"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fast with plenty of slack to the rope in case the tide should rise high, he got out and then he and Percival ascended the first slope, helping Jesse ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... great deed in this world of ours! Unheard of the pretence is. It plainly threatens the Great Powers; Is fatal in all senses. A just deed in the world! Call out The rifles! ... be not slack about The National Defences.' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the rope too much," answered the Navajo. "There will be places where you may have to do that. It will be safe to do so for Kitoni will take in all slack, but it will be better if you ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... nine o'clock, he was shifting from one foot to the other before the cashier's counter in the restaurant. From the little window inclosure came the clicking of typewriter keys, a little more spirited than before. Hiram had strategically chosen the slack business hour of the morning. He had eaten breakfast in a cheaper restaurant, two blocks down the street. He had not seen Tweet. He had been walking about the streets ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... speed until within range, when with that wonderful dexterity no other race has quite equalled, each pushed his bent right knee into the slack of the hair rope, seized bridle and horse's mane in the left hand, curled his left heel tightly into the horse's flank, and dropped down on the animal's right side, leaving only a hand and a foot in ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... fellows I have now," he went on as he led the way toward the men's quarters. "Not a trouble maker in the bunch, except a half breed that I'm not particularly stuck on, and that I'm going to get rid of as soon as work gets slack. But take them all together I ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... creature of fighting breed. It lunged forward with such suddenness that both its mistress and its enemy were taken unawares. The girl was dragged in tow. Zeke would have leaped aside, but he was too late to escape the encounter, though he mitigated it. The iron jaws clanged shut, but in the slack of the victim's sturdy jeans, instead of in the flesh. The massive mouth was locked vise-like. Because of the cloth's sturdiness, the dog swung clear of the floor. The girl still strove frantically, though ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... 1856, from eminent historians. When they were old men, he and Ranke, whom, in hot youth, there was much to part, lived on terms of mutual goodwill. Doellinger had pronounced the theology of the Deutsche Reformation slack and trivial, and Ranke at one moment was offended by what he took for an attack on the popes, his patrimony. In 1865, after a visit to Munich, he allowed that in religion there was no dispute between ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... no battle in prospect," he said; "our country does not want us to fight for it. No foe or tyrant is questioning or threatening our liberty. There is nothing to be done. We are only taking a walk. Keep your hand on the reins, captain, and slack the fire of that spirit. It is not ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the Saint: "My son, If grief were lawful in a world redeemed The blood-stains on a land so strong in faith, So slack in love, might cloud the holiest brow, Yea, his whose head lay on the breast of Christ. Clan wars with clan: no injury is forgiven; Like to the joy in stag-hunts is the war: Alas! for such what hope!" Benignus answered ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... should be loose about the stomach, so that digestion may not be impeded; it ought to be loose about the bowels, in order that the spiral motion of the intestines may not be interfered with—hence the importance of putting on a belly-band moderately slack; it should be loose about the sleeves, so that the blood may course, without let or hindrance, through the arteries and veins; it ought to be loose, then, everywhere, for nature delights in freedom from restraint, and will resent, sooner or later, any interference. Oh, that a mother ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... ought to have accompanied the creation of life peers. Proxies ought to have been abolished. Some time or other the slack attendance of the House of Lords will destroy the House of Lords. There are occasions in which appearances are realities, and this is one of them. The House of Lords on most days looks so unlike what it ought ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... he made at the line, the fish gave a peculiar wallow, which felt as if it had spun itself round in the water, and began in spite of the mate's efforts to move off, the line gliding through his fingers, till by a sudden action he twisted the slack round his ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... take the slack so fast. Hard a port. Now kick your stern over. That's the stuff. Pay out. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... advancing toward us at a brisk canter and the drum turned fast, taking up the slack of the tether; but, as though not satisfied with this rate of progress, several soldiers were running back and jumping up to haul in the rope. The sergeant who took care of the telephone was hard put to it to coil down the twin wires. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... that the chance to "make money" is to-day the most powerful stimulus in use. But thoughtful managers of industrial enterprise tell you, incredible as it may seem, that the worker's objection to applying himself to his task is not invariably overcome by anticipation of the wage return; he will slack or be perverse or throw over a job in the face of opportunities to earn as good a wage or a better one than he can get elsewhere. It is well known that workers joint unions in the face of opposition of employers and at the ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... idea for something artistic in the way of patterns there; but, as you love me, do not offer to buy any. We grocers only put the currants out for show, and so that we may run our fingers through them luxuriously when business is slack. I have a good line in shortbreads, madam, if I can find the box, but no currants this evening, I ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... visitors after her five o'clock tea. It was the habit at the Villa Amette to lunch at one o'clock, English tea at five o'clock, and dinner at eight—when the Rooms were slack save for the tourists from seven till ten. Strange! The tourists always think they can win while the gambling world has gone to its meals! They get seats, it is true, but they ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... remained upon the wharf. As he saw the rush coming he had ordered his men to abandon their load; then he ran to the after-mooring, and, taking slack from a deck hand, cast it off. Back up the dock he went to the forward hawser, where, at a signal, he did the same, moving, toward the last, without excessive hurry, as if in a spirit of bravado. The ship was clear, and he had not cut a hawser. He had done his work; ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... men, the marake, as it is called, "sharpens them, prevents them from being heavy and lazy, makes them active, brisk, industrious, imparts strength, and helps them to shoot well with the bow; without it the Indians would always be slack and rather sickly, would always have a little fever, and would lie perpetually in their hammocks. As for the women, the marake keeps them from going to sleep, renders them active, alert, brisk, gives them strength and a liking ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... companion, "and I'll bring Tom to you in a minute. He's having a lush with some of his pals; though I thought we were going to have a mill, for Jack Perkins, who is to be hanged o' Monday, roused out his slack jaw at him for some quarrel about a gal, and Tom don't bear such like easily. Howsumdever, they made it up and clubbed a gallon. Stay, I'll get you a candle end;" and leaving them in the dark, not much, if the truth must be told, to the satisfaction of John Ayliffe, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... year we had a committee meeting of the Alpha Delta Phi in Charles Washburn's room at 15 Holworthy. Roosevelt and I sat in the window-seat overlooking the College Yard and chatted together in the intervals when business was slack. We discussed what we intended to do after graduation. "I am going to try to help the cause of better government in New York City; I don't know exactly how," ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... superior to the mere consciousness of life, and which in its immensity of contradictions, delight, dread, exultation and despair could not be faced and yet was not to be evaded. There was no peace in it. But who wanted peace? Surrender was better, the dreadful ease of slack limbs in the sweep of an enormous tide and in a divine emptiness of mind. If this was existence then he knew that he existed. And he knew that the woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without movement, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of his guilt. Then he put back the ink and the dictionary, the blotting pad and sealing wax, and replaced them with a loaf of bread, a table knife, a bottle of brandy, and a drinking glass. After that he made up the fire with a shovel of slack, that it might burn until morning; removed the lamp from the table to the window recess that it might cast its light into the darkness outside; and unchained the outer door that a wanderer of the night, if any such there were, might ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... landing he had been dismissed, And now was traveling toward his native home. This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up, An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill-suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my side; Nor could I, while we journeyed thus, forbear To turn from present hardships ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... And he found a very nice little one; who, when he asked her, made a courtesy and said, "Yes, thank you," in the prettiest way possible. Then the Prince was pleased, and sent for a priest. The priest's name was Slack. He belonged to the Methodist persuasion, Otsego Conference, but he married the Prince and the Princess just as well as though he had been an archbishop. They went to live in a small palace of their own, and after awhile some little princelings came to live with them, and ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... minutes he was standing at the cliff edge, with a padded bight of the rope about his body, and the two joined ranging-rods in his hand, quite ready to be lowered down the face. Then two peons whom he had specially selected for the task, drew in the slack of the rope, passed a complete turn of it round an iron bar driven deep into a rock crevice, and waited for the command of a third who now laid himself prone on the ground, with his head projecting over the edge ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... generally, as I have said, have worked loyally and well, there have, I regret to say, been instances where absence, irregular timekeeping, and slack work have led to a marked diminution in the output of our factories. In some cases the temptations of drink account for this failure to work up to the high standard expected. It has been brought to my notice on more than one occasion that the restrictions of trade unions have undoubtedly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... grave words were said to me of my future life; although I feel myself truly four-square against the blows of chance. Wherefore my wish would be content by hearing what sort of fortune is drawing near me; for arrow foreseen comes more slack." Thus said I unto that same light which before had spoken to me, and as Beatrice willed ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... tightened round its shoulders, Tom galloping his own horse hard behind. By the most skilful manipulation of the lariat, Edna's horse was compelled to slacken its pace, Tom getting nearer and nearer by degrees and taking in the slack until he was right alongside. He soon brought the runaway to a stand-still, and directed me to release Edna's foot from the stirrup, which I did. She sank to the ground, completely exhausted. And little wonder. Her hands were cut and bleeding ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... hundred men by an explosion in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans, who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection, thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt the parliament buildings, looted several ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... three inches. The best quality of baked brick is of a yellowish-white tint, and very much resembles our Stourbridge or fire brick; another kind, extremely hard, but brittle, is of a blackish blue; a third, the coarsest of all, is slack-dried, and of a pale red. The earliest baked bricks are of this last color. The sun-dried bricks have even more variety of size than the baked ones. They are sometimes as large as 16 inches square and seven inches ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... time!" Mac called. "Let him think it out," as step by step Roper followed, the halter running slack on the water. When almost out of his depth, he paused just a moment, then, obeying the tightening rope, lifted himself to the flood and struck ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... two going away together, and he turned to the others. He and Obed worked fast, and within five minutes the last man was released. But as they crept back toward the chaparral the slack sentinels caught sight of the dusky figures retreating. Two musket shots were fired and there were rapid shouts in Mexican jargon. Ned and Obed rose to their feet and, keeping the escaped prisoners before them, ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Slack up, if you please, and let me have all the line you can, without casting off from your body. Keep fast the end for fear ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him fussy than careless," said Chowne, "because life cures a chap of being fussy, if he's got a brain and a sensible outlook; but the careless and slack sort go from bad to worse, and I ain't here to keep my constables in order: they be here to strengthen my hands and keep the rest ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... were waiting when they had finished, and they were soon under way. A mile of comparatively slack water brought them out into one of the larger estuaries of the river, and there the long, uphill pull began. O'Neil had equipped his two companions with high rubber boots, which they were only too eager to try. As soon as they got ashore they began to romp and play and splash through ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... replies for different ranks so that the officer of the deck may know how to receive the people that are coming aboard. It would make him awful mad if you gave such an answer that he would extend wardroom honors to a steerage officer. Now, stand by to slack away ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... come the command, and some men would go down into the smother of the lee rail and haul in or slack away sheets, while others at the mastheads would shift ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... authors who describe the thing otherwise, I appeal to the common sense of mankind. One late writer defines it thus: "LANGUAGE is any means by which one person communicates his ideas to another."—Sanders's Spelling-Book, p. 7. The following is the explanation of an other slack thinker: "One may, by speaking or by writing, (and sometimes by motions,) communicate his thoughts to others. The process by which this is done, is called LANGUAGE.—Language is the expression ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... whispered to 'Frisco Kid, who went for'ard and dropped the anchor, paying out the slightest quantity of slack. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... his horse, as he usually did, his left hand holding a slack rein, his right resting on his hip, with bent head and dreamy eyes, he made his first steps along that incline, at once glorious and fatal, which was to lead him to a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... Chicago now—a good-natured creature, but slack, like her mother. Her surly husband was still talking of his rights and crying down with the rich. They had two children. Minnie wrote of them, and of the delights of city life. Movies every night. Halsted ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... strongly against any tell-tale jerk, with the additional security of an anchor obtained by driving the pick of his ax deeply into the surface ice. It was Bower's business to keep the rope quite taut both above and below; but the American was sure that he was gathering the slack behind him with his right hand while he carried the ax in his left, and did not use it ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... explained to her that work was unusually slack in his own yard; that, moreover, he had worked special overtime during the week in order to get an hour or two off this Saturday, and that Seaton was on night duty at a large engineering "works," and lord therefore of his days. But she ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... then, and haul aft the leeward. Slack out the mizzen sheet a little, Jack. That's it; now she's off again, ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... sure to sleep like a top, and seven is time enough for me to rise. Two hours aint such a bad lot of sleep for a woman of my years. Let's see, I'm sixty-eight. In one sense sixty-eight is old, in another sense it's young. You slack down at sixty-eight; you don't have such a draw on your system, the fire inside you don't seem to require such poking up and feeding. When you get real old, seventy-eight or eighty, then you want a deal of cosseting; but sixty-eight is young in one sense of the word. This ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... jagged spurt of flame; The window seemed a furnace door That gave upon a bed of ore; The thunder rumbled out the muttered Words that his failing tongue had uttered— Another flash, a rending crack— The old man crumpled like a sack; I felt his stringy arms go slack. How could he sit