"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the one nearest him, which was on the right side of the ship. This room was about ten feet long, extending from the middle of the ship to the side, and about six feet wide. A telescope was the first thing which attracted his attention. It lay in a rack near the doorway. He took it down, but it fell apart at once, being completely corroded. In the middle of the room there was a compass, which hung from the ceiling. But the iron pivot had rusted, and the plate had fallen down. Some more guns ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... forced almost beyond the limit of endurance, had become passive, and almost incapable of suffering. A deep slumber stole upon him, yet could he not escape the horrors by which he was surrounded. Daggers reeking in blood—spectres covered with hideous wounds—murderers on the rack—gibbets, and a thousand forms, shapeless and unimaginable, crowded past with inconceivable rapidity. A huge figure approached. In its hand a weapon was uplifted, as if to destroy him. He made a vehement effort to escape; but was holden, without the power of resistance. Just as it was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... hear the low-pitched rumble of a scout-ship blasting from its launching rack. "All we want to do is go out and work Dad's claim," he ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... hall door he saw the hat-rack where as a boy he had hung his cap. It now held garments over which Lane fumbled. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Simmons, we kin safely say— 'Tain't gwine to be no storm to-day Kase here am facts dat's mighty plain An' any time you sees 'em you kin look fuh rain: Any time you hears da cheers an' tables crack An' da folks wid rheumatics—dare jints is on da rack—" ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... Sidhe Fionnachaidh and Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh. There used a bird with an iron beak and a tail of fire to come every evening to a golden window of Ilbrec's house, and there he would shake himself till he would not leave sword on pillow, or shield on peg, or spear in rack, but they would come down on the heads of the people of the house; and whatever they would throw at the bird, it is on the heads of some of themselves it would fall. And the night Caoilte came in, the hall was made ready for a feast, and the bird came in again, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... kitchen. Dong Ling found him there a minute later polishing a silver teaspoon with a fringed napkin that had been spread over Bertram's tray. In the hall above Aunt Hannah was crying into William's gray linen duster that hung on the hall-rack—Aunt Hannah's handkerchief was on the ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... discovered Raoul, she amused herself with the profound astonishment which her own and her friend's presence there caused the unhappy lover. Her waggish and malicious look, which Raoul tried to avoid meeting, and which yet he sought inquiringly from time to time, placed him on the rack. As for Louise, whether from natural timidity, or some other reason for which Raoul could not account, she kept her eyes constantly cast down; intimidated, dazzled, and with impeded respiration, she withdrew herself as much as possible ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... public enemies that present themselves. The public needs a victim to harrow up its feelings. The injury that is problematic, or general, or that falls in undefined ways upon unknown persons, is resented feebly, or not at all. The fiend who should rack his victim with torments such as typhoid inflicts would be torn to pieces. The villain who should taint his enemy's cup with fever germs would stretch] [Footnote continued from previous page: hemp. But think of it!-the corrupt boss who, in order to extort fat contracts for his ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... misery by a public execution. The possession of a piece of tobacco was penal, and for this offence alone multitudes were flogged; but its use was only limited by the supply: many men would have risked the rack, rather than rejected this valued indulgence. A wesleyan missionary was accustomed to reward his servant with the luxury, until he found that being distributed, others were involved in punishment. Visitors usually carried tobacco, which they dropped on the tramway by which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... increase gradually the temperature of the water from this degree, and not to exceed 45 deg. C. (113 deg. Fahr.), in order to obtain the most perfect result from a negative of good intensity. Indeed, by placing the supports on a rack and immersing the whole in water heated to 30 to 35 deg. C. (86 to 95 deg. Fahr.), the image will clear up by itself to perfection in a certain period. This method is excellent for proofs in lines. Those from the grained negatives employed in ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... counted; then he fancied he had lost a stroke and miscalculated. Either voluntarily or involuntarily, he said to himself, when it had finished striking, "You're wrong; it is nine, not ten." He turned round that he might not see the dial, and thus he stood for some time, with his hands upon the wagon-rack, gazing at the wood. He knew not how long he had been thus standing, when some one tapped him on the shoulder, and said, "How much for the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... presence of the great, for greatness is power, and power is a menace. He knew that he could walk backward without obstruction, and find the door without error. Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the meantime the snake's eyes burned with a ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Satan, so it was God's work to root them out and destroy them. Thus the Gradys have reasoned for a thousand years; and thus in black dungeons underground they have turned the thumb-screws and pulled the levers of the rack. They do it still in many of the large cities of America, where superstition runs the police-force, in combination with liquor interests ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... prove that a gun is in reality a sentient being of a very high order of intelligence. You may be quite certain that if you abuse your gun, even when you may imagine it to be far out of earshot, comfortably cleaned and put to roost on its rack, your gun will resent it. Why are most sportsmen so silent, so distraits at breakfast? Why do they dally with a scrap of fish, and linger over the consumption of a small kidney, and drink great draughts of tea to restore their equilibrium? If you ask them, they will tell you that it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... His book (Travels, &c.) is ill and pedantically written; but the account of his own sufferings on the rack at ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... said John Effingham, laughing, again drawing Eve towards him and saluting her cheek; "for if I were on the rack, I could scarcely say which I love best, although you have the consolation of knowing, pert one, that you get ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... autumn moan; but—he is coming. The skies hang full and dark—a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at its ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... excellent meal, and then Vane drew up a wicker chair to the fire for Evelyn and sat down opposite her. The room was low and shadowy, and partly paneled. Against one wall stood a black oak sideboard, with a plate-rack above it, and a great chest of the same material with ponderous hand-forged hinge-straps stood opposite it. A clock with an engraved metal dial and a six-foot case, polished to a wonderful luster by the hands of several ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... conceivable that a man of spirit, a gentleman by training at least, would let himself lie under the odium of such a charge if he were not guilty? Her tangled thoughts fought this profitless conflict for days. Nor could she dismiss it from her mind. Even after he began to mend she was still on the rack. For in some snatch of good talk, when the fine quality of the man seemed to glow in his face, poignant remembrance would stab her with recollection of the difference between what he was and what ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... Billings waited and waited. And what was the conversation of his worthy parents inside the garden? I cannot say; but one of the waiters declared that he had served the great foreign Count with two bowls of rack-punch, and some biscuits, in No. 3: that in the box with him were first a young gentleman, who went away, and a lady, splendidly dressed and masked: that when the lady and his Lordship were alone, she edged ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... race, or white or black, When bound as thou wert, to the rack, So seldom stooped to grieving; No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them men ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... It is not known what became of Pantaleon, whether he was executed or fled the country, but his friends were tortured to death or had to purchase their pardon dearly. Sadyattes was stretched on a rack and torn with carding combs.* Glaucias, besieged in his fortress of Sidene, opened its gates after a desperate resistance; the king demolished the walls, and pronounced a solemn curse on those who should thereafter rebuild them. Pindarus, summoned ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... town containing about two thousand inhabitants. It was located at the head of Clearwater Lake, a beautiful sheet of water about two miles long and half a mile wide and containing a number of picturesque islands. At the head of the lake was the Rick Rack River, running down from the hills and woods beyond. Up in the hills it was a wild and rocky watercourse containing a number of dangerous rapids, but where it passed Colby Hall it was a broad and fairly ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... What was St. Helena to the bitterness of such existence? The visions of past glory might illumine even that dark-imprisonment; but to be conscious that his supernatural energies might die away without creating their miracles: can the wheel or the rack rival the torture of such a suspicion? Lo! Byron bending o'er his shattered lyre, with inspiration in his very rage. And the pert taunt could sting even this child of light! To doubt of the truth of the creed in which you have been ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... University Snobs are those unfortunates who go to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their betters. Smith becomes acquainted with great people at college, and is ashamed of his father the tradesman. Jones has fine acquaintances, and lives after their fashion like a gay free-hearted fellow as he is, and ruins his father, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sat at a good mahogany table in the middle of the cabin. Behind him were a bunk, two chairs and a rack of small arms, containing half a dozen guns, four brace of pistols, and several swords. He had been reading a book, evidently one of the score or more which stood in a case on the right. Jeremy gasped, for he had never seen so many books in all his life. As the Captain looked up, a stern frown ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... will vex, unkindness will pierce; neglect will wound; threatened evils will make the soul quiver; sharp pain or weariness will rack the body, or make it restless. But what says the Psalmist? "When my heart is vexed, I will complain." To whom? Not of ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... thither again, and the morn was wild and stormy with drift of rain, and low clouds hurrying over the earth, though for the sunrise they lifted a little in the east, and the sun came up over the passes, amidst the red and angry rack of clouds. This morn also gave him no tidings of the token, and he was wroth and perturbed in spirit: but ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... you'll be too easy, too," said Hilda savagely. "You'll lose the good tenants and you'll keep the bad ones, and the houses will all go to rack and ruin, and then you'll sell all the property at a loss. That's how it will be. And what shall you do if you're not feeling well, and if it rains on ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... longer alone in the compartment, the ladies put on staid looks, and began to talk of subjects which might give others a high opinion of them. But at Bolbeck a gentleman with light whiskers, a gold chain, and wearing two or three rings, got in, and put several parcels wrapped in oilcloth on the rack over his head. He looked inclined for a joke, and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and while there was such music in the House that made Mercy exclaim over it with wonder—it was at the smell of the supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes seized upon him worse than ever. All the time the others sat late into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces. After William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the Lord's table. I do not know for certain just what fruit the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... had been some barley and wheat together; but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found several, cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters; and, in all, about five or six gallons of rack. These I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into the chest, nor any room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide begin to flow, though very calm; and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on the shore, upon ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... last came Bassanio, and Portia would have delayed him from making his choice from very fear of his choosing wrong. For she loved him dearly, even as he loved her. "But," said Bassanio, "let me choose at once, for, as I am, I live upon the rack." ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... 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 of her tale ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the thing on your own responsibility, of course it's your privilege to pass it up to those who have the authority. In that case, I wish to make one point clear: you're the man I'm going to hold up to the rack. I can't afford to spread myself over the entire management, and I don't mean to try. I'm going to look to you, Dick, for the backing of the clean sheet, and I warn you in all soberness that there must be no blots on it; no compromises; ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... many smaller matters open. No doubt it had been from jealousy.—In Jane's eyes she had been a rival; and well might any thing she could offer of assistance or regard be repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack, and arrowroot from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that Jane Fairfax would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... her eyes, as if to shut out some horrid phantom, and, while her heart seemed dying on the rack, she resolved not to despair till ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... up in the lighthouse tower, And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down; They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower, And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown. But men must work, and women must weep, Though storms be sudden, and waters deep, And the ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... pleasure doth create[67] The things it may annihilate, Refused thee even the boon to die:[68] The wretched gift Eternity Was thine—and thou hast borne it well. All that the Thunderer wrung from thee Was but the menace which flung back On him the torments of thy rack; The fate thou didst so well foresee,[69] But would not to appease him tell; 30 And in thy Silence was his Sentence, And in his Soul a vain repentance, And evil dread so ill dissembled, That in his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... came in, stepped across him, and made for the farther corner. A young fellow swung his golf clubs into the rack and sat down opposite. The train gave a gentle lurch, they were off. William glanced up and saw the hot, bright station slipping away. A red-faced girl raced along by the carriages, there was something strained and almost desperate ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... himself, "If I open what they are, then it will be evil also with me." Wherefore all this while he gave no man any answer, so that he was there a whole day and gave no man a word: wherefore the old duke gave charge that the next morning they should rack him until he had confessed; which when the young duke heard, he began to sorrow, and to say with himself, "It may be, that to-morrow (if Dr. Faustus come not to aid me) I shall be racked and grievously tormented, insomuch that I shall be constrained ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... Chicago, Ill. The drum consists of a cubical box with rounded corners and edges. This box has hollow gudgeons at two diagonally opposite corners and these gudgeons are open as shown to provide for charging and discharging. The box is rotated by gears meshing with a circumferential rack midway between gudgeons and another set of gears operate to tilt the mixer. The inside of the box is smooth, there being no deflectors, as its shape is such as to fold the batch repeatedly ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... working in a simulated spacesuit—the actual number was still being made to fit an accurate plaster cast of my body. So the boys figured out a clamp that would hold my helmet firmly to the gate, and a chin rack inside the helmet against which I could press and hold my head steady enough to keep my binoculars focused where they had to be focused. At a certain point I went back to Paul Cleary and said I thought I could make the necessary tests, dismount ...
— The Trouble with Telstar • John Berryman
... "Every morning at six, I see the sun rise; far more wonderfully, to my mind, than his famous setting, which everybody glorifies. My bedroom window commands a perfect view—the still grey lagune, the few seagulls flying, the islet of S. Giorgio in deep shadow, and the clouds in a long purple rack, behind which a sort of spirit of rose burns up till presently all the ruins are on fire with gold, and last of all the orb sends before it a long column of its own essence apparently: ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... at the guardhouse, bawling orders, came out of the receiver as he tossed the phone forward over Harry Quong's shoulder; Quong caught it and began speaking rapidly and urgently into it while he steered with the other hand. Von Schlichten took one of the five-pound spiked riot-maces out of the rack in front of him. Themistocles M'zangwe had already drawn his pistol; he shifted it to his left hand and took a mace in his right. The Nipponese-Irish colonel, looking like a homicidally infuriated pixie, had an ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... "Deliverer Christ; thou rack'st the souls of men; Thou tossest girls to lions and boys to flames; Thou hew'st Crusader down by Saracen; Thou buildest closets full of secret shames; Indifferent cruel, thou dost blow the blaze Round Ridley or Servetus; all thy ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... from a fresh loaf of French bread. Gash the loaf at the ends and pull apart into halves; then cut the halves and pull apart into quarters. Repeat until the pieces are about the thickness of breadsticks. Put on a rack in a dripping-pan, and dry out the moisture in a slow oven; then brown delicately. Keep in a dry place (a tin box is suitable) and reheat in the ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... desire to your lusts. Your desires are impotent and impatient, the means to carry you on are weak and lame, nowise accommodated or fit for such a journey, and this puts you always, as it were, on the rack, tormented between the impatience of your lusts, and the impotency of means, and impossibility to fulfil them. Desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, divide your souls between them. Such is the way after the flesh, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... care, In order that its owner may Thereoff reap golden corn one day. Oft has he tried, the niggard soul, The mighty stones away to roll, As useless burdens of his ground; But they for that too big were found. See, see! the moon through cloud and rack Looks down upon the letters black: And when the ghost its form uprears He shines upon its bursting tears— For oh! the moon's an ancient man, Describe him, mortal tongue ne'er can, He shines alike, serene and bright, At midmost hour of witching night, Upon the ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... air the stallion felt, He whimpers gayly, as if still is Upon his sight his native Scheldt, Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt,— Their waving grass and silver lilies, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... my hands and the pyeertness of my mind and the fruits of my industry, and when my man died were able to run the farm and take keer of the children as good as before—I am sot down here in the midst of rack and ruin, with the roof a-leaking over me, the chimbly sagging out, the fence rotten and the hogs in the corn, the property eatin' their heads off, and the young uns lacking warm coats and kivers, John and Marthy being so mortal doless; I am sot here bound ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... the port of Seville. He was seized as a heretic by the Holy Office, and cast into a dungeon eight feet square and dark as the grave. There he remained three years, every month being scourged to make him confess his crimes. At last, after being twice put to the rack, he offered to confess whatever they would suggest. His property, L12,000, was then confiscated, his wife, a Catholic, taken from him, and he was banished ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... thunderbolt of a word if she had been taught how to do so, or indeed been at much pains to create it at all? It came. It was her [Greek]. She did not probably know that she had done what the greatest scholar would have had to rack his brains over for many an hour before he could even approach. Tradition says that having brought down her boy she looked round the hall in triumph, and then after a moment's lull said, "Young gentlemen, prayers ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... subsequently carve half a dozen States, is found adhering to us. Mr. Wilson offered us a war in which, of course, we sought nothing and found, at the end of it, not the customary few trifles of territory, but the whole embarrassing, beggarly world adhering to us. The thumbscrew and the rack could not wring from Mr. Hughes the admission that we are after anything more ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... multiplicity of worlds is indeed immensely impressive; it may even be intensely disagreeable. There is something baffling about infinity; in its presence the sense of finite humility can never wholly banish the rebellious suspicion that we are being deluded. Our mathematical imagination is put on the rack by an attempted conception that has all the anguish of a nightmare and probably, could we but awake, all its laughable absurdity. But the obsession of this dream is an intellectual puzzle, not an aesthetic delight. It is ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... her wonderful beauty and strange manner. Her white throat was convulsed, her bosom heaved tumultuously, and on her face was the expression that might have rested on the face of a maiden like herself centuries before, when shown the rack and dungeon, and told to choose between her faith and ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young fellow is some loose fish ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... there was nothing like having a good sow and a lot of young pigs coming on, different sizes, in your styes, for they ate up all the refuse and got fat, and you'd always something to fall back on for your rent, besides having a nice bit of bacon in the rack for home use. He said he never saw a small farm get on without pigs. Some one ought to show 'em how to do it out here. But I don't know what would be the use of fattening up your pigs for the Mahdi chaps to come and drive ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... train sped on, and the drab autumn country flew by the windows, and still the bride sat wrapped in her dream, smiling, musing, rousing herself to notice the scenery. The lap of the cream-coloured gown held magazines and a box of candy, and in the rack above her head were the new camera and the new umbrella ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... after you had heard Brusson. Did you not yourself exhort the President to be human? And he is being so, in that he gives way to Brusson's foolish request, and thus resorts to the last means before putting him to the rack, for which he was well ripe some time ago." De Scuderi shuddered involuntarily. "And then, honoured lady," continued Desgrais, "it will not be demanded of you that you again enter those dark gloomy rooms ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Bartley again, and viewed Marcia with a fatherly friendliness that took away half her awe of the ugly magnificence of the interior. But still she admired that Bartley could be so much at his ease. He pointed to a stick at the foot of the hat-rack, and said, "How much that looks like Halleck!" which made the old man laugh, and clap him on the shoulder, and cry: "So it does! so it does! Recognized it, did you? Well, we shall soon have him with us again, now. Seems a long time ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... anticipation produced in me a sensation somewhat between bliss and fear. I rushed through the gate, took the three steps to the house at one bound, threw open the door, and was about to hang my cap on its accustomed peg of the hall rack when I noticed that that particular peg was occupied by a black derby hat. I stopped suddenly and gazed at this hat as though I had never seen an object of its description. I was still looking at it in open-eyed wonder when my mother, coming out of the parlor into the hallway, called ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... round the kennels. He had got out a couple of bottles of the best claret that Castle Dare could afford. He had his master's letters arranged on the library table, and had given a final rub to the guns and rifles on the rack. He had even been down to the quay, swearing at the salmon-fishers for having so much lumber lying about the place where Sir Keith Macleod was to land. And if he was to go down to the quay now, how could he be sure that the ancient Christina, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... martial. The highest rewards were promised her if she would disclose the names and plans of her associates. The inducements proving of no avail, torture was employed to wring from her the secret, in which so many of the best families of Colombia were interested, but even on the rack she persisted in making no disclosure. The accomplished young lady, hardly eighteen years of age, was condemned to be shot. She calmly and serenely heard her sentence, and prepared to meet her fate. She confessed to a Catholic priest, partook of the sacrament, and with a firm step ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... progressing rapidly toward the grave or that detestable status known as Reformes Numero II. And every man counts in France. Quite apart from humanity it was a terribly serious question for the Grand Quartier General, where Joffre and his staff had their minds on the rack. ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... had somewhat lost its leaden hue, clearing towards the zenith, where one or two odd stars could be seen occasionally peeping down at us through the storm rack that flew overhead like scraps of fleecy wool. This cheery prospect told us to be of good courage, leading us to hope that if we only waited patiently we might expect ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... high-road for a mixed and dusky populace. Under the circumstances she has done nobly well to arm herself with the twin defences of cheerfulness and humour; and if the cheerfulness comes at times near to being that of a martyr on the rack, while the fun is perilously apt to swing from themes that are nice for a lady's wit to others that are not so nice, and back to sheer triviality, what, in the name of a population of sand-flies and negroes, can you expect? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... its greatness is the ivy-mantled ruin represented in the above Engraving. So late as the fourteenth century, Burnham could also boast of a royal palace within its boundary: but, alas! the wand of Prospero has long since touched its gorgeousness, so as to "leave not a rack behind." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 561, August 11, 1832 • Various
... open, and Nanny was crouching against the opposite wall of the room, such a poor, dull kitchen, that you would have thought the furniture had still to be brought into it. The blanket and the piece of old carpet that was Nanny's coverlet were already packed in her box. The plate rack was empty. Only the round table and the two chairs, and the stools and some pans were ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... 