"Ruck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the mouth, too, and plagued out of his life between the ruck of you," continued Pete; "but God forgive you all, you can't ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck! But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward—then for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal. When at length he could no longer ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... race. Cornflower, lightly weighted, able to set a pace or hold one, did not show in front until the homestretch was reached. Then the mare suddenly shot out of the ruck and flashed into the lead. But she soon had company. Honest old Elisha had been plugging along in the dust for the first half mile, but at that point he began to run, and the Curry colours moved up with great celerity. Merritt, glancing over his shoulders, shook out ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... chapter upon chapter; for, if you are generous, you will throw a veil over the selfish reasons that have produced so happy a result. I will only add one piece of advice, which is, if the pleasure of visiting Niagara would be enhanced by a full larder and a ruck of people, go there "during the season;" but if your pleasure would be greater in visiting it when the hotel is empty, even though the larder be nearly in the same state, follow my example, and go later ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... of the gentleman was of a brilliant young charioteer in the ruck of the race, watchful for his chance to push to the front; and she could have said that a dubious consort might spoil a promising career. It flattered her to think that she sometimes prompted him, sometimes illumined. He repeated sentences she had spoken. 'I shall be better ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the girl built up as she lay, half waking, half dreaming between her blankets. Pictures in which MacNair, misjudged, hated, fighting against fearful odds, came clean through the ruck and muck with which his enemies had endeavoured to smother him, and proved himself the man he might have been; fancies and pictures that dulled into a pain that was very like a heartache, as the vivid picture—the real picture—which she herself had seen with ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Ionians who would never stand their charge, and were defeated by the Milesians with a loss little short of three hundred men, the Athenians first defeated the Peloponnesians, and driving before them the barbarians and the ruck of the army, without engaging the Milesians, who after the rout of the Argives retreated into the town upon seeing their comrades worsted, crowned their victory by grounding their arms under the very walls of Miletus. Thus, in this ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... fact that these men were enemies, my heart throbbed, almost in pride, as I watched them pass. They were Americans, and magnificent fighting men. I had seen them, or their fellows, in the ruck and toil of battle, playing with death, smiling in the face of defeat. Now they were marching grimly forward to another clash of arms, through the blinding dust, heedless of all else but duty. This was what stirred me. No proud review, with glittering uniforms and waving flags, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... zeal, and Hughes and Vansittart and Ludlow with their economic knowledge and powerful pens. They were reinforced by William Edward Forster, a young Radical M.P., whose zeal for social service had already marked him out from the ruck of mechanical politicians; and from time to time Carlyle himself would vouchsafe a growl of leonine approval to enterprises which, whether wise or foolish, were at least not shams. In 1852 the Amalgamated ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... "It's very kind of you to come here—very. My daughter—" he hesitated. He finished the sentence by drawing up a chair and clearing its seat of the ruck of morning papers. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... the greatness of his success in life, Henry St. George is the saddest of the authors portrayed by Mr. James. His SHADOWMERE was splendid, and its splendour is the measure of his shame—the shame he bore so bravely—in the ruck of his 'output.' He is the only one of those authors who did not do his best. Of him alone it may not be said that he was 'generous and delicate and pursued the prize.' He is a more pathetic figure than even Dencombe, the author of THE MIDDLE YEARS. Dencombe's ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... of disillusionment in the lives of men from which the sensitive recorder shrinks. Suffice it to say that the good thing fell down. Sleeve-links finished in the ruck. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... yet so desperate the narrow roadway was strewn with bodies. Frightened horses whirled and ran; wagons were overturned; hemmed in against the high walls, Germans and British made one mad effort to extricate themselves; the advance guard came spurring back, pushing blindly into the ruck, the boyish voice of their young lieutenant sounding above the uproar. But our men were between the two, a compact body, each borderman fighting independently, but knowing the game. I heard no word of command, no shout of direction ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... obituaries, cold meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... masterpieces are not "what the public wants." So the bright young men go into outer darkness, sadly looking for new jobs, and with its third number Snooks's Monthly has fallen into line with the indistinguishable ruck of monthly magazines, only indeed distinguishable one from the other by the euphonious names ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Granger," her companion answered lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... letting me try. It was perfectly glorious to feel her respond to every touch and thread her way through all that ruck." ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the solemnity with which she had always alluded to the fact, in the course of domestic discussions. Who the Stormonts were he could not recall that he had ever learned, but his mother had been very clear indeed about their superiority to the usual ruck of people. He would ask his sister whether she knew anything about them. In the meantime there was no denying that Stormont was a fine-sounding name. He reflected that it was his own middle name—and, on the instant, fancy engraved for him a card-plate on which ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... there was snow in London, that the visit would entail almost continuous travelling for nearly thirty hours each way, and that my sister cannot sleep in a train, it seemed as if Berry, at any rate, was pulling out of the ruck. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... of the woods a multitude of horses were picketed, and there were booths that sold food and drink, merry-go-rounds and fiddlers, and an immense concourse of every condition of folk, black slaves and water-side Indians, squatters from the woods, farmers from all the valleys, and the scum and ruck of the plantations. I found some of my friends, and settled my business with them, but my eyes were always straying to the green awning where I knew that ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. Meteor has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... which you frequently urge me, it is impossible! My house is a basilica rather than a villa, owing to the crowds of visitors from Formiae. But (you'll say) do I really compare the AEmilian tribe to the crowd in a basilica?[232] Well, I say nothing about the common ruck—the rest of them don't bother me after ten o'clock: but C. Arrius is my next door neighbour, or rather, he almost lives in my house, and even declares that the reason for his not going to Rome is that he may spend whole days with me here philosophizing! And then, lo and behold, on my ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace Morse—and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah, an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out from the paper to meet Jimmie Dale's eyes—and with it a column and ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... they had more or less successfully followed the hounds on fat ponies. She sat meditatively twisting a heavy signet ring up and down her little finger. The finger, the one which advises the world of the fact that some man in it has singled you out of the ruck as being fit for the honour of wifehood, was unadorned, showing neither the jewels which betoken the drawn-up contract, nor the pure gold which denotes the contract fulfilled. Those two had grown up in the knowledge that they would some time ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... the opposing orator seemed all in an instant to split asunder, and with trailing war bonnet and followed by only two or three of his braves, the former lashed his way westward and swept angrily out of the ruck and went circling away toward the crest, while, with loud acclamation, brandishing shield and lance and rifle in superb barbaric tableau, the warriors lined up in front of the victorious young leader ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... hesitations, mockery, and good advice, the next step must be taken, the decision must be swift, the choice is brief but eternal. There is no clear evidence of heroism around. The lighters do not differ much from the grotesque, the foolish, and the braggart ruck of men. No wonder that culture smiles and passes aloof upon its pellucid and elevating course. Culture smiles; the valet de chambre lurking in most hearts sniffs at the name of hero; hideous applause comes from securely sheltered crowds who hound victims to the combat, bloodthirsty as spectators ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... stream, until he heard the rapids. Now he was towing it back. He planned to go just as far and as fast up stream as he could. The current, to him, had become the crowd. One can see the crowd as it brushes past, as one can never see it from the ruck.... Sometimes it came to him in a flash, that this new David Cairns was but another lie and pose—but this couldn't hold. It was a bit of deviltry that wouldn't stand scrutiny. There had been too much unfolding o' nights; too many gifts found upon ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... Broughton Spinnies, Phineas and Madame Goesler were still together. He had not been riding actually at her side all the morning. Many men and two or three ladies had been talking to her. But he had never been far from her in the ruck, and now he was again close by her horse's head. Broughton Spinnies were in truth a series of small woods, running one into another almost without intermission, never thick, and of no breadth. There was always a litter or two of cubs at the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Floyd caught a jumbled jargon of Spanish shouts, mingled with Mexican and American words, and then out of the ruck of riders a solitary ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... Calcutta at the time, in command of a vessel called the Vespasian. He had been spending the previous night at my chummery at Ballygunge, and when he went the next morning to get on board his ship she was nowhere to be seen. At last he traced her, jammed in amongst the ruck at Howrah, and that was the last he ever saw of her, and he had subsequently to return home overland minus his vessel. He afterwards joined the service of the Pacific Steam Navigation Co., eventually becoming commodore of the fleet, a position which he held for a great ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... of caution for his fences. He has not been down yet, but has barely saved himself more than once. The ploughs are very deep, and his horse, though still boring at him, pants heavily. Oh, that there might come a check, or that the brute of a fox might happily go to ground! But no! The ruck of the hunt is far away from him in front, and the game is running steadily straight for some well known though still distant protection. But the man who doesn't like it still sees a red coat before him, and perseveres ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... out o' this Injun fry-pan fust, old hoss! I could lick my own weight in wild-cats, but this ruck o' Injuns is ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... white dust-cloud, lifted now and then, he could see naked forms swaying, bending forward, plying their weapons. Somewhere in the midst of it, out in the ruck of hoof and horn, his friend was riding, forgetting all else but the excitement of the chase. What if accident had befallen either of them? Lewis could not ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... yard or two and slipped it back to Denton. Denton made a yard or two more and passed it to Corder. Corder fell back with it into the arms of Ranger. Ranger let Corder drop, but captured the ball, and with one of his lightning swoops carried it out of the ruck for twenty yards, when, as he fell, Yorke came up and captured it. Yorke, alas, was cut short in his career before he had gone ten yards, but Clapperton was there to take it. Away he went, shaking ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... outside the ruck that determines the destinies of all such typical representatives. She considered the idea presented to her by Mrs. Stott with an open and mobile intelligence. She weighed the character of Ginger, the ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... always stood above the muck and ruck—clear and clean and unassailable. But this—this is too much! It is the spark. There is no forecasting what it ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... ingenious. The minority in a party must yield to a majority, and he stood almost by himself. He would be a returned prodigal in the conservative household, for unlike Sir James Graham, he had never merged himself in the ordinary ruck of liberalism. A tory peer writes to assure him that there never was such a chance for the reunion of the party. Even the nobleman who had moved Mr. Gladstone's expulsion from the Carlton said that he supposed reunion must pretty soon come ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... itself hoarse with rejoicings, and there went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of corpses, with her face in her hands, crying—for she was a young girl, you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the mothers of those dead friends ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... fawning and supplicating. The ruck of passengers, busy, with their babies and their bundles, had not noticed the affair. Kim slipped out behind him; for it flashed through his head that he had heard this angry, stupid Sahib discoursing loud personalities to an old lady near Umballa ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the Kingdom of Heaven?" asks Mr. Clutton-Brock, and succeeds at his best in telling us what it is not. As for anything more positive, he concludes very reasonably that it is a state of mind, and leaves us to infer that the ruck of humanity need the guidance of ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... But they're necessary for the common ruck. Anybody who is anything can just be himself and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... thrown in that sharp and short struggle between horse and rider; but Lionel's firm hand triumphed over the animal's temper for the time at least; and presently he was hurrying onward at a stretching gallop, which speedily carried him beyond the ruck of riders. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... and I be seen walking together; you'll get over it best in that way. We'll go over to Parker's, and I'll stand a lunch. We'll find Gerard, and Madden, and Twisleton there. Twisleton's so disgusted at getting a fourth. He says he won't take it, and swears he'll make them let him go out in the ruck." ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... and dumb spectators, whose fluttering hearts yet would not let them forget the iron laws of man's control of them—in this rank of brute-soldiers there had been relentless and hideous carnage. From the ruck of bleeding and prostrate horses, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its stricken body with its fore legs, and turning its nose with mystic and profound eloquence ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... fact, conservative, If an exact portraiture of him were given, the ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for the ruck of them. They are immoral and pestiferous demagogues, robbing the public whose pay they draw, and willing to go any length to maintain their seats. Washington is notoriously a rotten city, sexually and politically, and the representatives ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... position of sergeant and being reduced to the ranks, for causes which need not be specified. There is yet another, which knows its drill-book backwards, and can grasp the details of a tactical scheme as quickly as a seasoned officer, but remains in the ruck because it has not sufficient force of character to handle so much as a sentry-group. There are men, again, with initiative but no endurance, and others with endurance but no initiative. Lastly, there are men, and a great many of them, who appear to be quite ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and sag of waist—all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... I am sorry," she said. "All that we need is a leader, and you might have been he. As it is, I suppose we shall muddle along somehow until some one comes out of the ruck strong enough to pull us together.... Come and see me in London, Lawrence. Who knows but that you may be able to ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... street corner, by the clock, a couple of Town Councillors stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man, who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... o' changes for better an' wur, An' this is one change among th' ruck; We'n a toime o' prosperity,—toime o' success, An' then we'n a reawnd o' bad luck. We're baskin' i' sunshine, at one toime o'th day, At other toimes ceawerin' i'th dark; We're sometoimes as hearty an' busy as owt, At other toimes ill, an' ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... silent as though she slept, The woman huddled and quaked. And now was the peep of day. High and long on their left the mountainous island lay; And over the peaks of Taiarapu arrows of sunlight struck. On shore the birds were beginning to sing: the ghostly ruck Of the buried had long ago returned to the covered grave; And here on the sea, the woman, waxing suddenly brave, Turned her swiftly about and looked in the face of the man. And sure he was none that she knew, none of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... argue the ethics of the stage before he told his tale, the tale would remain untold. Then Betty, subdued, fell into an attitude of meek listening, hands on lap. The tale when told indeed proved to be a very ordinary affair, marked out perhaps a trifle from the ruck by the facts that there was another pretender in the field with whom Ancoats had already had one scene in public, and would probably have more; that Ancoats being Ancoats, something mad and conspicuous was to be expected, which would bring the matter inevitably to his mother's ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chances. He's head and shoulders above the ruck of black-and-white artists. He makes wonderfully good comics. He'll have no trouble getting into the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller's dreadful stamp; the lips were bloodless; the eyes were wide, lucent, something like pale, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... friend, for money. Missionary! I tell you, as long as Western Europe with all its wonders of modern science and its Christianity and its political reforms hasn't turned out a better type of humanity than the mean ruck of men we have now—we'd do best to stay at home and hold our counfounded jaw. Here's ourselves!" and ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... off his clothes, and to fold them along the floor of the grave. When he had apparently made all ready, he stooped down again and smoothed out a ruck, lest its discomfort should irk ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... as he returned after his third trip. "The bells are ringin', an' they're a swarmin' up the hill,—two ingines, an' a ruck o' boys an' men. Melindy, she's keepin' the laundry door locked, an' a ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... legs, he struck right and left with his huge sword, and cut down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the ruck a few moments later, disheveled but triumphant. Hat under his arm and both hands heavily laden, he made a gingerly progress to the place of his tryst, a comparatively unpopulated corner near the door. And there she stood, her comely ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fresh sheet to that which is about to be withdrawn, when the fresh one is brought under the child's body as that which is soiled is removed. The greatest care should always be taken that the under sheet is perfectly free from ruck or wrinkle; in long illnesses the skin becomes chafed and bed-sores may be produced by neglect of this simple precaution. The complaint that a child throws off the bed-clothes is easily remedied by a couple of bits of tape tied on either side loosely from the sheet or blanket ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... by six chorus-girls at once, that he condescended to take a look at me through the peephole. Then he ran up to me, gave my chin another hitch, pulled my neck another foot or two out of my collar, added a ruck or two to my sleeves, and said he liked the other side of my ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... speaking as a friend, young man, and not as a captious critic—you have set this Italian camp all askew by giving them countenance in the first place. They haven't any regulators in their heads, you see! When you're feeding charity to that kind of ruck you've got to be careful Parker, that they don't trample you down when they rush ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... particularly loving women, were, by the conditions consequent on their nature, condemned to contribute. In return for this inevitable sacrifice, the god of pain bestowed a dignity of mind and bearing upon his votaries, which set them apart, as though they were remote from the thoughtless ruck. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... this long row of shops was crowded almost dangerously. Magnificent dray horses, with long hair on the fetlocks above their big heavy hoofs, bridling in conscious pride of silver-mounted harness and curled or braided manes, rose above the ruck as their ancestors, the warhorses, must have risen in medieval battle. The crowd parted before them and closed in behind them. Here and there, too, a horseman could be seen—with a little cleared space at his heels. Or a private calash picking its ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... was denner-time The toon was in a low! The reek rase up as it had been Frae Sodom-flames, I vow. We lowst and rade like mad, for byre And ruck bleezt a' thegither, As gien the deil had broucht the fire Frae's hell to mak anither! 'Twas a' wrang, and a' wrang, And a'thegither a' wrang, Stick and strae aboot the place Was a'thegither ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... intelligence invoked, the same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of ethics and unmorals, though, the dubious preeminence he enjoyed was ample reward. He stood forth from the ruck and run, a creator and a leader who could afford to pass by the lesser, more precarious games, with their prospect of uncertain takings, for the really big and important things. He was like a specialist who having won a prominent position may now say that he will accept ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... coward who made big talk in times of peace, but faced about and vanished into hiding at the first sign of danger. He felt himself the meanest, vilest thing a-crawl upon this sinful earth, and she—dear God!—had thought him different from the ruck. She had held him in high esteem, and behold, how short had he not fallen of all her expectations! Shame and vanity combined to work a sudden, sharp revulsion ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... into mid-stream to see that strange prince go by, little thinking in a few minutes I should be shaking hands with him, a wet and dripping hero. The crowd came up, and having the advantage of the wind, it did not take me long to get a front place in the ruck, whence I set to work, with republican interest in royalty, to stare at the man who An said was the head of Martian society. He did not make me desire to renounce my democratic principles. The royal fellow was sitting in the centre of the barge under a canopy and on a throne which was a mass of flowers, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... man to the core, exhibited quite a feudal loyalty to the paper which had raised him from the ruck and placed him on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... stockily-built figure, that I had not seen for more than three years, stepped out of the ruck of onlookers and took its place in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... pathetically. "Yes, I know it was my duty to call when they first came: but what with one thing and another, and not knowing how she might take it—Of course, Mary-Martha, if you insist on walking ahead like a band-major, I can't prevent it. But it only shows a ruck in ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... reaching them, he gives the command for immediate march; promptly obeyed, since every robber in the ruck has pleasant anticipation of what is before, with ugly recollection of what is, and fears of ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... of distinction we stalked out of the ordinary ruck of passengers and followed the lieutenant to the station restaurant. He plunged at once into conversation, talking the Dutch of Holland, which Peter, who had forgotten his school-days, found a bit hard to follow. He was unfit for active ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Bible—my wife says so. She knows all about them. And the best painters in the world have shown her standing among the field of oats. By the Lord, sir, it's sheer blasphemy! and worse than that, it's making people—good, religious people, mind, not the ruck—it's making them ask why the blazes I gave you the living. It's ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... turn in the offices. His mind was a good one; his education both formal and informal, had trained it fairly well; yet he could not quite make good. Energetic, ambitious, keen young men, clambering upward from the ruck, gave him points at the game and then beat him. It was humiliating to the old man. He could not see the perfectly normal reason. These young men were striving keenly for what they had never had. Chuck was asked merely to add to what he already ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... those men come to discover who live before God as Earlston lived, a provision that secures to such men's souls a depth, and an inwardness, and an increasing exercise that carries them on to reaches of inward sanctification that the ruck and run of so-called Christians know nothing about, and are incapable ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... death-ridden dreaming; and so it was many nights, until the dawn that they fronted a swift river, black from its snowy banks, saw the rising pine hills opposite and were swept possibly by mistake into the center of comprehensible action—a picture lifted from the hundred-mile ruck. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... back on them, guarding his head the while from the lances that were rained on him; and he lifted the guidon higher and higher, till, out of the ruck and the throng, the brazen bird caught afresh the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... over the young calf? Fauntleroy kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... this light the legends on the tombstones could be read, brief voices saying, "I am Bertha Ruck," "I am Tom Gage." And they say which day of the year they died, and the New Testament says something for them, very proud, very ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... do I," says the lover to his mistress; and it is almost impossible not to adore a young lady who is universally beloved, for the simple reason that this general affection is very rarely accorded to any but a loving nature. There is an instinct in these things. From all the ruck of Cheapside a vagrant dog will select the man who has most toleration for the canine species, and is most likely to give him shelter. A little child coming suddenly into a circle of strangers knows in which lap it may find a haven, on which bosom it may discover safety ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Jockey. You won't, my brave boy; that a novice could tell. You'll be left in the ruck at the end, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... "Mr. Ruck, sir," says I, "is the Tory solicitor, and Messrs. Hodge and Smithers the Liberals." I knew them very well, for the fact is, before Mary Smith came to live in our parts, I was rather partial to Miss Hodge, and her great gold-coloured ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... century! or even fifty. Even twenty, if it got the school out of a tight place. He was as nervous on the Saturday morning as he had been on the morning of the M.C.C. match. It was Victory or Westminster Abbey now. To do only averagely well, to be among the ruck, would be as useless as not playing at all, as far as his chance of his first ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... position, my dear child," said Miss Skipwith, looking from Roderick's frank eager face to Vixen's downcast eyelids and mantling blushes. "I had hoped such a different fate for you. I thought the thirst for knowledge had arisen within you, that the aspiration to distinguish yourself from the ruck of ignorant women would follow the arising of that thirst, in natural sequence. And here I find you willing to marry a gentleman who happens to have been the companion of your childhood, and to resign—for ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... Julietta, who is immured by wicked arts in the "Convent of Grey Penitents," tormented by the head, Gradisca, but rescued, and so forth. The book, if harmless, is about as worthless as a book can be: but it represents, very fairly, the ruck, if not indeed even the main body, of the enormous horde of romances which issued from the press towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, and which, in their different action on persons of genius, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... his brow, 'when I know that I carry here the last word of Creation, when intuitively I perceive the Unconditioned, is it LIVING to be dragged hither and thither in the ruck of men who fly at each other's throats at the word of command without knowing what they are doing? My actual life is an inverted dream. My body comes and goes and acts; it moves amid bullets, and ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Here was I, before this mishap, not a scrap more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... done,—it would perhaps be better. When you have nearly broken your neck to get to hounds, or made your horse exert himself beyond his proper power, and then find yourself, within three minutes, overtaking the hindmost ruck of horsemen on a road because of some iniquitous turn that the fox has taken, the feeling is not pleasant. And some man who has not ridden at all, who never did ride at all, will ask you where ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... in short, up to its own high and difficult standards. And along had come a ruck of stuff that was dark and dingy and old-fashioned; awkward articles with a vast dull expanse of mahogany, ending in clumsy claw feet; spindle-legged tables inlaid with white wood; old-fashioned mirrors in scarred gilt frames; awkward-looking highboys and the plainest of sofas and lounges. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... had no love-affairs. Instinctively she had held herself aloof from the ruck of the young mountain-men, neither she nor they knew why, unless it was because she owned the valley land and so was what the mountain folk called rich. Most of them had tried to pay her court, but none of them, save Joe, had in the least attracted her, and she had let them know ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Prohack understood and pardoned the deep, deplorable groove. Insott could afford a club simply because his father, the once-celebrated authority on Japanese armour, had left him a hundred and fifty a year. Compared to the ruck of branch-managers Insott was a free and ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... Fort, near Kinsale, has long had the reputation of being haunted. An account of this was sent to the Wide World Magazine (Jan. 1908), by Major H. L. Ruck Keene, D.S.O.; he states that he took it from a manuscript written by a Captain Marvell Hull about the year 1880. Further information on the subject of the haunting is to be found in Dr. Craig's Real Pictures of Clerical ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... accursed music began again, and horn-rimmed Newland Sanders already had his arm about her waist. They disappeared into the ruck ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... debased decorated window. In the west wall of the north aisle is a two-light window of coloured glass, in memory of Augustus Elmhirst; and in its eastern wall is a three-light memorial window to his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Jane Ruck Keene. In the south wall of the chancel are two late four-centre two-light windows; and in the north wall a three-light flamboyant window. Gervase Holles mentions a north chancel window having "sa. a crosse between 4 cinquefoyles arg. . . .," ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... most influential newspaper of the day,—for a few minutes only; and the Prime Minister passed through the room in the course of the evening. Dukes and duchesses below the royal degree were common; and as for earls and countesses, and their daughters, they formed the ruck of the crowd. The Poet-laureate didn't come indeed, but was expected; and three Chinese mandarins of the first quality entered the room at eleven, and did not leave till one. Poor Lady Elizabeth suffered a great deal with those mandarins. ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... autocrat who is made by the circumstances of his life who ultimately becomes supreme. The leaders among the corsairs were tried by every test of prosperity and of adverse fortune; they emerged from the ruck in the first instance because it was in them to display a more desperate valour than did their contemporaries, and it was only when they emerged triumphant from this, the first test, that they could begin to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... for the Pickwickians to draw the inn out from the ruck of the commonplace, and to spread its fame to all corners of the globe; and the fact that it once had royal patronage is nothing in comparison to the other fact that it was the headquarters of the Pickwickians on a certain memorable occasion. That is the attraction to it; that is the immutable ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz
... unfamiliar stinging in his heel. During the process of looking after his luggage and seeking his train he limped about the platform. When he undressed for the night in his sleeping compartment, he found that a ruck in his sock had caused a large blister. He regarded it with superstitious eyes, and thought of the armies of the world. In hoc signo vinces! The ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... aren't going to do that sort of thing. We aren't going to join the ruck. We'll go about in holiday times all over the world. I want to see Fusiyama. I mean to swim in the South Seas. With you. We'll dodge the sharks. But all the same we shall have to have a house in London. We ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... be an outcast from her father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people—almost as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for facts like these were what interested Dolly. She couldn't understand, ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... eyes, with double dark And find the uncreated light: This ruck and reel which you remark Coils, keeps, and teases ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... its prickles; another by dint of its attractive flowers; a third by its sweet fruit; a fourth by its hard nut-shell. As regards stings, the nettle is one of the best protected plants; as regards flower and fruit, it is merely one of the ruck. Every plant can only take advantage of any stray chances it happens to possess; and the same advantageous tendencies do not show themselves in all alike. It is said that once a certain American, hearing of the sums which Canova ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... mix them up with the ruck of passengers, nor is it done on real ships. Nor, when a passenger wants a bath in the evening, do the stewards of real ships roll their eyes like vergers in a cathedral and say, 'We'll see if it can be managed.' They double down the alleyway ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... armed, conspiring in a mantle, draining a brimming goblet, but never—at least within my recollection—taking a part of any individuality, or one that gave him a chance of singing or speaking a single line by himself. He had been one of the ruck when I had first seen him, and now, after at least twenty years, the ruck still claimed him for its own. I remember I had woven a sort of romance about him. There, I had thought to myself, is a man who, no doubt, began his stage career with high aspirations, and noble ambitions. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... is much fine work being accomplished at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace. I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck. CASSOCK, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... and shoulders of the real Wagner emerge boldly from the ruck of commonplace which constitutes the bulk of the operatic music of the time. How any one could have failed to see the strength and beauty of much of the Dutchman is one of those things almost impossible to understand ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled, with broken arms or bloody crowns, but the others crowded forward, grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackham would cut the laggards down ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... hired, and hounds meet within easy reach of the University City, six days in the week, hunting over a country where you may usually be with them at the finish without doing anything desperate, if content to come in with the ruck, the ponies, and the old farmers; or where, if so inclined, you may have more than an average number of fast and furious runs, and study the admirable style of some of the best horsemen in the world among the ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... pity them? Didn't they see the old gee in the paddock—eh, what! Hadn't they as good a chance as any of us to spot that dotty leg. If I'd a been born with a little white choker round my swan's-down, I'd have shouted the news from the mulberry tree. But I wasn't, my dear—I'm just one of the ruck on the lookout to make a bit—and who'll grease my wheels if I leave my can at home? No, don't you think it—I wanted to marry you right enough, but that wasn't the road. What your father's paid me, he's going to have back again and pretty soon about. Let him give it to the ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... he. "You've simply got the old, stupid, wornout ideas of your class. You can't grasp this new ideal, rising through the ruck and waste and sin and misery of the present system. I don't blame you. You're a product of your environment. You can't help it. With that environment, how can you sense the newer and more vital ideas ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... black draws clear of the ruck, And the murmur swells to a roar, As the brave old colours that never were struck, Are seen with the lead once more. Though the feathery ferns and grasses wave O'er the sod where Lantern sleeps, ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... while her slightest word, or action, riveted the attention. It was a triumph beyond applause, beyond any mere outward demonstration of approval. Winston felt the spell deeply, his entire body thrilling to her marvellous delineation of this common thing, her uplifting of it out of the vile ruck of its surroundings and giving unto it the abundant life of her own interpretation. Never once did he question the real although untrained genius back of those glowing eyes, that expressive face, those sincere, quiet tones which so touched and swayed the heart. In other days he had seen ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... from the ruck by his extraordinary personal strength; once free from the confused mass, his speed, in which he surpassed all the barbarians, enabled him to easily avoid capture. But as he flew his heart was dead within him, for there was no hope ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... ordinary gentleman's upbringing. If he could not, he would still be something of an outsider though all the world should acclaim him. Dick's careless speech—she called it stupid—affected her strangely. It lifted her suitor out of the ruck, and ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... hat in his hand. He began to feel that he was in the midst of something too vast to be moved by the efforts of any one man. The pitiful insignificance of the individual was apparent. As in a long procession the figures of the individuals who had tried to rise out of the ruck of American life passed before him. With a shudder he realised that for the most part the men whose names filled the pages of American history meant nothing. The children who read of their deeds were unmoved. Perhaps they had only increased the disorder. Like the men passing in the ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... has the right or the wrong o' this thing? Cromwell stands for the people's cause, Charles is crowned by the ancient laws; English meadows are sopping red, Englishmen striking each other dead,— Times are black as a raven's wing. Out of the ruck and the murk I see Only one thing! The King has trusted his banner to me, And I ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty—once he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a somersault and still win the race—on each occasion it had always come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an inevitable ingredient ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... accusation, and several kindred innuendoes let fall by his mother, left him coolly incredulous; the girl still seemed to him altogether distant; but from the first sight of her face he had evolved a stolid, unfaltering conception of her difference from the ruck of her sex. ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... in my power," she answered slowly. "Until he has fallen back again to the ruck. Until he has tasted a little of the misery from which at least he might have ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from the literati of China who live day by day almost from hand to mouth, eking out a scanty subsistence by writing scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation of some obscure passage ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles |
