"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... air was harsh and bleak; the ridged and mottled sky looked scourged, or cramping fogs set in from sea, for leagues around, ferreting out each rheumatic human bone, and racking it; the sciatic limpers shivered; their aguish rags sponged up the mists. No shelter, though it hailed. The sheds were for the bricks. Unless, indeed, according to the phrase, each man was a "brick," which, in sober scripture, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... the most unconcerned and pleasant way, whilst Sir Andrew, in an agony of mind, was racking his brains as to the quickest method he could employ to get that bit of paper out of that beautiful woman's hand. Instinctively, vague and tumultuous thoughts rushed through his mind: he suddenly remembered her nationality, ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... hanged for a pedant, and the whole crew of versifiers, from Lord Dorset (but he, poor man, has been past hanging some time since) to yourself! Why delude you into playing Procrustes as he does with the queen's English, racking one word till its joints be pulled asunder, and squeezing the next all a-heap as the Inquisitors do heretics in their banca cava? Out upon him and you, and Sidney, and the whole kin. You have not made a verse ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... extensive and stylish, inhabited by Mr. Latouche, the agent so much dreaded, so much hated in Northern Leitrim. This is the gentleman who is accused of charging the tenants 10s. 6d. for potatoes which the landlord sent down to be given to the tenants at five. If racking the tenantry is the condition on which he gets this lovely home, it is a temptation certainly. We felt as if we were in the wrong place, as, after glancing at the handsome cottage, the trim lawn fringed with shrubbery and then at the ruins we took the lower ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... she said, "what motive brought him there. I have been racking my brains about it ever since it happened and it is an ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... and I'll find out like a brave man," he said, after racking his brains for an hour or two in a vain endeavor to get at the cause of Miss Hollister's cut. "I'll call upon her to-night ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... little respite. It was neither courage nor pride that kept me in the saddle, but the knowledge that much of the way would be worse rather than better, and I would wisely face it at the outset. If it got too nerve-racking I could always betake myself to my chair and, trusting in the eight sturdy legs of my bearers, abandon myself to enjoying the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... 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 lieu of their ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... thy venom'd stang, That shoots my tortur'd gums alang; And thro' my lugs gies mony a twang, Wi' gnawing vengeance; Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang, Like racking engines! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... chorus of sounds from the cataract, the river, the wind, the trees, and the birds, a mighty music of elements of the earth and of life, rising and falling rhythmically, and inspiring, but nerve-racking. Fragrance of the Jasmine seized my hand and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Atterson 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 of ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... how they should have had such temptation as to seduce them from virtue; and have there not, perhaps, been others, who, sensible of their innocence, were divided between indignation at the undeserved doom which they were to undergo, consciousness that they had not deserved it, and racking anxiety to discover some way in which they might yet vindicate themselves? Do you suppose any of these deep, powerful, and agitating feelings, can be recorded and perused without exciting a corresponding depth of deep, powerful, and agitating interest?—Oh! ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... flooring being placed on the under side of the crosspieces makes it possible to get the sail boom very low. The sides put on and well fastened will greatly assist in stiffening the platform and help it to stand the racking strains. These sides will also keep the water and spray out and much more so if a 12-in. dash is put on in front on top of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... see,' said he, trying to pretend to be racking his memory; 'the grape-vine pattern? It seems to me that I do recall something about a design with that name. Did you say we ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... world. He was attentive to the comfort of his passengers and was presumed to have no other duties on deck than to give the proper orders to his first officer and work out his daily reckoning. It was an exacting, nerve-racking ordeal, however, demanding a sleepless vigilance, courage, and cool judgment of the first order. The compensations were large. As a rule, he owned a share of the ship and received a percentage of the freights and passage money. His rank when ashore was more exalted ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... was a big lump just over where the eye should have been. Then he saw that the beast's lips were cut and bleeding. There was blood on the snow; and suddenly the big brute covered his fangs to give a racking cough, as though he had swallowed a sharp fish-bone, and fresh blood dripped out of his mouth on the snow between his forepaws. One of these forepaws was twisted; it had ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... himself had tried to get at him for his relief; for he was confined underground and lay in chains and filth not to be described. I said what I could to him, but he said he needed nothing and was content, though his pain must have been very great all this while, what with the racking repeated over and over again and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 princess declared her resolution ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... 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
... and the projectiles rushed ever nearer. Knowing that she had at 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
... Elsie, executing little skips of transport. "How sweet you are, Katy! I mean to love you next best to Cousin Helen and Papa! And"—racking her brains for some way of repaying this wonderful kindness—"I'll tell you the secret, if you want me to very much. I guess ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... screamed shrilly, as with their escorts they dodged the horses' hoofs, the trolleys clanged their gongs, electric-signs blinked their pictorial designs, noisy boys yelled hoarsely "final extras!" The din was nerve racking. One had to shout to be heard, yet no one seemed to object. Everybody was happy. New York was ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... 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 into ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Accordingly we seated ourselves in a 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 ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... 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' ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... 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 ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... mistake, changing a full chord into a dissonance so harsh and nerve-racking that Allison shuddered, then frowned. When they had finished, he turned to her, saying, kindly: "You're tired, Rose. I've been a selfish brute and ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... 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 ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... to resolve upon?—So many cares Entangle me at once, and rend my mind, Pulling it diff'rent ways. My love, compassion, This urgent match, my rev'rence for my father, Who yet has ever been so gentle to me, And held so slack a rein upon my pleasures. —And I oppose him?—Racking thought!—Ah me! I know not what ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... certainly an awful moment for Ruth Fielding and her two companions. Jennie's intermittent squeal turned into a sudden shriek— as keen and nerve-racking as the whistle of a locomotive. Isadore Phelps "blew up" with a muffled roar as he turned half a somersault in the air and landed ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... slightest attention to him or his strange headgear. Alma Sprockett stopped him at a corner and begged him not to tell something he knew nothing of, and he promised her he wouldn't tell and went on his way racking his brain to remember what she ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... shoulders went up and down, and he shook like a bowl of jelly. He seemed to be overcome by the simplicity of the problem over which his son had been racking ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... The Professor had insisted on again taking the helm. He had been refreshed by the few moments' relaxation. Slowly he moved over to the tiller. Would he ever make it? The boys stopped their work, fascinated with the nerve-racking intensity of it. They knew the point had been passed. The Professor smiled, and held up his hand as a signal, and the boys rushed to him and actually cried, as he ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... just find out what's needed here—" he growled, touching the delicate contrivance. "That's the way! While I'm racking my poor old nut, some other fellow's going to make the ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the night, With the wind bitter North East and the sea rough; You have a racking cough and your lungs are weak, But out, out into the night you go, So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... dollars each! Why, that would amount to two hundred dollars, and there would be no racking his ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... intelligence examination at school this week. Stupid old things! One question was, 'What is the complementary colour to red?' I had never heard of a complementary colour in my life, and I was just racking my brains to think what to say, when my eyes happened to light on Miss Smith's carrots. 'Ah, ha,' thinks I, 'I have it!' So I put down 'auburn,' and was jolly well pleased with myself until lunch-time came, when I was telling Gladys ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... venture 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 ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... a moment's pause, as Folwell ran to join the others in their place of safety. Then from without there came a most nerve-racking and terrifying crash. It seemed as if the very mountain would ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... "Oh, this racking cough! Shall I never be done with it?" gasped Laura, as she lay panting upon her pillow after an unusually ...
— Elsie at Home • Martha Finley
... 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 glories of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... crank-shaft is a large reversing friction clutch, which drives, through miter gear, a vertical shaft placed just in front of the post; from the latter the slewing, racking, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... glorious suns, each one a perfect sun; Not separated with the racking clouds, But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky. See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss, As if they vow'd some league inviolable; Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun. In this the ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... I am sure, unnecessary for me to say how much this unexpected difficulty has hurt both Pitt and myself. I am racking my brains to find a remedy for it, and shall be truly happy if any such should occur either ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... with signs of tension in his face, and it was clear that he was racking his befogged brain. The few weeks of abstinence and healthful toil had made a change in him, but one cannot in that space of time get rid of the results of years of indulgence; and under stress of excitement the ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... When at last the sun sank behind the fort upon the hill and twilight marked the end of another wretched day, I used to walk up and down the courtyard looking reflectively at the dirty, unkempt 'zarps' who stood on guard, racking my brains to find some way, by force or fraud, by steel or gold, of regaining my freedom. Little did these Transvaal Policemen think, as they leaned on their rifles, smoking and watching the 'tame officers,' of the dark schemes of which they were the object, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... would be useless. My lower extremities are swelling, and I can feel the hand of death clutching at my vitals. The doctor was right; death is not racking me with torture, it is gently embracing me. But I want your assistance; ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... dry spell, when advertisers were beginning to question circulation figures, and editors were racking their brains for a strong hate symbol to create interest, the delayed report from Eden came as a summer shower, that might be magnified ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... 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
... 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 him ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)
... 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, beside ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... speed while all of their minds were busy trying to work out the problem. In the meantime Torrey's frantic pleadings for them not to go away and leave him to his fate filled their ears. It was a trying, nerve-racking situation. ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... principal honors in the battle of Messines Ridge to the guns and the gunners who served them. For about a fortnight the gunners had worked incessantly with scarcely any sleep in the midst of nerve-racking noises and with death constantly hovering around them. The number of shells used in this battle by the British was incredible. One division alone fired over 180,000 shells with their field batteries and over ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... coffee upstairs, far removed from the onions. A racking headache set in. Never again will I go without my coffee so long. It always gives me ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... pass the dark line of five-foot fencing, and the great iron gate, with its massive lock, without pausing and racking my brain as to what the secret might be which was shut in by that inscrutable barrier. Yet, with all my conjectures and all my observations, I could never come to any conclusion which could for a moment be accepted as an explanation of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... the moderate-priced hotel where he had established himself, he set about interviewing by telephone the Naudains whose names appeared in the directory. It was a nerve-racking task to Bruce, who was unfamiliar with the use of the telephone, and those of the name with whom he succeeded in getting in communication seemed singularly busy folk, indifferent to the amenities and entirely uninterested in his quest. But he persisted ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... I can remember any more old saws," said Buddie, after racking her small brain for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... 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 more—still without effect; and by six ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... it may appear, that very question has been racking my brain for the last ten minutes. Now, what would ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... description of them, I was truly thankful were not there. The men's state of mind, however, soon cleared; and I must say this was the only time I came across this lhiamba giving such strong effects; usually the men just cough with that racking cough that lets you know what they have been up to, and quarrel for a short time. When, however, a whiff of lhiamba is taken by them in the morning before starting on a march, the effect seems to be good, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... 