so dead, so still! While wind snouts ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... loosed the steed,—his slack hand fell;—upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place: His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain:— His banner led the spears no more, amidst the hills of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the dancers give themselves to the saxophone. Their feet keep a rendezvous with the umpah umps. Their thoughts dance on the slack wire of the clarinet. Their veins beat time to the whinny of the derby wreathed cornet. The fiddles and the drums are partners for their arms and their muscles. But their hearts embrace shyly the Mother Aphrodite. Their hearts listen sadly and proudly and they almost ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... never been to a circus; and when Fanny told him what it was,—how men rode standing up on their horses; how they turned somersets, and played all sorts of antics on the tight rope and the slack rope; and, above all, what funny things the clowns said and did,—he was quite ready to do almost anything to procure so rare a pleasure as witnessing such a performance must afford him. It did not require any ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... step, Colonel Brent!—not a step! What business have you going into action? You did enough fighting forty years ago." Brent, deaf to her expostulation, is rushing to the steps, buckling his belt on the run, but "M'ria" grabs the slack of the Khaki coat and holds him. Stuyvesant springs for his hat. It has vanished. Marion, her hands behind her, her lips parted, her heart pounding hard, has darted to the broad door to the salon, and there, leaning against the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... it would have been more of a miracle had she done it in a balmy August, in the midst of other occupations, instead of in a tempestuous January when business was slack; but, on the whole, I did not believe that either the Madonna or my sins had had anything to do with my cold which I considered to be a natural, or non-miraculous, consequence of the rain and the wind. But the sceptical guard objected that even so the Madonna could not get quite clear, ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... stretch far over the quay, and from them hang spars and planks as a gangway to each ship. This immense establishment is worked by from one to three thousand hands, according as the business is either brisk or slack.'" ...
— Rollo in London • Jacob Abbott
... advertised "Just arrived from Halifax and to be sold, ten strong hearty, Negro men mostly tradesman, such as caulkers, carpenters, sailmakers and ropemakers.[3] Any person wishing to purchase may enquire of Benjamin Halliwell of Boston." Such an advertisement indicates that shipbuilding was slack at Halifax and more brisk at Boston. A conjecture may be hazarded that these slaves had been taken by their master to Halifax to build ships and then returned to the colony when ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... without the benefit of the diversion of any copes-mate or corrival at all, but should withal shun and eschew them, fly from them, and eternally forsake and reject them as impious heretics and sacrilegious persons, according to the accustomed manner of other gods towards such as are too slack in offering up the duties and reverences which ought to be performed respectively to their divinities—as is evidently apparent in Bacchus towards negligent vine-dressers; in Ceres, against idle ploughmen and tillers of the ground; in Pomona, to unworthy fruiterers ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Borderland, a rude spirit of chivalry and a passion for wild adventure lingered among the Eliots, Armstrongs, Kerrs, Rutherfords, Homes, Johnstons, and other marauding clans, who acknowledged no law but march law, and held slack allegiance to "the King of Lothian and Fife." Every owner of a half-ruinous "peel" or border keep had a band of retainers within call, like the nine-and-twenty knights of fame who hung their shields in Branksome Hall; and he could ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the hostess, addressing a little girl of twelve years old, who had by this time appeared, "tak the gentleman's horse to the stable, and slack his girths, and tak aff the bridle, and shake down a lock o' hay before him, till the dragoons come back.—Come this way, sir," she continued; "ye'll find my house clean, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... was extremely strong, and my rod was a single bamboo. Accordingly, I put on a powerful strain, which was replied to by a sullen tug, a shake, and again my rod was pulled suddenly down to the water's edge. At length, after the roughest handling, I began to reel in slack line, as my unknown friend had doubled in upon me; and upon once more putting severe pressure upon him or her, as it might be, I perceived a great swirl in the water, about twenty yards from the rod. The tackle would bear anything, and I strained so heavily upon my adversary, that I soon reduced ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... said, staring at vacancy, "what trivial matters a man thinks of in the shadow of death. I can't consider it; I can't be reconciled to it; I can't even pray. One absurd idea possesses me—that Singleton will have the Legion now; and he's a slack drill-master—he is, indeed!... I've a million things to think of—an idle life to consider, a misspent career to repent, but the time is too short, Ormond.... Perhaps all that will come at the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... strong believer in strict discipline, at once ran to obey the order, accompanied by the most active among the men, while others ran to slack off the sheets and lower ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... the ground, I took hold of the rope and shook it. I am not generally nervous, but I was a little nervous then. I did not shake the grapnel loose. Then I let the rope go slack, for a foot or two, and gave it a big sweep to one side. To my great delight, over came the grapnel, nearly falling on our heads. I think I saw Maiden's Heart make a grab at it as it came over, but I ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... united insult of the united public! Why should an educated and cultured man, a gentleman in point of fact, be absolutely prohibited from hearing a "classical" concert because he wore the Queen's uniform and did that most important and necessary work which the noble Briton is too slack-baked, too hypocritically genteel, too degenerate, to perform, each man ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... distaste. He had no liking for Squires, a harsh, arrogant man, notorious for his relentless persecution of any director or officer who, in Squires' opinion, had become slack in his duties to the Machine. But he had a large following in the upper echelons, and ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... superintend the training of an eyas, or young hawk, which he himself, at the imminent risk of neck and limbs, had taken from the celebrated eyry in the neighborhood, called Gledscraig. As he was by no means satisfied with the attention which had been bestowed on his favourite bird, he was not slack in testifying his displeasure to the falconer's lad, whose duty it was ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... yet but once at Fawn Court since he had written to Lucy Morris asking her to be his wife. That was three weeks since, and as the barrier against him at Fawn Court had been removed by Lady Fawn herself, the Fawn girls thought that as a lover he was very slack; but Lucy was not in the least annoyed. Lucy knew that it was all right; for Frank, as he took his last walk round the shrubbery with her during that visit, had given her to understand that there was a little difference between him and Lady Fawn in regard to Lizzie Eustace. "I am her only ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... power per hour, instead of 1-3/4 lb., as is done in the best steam engines. The only producer that makes gas for gas engines at present is the Dawson, and in it anthracite is used, because of the difficulty of getting rid of the tar coming from the Siemens and Wilson producers, using any ordinary slack. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... fit for strenuous work. There are days in every girl's life when she is not capable of her best work, and when a wise and sympathetic teacher will see that it is better for her to do comparatively little. And yet these slack times are just those in which there is the greatest danger of a girl indulging in daydreams, and when her thoughts need to be more than usually under control. These times may be utilised for lighter subjects and for such manual work as does not need great physical exertion. It is not a good time ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... mind. No power could impede the march of his mercy to the predestined point; no casualties defeat his great design; and no lapse of years, or revolution of centuries, diminish the ardour of infinite love, to secure the felicity of his people. The Lord was never "slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness;" for it must never he forgotten, in estimating the movements of eternal Providence, that "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... do what I can for them all three, for so I have promised, and I'll be as good as my word; but speciously for Master Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff from my two mistresses: what a beast am I to slack it! ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... abominable and erroneous opinions lately sprung in Germany, and by them have been some seduced in simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment have been exercised according to the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss or slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth."[41] Such were the first Protestants in the eyes of their superiors. On one side was wealth, rank, dignity, the weight of authority, the majority of numbers, the prestige ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... navigable rivers of this country are comparatively long and shallow. In order that they may be made fully useful for navigation there has come into vogue a method of improvement known as canalization, or the slack-water method, which consists in building a series of dams and locks, each of which will create a long pool of deep navigable water. At each of these dams there is usually created also water power of commercial value. If the water power ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... time finding the way again, so it was after nine when we reached Mason's stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the countersign, several dogs came bounding over the fence, with great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to; so we had to look on, helpless, at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the civil ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of "giggling and making giggle" with Thurlow in an attorney's office, was now entered at the Temple and amusing himself at times with literature in company with such small men of letters as Colman, Bonnell Thornton, and Lloyd. It was a slack tide of literature; the generation of Pope had passed away and left no successors, and no writer of the time could be put in competition with the giant now known as ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Rome, where they throw hundreds and thousands at each other in play, and call it a Comfit Battle or Battaglia di Confetti (that's real Italian). And he wanted to get up that sort of thing among the village people—but they were too beastly slack, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... went about his work in a scientific fashion. First he fastened and threaded a length of silk rope through one of the rails of the bed and into the slack of this he lifted Milburgh's head, so that he could not struggle except at the risk ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... at the clump of trees on the edge of the field. Their shade invited like a beckoning hand. Little beads of perspiration stood on her forehead. A warm lassitude spread through her body, turning her muscles slack. Hadn't Gertrude said Aunt Jessica didn't let them work in too ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... you and give thanks with our whole heart to God and to your fatherly care. And because there is still need of great watchfulness, because the place is new, and the land unaccustomed to the monastic life, yea, without any experience of it, we beseech you in the Lord,[970] that you slack not your hand,[971] but perfectly accomplish that which you have well begun. Concerning our brothers who have returned from that place,[972] it had pleased us well if they had remained. But perhaps the brothers[973] of your country, whose characters ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... not going anywhere in particular," Captain Wilson replied. "The chief says he thinks that things have got rather slack, since I have been away. There are several bands of bush rangers, who have been doing a deal of mischief up country; so to begin with, he wishes me to make a tour of inspection, and to report generally. After that, I think I shall be settled ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... her a drawin' of tea and a couple of nut-cakes: mebby she'll relish 'em, for I shouldn't wonder ef she hadn't had a mouthful this blessed day. She's dreadful slack at the best of times, but no one can much wonder, seein' she's got nine children, and is jest up from a rheumatic fever. I'm sure I never grudge a meal of vittles or a hand's turn to such as she is, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... simplicity and ignorance. Against these, if judgment has been exercised according to the laws of the church, and conformably to the laws of this realm, we be without blame. If we have been too remiss and slack, we shall gladly do our duty from henceforth. If any man hath been, under pretence of this [crime], particularly offended, it were pity to suffer any man to be wronged; and thus it ought to be, and otherwise we cannot answer, no man's special case being declared in the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and the High Mass ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... distance, he observed that the fingers held a sheet of printed paper; and he remembered Florence. Instead of pressing his brow he unfolded the journal she had thrust upon him. As he began to read, his eye was lustreless, his gait slack and dreary; but soon his whole demeanour changed, it cannot ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... from the table, running the ends of all the cords through another cord that could, upon being pulled, adjust their height by pulling or releasing, thus controlling the distance between the upper and the lower beams, and changing the amount of slack in the carpet that was stretched between them. I then removed the legs from the tabletop, leaving just it and the beams together, the carpet ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... when A slack rope tightens. Smoke beats downward. Sun is red in the morning. There is a pale yellow ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... Virginia; and to Mrs. Colfax, who received them with red eyes and a thousand queries as to whether that Yankee ruffian would pay any attention to the Sovereign law which he pretended to uphold; whether the Marshal would not be cast over the Arsenal wall by the slack of his raiment when he went to serve the writ. This was not the language, but the purport, of the lady's questions. Colonel Carvel had made but a light breakfast: he had had no dinner, and little rest on the train. But he answered his sister-in-law with unfailing courtesy. He was too honest ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an officer ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... some of our less flighty looking customers revealed to me the fact that there were those who predicted for him a fall as rapid as had been his rise. But I could not help feeling a little of my former jealousy return, as I noted how slack and unprofitable our business ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Slack," said Grandma. "I don't have many applications for men's things, so I guess there's a coat of Mr. Grant's put away in the camphor chest, and maybe a vest or so; you sit right down by my fire whilst I go up to the garret ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack water again, when we weighed and made for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... already mentioned, of words used both adjectively and adverbially, our dictionaries exhibit many primitive terms which are to be referred to the one class or the other, according to their construction; as, soon, late, high, low, quick, slack, hard, soft, wide, close, clear, thick, full, scant, long, short, clean, near, scarce, sure, fast; to which may as well be added, slow, loud, and deep; all susceptible of the regular form of comparison, and all regularly convertible into adverbs in ly; ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the Sarkee has complained of this, and the Sheikh, to do him justice, has ordered the Sarkee to seize any Bornouese committing these misdemeanours, and execute what justice he pleases upon them. The Sarkee, now, will not be slack to obey his master's commands. Still it is not surprising the people ran ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom:— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or in conflagration pale ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... would make me forget all, and wear even the remembrance of the evil of sin, the worth of heaven, and the need I had of the blood of Christ to wash me, both out of mind and thought: but I thank Christ Jesus, these things did not at present make me slack my crying, but rather did put me more upon it (like her who met with adulterer, Deut. xxii. 26), in which days that was a good word to me, after I had suffered these things a while:- I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, etc., shall ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... came in to rest after the Guards had gone, and before they left again for the line, gave a big race meeting on the sands. Luckily for us there was no push on just then, and work was in consequence very slack. A ladies' race was included in the Programme for our benefit. It was one of the last events, and until it came off we amused ourselves riding available mules, much to the delight of the Tommies, who cheered and yelled and did their best to get them to "take off!" ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water in his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred miles up ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... a wider channel, or finally by a lacustrine or marine basin which receives its waters. Wherever it lets fall solid material, its channel is raised in consequence, and the declivity of the whole bed between the head of the embankment and the slack of the stream is reduced. Hence the current, at first accelerated by confinement, is afterwards checked by the mechanical resistance of the matter deposited, and by the diminished inclination of its channel, and then begins ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... uniform, and does useful work as doorkeeper and orderly, always on the watch to welcome poor souls such as he was. He has had his share of trials since he was converted. Bronchitis and asthma often keep him a prisoner and make work slack. 'I don't have to look for troubles, they come trooping along, but grace keeps them company,' he says joyfully. Then a shade of sadness steals into his voice as he continues, wistfully, 'What was I doing to miss all those years? Wretched, terrible ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... down, put his hands on the arms of the chair, and kissed me violently, twice. The fire that consumes the world ran scorchingly through me. Every muscle was suddenly strained into tension, and then fell slack. My face flushed; I let my head slip sideways, so that my left cheek was against the back of the chair. Through my drooping eyelashes I could see the snake-like glitter of his eyes as he stood over me. I shuddered ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... grave. Sir Edward Coke spent the last six years of his life in revising and improving the works upon which his fame now rests. John Wesley only the year before he died wrote: "I am now an old man, decayed from head to foot.... However, blessed be God! I do not slack my labors; I can preach and write still." Arnauld, one of the greatest of French theologians and philosophers, retained, says Disraeli, "the vigor of his genius and the command of his pen to his last day, and at the age of eighty-two was still the great Arnauld." It was he ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... more doth Pitt deem the land crying loud to him— Frail though and spent, and an hungered for restfulness Once more responds he, dead fervours to energize Aims to concentre, slack efforts to bind. THOMAS HARDY, The Dynasts, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... "It is slack-water, Sir Gervaise, and the vessels are looking all ways at once. Most of us are clearing hawse, for there are more round turns in our cables, than I remember ever to have seen in so ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... captain that walks the quarter-deck Is the monarch of the sea; But every day, when I'm on my dray, I'm as big a monarch as he. For the car must slack when I'm on the track, And the gripman's face gets blue, As he holds her back till his muscles crack, And he shouts, "Hey, hey! Say, you! Get out of the way with that dray!" "I won't!" "Get out of the way, I say!" But I stiffen my back, and I stay on the track, And I ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... darker border, which seems placed there on purpose to make them conspicuous; and this was a great puzzle to naturalists, because the long coarse gray or greenish hair was evidently like tree-moss and therefore protective. But an old writer, Baron von Slack, in his Voyage to Surinam (1810), had already explained the matter. He says: "The colour and even the shape of the hair are much like withered moss, and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but particularly when it has that orange-coloured spot between the shoulders ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... with the said James Burbage in the aforesaid lease, was reputed among his neighbors to be worth one thousand pounds at the least, and that after he had joined with the said Burbage in the matter of the building of the said Theatre, he began to slack his own trade, and gave himself to the building thereof, and the chief care thereof he took upon him, and hired workmen of all sorts for that purpose, bought timber and all other things belonging thereunto, and paid all. So as, in this deponent's conscience, he bestowed thereupon ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... these to keep in order, as well as cope with those in the field. Besides, one must remember that in a matter like this we cannot fully depend on any force that we may gather. The archers and men-at-arms would be drawn largely from the same class as the better portion of these rioters, and would be slack in fighting against them. Certainly, those of the home counties could not be depended upon, and possibly even in the garrison of the Tower itself there may be many who cannot be trusted. The place, if ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... known it for half an hour. He had been noticing river details, and he could not fail to recognize that little boat. His hands trembled as he steered the launch to take advantage of slack current and dead water, and his throat choked with an emotion which he controlled with difficulty. He looked fearfully at the gaunt River Prophet whose own cheeks were staining with warm blood, and whose eyes gazed so keenly at the young woman who ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... "Humph! business is slack," remarked a younger edition of the old gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the back of his head, in ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... entered so largely into the theory of M. le Comte de Monte-Cristo. However closely disguised, himself is always the heroic figure, and he is ever busy in arranging discovery and triumph. To his chance-mates he is but an eccentric person, an amateur tinker, a slack-baked gipsy, an unlettered hack; to his audience he is his own, strong, indifferent self: presently the rest will recognise him and he will be disdainfully content. And recognise him they do. He throws off his disguise; there is a gape, a stare, a general conviction that Lavengro is the greatest ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... as the enemy's departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience of the German system with the slack and muddle of Coodle and Doodle, and we are lost. Unless you keep up as hot a fire from your ink-bottle on the Government as the soldier keeps up from the trenches you are betraying that soldier. Of course they will call you a pro-German. What of that? They call ME a pro-German. We also must ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... gallantly to block; and when, in the early hours of yesterday morning, the Vindictive groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt to its ultimate ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... or through his gill, put it again into his mouth, and the point and beard out at his tail; and then tie the hook and his tail about, very neatly, with a white thread, which will make it the apter to turn quick in the water; that done, pull back that part of your line which was slack when you did put your hook into the minnow the second time; I say, pull that part of your line back, so that it shall fasten the head, so that the body of the minnow shall be almost straight on your hook: this done, try how it will turn, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... utterly easy-going, perhaps in token of his gratitude for the assistance we had rendered him at a critical time; but chiefly, I fear, because he was slack to check anything which seemed to defy constituted authority or promised to give an uneasy time to the representatives of ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... runner saw the shadow of it, and with a cry that they heard, half turned and threw out his arms to ward it off. The loop was too large, the cowman missed it, and as the Indian pulled up in a cloud of dust, he whipped in the slack, and the noose tightened fairly about the renegade's waist. An instant after, however, the second pony, plunging ahead of the Indian's, threw the rider forward, slackening the lariat. In a twinkle the cowman had loosened the noose, and was ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... some months before, that Bashley being away for a day's holiday, Antoine took his place at the scale; for it was a slack time, and few workpeople were there to be served. He believed he had given out the last skein of silk, and had weighed the last bobbin, so shutting the slide, and putting up the bar, he unlocked an inner door, and went into the house and up the stairs. Pausing on the first landing, ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... admits his obligations to the mendicants, from whom he obtained many choice transcripts. "When indeed," says he, "we happened to turn aside to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers had convents, we were not slack in visiting their chests and other repositories of books, for there, amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most exalted riches treasured up; there, in their satchells and baskets, we discovered not only the crumbs ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... be a sad march through all the length of the fair land that had slipped from his slack fingers, up to far-off Riblah, in the great valley between the Lebanon and the anti-Lebanon. Observe how, in verses 5 and 6, the king of Babylon has his royal title, and Zedekiah has not. The crown has fallen from his head, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... reach down for the slack rein running from her father's hand to Diablo's mouth. "Missed! She's got it!" he cried, eagerly. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... rise to new construction projects. The MOSCOSO administration inherited an economy that is much more structurally sound and liberalized than the one inherited by its predecessor. Even though export demand is likely to remain slack in some key markets - especially the Andean countries - GDP growth in 2000 probably will be 3% to 4%. Key reform initiatives from the previous administration - including the privatization of public utilities - remain uncompleted. Although President MOSCOSO ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... because we talked of a newspaper of our own. When you are with me you know I'm a man; when you get away from me you think I'm a cheat and a cad.... There's not a word of truth in the things they say about us. I've been slack. I've left things. But we have only to exert ourselves. You do not know how wide and far we have spread our nets. Even now we have a coup—an expedition—in hand. It will put us on ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... month things were looking bad. Harry had besieged the New York headquarters of the Columbus River Slack-water Navigation Company with demands, then commands, and finally appeals, but to no purpose; the appropriation did not come; the letters were not even answered. The workmen were clamorous, now. The Colonel and Harry retired ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... clear, so that both ships sailed night and day; until one day, towards the time the day turns to shorten, Karle and his people took up the land near an island, let down the sail, cast anchor, and waited until the slack-tide set in, for there was a strong rost before them. Now Thorer came up, and lay at anchor there also. Thorer and his people then put out a boat, went into it, and rowed to Karle's ship. Thorer came on board, and the brothers ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... had just as it were reached a climax, when, instead of the line breaking or Mark going over the side, the strong cord, which had been hissing here and there through the water, suddenly grew slack, and the tension was taken off Mark's muscles and mind to give place to ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... course, but I had enough confidence in Stranor Sleth to think that he could handle the situation himself. I didn't know he'd gone slack—" ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper |
