened to his teachings, they declare he will be sent to the Tower to be examined by the rack." ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... first of many. Almost every evening after dinner Frances sat down at the old-fashioned piano, with the candle brackets at each side of the music rack, and sang. Occasionally we were her only auditors, but more often one or both of the curates or Doctor and Mrs. Bayliss or Bayliss, Junior, dropped in. We made other acquaintances—Mrs. Griggson, the widow in "reduced circumstances," whose husband had ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... handkerchief. The others were laughing and applauding. Lee and Coralie in their obscure corner were wide-eyed with excitement, and happy. Mr. Polk's chest heaved spasmodically. He screwed up his eyes. His face grinned. He looked like a man on the rack. He opened his eyes and glared about; but he saw nothing, for they were blind with tears. He ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... sir.—O heaven! that anything in the likeness of man should suffer these rack'd extremities, for the uttering of his sophisticate good ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... people who shouted "Christ to the cross!" But we bind you not to our safety—no! Betray us to the crowd—impeach, calumniate, malign us if you will—we are above death, we should walk cheerfully to the den of the lion, or the rack of the torturer—we can trample down the darkness of the grave, and what is death to a criminal is ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... foregoing are according to his most unbiased views—that such, and only such, he will ever support, nor shrink, nor waver from, nor expose the same, even in the agonies of death, on flood, or field, in prison, on the rack, scaffold, or feathered couch—that he understands this fully, and all the bearings of it, with all of the foregoing, his name, which he deliberately, without compulsion, sets to this constitution, stands as lasting, undeniable proof—that he has come to this solemn determination after ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... last spring, weren't you?" queried the King's Messenger, burrowing in his suit case for his flask. "Squat down at the end there—got your glass?" He measured out two portions of whisky and from the rack produced a ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... are. Those hands, how white they are in the moonlight.' He took her hands. 'Why do you trouble and rack your soul about painting? A woman's hands are too beautiful ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... dull'd his eyeballs as they ached, With Homer's forehead—though he lack'd An inch of any! And one rack'd ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... ought not to laugh at them. They were carrying out in literature what the older books of arithmetic call "The Rule of False,"—that is to say, they were trying what the English tongue could not bear. No one was so successful as Stanyhurst in applying this test of the rack: yet it is fair to say that Harvey and Webbe, nay, Spenser and Sidney, had practically, though, except in Spenser's case, it would appear unconsciously, arrived at the same conclusion before. How much we owe to such adventurers of the impossible few ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... would the strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... choir. At the same moment, also, the torches were extinguished, and the whole of the building buried in profound darkness. Presently after, a sound was heard of footsteps approaching the nave, but nothing could be discerned. Expectation was kept on the rack for some minutes, during which many a stifled cry was heard from those whose courage failed them at this trying juncture. All at once, a blue light illumined the nave, and partially revealed the lofty pillars by which it was surrounded. By this light the whole of ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... room with the coffee, and this made a break—and he immediately asked her to play to him, and settled himself in one of the big chairs. He was too much on the rack to continue any more love-making then; "what might have been" caused too ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... had lashed up the hammock, by what seemed to me to be art-magic, "don't you say you don't know how to lash a 'ammick. I've showed you once. Now shove it in the rack there. Up on ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... to Lewis. Its floor was tiled. Its roof was cleverly arranged to give a pergola effect. It was quite vine-covered. The vines hid the glass that made it rain-proof. In one corner rugs were placed, wicker chairs, a swinging book-rack, and a tea-table. The lady motioned to Lewis to sit down. She sat down herself and started drawing off her long gloves. She looked curiously at ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... dark—a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple, as monarch in his state; the heavens are ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... property to the owner, and only admitted him to a sort of partnership with the tiller of the soil, old Gill speedily assured them that these were changes only to be adopted in Ulster, where the tenants were rack-rented and treated like slaves. 'Which of you here,' would he say, 'can come forward and say he was ever evicted?' Now as the term was one of which none had the very vaguest conception—it might, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... but an empty show to save appearances; the tribunal, as a fact, was composed of eight members, all known to be fervent haters of Savonarola, whose trial began with the torture. The result was that, feeble in body constitutionally nervous and irritable, he had not been able to endure the rack, and, overcome by agony just at the moment when the executioner had lifted him up by the wrists and then dropped him a distance of two feet to the ground, he had confessed, in order to get some respite, that his prophecies were nothing mare ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... As my eyes grew accustomed to the place, I found it possible to discern the outlines of the windows and locate the stairs and the arches where the side halls opened. I was even able to pick out the exact spot where the great antlers spread themselves above the hatrack, and presently the rack itself came into view, with its row of empty pegs, yesterday so full, to-day quite empty. That rack interested me,—I hardly knew why,—and regardless of the noise I made, I crossed over to it and ran my hand along the wall underneath. The result was startling. A man's coat ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... mechanically and looked around; the towns were perfectly still, save for the prolonged organ note of the falls, which soon ceases to strike the ear. On either bank the houses gleamed pale under a low sky, where the greenish moonlight struggled through a rack of angry black clouds. While he stood there the clock under the church cupola above struck the quarters and clanged out the hour, followed, after a becoming pause, by the gatehouse clock across the river, and such others ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... faculty, our sensibilities to the beautiful. All events of life, all the workings of our hearts, should point to this one idea. As I walk the fields, the trees and flowers and birds, and the motes of rack floating in the sky, seem to cry to me: "Thou knowest us! Thou knowest we have a meaning, and sing a heaven's harmony by night and day! Do us justice! Spell our enigma, and go forth and tell thy fellows that we are their brethren, that their ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... wrong? No; it should be bitter: bitterness is strength—it is a tonic. Sweet, mild force following acute suffering you find nowhere; to talk of it is delusion. There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack. If energy remains, it will be rather a dangerous energy—deadly ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... through the eyelids, by which means they are effectually blinded, while in the case of smaller birds both the legs and wings are broken." Deer, hares and even pig are also caught by a strong rope with running nooses. For smaller birds the appliance is a little rack about four inches high with uprights a few inches apart, between each of which is hung a noose. Another appliance mentioned by Mr. Ball is a set of long conical bag nets, which are kept open by hooks and provided with a pair of folding doors. The Pardhi has also a whistle made ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Insulated wires—insulated so that they would transmit messages in a storm, on the ground or under water—were wound upon reels, making about two hundred pounds weight of wire to each reel. Two men and one mule were detailed to each reel. The pack-saddle on which this was carried was provided with a rack like a sawbuck placed crosswise of the saddle, and raised above it so that the reel, with its wire, would revolve freely. There was a wagon, supplied with a telegraph operator, battery and telegraph instruments for each division, each corps, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sufficiently happy to be wifely." Could I suppose aught else from such an utterance but that there was an estrangement and hidden pain? How, unless there were sorrow, could the woman see herself sorrowed for? My mind leapt to possibilities. Little Barbara on the rack was more than I could bear. I groped for her hands. It was a fault in her to be so much on her guard. She had no sorrow to confess, and spoke—only to ward off what was ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... was brought round and placed on the rack behind the wagon. It was a large black trunk, securely bound with brass bands, and showed marks of service, as if it had been considerably used. Two small strips of paper pasted on the side bore the custom-house marks of Havre and ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... heavily and sank down on a corner of the sofa. All night long body and mind had been on the rack; he was chill, faint, wearied to death. The prospect of another hysterical scene was almost more than he could endure, yet through all his heart yearned over his wife, for he realised that, great as was his own sorrow, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... throbbed fiercely in her temples and thumped heavily at her heart, producing a half-suffocating sensation; and, in her feverish anxiety, the doom of Damiens appeared tolerable in comparison with the torturing suspense of nine hours on the rack. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in the work of my hands and the pyeertness of my mind and the fruits of my industry, and when my man died were able to run the farm and take keer of the children as good as before—I am sot down here in the midst of rack and ruin, with the roof a-leaking over me, the chimbly sagging out, the fence rotten and the hogs in the corn, the property eatin' their heads off, and the young uns lacking warm coats and kivers, John and Marthy being so mortal doless; ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... 'Tis some sort av fit that's on him. I've seen ut. 'Twill hould him all this night, an' in the middle av it he'll get out av his cot an' go rakin' in the rack for his 'courtremints. Thin he'll come over to me an' say, "I'm goin' to Bombay. Answer for me in the mornin'." Thin me an' him will fight as we've done before—him to go an' me to hould him—an' so we'll both come on the books for disturbin' in ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence. It's easy to bid one rack one's brain, I'm sure my poor head aches again, I scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh, for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap. "Bless us!" cried the Mayor, "what's that? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... great crowd on the train. They easily found a second-class compartment without occupants. He swung the luggage on the rack ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine;—and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom,—uprose a thousand phantoms,—in ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... girl asleep in the spare room. Don't wake her," cautioned the mother, who, to prevent even a hat falling, had secured Martin's things and was putting them on the rack. ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... the bass to 18-1/2" in the treble; they are mounted on a trapezoidal key frame which is removable from the instrument. The balance rail and balance rail pins are on a diagonal, resulting in a gradual but noticeable change in the touch from one end of the keyboard to the other. The rack, 1/2" thick and 1-3/4" high, is fastened along the back of the key frame and has one vertical saw cut for each key. Projecting from the back of each key is a small sliver of wood which rides in its proper ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... our suitcases on the trunk-rack at the back must be loose, Jim. I hear it bump about every time you go over a rough place in ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... speed to avoid the bear's first mad rushes. It speedily became so excited, however, as to render it almost impossible for the rider to take aim. Sometimes he would come up close to the bear and wait for it to charge, which it would do, first at a trot, or rather rack, and then at a lumbering but swift gallop; and he would fire one or two shots before being forced to run. At other times, if the bear stood still in a good place, he would run by it, firing as he rode. He spent many cartridges, and though most of them were wasted ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... angles to the verandah and the road. The floor was covered with oil-cloth; the walls were hung with curios, South Sea spears and masks, Japanese armour, boomerangs, nullahs, a multitude of quaint workings in wood and grass and beads. Against the wall facing the door was an umbrella stand and hat rack of polished wood, with a mirror in the centre. There were two pannelled doors to the left; a doorless stairway, leading downwards, and a large window to the right; at the end of the passage a glazed door, with coloured ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track; Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... prisoners, blindfolded, and lashed to an armchair, were lowered through this shaft to the gloomy vaults hewn out of the solid rock. The dark and mysterious dungeons were closed by a stone slab, revolving on a pivot, and weighing from half a ton to a ton. One room, larger than the others, was the rack-chamber, which contained the instrument of torture; and in the wall several iron ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... Judy brightly. "Shall I make you some toast, Hilda? This in the toast-rack is so soft ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... speedy and sedate, as though I were some rack-rape that they did well to be feared of alone at night; and so came at last to the village green, where a great dance was a-foot, with torches, and a wandering fiddler to set the ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... danger—which appeared to rise up at every turn, and to hang day and night over the towers of Cloomber! Rack my brain as I would, I could not conjure up any solution to the problem which was not ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hall she ate nothing, but drank her wine as though burning with a fever. Sometimes, when the stillness had become portentous, Lapo rolled up his sleeves, inspected his scarred, swarthy arms, and mumbled, with the grin of a man stretched on the rack: ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... one instance at Gualeguay, in the Argentine territory, he found himself in the power of one Leonardo Millan, a type of Spanish South American brutality, by whom he was savagely struck in the face with a horsewhip, submitted to several hours' rack and torture, and thrown into a dungeon in which his sufferings were soothed by the ministration of that "angel of charity," a woman, by name ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table until he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins, and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... wretch going to send the whole market here to try to find out what we talk about? What a prying, malicious set they are! Did anyone ever hear before of crumbed cutlets and 'assortments' being bought at five o'clock in the afternoon? But then they'd rack themselves with indigestion rather than not find out! Upon my word, though, if La Saget sends anyone else here, you'll see the reception she'll get. I would bundle her out of the shop, even if she were my ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... tamer, good Mardonius, Thou know'st I love thee, nay I honour thee, Believe it good old Souldier, I am thine; But I am rack'd clean from my self, bear with me, Woot thou bear ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... should answer it. How could he refuse her dear constancy and affection, yet how could he accept it? He had no hope of marrying her, he reasoned that it would be better for her should he even repulse her rudely. It would be like screwing the rack for his own body to do that, but he declared to himself that he ought. "She'll never marry at all, if she waits for you; it'll hinder her looking at somebody else; she'll be an old maid, she'll be all alone in the world, with no husband or children, and you ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... enter the house, Mr. Baron encountered his niece, who had been a witness to the scene, which explained everything to her. "You see, you see," cried the old man, "everything going to rack and ruin! Would to Heaven you could be married to-night and sent away ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... out to the spaceport," said Tom, pulling his gear out of the recessed rack under his seat. "Our ship blasts off for Venus ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... uppermost bulwarks. And now, loud above the roar of the sea, was suddenly heard a sharp, splintering sound, as of a Norway woodman felling a pine in the forest. It was brave Jarl, who foremost of all had snatched from its rack against the mainmast, the ax, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... straight away from their own people, right into the heart of the enemy country, and rack his brains as he might, Ken could see no plan for getting back. There was nothing for it but to try to shake off their pursuers and trust to chance ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... servant had set the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report relating to the present complication. The complication was of this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch's characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... manner of two swings, at about sixteen inches apart from each other, and one a little higher than the other; these should be joined together with two or three cords passing from the one to the other, and on the rack thus made, a pillow or cushion should be placed; upon this, the learner will throw himself on his breast, as upon the water, and supporting himself in this position, and having his hands and feet perfectly at liberty, he will move them to and ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... to the great unused upper story, where heaps of household rubbish obscured the dusty half-windows. In a corner, behind Louise's baby chair and an unfashionable hat-rack of the old steering-wheel pattern, they found the little brown-painted tin trunk, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... others. Back of the store proper was a room, with the prescription desk at one side and reserve stock on shelves around the other three. Here were a table and a half dozen old chairs, a war map, still showing with colored pins the last positions before the great allied advance, and an ancient hat-rack, which had held from time immemorial an umbrella with three broken ribs and a pair of ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were ranged in it: two 12-bore shot-guns, an air-gun, and a little 20-bore. Another rack was empty; no doubt it had held the Mannlicher rifle, which the police had carried away to use as evidence in their case for the prosecution. The door was locked and there was no ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... sight he rushed downstairs, and found the boys hastily gathering in the dark living room, arming themselves from the gun rack, and taking ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... frescoed in imitation paintings. The columns which supported the ceilings were brilliantly banded in various colors and flowered out below their pediments into iron branches of oak leaves among which blossomed the bulbs of many electric lights. By each column stood a severely plain hat-rack. In the middle of the room were four billiard tables, around its sides numberless small marble-topped stands where beer was being served galore. Against the walls were fastened several of those magnificent ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... rack your brain—'tis all in vain, I'll tell you every thing I know; But to the Thorn, and to the Pond Which is a little step beyond, I wish that you would go: Perhaps, when you are at the place, You something of her tale ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... as mile after mile was covered by the long, raking strides of the hardy horses. Occasionally Grey was forced to pull off the trail into the deep snow to allow the heavy-laden hay-rack of some farmer to pass, or a box-sleigh, weighted down with sacks of grain, toiling on its way to the Ainsley elevator. These inconveniences were the rule of the road, the lighter always giving way to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... me to my old home? It was beautiful once, Russ, before it was let run to rack and ruin. A thousand acres. An old stone house. Great mossy oaks. A lake and river. There are bear, deer, panther, wild boars in the breaks. You can hunt. And ride! I've horses, Russ, such horses! They could run these scrubby broncos off their legs. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... side-rooms. He entered first the one nearest him, which was on the right side of the ship. This room was about ten feet long, extending from the middle of the ship to the side, and about six feet wide. A telescope was the first thing which attracted his attention. It lay in a rack near the doorway. He took it down, but it fell apart at once, being completely corroded. In the middle of the room there was a compass, which hung from the ceiling. But the iron pivot had rusted, and the plate had fallen down. Some more guns and swords were here, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Julia tartly. "I don't bother myself much with abstractions. I know it is you and I." And she put her things on the hall-rack, as she was going out again ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... and much more did, His friendship did command and freely gave All before writ, and more than I durst crave. But leaving him a little, I must tell, How men of Manchester did use me well, Their loves they on the tenter-hooks did rack, Roast, boiled, baked, too—too—much, white, claret, sack, Nothing they thought too heavy or too hot, Can followed can, and pot succeeded pot, That what they could do, all they thought too little, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... feet square, with ceilings eight or ten feet high. Doors connect the rooms, and the stories, of which there are three, are connected by ladders through trapdoors. It probably held a population of fifteen hundred. The pueblo has well stood the rack of time; the lesser buildings outside it ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... and others declare It'll shorten your days and your heart will impair— That nicotine poison will flow through your veins And nervous distraction will rack with its pains; But what cares a feller in slippers and gown, When wintry winds whistle and snow's pouring down, With papers and books, and his feet near the fire, Encircled with ringlets that curl high ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... mislaid?" demanded Jacob Farnum, also leaping forward and staring with dismayed eyes into the rack. "Oh, ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... piano—her piano!—the spirit of desire which had so long possessed him, waking and sleeping, returned,—returned to torture him now with greater skill amidst these her possessions; her volume of Chopin on the rack, bound in red leather and stamped with her initials, which compelled his glance as he passed, and brought vivid to his memory the night he had stood in the snow and heard her playing. So, he told himself, it must always be, for him to stand in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... meant Scourges to the Earth; no Mortal's fit for absolute Command; Men have their Passions; Monarchs are but Men, and when Love, Jealousie, or Fear possess 'em, the Tyrants spurn, and rack their guiltless People, who tamely bend, and court their fatal Madness; our happy Realm knows no Despotick Sway; not only Kingdoms here, but Hearts unite, the Sov'reign and the Subjects bless each other; a Constitution so divinely fram'd; such gen'rous ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... hide. If it hadn't been for the fear of falling to the hard floor, he would have jumped out of Mary's hands and scampered away. But he had no chance to do this. There was another loud racketty-rack-clumpity-bang! First a big tin dish pan rolled all the way down the stairs into the hall; then a set of building-blocks, a wooden hobby horse, a lot of animals from a Noah's ark, tin soldiers, a drum, and a train of cars. Toby came last, sliding down the banisters, and shouting ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... wide billows, and after that, John, the Pole, and I roll the billows into tumbles. Or, if the hay is slow in drying, as it was not this year, the kicking tedder goes over it, spreading it widely. Then the team and rack on the smooth-cut meadow and Bill on the load, and John and I pitching on; and the talk and badinage that goes on, the excitement over disturbed field mice, the discussion of the best methods of killing woodchucks, tales of marvellous exploits of loaders and stackers, thrilling incidents ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... in that case the form must be strictly subjunctive, and not indicative. 'If any member absents himself, he shall forfeit a penny for the use of the club'; this ought to be either 'absent,' or 'should absent.' 'If thou neglectest or doest unwillingly what I command thee, I will rack thee with old cramps'; better, 'if thou neglect or do unwillingly,' or 'if thou should neglect.' The indicative would be justified by the speaker's belief that the supposition is sure to turn ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the bright Queen who rules the tide Now forward thrown, now bridled back, Smile o'er each answering smile, then hide Her grandeur in the transient rack, And yield her power, and veil her pride, And move ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... your 'hatter' won't fraternize?" asked Mr. Crewe. "You young men are naturally sanguine, but I know these diggers. They may be communicative enough over a glass, but next day the rack and thumbscrews wouldn't extract ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... they brought off, together with the brigantines. These prisoners were all put to the question; but whatsoever torments they endured, they could not at first get one syllable out of them, either where the enemy lay, or what was the number of his men, or of his ships. Two of them died upon the rack, and other two they threw overboard; but the remaining couple, either more mortified with their torments, or less resolute, being separated from each other, began at last to open: And told the same things apart; both where the Achenois were ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... seventeen years old, prefect and hero, stretched himself with calm satisfaction in a corner of a smoking carriage in the Irish night mail. Above him on the rack were his gun-case, his fishing-rod, neatly tied into its waterproof cover, and a brown kit-bag. He smoked a nice Egyptian cigarette, puffing out from time to time large fragrant clouds from mouth and nostrils. His fingers, the fingers of the hand which was not occupied ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... nerve and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. I recalled the time when I, too, had enjoyed the rack on which ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... a horse, and my horse pleased me; I tied my horse behind a tree. Horse said, 'Neigh! neigh!' Dog said, 'Bow-wow!' Duck said, 'Quack! quack!' Guinea said, 'Pot-rack! pot-rack!' Hen said, 'Shinny-shack! shinny-shack!' Bird ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... rooms for travellers, called daimiyos' rooms, fifteen feet high, handsomely ceiled in dark wood, the shoji of such fine work as to merit the name of fret-work, the fusuma artistically decorated, the mats clean and fine, and in the alcove a sword-rack of old gold lacquer. Mine is the inner room, and Ito and four travellers occupy the outer one. Though very dark, it is luxury after last night. The rest of the house is given up to the rearing of ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... was a heart-rack none the less. Dalhousie was no lifelong friend like O'Neill, or even like Chas Cooney. But Vivian, having made his acquaintance most informally one night in the summer, had responded at sight to the unconscious claim of weakness; he had come to feel a strong bond, conceived splendid reformatory ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... filling half the space of one of the side-walls, its steel framings glittering like polished silver; the high plate-rack full of shining crockery at one end by the door, and the low, comfortable couch at the other; two lines of linen hung on cords stretched under the ceiling airing above the range, and the solid deal table in the middle of the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... steady inpouring of truth into every brain ready to receive it, so that hand stretched out to hand across the centuries and passed on the torch of knowledge, which thus was never extinguished. His the Form which stood beside the rack and in the flames of the burning pile, cheering His confessors and His martyrs, soothing the anguish of their pains, and filling their hearts with His peace. His the impulse which spoke in the thunder of Savonarola, which guided the calm wisdom of Erasmus, which inspired ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... wonder, he showed her a haggard face. And she had for him, in the agony and the abasement of his soul, still quivering from the rack of emotion that alone could have extorted his confession—she had for him the half-smile, tender and compassionate, that it is given to most men to see but once in a lifetime on the lips and in the eyes of the woman beloved. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... presently found myself groping my way, with her assistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modicum of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow assisting my recovery by seating herself beside me and fanning me ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... the crowd. We follow the ravages these sufferings make in tortured body and lacerated heart; we wed these sufferings; they become our own. Nor does the witness strain after objectivity. He is the impassioned pleader who, just delivered panting from the rack, cries for vengeance. The writer of the book now under review is newly come from hell; he gasps for breath; his visions chase him; pain's claws have left their mark upon him. Andreas Latzko[42] will, in future days, keep his place in the first rank among the witnesses who have left ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... why Aramis had asked Percerin to show him the king's new costumes. "There is not a doubt," he said to himself, "that my friend the bishop of Vannes had some motive in that;" and then he began to rack his brains most uselessly. D'Artagnan, so intimately acquainted with all the court intrigues, who knew the position of Fouquet better even than Fouquet himself did, had conceived the strangest fancies and suspicions at the announcement of the fete, which would have ruined a ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the zenith, black with bale, The Gipsies' smoke rose deadly pale; And one wide night of hopeless hue Hid from the heart the recent blue. And soon, with thunder crackling loud, A flash reveal'd the formless cloud: Lone sailing rack, far wavering rim, And billowy tracts of stormland dim. We stood, safe group'd beneath a shed. Grace hid behind Jane's gown for dread, Who told her, fondling with her hair, 'The naughty noise! but God took care Of all good ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... pickets are driven vertically in the notches, large and small ends down, alternately. The form is then raised a foot and held by placing a lashing around outside the pickets, tightened with a rack stick, Fig. 18. The wattling is randed or slewed from the form up. The form is then dropped down, the gabion inverted and the wattling completed. If the brush is small, uniform, and pliable, pairing will make a better wattling than randing. ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... visible of the wild riot of the evening before—torn papers, emptied bottles, a shattered sign or two, an oil-lamp blown into bits by some well-directed shot, a bat lying in the middle of the road, and a dejected pony or two, still at the hitching-rack, waiting a delayed rider. But, except for these mute reminiscences of past frolic, the long street seemed utterly dead, the doors of saloons and dance-halls closed, the dust swirling back and forth to puffs of wind, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... move you nothing? No?" he said, with the slightest taint of bitterness. "Well, well, I have found, Esther, the worst reality is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through which we at first see it darkly—never—not even the rack. I suppose it will be so with death. And by that philosophy the slavery to which we are going must afterwhile become sweet. It pleases me even now to think what a favored man our master is. The fortune cost him nothing—not an anxiety, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... my dear nephew," said Mr. Bloomfield, with the voice of one on the rack. "I regard you with the most sacred affection; and I thank God I am an Englishman—and all that. But not—not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tea, and cake, and jam, and an evening filled with bound volumes of The Christian Treasury, where we wrestled with tales of religious bigotry and persecution until we seemed to breathe the very atmosphere of dark and mouldy cells; and became daringly familiar with the thumb-screw and the rack, the Inquisition and other devildoms of Spain. I used to wonder pitifully why it had never occurred to the poor victims to say their prayers in bed, and thus save themselves such ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we distinguish one waiter from another much as we pick our hat from the rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never presumed to have any opinions of his own. When such was my mood he remained silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me he laughed before I told him what it was. He turned the twinkle ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... is a long ride from Towcester to St. Albans town in Herts, though the road runs through a pleasant, billowy land of oak-walled lanes, wide pastures, and quiet parks; and the steady jog, jog of the little roan began to rack Nick's tired bones before the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically;— morally, none whatsoever: we use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property; we use, indeed, the man's own anxieties, instead of the rack; and his immediate peril of starvation, instead of the pistol at the head; but otherwise we differ from Front de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the redoubted highwayman ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... most treasonable conversations, take place. But only in exceptional instances has it been possible to catch the guilty in the act, or to secure definite proof against the offenders. A few admissions have been enforced by the rack, but these confessions have proved so untrustworthy that several members of the Council are of opinion that for the future it would be better to abstain from methods of investigation which are not only cruel but are apt to lead us astray. Of course there is no lack of individuals well-affected towards ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... cords, then the flap was thrown open and the adjutant's office stood partially revealed. It was a big wall tent backed up against another of the same size and pattern. Half a dozen plain chairs, two rough board tables littered with books, papers and smoking tobacco, an oil stove and a cheap clothes rack on which were hanging raincoats, ponchos and a cape or two, comprised all the furniture. In a stout frame of unplaned wood, cased in their oilskins and tightly rolled, stood the colors of the famous regiment; ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... cruel punishment he went out and found Benny, who had been crying piteously all the time, and then my two boys went and hid themselves. I would have suffered the rack to have recalled that hour. It was too late. On going into the kitchen shortly after, I found a poor woman of the neighborhood with the box, which she said her thievish son had confessed he stole from the pantry. Perhaps some parents imagine ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... of the immigrant, sprung from peasant stock, is to grow up in the slums and tenements of the great city. Such a fate was mine. To exchange the rack-rented but limitless fields of Irish landlordism for the rickety and equally rack-rented tenements, with the checkerboard streets, where all must keep moving, is only adding sordidness to spare sadness. Surely, the birthday's ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... lingering longer, and she descended, the waxlight in her hand. Everything was ready in the gray parlor—the tea-tray on the table, the small urn hissing away, the tea-caddy in proximity to it. A silver rack of dry toast, butter, and a hot muffin covered with a small silver cover. The things were to her sight as old faces—the rack, the small cover, the butter-dish, the tea-service—she remembered them all; not the urn—a copper ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... place in London before I have to thank you for your present to me; you hardly give me time, in the short intervals of these marks of your kindness to me, to frame my thanks to you for each. I have exhausted all my common-place forms and am forced to rack my invention (so very often have you come forward with these welcome claims on me) to give anything like a turn to the expression in which to convey my thanks. Mr. Pope (in those rhymes for the nursery which he has entitled ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... gone—sold and gone, To the rice-swamp dank and lone, Oh, when weary, sad, and slow, From the fields at night they go, Faint with toil, and rack'd with pain, To their cheerless homes again— There no brother's voice shall greet them— There no father's welcome meet ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... colonies were founded. The sentiment of religious freedom was the active principle of all the alliances, wars, intrigues, and adventures of that stormy period. The rights of conscience were maintained, in defiance of the rack and the stake. They were stubbornly asserted in regard to the smallest matters. Lines of separation, so fine as hardly to be perceptible, were defended to the last. The Catholic was not more irreconcilably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... make me Thine, my gracious God, Or with Thy staff, or with Thy rod; And be the blow, too, what it will, Lord, I will kiss it, though it kill: Beat me, bruise me, rack me, rend me, Yet, in torments, I'll commend Thee; Examine me with fire, and prove me To the full, yet I will love Thee; Nor shall Thou give so deep a wound But I ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... by the hope of pardon could hardly be supposed; for William had taken pains to discourage that hope. Still less could it be supposed that the prisoner had uttered untruths in order to avoid the torture. For, though it was the universal practice in the Netherlands to put convicted assassins to the rack in order to wring out from them the names of their employers and associates, William had given orders that, on this occasion, the rack should not be used or even named. It should be added, that the Court did not interrogate the prisoner closely, but suffered him to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... got up; stretched his long, lean frame, shuddering as if it had been on the rack. He drew two deep breaths, braced himself, wiped the blood from his lip, put on the stony mask which Bridget saw when she opened her eyes and found ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... all," was the laughing reply. "I never did lie on the rack, having my arms torn out of the sockets; but it must ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... sounded at the door, the cook laid his pipe on a shelf and glanced up at a big carving-knife that hung from a rack ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... eggshells for the settling process were standing near. The cold potatoes and corned beef were in the wooden tray, and "Regards of Rebecca" stuck on the chopping knife. The brown loaf was out, the white loaf was out, the toast rack was out, the doughnuts were out, the milk was skimmed, the butter had been ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... from Group to Group along the Hitch Rack on Saturday afternoon, shaking hands with the Rustics and applying the Ointment, remarked that Ves was a young man of Rare Promise and could not be held back from the Pay-Roll for any considerable ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... got by impudence and importunity, are like discoveries from the rack, when the afflicted person, for his ease, sometimes confesses secrets his heart knows ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... two letters for her in the rack. She took them down, and turned to find Charles, having smoothed out his hat, standing ruefully ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... forms of hat May wreathe my manly brow, No Straw shall e'er (be sure of that) Be half so dear as thou. Hang then upon thy native rack As varying modes compel, Till next year's fashions bring ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... chairs in it that swung round. They call it a "Pullman" which is a good name for a car, only it's the engine that pulls the man and the car, too, really. Then we got all comfortable, with another nice colored man who showed his teeth at us, and put our bags up on a rack, and Aunty May gave me some sweet chocolate and a magazine with pictures in it, and Aunty Edith said. "I wish we didn't have to ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... dismayed me. He rose with an uneasy look as I went toward him. He was so wasted that his large features stood out gaunt and prominent. His clothes hung about him in folds, and his vast, bony frame was like a rack from which ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... drifting up out of the West and took to themselves a wonderfully rich and brilliant green color—the decided green of new spring foliage. Close by them we saw the intense blue of the skies, through rents in the cloud-rack, and away off in another quarter were drifting clouds of a delicate pink color. In one place hung a pall of dense black clouds, like compacted pitch-smoke. And the stupendous wagon wheel was still in the supremacy of its ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adversary of our Redeemer, and then we shall see. It may be that heaven will then permit me to detect this Comte de la Foret in some particularly abominable heresy. For this long-legged ruffian looks like a schismatic, and would singularly grace a rack." ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... be all right," said Brooke, with a rather embarrassed laugh, "but some of them may be." He made a perfectly needless excursion across the room to fetch a cue from the rack that he did not want, while Sydney smoked on and watched him with amused and rather curious eyes. "I suppose I am a little under petticoat government," said Dalton, examining his cue with interest, and then laying it down on the table, "as you may see for yourself. But my sister manages ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the beatific visions that opium bestows, having once enchained its victims. Little wonder that, after spending nights upon a poisoned rack, Mr. Jocelyn was in no condition to meet his fellow-men and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... shack was lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed English setter. The dog was asleep. In the shack was absolute stillness ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... absently. "Yes; he was. But you must remember Lord Heyton is very much upset; when one's nerves are on the rack, the least thing, trifling though ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... threatenings of all the men in the world; and this was the cause why the martyrs of Jesus did so slight both the promises of their adversaries when they would have overcome them with proffering the great things of this world unto them, and also their threatenings when they told them they would rack them, hang them, burn them. None of these things could prevail upon them ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... sore with the poignant sense of insulted virtue, filled with high disdain against the pride of triumphant baseness, often have it not in their choice to stand their ground. Their complexion (which might defy the rack) cannot go through such a trial. Something very high must fortify men to that proof. But when I am driven to comparison, surely I cannot hesitate for a moment to prefer to such men as are common those heroes who in the midst of despair perform all the tasks of hope,—who subdue ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... seize an umbrella from the rack, rip the cover off, and break out a rib, to which he tied a piece of string while he hurried to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... for many weary months the deadly strain went on; and the twin cities—stretched upon the rack—bore the torture as their past training had taught the world they ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... human figures of the like; riding abroad with hawks; talking noisy nonsense;—tearing out the bowels of St. Edmundsbury Convent (its larders namely and cellars) in the most ruinous way, by living at rack and manger there. Jocelin notes only, with a slight subacidity of manner, that the King's Majesty, Dominus Rex, did leave, as gift for our St. Edmund Shrine, a handsome enough silk cloak,—or rather pretended to leave, for one of his retinue borrowed it of us, and we ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle |