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 ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... Hugh, the gawky youth, to the Devil's Tooth with the three hundred dollars and a note saying what the money was for. But her father would not permit Hugh to go, reiterating feverishly that he needed Hugh on the ranch. And with the pain racking him and making his temper something fearful to face, Mary Hope dared ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... began at 6 p.m.; and on this day they were on duty until this hour from six in the morning. In addition, they were granted a week-end every three months. These women did their bit during the war—and are still doing it—as truly as did the men at the front. Their work was hard, nerve-racking, and often of a disagreeable kind; and it must be remembered that many of them had never so much as dusted off their own pianos before taking up their ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... through the sand up to our camp about a mile away. And the sun blazed, and the flies pestered and stung and buzzed and fought with each other for the drops of sweat streaming down your face. How long should we be here? When were we going into action?... The suspense was brain-racking. The diarrhoea increased: everyone went down with it. Some got the ague shivers and some a touch ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... awfulness of the situation, Dolly burst into tears, and though not as violent as Dotty's, her sobs were deep and racking ones. ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... "Wilford's folks" were ashamed of her, and that Wilford himself might perhaps become so, if he were not already. That would be worse than death itself, and the darkest hours she had ever known were those she spent alone that night, sobbing so violently as to bring on a racking headache, which showed itself upon her face and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... horses being all 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 as the head of the great Australian Bight. To leave ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... other girl? Sitting there with that strange smile upon her face, the smile that is neither mirth nor sadness, but a poignant, haunting compound of both, did she remember her and the Urge that had always been upon her, racking her like actual pain, driving her with a whip of scorpions, flaying her on and on with a far more vivid sense of suffering than the actual beatings laid on by her mother's heavy hand, the thing that found articulation in the words, "I must ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... next hour or so in thinking over all that he could do for Randal, and devising for his intended son-in-law the agreeable surprise, which Randal was at that very time racking his yet cleverer ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... before she had slept better than she had done for the past ten nights. Both youth and weariness will assert themselves in the end against the tyranny of nerve-racking stress. She had slept but she woke up with her eyes full of tears. There were no traces of them when she met him in the shabby little parlour downstairs. She had swallowed them up. She was not going to let him ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... 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 sounds, but ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... if a shade too methodically at times, the racking torments of hunger and thirst, the dreary importunity of the rain, the loathsomeness of the all-invading mud, the sickening horror of the carrion smells, the pathetically inadequate relaxations ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... we began cursing and railing at her. That made her stop, after a fashion. But still she occasionally gave vent to a heart-deep, dry, racking sob. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... 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 accumulates and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow-creature, simply because that creature does not speak his language? All that day, with growing, racking pains, poor Redruff hung and beat his great, strong wings in helpless struggles to be free. All day, all night, with growing torture, until he only longed for death. But no one came. The morning broke, the day wore on, and still he hung there, slowly dying; his very strength a curse. The ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... kept his knowledge to himself. Every peculiarity of a course is worth remembering in a country where rats play the mischief with the elephant-litter, and Stewards build jumps to suit their own stables. This man ran a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph—a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"—or for ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... made ready for our journey to Town, all the time racking my brain feverishly for some odd atom of incident ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... nerve-racking Zeppelins is constant. Hardly a soul is now to be seen in the streets of London. Everyone is below the earth, in the Tubes and subways, which are packed by white and trembling crowds. Every cellar is congested, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... bay begin to heap themselves into broken and irregular waves, each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the wind struck us, in three nerve-racking blasts. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... suddenly came the 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... he now lies where he was shot down in the dust and dirt, and his white beard and his rotting rags seem to raise a silent and eloquent protest to high Heaven against the devilish complots which are racking Peking. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the devout assurance of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... I had not expected the suffering. A night of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though my skin was presently afire, all my body afire; but I lay there like grim death. I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone and untended in my room. There were times when I sobbed and ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... fall down on the space of green turf before the church, now bathed in the soft golden October sunshine, and recant these happy, commonplace centuries of heresy, and have back again the good old believing days of bigotry, and superstition, and roasting, and racking, if only to have once more the men who dreamed those windows out of their faith and piety (if they did, which I doubt), and made them with their patient, reverent hands (if their hands were reverent, which I doubt). The church is called Santa ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... my cognizance. 'Twas a drear day and place I dwelt in, a very dull world, not enlivened by peril or desirable object or the difficulty of toil, not excused or in any way made tolerable by a prospect of sacrificial employment. I had been ill brought up to meet this racking emergency. What had there been, in all my life, fostered in body and happiness, expanding in the indulgent love and pitiably misdirected purpose of my uncle, to fit me for this denial of pure and confident desire? I tried, God knows I tried! summoning to my help ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... that legal business required his absence from the 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 ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... I was on the bridge thinking how dark it was and how preternaturally still; I felt all alone in the world; nothing stirred; even the French 75's had ceased their nerve-racking bark, and then, suddenly, in one instant, hell was let loose upon earth. Like a hundred peals of thunder the Turkish artillery from both Continents let fly their salvoes right, left and centre, and the French and ourselves did not lose many seconds ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a hideous mass of rubbish. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... sisters, two marked for sure and early death, laboring at literary work every day with the passion and intensity that come to few men. Think of Emily, the eldest, with fierce pride refusing help to climb the steep stairway of the parsonage home when her strength was almost spent and her racking cough struck cold on the hearts of her sisters. And think of Charlotte in her terrible grief turning to fiction as the only resource from unbearable woe and loneliness. It is one of the great tragedies of literature, but out of it came the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Accursed thing!—Oh! where shall fancy find A proper name to call thee by, expressive Of all thy horrors?—Pregnant womb of ills! Of tempers so transcendantly malign, That toads and serpents of most deadly kind Compared to thee are harmless.—Sicknesses Of every size and symptom, racking pains, And bluest plagues, are thine.—See how the fiend Profusely scatters the contagion round! Whilst deep-mouth'd slaughter, bellowing at her heels, 630 Wades deep in blood new-spilt; yet for to-morrow Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring, And inly pines till ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... normal appearance. For the past month or so Barbara has been most distraite; uncle has so evidently tried to be cheerful that the effort has been distressing; and you, little Lady Betty, have been racking your precious brains for a scheme to ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... They had all been racking their brains to think of a punishment that would fit Philip's crime, or at least some warning that would bring it home to him. He had been led by Viola, subdued and courteous, to tell Miss Addison that he had deceived ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... poor unfortunate—how 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 ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... the wine, we should have: 1st a large brass faucet. 2d. Pails of a peculiar shape, wider at the top, to prevent wastage. 3d. A wooden funnel, as shown in Fig. 31, to hold about six gallons. In racking—first carefully lift the bung of the cask, as the exclusion of air from above would cause a gurgling motion in the cask, if tapped below, which would stir up the lees in the bottom. Then, after having ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... 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
... duty, sir," she said. "That is the myrrh and balsam to a racking 'ed. Not but what I owns to a shrinking like unto death over the thought of what lays before me this very morning. Rest and quiet is needful, but it's little I shall get of either out of a kitching fire in the dog days. And what would you fancy ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... bear the thought that my friend Marcia Raynor should sacrifice herself in this way. I went back to Arden in the hope that something might suggest itself; that a gleam of sense might be shown by the one or the other of the lunatics in gray for whose good I was racking my brains. But I found things worse than I had left them. Sylvia had stirred herself into a spirit of combativeness of which no one would have supposed her capable, and had actually endeavored to brow-beat her Mother Superior into the belief ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... were strengthened by the substitution of 1-in. truss rods instead of the -in. rods used originally. The top platform and the cross-bracing were also stiffened a little and tightened up to prevent racking. ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... Nerve-racking and ear-splitting as it must be to the mud-splashed creatures in the trenches below, from on high the land within the neighborhood of the zig-zag trenches took on the appearance of a pot of boiling mush—here a crater, there a crater, springing into being with an amazing suddenness ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Sizers did, and were frantic with rage over what they deemed was a deliberate insult to Molly. Several young men who had come from distances to attend the birthday party had stayed over Sunday at the farmhouse, where the revelry still continued in a fitful way, due to vain attempts to relieve racking headaches by further libations. Monday morning found the dissipated crew still the guests of the Sizers, and when big Bill slowly spelled out the assertion made by the Tribune that his sister had "a roughish smile" loud cries of indignation ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... 