"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mountain-top "Can this unhappy woman go, "Whatever star is in the skies, "Whatever wind may blow?" Nay rack your brain—'tis all in vain, I'll tell you every thing I know; But to the thorn, and to the pond Which is a little step beyond, I wish that you would go: Perhaps when you are at the place You something ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... nothing. As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward. But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road over which she ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... entered in the buyer's book, take his horses to the stable for feed and water, and when a favorable opportunity offered he would assist the hot and panting Mrs. Simpson out of the side or back of the rack, and gallantly brush the straw from her person. For this reason it was always asserted that Abner Simpson sold his wife every time he went to Milltown, but the story was never fully substantiated, and at all events it was the only suspected blot on ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and luxuriously-cushioned basket chairs, and seemed to be used as a kind of lounging place, for which it was eminently adapted, since the two open doors caused a constant draught of comparatively cool air through the apartment. There were a few good pictures on the walls, as well as a gun-rack, well fitted with sporting guns and rifles; and a hatstand which, in addition to its legitimate use, formed a convenient support for sundry riding-whips and pairs of spurs. Two passages, leading to right and left out of this hall, gave ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... intent. He knelt.—Cool play'd upon his cheek the wind, And fann'd the fever of his maddening mind, The willows waved, the stream it sweetly swept, The paly moonbeam on its surface slept, And all was peace;—he felt the general calm O'er his rack'd bosom shed a genial balm: When casting far behind his streaming eye, He saw the Grove,—in fancy saw her lie, His Margaret, lull'd in Germain's[3] arms to rest, And all the demon rose within his breast. ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... looked around; the towns were perfectly still, save for the prolonged organ note of the falls, which soon ceases to strike the ear. On either bank the houses gleamed pale under a low sky, where the greenish moonlight struggled through a rack of angry black clouds. While he stood there the clock under the church cupola above struck the quarters and clanged out the hour, followed, after a becoming pause, by the gatehouse clock across the river, and such others ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Rack, n. [rac] Tormento, dolor; rueca; pesebre. Pahirap, hirap; sudlan, panghabi, habihn; kakann ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... was suddenly transformed by the light of my lamp into a warm and cheerful refuge from the darkness of the lower floor. The purring of the cat, comfortably settled on the telephone-stand, was as cheering as the singing of a kettle on a stove. On the rack near me my garden hat and an old Paisley shawl made a ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... stand tormented by thirst in a lake. Tityus, for an assault on Artemis, was pinioned to the ground with two vultures plucking at his vitals. Typhoeus, a hundred-headed giant, was slain by Zeus' thunderbolt, and buried under Aetna. The gin on which he was tortured was probably the rack of the Middle Ages. Cf. the bed of Procrustes. Theseus, for attempting to carry off Persephone, was fixed to a rock in Tartarus. The "fifty sisters" are the fifty Danaides, who, for slaying their husbands, were condemned to pour ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... sure I could do it," she whispered, studying with eager eyes the open book on the music rack. "I—I'm going to try, anyhow!" she ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... out a pair of rails on which to dry the tape after it has been dipped. I make these rails by using two 1" x 2" boards about twelve feet in length, nailed together at the ends with boards two feet long. This frame, resting on carpenter's horses or benches, makes a good drying rack. ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... the awed Americans to voice to the shimmering moon the countless wrongs of the primitive Indians, who, centuries before, had roamed this marvelous land in happy freedom, until the Spaniard descended like a dark cloud and, with rack and stake, fastened ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... She made them happy, but she would not spoil them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well, I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr. Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round the table ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... you don't," said Dr. Carr, with an odd sigh, which set Katy to wondering. What should papa sigh for? Had she done any thing wrong? She began to rack her brains and memory as to whether it could be this or that; or, if not, what could it be? Such needless self-examination does no good. Katy looked more ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... to the rack, muttering as he did so; but what he said neither the captain nor his mates ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... mentally noted that the timepiece was inaccurate—three and a half minutes behind Greenwich. As usual, the hall was untenanted, with no servant to answer questions. He searched the dark recesses of a dirty letter-rack, on the chance that he might find a telegram from his wife waiting for him. Then he went gaily up the interminable staircase, making nothing now of its five flights, enjoying their steepness as productive of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... delighted most to be there when tempests were abroad; his unquiet spirit found a solace in the expression of his own unrest on the face of Nature; danger lent a charm to his situation; he felt in harmony with the scene, when the rack was sweeping stormfully across the heavens, and the forests were sounding in the breeze, and the river was rolling its chafed waters into ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... their way into the corridor, where by this time an office clerk and another man had joined the maid who was in charge of the coat rack. ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... other ways did the British officers seem to rack their inventions to insult, terrify, and vex the poor prisoners. The meanest, upstart officers among them would insult and abuse our colonels and ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... legs like Tdariuk, the reindeer. But it was ever so much larger than Tdariuk, and its legs were straighter. Little Black Bear wasn't long in finding out that this was not really any one at all, but just a rack Omnok had made on which to keep his meat. And there was meat up there! Oh! strips and strips of it! But it was all high out of reach. Little Black Bear sniffed and sniffed, and My! It did smell good! But even when he stood on his tiptoes he couldn't reach the least little mouthful. There was ...
— Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends • Roy J. Snell
... double handfuls of musket balls apiece—about a hundred bullets to each gun—in place of round shot, and, running them forward, mounted them on the topgallant forecastle as being the most commanding position in the ship. Then we loaded the muskets and placed them in the rack on the fore side of the deck-house, which completed our preparations. And now all that remained was to keep a sharp look-out, and, while doing so, determine upon the policy to be pursued when the returning longboat should heave ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... lay on the table now its top was partly open. The inside was brightly lighted by a small storage battery and electric globe, fastened to the side. Near the bottom of the bag was a tiny wire rack, held suspended about an inch from the bottom by transverse wires to the sides. The inside of the bag ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... around to the side and tied his mount to an old horse-rack, and then walked up the wide front steps as if each lift were an event. He turned the handle of the big door without much hope that it would yield, but it opened willingly, and he stood inside. A broom ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... shirt under his striped jacket, a high collar, and a necktie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and white and well cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger. When he heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising his eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... darker, drearier vision Passed before me vague and cloudlike; I beheld our nation scattered, All forgetful of my council, Weakened, warring with each other: Saw the remnant of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud rack of a tempest, Like the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Clisson turn'd these years agone; The Captal died in prison; and, over all, Edward the prince lies underneath the ground, Edward the king is dead, at Westminster The carvers smooth the curls of his long beard. Everything goes to rack—eh! and we too. Now, Curzon, listen; if they come, these French, Whom have I got to lean on here, but you? A man can die but once, will you die then, Your brave sword in your hand, thoughts in your heart Of all the deeds we have done here in France— And yet may do? ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... whey, when you have any, wipe it once a month, and keep it on a rack. If you want to ripen it, a damp cellar will bring it forward. When a whole cheese is cut, the larger quantity should be spread with butter inside, and the outside wiped to preserve it. To keep those in daily use moist, let a clean ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... were dealt with according to their folly. There used to be special houses of correction in those days, mad- houses built upon an approved system, for the special treatment of cases of this kind; mediaeval dungeons, an occasional application of the rack, and other gentle instruments of torture of an inventive age, were wonderfully efficacious in curing a man of his folly. Nor was there any special limit to the time during which the treatment lasted. And in case of a dangerous fit of folly, there were ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... women, and the bosom friend and disciple of Anne Askew. And she had sat in Smithfield, with blood curdled by horror, to see the hapless Court beauty, a month before the paragon of Henry's Court, carried in a chair (so crippled was she by the rack) to her fiery doom at the stake, beside her fellow-courtier, Mr. Lascelles, while the very heavens seemed to the shuddering mob around to speak their wrath and grief in solemn thunder peals, and heavy drops which ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... teach them to break windows!' repeated Alfred Pleydell, running to the stick rack. The rain rattled on the skylight of the square hall, and the wind roared down the open chimney. Among the men hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks and cramming caps upon their heads were some who had tasted of rheumatism, but they ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... singularly unpretentious. The whole furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen: the beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate-rack, the meal-chest, and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the stair-foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would ere long be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. They were much interested in my misadventure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rack, fodder or no fodder: that's the word; there's no 'scaping them consequences; they must be taken as they come,—gantelope, fire-roasting, and all. But, I say, Dick—saving your pardon for being familiar," he added, "there's the small matter to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... to despair when he felt this relation between Warren and himself. Something within him cried out to him to reveal his identity. Warren would kill him; but it was not fear of death that put Cameron on the rack. He had faced death too often to be afraid. It was the thought of adding torture to this long-suffering man. All at once Cameron swore that he would not augment Warren's trouble, or let him stain his hands with blood. He would tell the truth of Nell's sad story and his own, and make what ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... her fine small wits to rack! Closer, and faster on her track Hurries the hydra-headed ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... drawing him back, with claw of wily question, probing him on this side and that, turning him inside out,—the row of victims opposite, pale or flushed, of anxious or careless mien, according to temperament, but one and all on the rack as they bend over the allotted paper, or read from the well-thumbed book—the scarcely-less-to-be-pitied row behind of future victims, "sitting for the schools" as it is called, ruthlessly brought hither ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... said, This night, as I was in my sleep, I dreamed, and behold the heavens grew exceeding black; also it thundered and lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony; so I looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds rack[46] at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of Heaven; they were all in flaming fire: also the heavens were in a burning flame. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... housemaid had been allowed to touch them for weeks—with one exception. A table, smaller than the rest, but arranged with scrupulous neatness, stood at one side of the room, with a typewriter upon it, certain books, and a rack for stationery. A folded duster lay at one corner. Pens, pencils, a box of clips, and a gum-pot stood where a careful hand had placed them. And at a corner corresponding to the duster was a small vase of flowers—autumnal roses—the only ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contact arm along the threaded rod is produced by the action of either one of two solenoids, each of which has a core attached to a rack and pinion at either end of the rod. If the current is passed through the contact S{1}, a current passes through the left-hand solenoid, the core moves down, the rack on the core moves the pinion on the rod through a definite fraction of a complete revolution and ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... captain. Our fearful trip is done; The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! Heart! Heart! Leave you not the little spot, Where on the deck my captain ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... than any writer of our age or nation has exercised." Such is the opinion held of this great poet in 1835; but what were those of 1805-15,—nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough—insolent enough—to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic—who still, I believe, edits a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Truth, like other deities whose disposition has been too hastily inferred from that of the men who have invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with much of the worship paid to her even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done in her honour: no thumb-screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of flesh; but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even lifelong maiming. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... lie Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back, And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack, So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy The vision of her girlhood glinted by:— And how the father through their garden stray'd, And, child with children, play'd, And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove Before him from above Alighting,—in his visitation ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Fire-brigade. Two other men like himself lay on two little iron beds sound asleep with their clothes on. There was this difference between them, however, that the wakeful man wore brass epaulettes on his shoulders. Brass helmets and axes hung round the room. A row of boots hung in a rack, a little telegraph instrument stood on a table near a map of London, and a small but sociable clock ticked on ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... against, and chastise all they call heretics, or persons suspected even of heresy, and their protectors. It is dreadful to think of the power placed in their hands. Already thousands of the inhabitants of the Netherlands have been burned, or drowned, or hung, or killed on the rack; those who can taking to flight, till many parts are well-nigh depopulated. Nothing can be more dreadful than the system of torture employed. The accused person is carried off to prison, often without knowing the crime he is accused of, or his accusers. He is tortured to make ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... not to be balked. He pointed to the coat-rack on the wall in front of them both. "There is Henry de Spain's coat. He hung it there just before he went down to the inn. Under it, if you look, you'll find his belt of cartridges. Don't take ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the writhings of old Luke and such others as I could now see through the widening crack my hands unconsciously made in the doorway, told me that the rack was at work in this room so lately given up to revelry. Yet the mutterings, which from time to time came to my ears from one sullen lip or another, did not rise into frightened imprecation or even into any assertion ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... adjustment (Fig. 40, c) should be a rack-and-pinion movement, steadiness and smoothness of action being secured by means of accurately fitting dovetailed bearings and perfect correspondence between the teeth of the rack and the leaves of the pinion (Fig. 42). Also provision should be made ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... mother about it, Madeline took her Candy Rabbit, and, with her two little friends, went up to the bathroom. She drew the tub full of water, and while she was doing this she set the Rabbit on a glass shelf near the towel rack. ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... gave him the money, and did not take his bond, I believe, for it; but Nobkissin, we find, immediately afterwards enters upon the stewardship or management of one of the most considerable districts in Bengal. We know very well, and shall prove to your Lordships, in what manner such men rack such districts, and exact from the inhabitants the money to repay themselves for the bribes which had been taken from them. These bribes are taken under a pretence of the Company's service, but sooner ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... quartered in a small stable, with a hayloft above and a rack and manger at one end: a lodging better than fell to the lot of many of his brother officers; and, by means of a stove and some help from a carpenter, he says that he made himself tolerably comfortable. The change, however, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... be all his lifetime a good rider, they made to him a fair great horse of wood, which he did make leap, curvet, jerk out behind, and skip forward, all at a time: to pace, trot, rack, gallop, amble, to play the hobby, the hackney-gelding: go the gait of the camel, and of the wild ass. He made him also change his colour of hair, as the monks of Coultibo (according to the variety of their holidays) use to do their clothes, from bay brown, to sorrel, dapple-grey, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... in distant lands, Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain deg.— deg.8 Say, will it never heal? And can this fragrant lawn 10 With its cool trees, and night, And the sweet, tranquil Thames, And moonshine, and the dew, To thy rack'd heart and brain ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... forgotten pride (cheers). I am not a man at all. I am a cause (renewed cheers). I set myself against Comrade Gregory as impersonally and as calmly as I should choose one pistol rather than another out of that rack upon the wall; and I say that rather than have Gregory and his milk-and-water methods on the Supreme Council, I would ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... my shivering soul, Rack'd wish convulsive pangs in dust I roll; And hate, in madness of extreme despair, To view the sun, or breathe the vital air. But when, superior to the rage of woe, I stood restored and tears had ceased to flow, Lenient of grief ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... hand me up that switch of a stretcher," (Friend, if thou be'st not nautical, thou knowest what a rack—pin, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that they had a new beauty. Above the fireplace was a great black eagle which Gavotte had killed, the wings outspread and a bunch of arrows in the claws. In one corner near the fire was a washstand, and behind it hung the fishing-tackle. Above one door was a gun-rack, on which lay the rifle and shotgun, and over the other door was a pair of deer-antlers. In the center of the room stood the square home-made table, every inch scrubbed. In the side room, which is the bedroom, was a wide bunk made of pine plank that had also been ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... came to Italy with one of the Spanish princes. Instantly he recalled the scene where first he had listened to them—the dungeon draped in black—the white-hot irons which had seared his flesh; the rack which had maimed his limbs, the masked men who ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Williams, calling to Rock to come down. "Yes, sir," answered Rock, "when I take my arms." "You must come without them," said Williams. "Oh, I must have my arms, sir," and as Rock stretched out his hand to seize his musket in the arm-rack, Williams shouted, "If you lay one finger on your musket I will cut you down," at the same time drawing his sabre. "Now, go down before me." Rock obeyed, was placed in irons, and within half an hour Clark, O'Brien, and nine other mutineers were embarked ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... departure of Ulysses, our Gascon could not console himself for not having guessed why Aramis had asked Percerin to show him the king's new costumes. "There is not a doubt," he said to himself, "that my friend the bishop of Vannes had some motive in that;" and then he began to rack his brains most uselessly. D'Artagnan, so intimately acquainted with all the court intrigues, who knew the position of Fouquet better even than Fouquet himself did, had conceived the strangest fancies and suspicions at ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... having been admitted to that community two years before. To be a Lutheran in those days, that is in the Netherlands, meant, it need scarcely be explained, that you walked the world with a halter round your neck and a vision of the rack and the stake before your eyes; circumstances under which religion became a more earnest and serious thing than most people find it in this century. Still even at that date the dreadful penalties attaching to the crime did not prevent many of the burgher and lower classes from worshipping ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Passed before me, vague and cloud-like; I beheld our nation scattered, All forgetful of my counsels, Weakened, warring with each other: Saw the remnants of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, Like the withered leaves ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... the midnight wind, And courted sleep in vain, While thoughts like these have oft combined To rack the wearied brain. And even when slumber, soft and deep, Has seen the eyelid close, The restless soul, which cannot sleep, Has stray'd till ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... "Wynde hurled the Battayle"—Rowleian for a small boat—"agaynste an Heck." Heck in this and other passages was a puzzle. From the context it obviously meant "rock," but where did Chatterton get it? Mr. Skeat explains this. Heck is a provincial word signifying "rack," i.e., "hay-rack"; but Kersey misprinted it "rock," and Chatterton followed him. A typical instance of the kind of error that Chatterton was perpetually committing was his understanding the "Listed, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... shall suffer defeat, rout, and extermination; and Roman power shall cease to terrify. All its might must decay. But "everyone that is of the truth" shall attach himself to me with a love which will brave rack and stake. All your power cannot give a grain of new life. I can and will infuse my own divine life, my own divine self, into men. And this new life is invincible, immortal, all-conquering. I have infused myself into a few fishermen, and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... walls were hung with curios, South Sea spears and masks, Japanese armour, boomerangs, nullahs, a multitude of quaint workings in wood and grass and beads. Against the wall facing the door was an umbrella stand and hat rack of polished wood, with a mirror in the centre. There were two pannelled doors to the left; a doorless stairway, leading downwards, and a large window to the right; at the end of the passage a glazed door, with coloured ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... April Came to Anchor sum Distance from the Pirritt Rack[8] Ship, a Very Great Sloop. After Sending his boat to the Pirrit Rack Thay Came to Saile and Chassed serveral of Our fishing Vessells, then stod in to Sea which I belive to be ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... his success in life had not equalled his merits. As AEnone entered, he was bending over a shield, and earnestly engaged in burnishing its brazen mouldings. At his side leaned a short sword, awaiting similar attention, and in a rack beside him were a number of weapons of different varieties and sizes, which had already submitted to his restorative skill, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... exhibition of his hardihood and prowess. Gloomily bending over his horse's neck, he cursed himself as fool and coward. What would he have had!—a new crime on his soul? Perhaps he would have answered, "Anything rather than this humiliating failure." He did not rack his brains with conjecturing if Cutts had betrayed him, or by what other mode assistance had been sent in such time of need to Darrell. Nor did he feel that hunger for vengeance, whether on Darrell or on his accomplice (should that accomplice have played the traitor), ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your lap after holding ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... mellow in the long living-room after the brazen afternoon sun outside, a livable, lovable room. Stephen Lorimer had an open book on the music rack and he was ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... reck rate reed rill rub rig rim rite ride rise red rag rick rote run reek rib rob rip ruse roar roam rack rid rip rouse Arch farm lark far snare for march harm bark bar spare war larch charm mark hair sure corn starch dark are stair lure born arm spark star care ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... death,' he answered,' 'fore they've hed time t' start Ye want t' step right up t' the rack jes' if ye'd bought an' paid fer yerself an' was proud o' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... general smell of tar about everything. Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork to his mouth or into his eye. The tumblers and wineglasses, stuck in a rack over the table, kept clinking and clinking; and the cabin lamp, suspended by four gilt chains from the ceiling, swayed to and fro crazily. Now the floor seemed to rise, and now it seemed to sink under one's feet like ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the Dutch mariners. This hill, according to Irving, was peopled with a multitude of imps, too great for man to number, who wore sugar-loaf hats and short doublets, and had a picturesque way of "tumbling head over heels in the rack and mist." They were especially malignant toward all captains who failed to do them reverence, and brought down frightful squalls on such craft as failed to drop the peaks of their mainsails to the goblin who presided over this shadowy republic. It was the ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... imprisonments were unjust and cruel, and his executions, always upon the gibbet, were military murders. And if, to gain his point, he did not, like the Duke of Alva, (employed in a similar vocation) make use of the rack, the stake, and the faggot, yet Lord Cornwallis resorted to every other mode of punishment, a more improved civilization had left him, to suppress civil liberty. Such was the character of the commander in chief of the British forces ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... he removed his hat and stood irresolute, expecting some greeting. But nothing happened. On a rack against the wall he saw a gray uniform coat like that which Mr. Quimbleton had worn in the Balloon office, and a similar gray cap with the silver monogram. He glanced at the books. One was The Rubaiyat of Omar ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... the supposition that the lifting up of a building is here in question, is the indication of engines for winding up, such as jacks, and a rack and wheel. As the lifting apparatus represented on this sheet does not seem particularly applicable to an undertaking of such magnitude, we may consider it to be a first sketch or scheme for the engines ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held it up to ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... of, for five minutes after a run through a wild bit of Surrey, that looked gloriously attractive with its sandy cuttings, commons, and fir-trees, to a boy who had been shut up closely for months in London, his uncle suddenly cried, "Here we are!" and rose to get his umbrella and overcoat out of the rack. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... the next afternoon, when he climbed into the stage at Mercer and piled his own and Martha's bundles on the rack above him, that he really settled down to think the thing over.... What did it mean? The man had been willing to eat his bread; he had shown no offence at anything; what the deuce—! He pondered over it, all the way to Old Chester. When Martha, according to the custom of wives, inquired categorically ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... how to," replied Miss Hitty. "I don't know but what everything will go to rack while I'm away. My help is dreadful poor,—I can't calculate for her noway. I shouldn't wonder if she was settin' in the keepin'-room this minute, looking at ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... them into a small apartment which was evidently intended for a study. It bore evidences of unusual taste and care, and one could see that some loving hand had been trying to make it a real sanctum of refinement. There was even a small piano. A carved book-rack ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... were not scant. Inquire still less, what signifies a church Of perfect inspiration and pure laws Who burns the first man with a brimstone-torch, And grinds the second, bone by bone, because The times, forsooth, are used to rack and scorch! What is a holy Church unless she awes The times down from their sins? Did Christ select Such amiable times to come and teach Love to, and mercy? The whole world were wrecked If every mere great man, who lives to reach A little leaf of popular respect, Attained ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... hideous injustice they enrich themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout you from their presence. The wealthy corporations owning these street car lines in New York see that their drivers and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen hours every day of the week, including Sundays; but when a bill is brought into the State Legislature to limit the daily working hours to twelve, they order their hired agents of the lobby to defeat it. These gamblers ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... formed some stern old grand inquisitor, torturing the life out of human sinews because he ought. The grand inquisitor's devotion and conscience told him that he ought to advance the holy faith by every engine in his power, and therefore, as he considered that the rack, the thumbscrews, the rope, the fire and the faggot were the best possible engines, he used the same to the utmost of his ability; and thought, alas for humanity! that he was ...
— A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn • S.R. Calthrop
... looked meaningly at Outfield, and as the latter nodded the two rushed at the members of the Sacred Order of Hullabalooloo. But the latter were prepared. Over went the nearest armchair, down from the wall with a clatter came a rack of books, and this way and that swayed the forms of the maskers and the two roommates. The battle was short but decisive, and when it was done, Joel lay gasping on the floor and Outfield sprawled ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... McAllister Family. Earth was the floor, white-washed and uneven were the walls, non-existent was the ceiling, and black with peat-smoke were the rafters. There was a dresser, clean and white, and over it a rack of plates and dishes. There was a fire-place—a huge yawning gulf; with a roaring fire, (for culinary purposes only, being summer),—and beside it a massive iron gallows, on which to hang the family pot. Said pot was a caldron; so big was it that there was a species of winch and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... ease his heart of pain. But what, shall torture make me wrong her name? No, no, a pris'ner constant thinks it shame, Though he (were) racked his first truth to gainsay. Her true given praise my first confession is; Though her disdain do rack me night and day, This I confessed, and will ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... wave's mounting, flowing side, With stroke on stroke we rack; As down the sinking slope we slide, She cleaves a talking track— Like heather-bells on lonely steep, Like soft rain on the glass, Like children murmuring in their sleep, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to have you to the rack," said he, "they will make you confess you did it yourself, whether you did it or no, and then you ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... outlined—projet; and we must give it to them as soon as possible." She cleared away the ruck of evening papers from the library table, sent her younger sister off with arithmetic and geography to the dining-room, extracted a few sheets of monogrammed paper from the silver stationery-rack close by, and turned on two or three more lights in the electrolier overhead. "Now, then. We'll choke off that foolish notion of theirs; we'll smother it before it has ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... pipe, and talking, and trying to keep up his spirits; but the other, who was my friend, and Aikane—Hope, was the most dreadful object I had ever seen in my life: his eyes sunken and dead, his cheeks fallen in against his teeth, his hands looking like claws; a dreadful cough, which seemed to rack his whole shattered system, a hollow whispering voice, and an entire inability to move himself. There he lay, upon a mat, on the ground, which was the only floor of the oven, with no medicine, no comforts, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Jefferson, "if we sacrificed it to them, it might be a doubtful benefit. I often thank my stars I wasn't born in the age of martyrs. If J. had been, I'm sure the very sight of the rack or the faggot would have made ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... rack invention to endeavour to account for so strange an incident: my conjectures were all unsatisfactory, all improbable. I looked round to see if I could discover his lordship in the house, but without success: the numbers were so great that the people were concealed behind each other. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... rack for hats and coats, and an umbrella stand, and two quaintly carved chairs, and, most wonderful of all, a tall clock that stood upon the floor and ticked out the minutes in a grave and ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... under a central purpose gives strength and power, while the use of faculties without an aim or end only weakens them. The mind must be focused on a definite end, or, like machinery without a balance-wheel, it will rack itself to pieces. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... trees, snowy wash-cloths, each bearing its owner's initials, adorning the shrubs, while numerous towels waved in the breeze. Between two trees a thin board was nailed, which appeared to be used, as nearly as the woodpeckers could make out, as a toothbrush rack. In this, Philip, the skilful carpenter, had bored the necessary number of holes, and each one contained a toothbrush tied with a ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ourselves with leaving the red bundle on the seat beside her. It was lucky, I told her, that the carriage wasn't full, otherwise it would have had to go up in the rack, where it ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... moment's certain uneasiness for an uncertain evil. I really cannot discover either the use or the virtue of tormenting one's self by anticipation. I should think it quite as rational to case myself in a suit of mail, by way of security to my person, as to keep my mind perpetually on the rack of anticipating evil. I perfectly agree with that philosopher who says, if we confine ourselves to general reflections on the evils of life, that can have no effect in preparing us for them; and if we bring them home to us, that is the certain ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... we can try them. If you will make them understand that I don't at all want the place, and that it will go to rack and ruin because there is no one to live there, I am sure they will ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... to bend his head to enter the door. He found himself in a very large room inclosed by adobe walls and roofed with brush. It was full of rude benches, tables, seats. At one corner a number of kegs and barrels lay side by side in a rack. A Mexican boy was lighting lamps hung on posts that sustained the log rafters ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... Those hands, how white they are in the moonlight.' He took her hands. 'Why do you trouble and rack your soul about painting? A woman's hands are too beautiful for ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... could insist no longer: Mrs. Ellmother's reserve had beaten her—for that day at least. "Go into the hall," she said, "and see if there are any letters for me in the rack." ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... malicious Tiptoffs were, as usual, the main promoters. Mrs. Barry, indeed, though her temper was violent and her ways singular, was an invaluable person to me in my house; which would have been at rack and ruin long before, but for her spirit of order and management, and for her excellent economy in the government of my numerous family. As for my Lady Lyndon, she, poor soul! was much too fine a lady to attend to household matters—passed her days with ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... great man's family life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to be a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... brokenly, and cast a thing she wore about her neck to the floor. Then, suddenly, she collapsed in her chair and fell into a fit of dry weeping. Long, bitter sobs shook her frame and seemed to tear their way out of her body. She was like a woman wrenched upon the rack. Harlenden could do nothing but stand and wait, his own face twisted with pain, until the storm was past. Gradually it died away, with longer and longer intervals between the shuddering sighs. At last, she uncovered her ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... by the way he came, went out of the front door, and through the garden to where the pony was made fast, and led him away in search of a stable. He found one behind the house, and filling the rack with hay, returned to the house, and seated himself at a porch which was at the door which led to the back premises, for the keeper's house was large and commodious. Edward was in deep thought, when he was roused by the little girl, the daughter of the newly-appointed Intendant ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... fresh rod from the rack, and, dipping it in the solution, handed it to me. I cautiously applied it to the tip of my tongue and was immediately aware of a peculiar tingling sensation accompanied by a ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... you may say what you have overheard; for, in not answering me directly, you put my soul upon the rack; and half the trouble I have had with you would have brought to my arms one of the finest ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... this letter from the rack in the hall at college, and torn it open as she crossed to the Women's room. The world seemed to dissolve away from around her, she ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... is on the rack. Though some troubles may seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home there are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified by incessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such then is the secret of that sadness which you have surprised in me ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... helpful to intervene. Still the exhibition was a very painful one, putting a heavy strain upon the spectator. For be a fellow creature never so displeasing in nature and in habit, never so cankered by vanity and self-love, it cannot be otherwise than hideous to see him upon the rack. And that de Courcy Smyth was very actually upon the rack—a rack well deserved, may be, and of his own constructing, but which wrenched his every joint to the agony of dislocation nevertheless—there could be no manner of doubt. Coming as conclusion to the long day, to the peaceful ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the mare went with him, by night he slept so that he could, by reaching out a wrinkled, ebon hand, actually touch her glossy hide. He fed her himself with oats and hay which he examined with the utmost care before they found her manger or her rack; he watered her himself with water from a well within the stable and guarded by locked doors, drawn in a pail which, invariably, he rinsed with boiling water before he filled it up for her. No drugs should reach that mare if he could help it! None but himself ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... consumed, 320 And the sad owner to destruction doom'd; Mangled with wounds, with pungent anguish torn, Or left to perish naked and forlorn! What carnage reek'd upon thy ruin'd plain! What infants bled! what virgins shriek'd in vain! In every look distraction seem'd to glare, Each heart was rack'd with horror and despair. To Albion then, with groans and piercing cries, America lift up her dying eyes; To generous Albion pour'd forth all her pain, 330 To whom the wretched never wept in vain. ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... Marius, but comes to warm his hands and heart at the hearth of Cossette's presence; and he is stung when he sees no fire in the reception-room. The omission he can not misinterpret. He goes again, and the chairs are removed. Marius may have honor, but his honor is cruel, like an inquisitor with rack and thumbscrew; and then Jean Valjean goes no more, but day by day suns his heart by going far enough to look at the house where Cossette is—no more; then his eyes are feverish to catch sight of her habitation as parched lips ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... disorder. Across the head of the iron bed was hung a miscellany of socks, neckties, and suspenders. A discouraging assortment of boots, shoes, and leggings protruded from beneath the bed. Some calendars ornamented the wall, and upon a table stood a smoky lamp and some tobacco and a smelly pipe. On a rack over the ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... circular tray, which turns at the least touch in the centre, leaving only a rim round the table for plates and cups. This was covered also with a white cloth and on it were placed all the breakfast viands, with butter, sugar, cream, bread, toast-rack and preserves. You need no servants, but turn it round and help yourself. I believe the Van de Weyers introduced it, from a visit in Wales. Tea and coffee are served from a side-table always, here. Let me tell Aunty that our simple breakfast DRESS is unknown in England. You come down ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... burden; but the pain of my position is not one likely to lessen with habit. Its solitude and isolation are oppressive circumstances, yet I do not wish for any friends to stay with me; I could not do with any one—not even you—to share the sadness of the house; it would rack me intolerably. Meantime, judgment is still blent with mercy. Anne's sufferings still continue mild. It is my nature, when left alone, to struggle on with a certain perseverance, and I believe God ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a rack on the table, Fo-Hi held it near a lamp and examined the contents—a few drops of colourless fluid. These he poured into a curious long-necked yellow bottle. He began to speak, but without ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... country as missionaries; Gideon's health gave way under the tropical climate. He returned to this country and had since made his home with the Palmers. But little was learned of the wife. She still lived, and if remittances were not forthcoming, Gideon was on the rack. In fact, each one of her complaining letters made Gideon turn more yellow in color, sit up later and get up earlier than usual, no matter how poor Gideon suffered. If he was ailing and Palmer noticed it, ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... beneath the steed, They tied his hands behind his back; They guarded him, fivesome on each side, And they brought him ower the Liddel-rack. ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... flamed in the skies, everything below stood out in clean-cut and shadowless distinctness: the bending trees, the billowy river, white with foam, the driving spray of spume-flakes, the dim outlines of the high bluffs on the other side, glimpsed through the drifting cloud-rack and the slanting veil of rain. Every little while some giant tree yielded the fight and fell crashing through the younger growth; and the unflagging thunder-peals came now in ear-splitting explosive bursts, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... balm to my soul. And my nerves, on the rack for these three days, with the culmination of the last six hours seemed suddenly to snap ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... use the rope. Pray accompany me." Sakurai Kichiro[u] divined the object of the arrest. "The affair at the Kirido[u]shi has been scented out. The manner of that rascally drug seller was strange to-day." The officer had planted himself right before the sword rack. Sakurai could neither kill anybody, nor cut belly. He turned to his wife. "There is a matter on hand to be explained. Absence will probably be prolonged. Already the day is far advanced.... Ah! Is it Kichitaro[u]?" A boy of seven years had rushed into ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... service. Then, after his first wife (mother of the younger Pokrovski) had died, the widower bethought him of marrying a second time, and took to himself a tradesman's daughter, who soon assumed the reins over everything, and brought the home to rack and ruin, so that the old man was worse off than before. But to the younger Pokrovski, fate proved kinder, for a landowner named Bwikov, who had formerly known the lad's father and been his benefactor, took the boy under his protection, and sent him to school. Another reason why ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a cloud of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment, with its feeble lamp overhead, and our rugs and hand-baggage swaying on the rack, and Isabel, very still in front of me, gripping my wilting red roses tightly in her bare ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... too much!" O'Sullivan said. "That ledge is so narrow that I could hardly sit there, even holding on by the bars; and as to stopping there half an hour, I would almost as soon be on the rack." ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... hour they sat in council, At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door, but a gentle tap! "Bless us," cried the Mayor, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... dwellings now occupied by the working classes—the miserable, uncomfortable, jerry-built "villas" occupied by the lower middle classes and by "business" people, will be left empty and valueless upon the hands of their rack renting landlords, who will very soon voluntarily offer to hand them and the ground they stand upon to the state on the same terms as those accorded to the other property owners, namely—in return for a pension. Some of these ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, and an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... I was on the rack all the next day. It was the last day I should be in England, and I had a nervous dread of being detained. If I should once more succeed in quitting the country undetected, it seemed as though I might hope to be in safety in Calvados. Of Calvados I knew even less than of the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... whom she had always thought the greatest man in the world, not excepting Monsignore, until he told her he was only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She tripped alertly across the paved court into the stable, and took down the saddle and bridle from the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco, with his natural politeness, would not allow her to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor |