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 door lay ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... from 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, ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... table on which the paper was symmetrically arranged in a stationery rack, and quickly seating herself, she laid her muff down, half-raised her little veil, and beat a tattoo with her tiny hand on the little black leather blotter before her, then taking off her gloves, she took at random some sheets of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... the human frame on the brow of a third. He was very much displeased with them, and told them, that in future the earth should produce bad fruits; that sickness should lay them on beds of leaves, and pains rack their bones; that their lives should be lives of fatigue and danger, and their deaths, deaths of doubt and agony—penalties which have attached to his descendants to ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that there was an English vessel in the Scheldt which he would find worth examining. Story was tempted on board. The hatches were closed over him. He was delivered two days after at the Tower, when his secrets were squeezed out of him by the rack and he ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... one dive for a rack of arms and snatched down his old sword and ran out, drawing it as he ran. I dashed out and up the stairs, snatched my camera-flashlight and a heavy revolver, gave one yell at Parsket's door: 'The Horse!' and was down and into ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... even his grip of the stout stick on which he leaned, were all expressive of a resolution not easily shaken, and a purpose (it matters little whether right or wrong, just now) such as in other days might have survived the rack, and had its strongest life in weakest death; still there were grains of hesitation in his mind, which made him now avoid the house he sought, and loiter to and fro in a gleam of sunlight, that ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... ties which bound her to Basterga. Innocent, it seemed to him, that connection could not be. Based on aught but evil it could hardly be. Yet he must endure, witness, cloak it. He must wait, helpless and inactive, the issue of it. He must lie on the rack, drawn one way by love of her, drawn the other by daily and hourly suspicions, suspicions so strong and so terrible that even love could ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Wheel of Fortune; lest I should fall into the hands of my Lord Chief-Justice, or Sir Edmond Godfrey. The truth is, in short, and let Bayes make more or less of it if he can, Bayes had at first built-up such a stupendous magistrate as never was of God's making. He had put all princes upon the rack to stretch them to his dimension. And as a straight line continued grows a circle, he had given them so infinite a power, that it was extended unto impotency. For though he found it not till it was too late in the cause, yet he felt it all along (which is the understanding of brutes) ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the hall he kept looking all around as if he expected to see sharpshooters behind all the doors. It was a dandy house, with a nice big wide hall and it had a moose's head for a hat rack. First I guess ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... space was covered with crocks and kits full of provisions, and in the rack above our heads were so many boxes and bundles, bags and bales, remaining aloft by such remarkable laws of equilibrium that I feared lest any moment they fall upon our heads, and once this catastrophe occurred there seemed to be little hope of extricating ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... gardener quarrelled, and have not been on speaking terms for months. Thomas, the sexton, won't let Williams do anything to the grave, and out of spite won't touch it himself, so it went to rack and ruin. The grass is long—or rather was long—and the flowers all gone to seed. A ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... corner of the shop and came back with his kit,—a little narrow wooden box on legs, with two places, one for nails and one for the shoeing tools, and a wooden rod above for handle and shoe-rack. He set the box beside him, took up the horse's foot, wiped it on his apron, and tried the shoe with his fingers. Then he took a pair of pincers out of his box, and catching one half of the broken ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... evening. It will be impossible for you to stay on here with those four children and no one responsible to look after them. You appear half dead with grief and depression, and you want a thorough change. The place is going to rack and ruin. Your rent-roll, how much ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... entered was bare and cold; a single chair, a narrow bedstead, a rude rack on the wall to hang his garments upon, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... run in an ordinary bachelor's rooms, and you will have the normal appearance of Jaffery's home. As I knew he did not want me to dust his books and pictures (such as they were) or to make order out of a chaos, of old newspapers, or to put his pipes in the rack or to remove spurs and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which reposed—most useful piece of furniture—in the middle of the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... the better," answered George; "so go at once, please, for your pistols; load them carefully; take a cutlass each from the rack; and then we will proceed ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... The Army will now go to rack and ruin. I am a plain citizen of the United States. I expect to spend ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... suggestion. The invasion of an eccentric-looking individual—probably an innocent tradesman into a railway carriage had given the hint for "A Night with a Lunatic;" a nervously excited and belated passenger had once unconsciously sat for an escaped forger; the picking up of a forgotten novel in the rack, with passages marked in pencil, had afforded the plot of a love story; or the germ of a romance had been found in an obscure news paragraph which, under less listless moments, would have passed unread. On the other ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... There were a hat-rack, and two waste-baskets filled with little things done up in newspaper, and a little table, and a paste-board box filled with hats, and two mirrors about as tall as David, and a maid's wash-stand, and a bundle of pictures tied up in newspapers, ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... enough to seize an umbrella from the rack, rip the cover off, and break out a rib, to which he tied a piece of string while he hurried to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... am disguised when I am forced to wear those things, which do not suit me," said Jacqueline, pointing to her gray jacket and plaid skirt which were hung up on a hat-rack. "Oh, I know why mamma keeps me like that—she is afraid I should get too fond of dress before I have finished my education, and that my mind may be diverted from serious subjects. It is no doubt ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... stealing trash, what shall we do to him whom, in our conscience and on our honour, we believe to be corrupting the hearts of mankind, and perhaps leading them to eternal perdition? Again, what in the name of liberty are we to do to men whose preaching, if followed out in act, would bring back the rack and the stake? Once more there is a difficulty of delimitation which will have to be fully sifted. I will only remark here that our practice has arrived at a solution which, upon the whole, appears to have worked well hitherto, and which has its roots in principle. It is ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... want to get you into a peck of trouble, Miss Nancy," said Mr. Campbell bringing the famous raincoat from the passage where it hung on the hat rack. "Here's your coat. She left it behind as a souvenir yesterday when she broke into the house to steal my drawings. I fooled her, though," he added, smiling sweetly. "If she thinks she can ever make anything out of those papers, she'll soon find ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the skill to direct the labour of others. Those who have read modern history, or political economy, will not require an elaborate exposure of a scheme which aims at setting up in Gilead, under the guise of philanthropy, the rack-renting and ornamental landlording which have received such severe rebukes in Europe. We refer to the general outline of Mr. Oliphant's fascinating scheme, inasmuch as he has reduced to practical shape ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... approximation in crushing it. This can be managed by an ingenious arrangement, which leaves the movable blade under the control only of the operator's thumb till the stone is found, and yet, by touching a spring, gives him the advantage either of a fine screw or of a rack and pinion movement for ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... is jest nachelly gwine to rack an' ruin! Zack ain' got no moh sense 'bout takin' cyare of a ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... we began to regard each other with alarm. If there were one thing Pinkerton valued himself upon, it was his honesty; if there were one thing he clung to, it was my good opinion; and when both were involved, as was the case in these commercial cruces, the man was on the rack. My own position, if you consider how much I owed him, how hateful is the trade of fault-finder, and that yet I lived and fattened on these questionable operations, was perhaps equally distressing. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turned by another and another lion in the way. She got up very early, with a feeling that movement had something lulling and soothing in it, and that to lie there a prey to all these thoughts was like lying on the rack—to the great surprise of the kind landlady, who came stealing into her room with the inevitable cup of tea, and whose inquiry how the poor lady was, was taken out of her mouth by the unexpected apparition of the supposed invalid, fully dressed, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... suggestions. From the corner of one book-case there hung a huge wasp's nest, and over the mantel-shelf, which was only wide enough for some cigar boxes and a little clock and a few vials of medicines, was a rack where three or four riding whips and a curious silver bit and some long-stemmed pipes found unmolested quarters; and in one corner were some walking sticks and a fishing rod or two which had a very ancient unused look. There was a portrait of Dr. Leslie's grandfather ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the wagon with him were uproariously funny. When the wagon stopped now and then, one whom Phil recognized as the head clown, Mr. Miaco, would spring to the edge of the rack and make a stump speech in pantomime, accompanied by all the gestures included in the pouring and drinking of a glass of water. So humorous were the clown's antics that ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... down in a sitting position on one of the steps. I thought he must have stumbled; but before I could say anything, or even get to him, he called out, "All right, Nan! nurse will be there in a minute," adding impatiently to me: "What are you gaping at? Get on your hat—it's on the hat rack—and rush for Dr. Archard as fast as you can. Tell him father's very ill, and to come at once. Step ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... details. Whatever might be her state of mind in other respects, she seems to have been perfectly conscious of the perilous consequence of her disclosures to her own person. "I do not deserve," says she, "to be seated here at ease and unharmed, but rather to be stretched on an iron rack: nor can my crimes be atoned for, were I to be drawn asunder by ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 withered ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... he replied, "No, sir; you said yellow." William could never have been guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we distinguish one waiter from another much as we pick our hat from the rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never presumed to have any opinions of his own. When such was my mood he remained silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me he laughed before I told him what ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... and all her small delights! She feels not how the social frame is rack'd. She loves a little scandal which excites; A little feeling is a want of tact. For her there lie in wait millions of foes, And yet the 'not too much' is all the ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... responded Will, now thoroughly wide-awake; "then I can say I've been in Belgium;" and snatching the small hand-bag from the rack, he hurried off, leaving his brother to continue ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the line of shore and sea was indistinguishable. But above, the cloud-procession passed on, shattered by its contact with the mountain, and transfigured as it neared the setting sun into long upward streaming lines of rack, purple and primrose against a saffron sky, while Venus lingered low between cloud and sea, a spark of fire ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... college athlete, and knows it all. Can't fool him for a cent," was the talk now, instead of "Keep at the old Dutchman and you may get it. He don't know the difference between a Chippendale sideboard and a shelf rack from Harlem. Wait for a rainy day and go in. He'll be feeling blue, and you'll be sure to ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... space helmet down from its rack and put it on. He tested it, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data from the lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above his eye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking through the ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... Decidedly, it is the Inquisition. Mr. Hudson, stand firm, and let us agree to make no confessions without conferring previously with each other! They may put us on the rack first. Mr. Mallet, I see also," Christina added, "has something serious to say ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... lard'er clat'ter man'ger ban'ter mar'gin flat'ter quak'er ban'ner ar'dent lat'ter qua'ver hand'y ar'my mat'ter dra'per man'na art'ist pat'ter wa'ger can'cer har'vest tat'ter fa'vor pan'der par'ty rag'ged fla'vor tam'per tar'dy rack'et sa'vor plan'et ar'dor van'ish ma'jor ham'per car'pet gal'lant ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... they are mounted on a trapezoidal key frame which is removable from the instrument. The balance rail and balance rail pins are on a diagonal, resulting in a gradual but noticeable change in the touch from one end of the keyboard to the other. The rack, 1/2" thick and 1-3/4" high, is fastened along the back of the key frame and has one vertical saw cut for each key. Projecting from the back of each key is a small sliver of wood which rides in its proper saw cut and serves to guide the key. The ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... Within it was unexpectedly commodious. It had the shipshape air of belonging to a seafaring man. The rooms were all on one floor. There was the big front room, which served as a sitting-room and dining-room. It had a table built out from the wall with high-backed benches on each side of it, and a rack for glasses overhead. There was a window above the table which looked out towards the sea. The walls were painted blue, and there was an old brick fireplace. A model of a vessel from which the figure-head in the front yard had been taken was over the ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... had stabbed to the heart. Callisthenes, the intermedium between himself and Aristotle, he had caused to be hanged, or, as was positively asserted by some who knew the facts, had had him put upon the rack and then crucified. It may have been in self-defense that the conspirators resolved on his assassination. But surely it was a calumny to associate the name of Aristotle with this transaction. He would have rather borne the worst that Alexander ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... hope The kingdom of the spirit of man, the feast Of souls subdued from west to sunless east, From blackening north to bloodred south aslope, All servile; earth for footcloth of the pope, And heaven for chancel-ceiling of the priest; Thou that hadst earth by right of rack and rod, Thou that hadst Rome because thy name was God, And by thy creed's gift heaven wherein to dwell; Heaven laughs with all his light and might above That earth has cast thee out of faith and love; Thy part is but the hollow dream ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wound being now almost well, he threw himself headlong into the work of the levy and of exercising his men, striving to bring them to such a degree of efficiency as might win honour for himself and advantage to the Republic. Now and again twinges of the old heart-pain would rack him, but he obstinately attributed all depression and melancholy to the inferior quality, both physically and socially, of many of the new levies, and to his misgivings as to the account they would render of themselves when confronted by the ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... who had been shut in by the mysterious click and turn of the door-handle. The top was crowded with gentlemen looking only less important than the luxurious passengers inside: and behind on a vast rack was such a mountain of-baggage swaying with the stage, but corded firmly to place, and topped with bandboxes, that aunt Corinne believed their moving wagon would not have contained it all. Yet the stage swept past like a flash. All its details had to be gathered by a quick ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the foremost carriage I found him. I tried to persuade him to come out, but he clung to the rack. So I left him. I have not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his Mexican hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out comes ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... And fix 'm whomsoe'er they please on? Cannot the learned counsel there Make laws in any shape appear? 330 Mould 'em as witches do their clay, When they make pictures to destroy And vex 'em into any form That fits their purpose to do harm? Rack 'em until they do confess, 335 Impeach of treason whom they please, And most perfidiously condemn Those that engag'd their lives for them? And yet do nothing in their own sense, But what they ought by oath ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler |