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 ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... "I have been racking my brain for a plan for your mother, and to no purpose. Traverse, your mother should be in a home of peace, plenty and cheerfulness—I can speak before my little Clare here; I never have any secrets from her. Your mother wants good living, cheerful company and freedom from toil and ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... not worry him. It faded from his mind, being far less terrible than life under prospective conditions. Discomfort, hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, pain; above all the terror of his fellows—these were the soul-racking anticipations of this new life into which it was a matter of honour for him to plunge. And to an essential gentleman like Doggie a matter of honour was a matter of life. And so, dressed in his pink pyjamas and violet dressing-gown, amid the peacock-blue and ivory hangings ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... a freight engine, and the girls were disappointed. But, a few minutes later, the express sounded its blast, and, amid a whirl of dust, and a nerve-racking screech of brakes, ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... the Muses love to dwell! Verse is with them a knack, an idle toy, A rattle gilded o'er, on which a boy May play untaught, whilst, without art or force, Make it but jingle, music comes of course. 10 Little do such men know the toil, the pains, The daily, nightly racking of the brains, To range the thoughts, the matter to digest, To cull fit phrases, and reject the rest; To know the times when Humour on the cheek Of Mirth may hold her sports; when Wit should speak, And when be silent; when to use the powers Of ornament, and how to place the flowers, So ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... manu, et a tergo respiciens, 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 professed, and would ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... things are at stake, we do not readily admit that there is any distinction between our universe and the universe. A world which turns out to be one in which those we honor are unworthy, and those we despise are noble, is nerve-racking. There is anarchy if our order of precedence is not the only possible one. For if the meek should indeed inherit the earth, if the first should be last, if those who are without sin alone may cast a stone, if to Caesar you render only the things that are Caesar's, then the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... racking his brain to find some suggestion of a plan whereby he might turn the situation to his own account. His eyes wandered past the weird figure before him; they played about the walls of the apartment as though hoping to draw inspiration from the dead ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... did not last long, for I soon understood what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the sofa with a racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared dully at the stamp on the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube coiled on the floor, and the odds and ends of tobacco and confectioner's tartlets which were littered about. "Truly," I thought to myself ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... 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
... searching gaze of those about her and the joy they experienced at her discomfiture. Never had she been at a loss to know which way to turn to extricate herself from a difficulty; but now, how helpless she was. She nervously tapped the palm of her left hand with her fan, vainly racking her brain in an effort to find a solution. Dick, who had been watching her narrowly the while, saw a strange light begin to play in her eyes in which he read Don Felipe's death as plainly as though it were written across the heavens in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the first time in many hours Kathlyn closed her eyes with a sense of security. True, it was not the most comfortable place to sleep in, the howdah; there were ceaseless rollings from side to side, intermingled with spine racking bumps forward, as the elephant occasionally hastened his stride. Kathlyn succeeded in stealing from the god of sleep only cat naps. Often the cold would awaken her, and she would find that Bruce had been bracing her by extending his arm across ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... smiled down into the lad's face while the surgeon began the painful work of extracting another shell fragment. This one being more deeply imbedded, the surgeon was obliged to make a selection of scalpel and tissue scissors and do some nerve-racking cutting. But the seaman, his hands tightly gripped on the edges of the operating table, which he had termed a cot, did not once cry out, though ice-cold sweat beaded his forehead under ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... a racking headache. And when I said so, I was told not to talk. I was in bed, and the nurses were always telling me not to talk. I was in a hospital. I knew that; but I didn't know why I was there. One day I thought I should like to know why, and so I asked. I was feeling much ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... Medicine 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.
... the note-book insisted on taking the numbers of the notes, to the conductor's annoyance. It was immaterial to me: small things had lost their power to irritate. I was seeing myself in the prisoner's box, going through all the nerve-racking routine of a trial for murder—the challenging of the jury, the endless cross-examinations, the alternate hope and fear. I believe I said before that I had no nerves, but for a few minutes that morning I was as near as a man ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... love to her. He saw the futility of hoping, and he was noble enough to respect her plea for silence on the subject that seemed distasteful to her. He went as one conquered and subdued; he went with the iron in his heart for the first time—deeply imbedded and racking. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon |
