"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its height and as the ships swung idly to their cables on the slack, the Danes thronged the bridge, thinking, doubtless, that we should attack when they were within ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... the conditions of the farmer's life, owing to the variations of the season," I said, "has always been the alternation of slack work and periods of special exigency, such as planting and harvesting, when the sudden need of a multiplied labor force has necessitated the severest strain of effort for a time. This alternation of too little with too much work, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... The water of the British Columbian river in which he stood knee-deep was icy cold; his rubber boots were badly ripped and leaky, and he was wet with the drizzle that drove down the lonely valley. It was difficult to reach the slack behind a boulder some distance outshore, and the arm he strained at every cast ached from hours of assiduous labor; but there was another ache in his left side which was the result of insufficient food, and though the fish ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled-out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if Teufelsdroeckh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... thank thee, good master," quoth Stutely, springing to his feet, "that thou hast chosen me for this adventure. Truly, my limbs do grow slack through abiding idly here. As for two of my six, I will choose Midge the Miller and Arthur a Bland, for, as well thou knowest, good master, they are stout fists at the quarterstaff. Is it not ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... corners and ranged along the wall. The black, too, produced from a chest several silver and richly-embossed plates, dishes, and other utensils, into which having emptied a rich stew from an iron pot, he placed them before his guests, and made them a sign to fall to. This they were not slack to obey, for all were desperately hungry. No one inquired of what it was composed, though a qualm came over the feelings of Devereux, who was likely to be the most particular, as he hooked up what certainly looked very like the body and feet of a lizard. However, he said ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... industry; he gets to know a good job in his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work—these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... more indicative of the Yankees' shrewd practicality than the early settlers' instant appreciation of the financial and economic potentialities of the fishing-trade. The Spaniard sought for gold in the new country, or contented himself with the fluctuating fur trade with its demoralizing slack seasons. But the New Englander promptly applied himself to the mundane pursuit of cod and mackerel. Everybody fished. As John Smith, in his "Description of New England," says: "Young boyes and girles, salvages or any other, be they never ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... of each small skew bevel wheel forms one part of a clutch; the other part of the clutch is slidably mounted on the spindle. When the two parts of the clutch are separated, as they are when the yarn breaks or runs slack, when it is exhausted, or when the cop reaches a predetermined length, the spindle stops; but when the two parts of the clutch are in contact, the small skew bevel wheel drives the clutch, the latter rotates the spindle, and the ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... gout! Let us now see what sort of sport may be had in the Coln. To begin with, it must be described as a "may-fly" stream. This means, of course, that there is a tremendous rise of fly early in June, with the inevitable slack time before and after ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... imported into the United States. A superior quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C., coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of the coal ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... efficacious pills, invented by a doctor of Salerno, warranted to prevent toothache and death by drowning; and not far off, against another pillar, a tumbler was showing off his tricks on a small platform; while a handful of 'prentices, despising the slack entertainment of guerilla stone-throwing, were having a private concentrated match of that favourite Florentine sport at the narrow entrance of the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... en gents,' sez Brer Tarrypin, sezee, 'you all go wid Brer B'ar up dar in de woods en I'll stay yer, en w'en you year me holler, den's de time fer Brer B'ar fer ter see ef he kin haul in de slack er de rope. You all take keer er dat ar een',' sezee, 'en I'll take keer er dish ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... man, "what you doin' thah! That fellow's makin' notes of all your slack; keep your tongue! aftah awhile you'll tell the nombah of the foces! Don't you s'pose he'll ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... If I like, I can dae my darg wi' ony man,' he replied rather ironically. 'Pit oot the kale, Leezbeth, or we'll be burnt to daith. Are ye slack yersel' that ye can come ower here at ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... in all cases is transmitted by systems of Manila rope belting; the rope is 2 inches in diameter; the grooves in the sheaves or pulleys are slightly oval, so that the rope does not go quite to the bottom; the ropes are horizontal, and run very slack (no tighteners), with no appreciable slip; the splices are made very long, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... A Prussian hussar on a grey horse goes by at a dash. From other shops, the noise of striking blows: Pounds, thumps, and whacks; Wooden sounds: splinters—cracks. Paris is full of the galloping of horses and the knocking of hammers. "Hullo! Friend Martin, is business slack That you are in the street this morning? Don't turn your back And scuttle into your shop like a rabbit to its hole. I've just been taking a stroll. The stinking Cossacks are bivouacked all up and down the Champs ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... from having any wish to conceal my name from you, I went round to your house before I called here and left my card on you. You'll find it there when you get back. I always like to be strict in the observance of the rules of civilised society. I particularly dislike the slack ways into which people in places like this are inclined to drift. I must say for the Major, he's not as bad as the rest in that respect. ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... will be inexorably enforced against the individual transgressor. God is not slack concerning his promises. He is free from all human weakness. His mind is not limited, like that of man, to be more affected by partial suffering than by that universal disorder and ruin which must inevitably result from the unrequited violation of his law. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... lawn for the half-dozen familiar households on the Santa Lucia tract. That was the busy time of all the year, affording no leisure for those dinners and whist parties which came in the early season, when the country families had just arrived from town, or in the late season, when prune picking grew slack. Night finds one weary in the country, even when his day has brought only supervision of labor. These town-bred folk, living from the soil and still but half welded to it, fell unconsciously into farmer habits in this ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... after, Neewak sent greeting and invitation to his igloo. Moosu went, but I sat alone, with the song of the still in my ears, and the air thick with the shaman's tobacco; for trade was slack that night, and no one dropped in but Angeit, a young hunter that had faith in me. Later, Moosu came back, his speech thick with chuckling and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... with him. And he found a very nice little one; who, when he asked her, made a courtesy and said, "Yes, thank you," in the prettiest way possible. Then the Prince was pleased, and sent for a priest. The priest's name was Slack. He belonged to the Methodist persuasion, Otsego Conference, but he married the Prince and the Princess just as well as though he had been an archbishop. They went to live in a small palace of their own, and after awhile some little princelings came to live with them, and they ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... rage in Ohio. A canal was projected to connect with the great Ohio Canal at Carroll (eight miles above Lancaster), down the valley of the Hock Hocking to Athens (forty-four miles), and thence to the Ohio River by slack water. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the governor, "follow out my purpose by the gentlest means in my power; and I shall bring no further distress upon this poor lad, than thine own obstinacy and his shall appear to deserve. In the meantime, think, Sir Minstrel, that my duty has limits, and if I slack it for a day, it will become thee to exert every effort in thy power to meet my condescension. I will give thee leave to address thy son by a line under thy hand, and I will await his answer before I proceed farther in this matter, which seems to be very mysterious. Meantime, as thou hast a soul ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... attractiveness, long before the development of either of the principal parties concerned; but even then the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects. The cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was an age neither of religion nor of chivalry. Dowers were more thought of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... relaxation; loosening &c v.; freedom; disjunction &c 44; rope of sand. V. make loose &c adj.; loosen, slacken, relax; unglue &c 46; detach &c (disjoin) 44. Adj. nonadhesive, immiscible; incoherent, detached, loose, baggy, slack, lax, relaxed, flapping, streaming; disheveled; segregated, like grains of sand unconsolidated &c 231, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the line was dropped from the hands of the men, one after another, as the line drew aft; but when it came to the hands of the master, who was on the quarter, instead of finding, as he expected, forty fathoms of water, he had to haul in the slack line for such a length of time, that the lead was astern and no proper ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... ay, Captain Bonnet!" came in a broken chorus, as the crew, partially sobered by the words, hurried to the long-boat, where a line of small kegs lay in the sand. A moment later they were gone, plowing up the hillside. Jeremy stood where he had been left. A tall, slack-jointed pirate in the most picturesque attire strolled over to the boy's side and looked him up and down with a roguish grin. Under his cloak Jeremy had on fringed leather breeches and tunic such as most of the northern ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... who, when work is slack and members are unemployed, will advocate shorter hours at the same rate of pay so as to make ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... with the tray and lit my candle; and I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present pressure for time, were I not better employed ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... damp It made my curls hang slack As they kissed my neck and back While I footed the salt-aired ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... at one another and nodded to the man on the end of the first bunk; and he, shifting a quid of tobacco to the slack of his right cheek, expectorated gravely into the ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... oppressor, of RAMESES, conquering king; But were there such voice by the Neva to-day, of what now should he sing? Of tyranny born out of time, of oppression belated and vain? Put up the old weapon, O despot, slack hand from the scourge and the chain; For the days of the PHARAOHS are done, and the laureates of tyranny mute, And the whistle of falchion and flail are not set to the chords of the lute. True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of the Pyramid-builders, bows still, For a time, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... Nance and Nellie, Let us study BOTTICELLI When we feel the gnawing craving to be smart; If we want to be de rigueur We must educate the figure To show the downward trend of "plastic art." The outline should be slack, Slippy-sloppy, front and back, Till bodice, skirt and tunic—every stitch— Seems to call for the support Of the handy-man's resort— That naval gesture termed the "double hitch." The shoulders must be drooping. The knees a trifle stooping, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... long, his tall, lithe body slack, grim, serious lines in his lean face. He had thought of his conversation with Judge Graney concerning ambition—his ambition, the picture upon which his mind had dwelt many times. A little frame printing office in the West ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... qualities are incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness of our capacity, To aspire is our privilege, and a privilege which we are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, is only a proof ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... "but lo' thou, when our Lord Himself did heal one that had leprosy, what quoth He? 'Show thyself to the priest,' saith He: not, 'I am the true Priest, and therefore thou mayest slack to show thee to yon other priest, which is but ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... workmen find work. At first he had the fixed idea that he must only work as a carpenter, but at every carpenter's shop where he applied he was told that they had just dismissed men on account of work being so slack, and, finding himself at the end of his resources, he made up his mind to undertake any job that he might come across on the road. And so by turns he was a navvy, stableman, stonecutter; he split wood, lopped the branches of trees, dug wells, mixed mortar, tied up fagots, tended ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... was coming. The ship that had been lying tide-rode swung to a heavier puff; and suddenly the slack of the chain cable between the windlass and the hawse-pipe clinked, slipped forward an inch, and rose gently off the deck with a startling suggestion as of unsuspected life that had been lurking stealthily in the iron. In the hawse-pipe the grinding links sent through the ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... happiness of love and friendship. As the days go by, let him feel his latent powers developing, and glory in the thought that they have been given him for his own joy and that of humanity. Then when temptation comes to him, and he remembers how its indulgence has left him slack and bored, it will seem to him like a candle-flame in the sun of his happiness, a wretched little mean and unworthy thing breaking in on and threatening to ruin the peace and harmony of his life. And so he will not give it a second ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of rock crystal in the centre for a pupil. These glittering eyes looked out upon the world from beneath their eyelids of bronze, in the time of Abraham. You will find it in the museum at Cairo. Ride a donkey in the Mooskee if you want real sport; and if you feel a little slack, climb the Great Pyramid. Ask for an Arab named Schehati, and tell him you want to do it one minute quicker than any lady ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... sprawled amongst the low burnt-up hills, and every day the doctor with his bad liver came across in his boat under the blinding sunshine to within shouting distance, and put a few weary questions. The formalities were slack enough. Nilssen usually made the necessary replies (as he liked to keep himself in the doctor's good books), and then ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... during the past years he had staggered in from a long march where, for hours, he had waged a bitter war with cold and hunger, his limbs clumsy with fatigue, his garments wet and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... are these fresh forces all aglow within their first zeal, and unless they are worse captains than I suppose them, they will attempt some mischief ere long—nor is any time so slack as cock-crow.' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little in my way lately, George," the hunchback continued, looking sharply sideways up at his companion. "Sly business has been slack, my ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a rule, but a slack attention to military history, and my interest in war itself is, fundamentally, the same as for cretinism and bad drains. I merely wonder why it is, and wish it were not. But the Marne, I regret to say, holds me in wonder still; for this there is nothing to say excepting ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... wore a strangely deserted look. December is a slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered automatically, received her mail, exchanged greetings with ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... tight-clenched, writhing, swaying, reeling, in fast-locked, desperate grapple. Now to Roger's strength and quickness Beltane opposed craft and cunning, but wily Roger met guile with guile nor was to be allured to slack or change his gripe. Therefore of a sudden Beltane put forth his strength, and wrestled mightily, seeking to break or weaken Roger's deadly hold. But Roger's iron arms gripped and held him ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... slack and unsteady, gave way beneath him, as if any prolonged exertion were beyond his power. He relapsed into his ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... particularly slack day for the glass-bottom boats, for Clancy and Hill were the only ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... thirty points, the match stopped. This prevented those massacres which do so much towards crushing all the football out of the members of the beaten team; and it kept the winning team from getting slack, by urging them on to score their thirty points before half-time. There were some houses—notoriously slack—which would go for a couple of seasons without ever playing the second half ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... consciousness—as a man might press a common little plant, whose juice is healing, against his dim eye-ball—by saying to yourself, 'It is true of me. I walk as a shadow. I am gliding onwards to my doom. Through my slack hands the golden sands are flowing, and soon my hour-glass will run out, and I shall have to stop and go away.' Let me beseech you for one half-hour's meditation on that fact before this day closes. You will forget my words then, when with your own eyes you have looked ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... alert, the engineer at the gunwale held the cable. For a few seconds he felt nothing as the slack was taken up; then he perceived a tug and knew the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... "Mitre," the orthodox hotel where Mr. Datchery put up with his "portmanteau," was probably the city coffee-house, an old hotel of the coaching days, which stood on the site now occupied by the London County Bank. "It was a hotel of a most retiring disposition," and "business was chronically slack at the 'Crozier,'" which probably accounts for its dissolution. Another suggestion is that the "Crozier" may have been "The Old Crown," a fifteenth-century house, which was pulled down in 1864. He could not identify the "Tilted Wagon," the "cool establishment on the ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... look at the congregation; his great eyes was glued on Fiddy, as if he couldn't hardly keep from eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. Them ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of trying to hide our troubles from each other, I went about talking all sorts of cheerful nonsense, while Falkenberg bragged loudly at every meal of how he'd got to eating too much of late, and was getting slack and out ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... with harness soap. Out of the love that he bore for the beautiful dumb brutes grew an understanding that in time became almost uncanny. All the jockeys and hostlers said there was magic in the lad's hands. He could ride anything on hoofs with a slack rein; and the worst biter in the stable would take a bridle from him as ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Because I am, a shade. Fact is, I was going to ask you to give me a little extra time on that payment. Business is pretty slack, to begin with, and then I'm fixing up a little house for Ned and Ruth when they're married. I'm glad to do it for 'em, but it costs." His look appealed to Ethan for sympathy. "The young people like things nice. You know how it is yourself: it's ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... too uncertain; [and the day was spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through the sand which has accumulated over it. By getting the cable tight on to the boat, and letting the swell pitch her about till it got slack, and then tightening again with blocks and pulleys, we managed to get out from the beach towards the ship at the rate of about twenty yards an hour. When they had got about 100 yards from shore, we ran in round the Elba to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the cable is attached by nippers as it comes through the hawse-hole inboard; and, as the capstan is hove round, the messenger drags the cable up, the nippers being released and taken forward again to get a fresh grip, while the slack of the cable passes down the deck pipes into the cable lockers ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... took her in his arms and kissed her it was not as he had dreamed it would be. Her body was slack, her lips not merely passive but cold against his own. His heart heavy for reasons which he could not name, he ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... made by winding the raw silk, putting a large number of ends together, giving them a slack twist, then doubling and twisting in the reverse direction with ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... north of the Tavern the enemy had obtained a lodgment from 10,000 to 15,000 strong in the rear of our wing, on the morning of the 7th. His strength consisted in part of the following rebel Divisions, as was subsequently ascertained: Frost's, Slack's, Parson's, and Rains's; and the batteries of Ghebor, Clark (six pieces), E. McDonald (three pieces), and Wade (four pieces). There was present also one Regiment of Indians, the whole commanded by General Van Dorn in person, ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... remain, they will be very few, cast them away, for they are good for nothing. Put the Solution into a glass-Gourd, with a Head luted upon it, set it into Balneum Mariae, with its receiver to take the Spirits, distil slowly with a slack heat, till all the Spirit of Wine be come over, pour it in again upon the dry matter, draw it off again as before; this pouring in & abstracting continue so often, till you see the Spirit of Wine ascend over the helm in various colours, then it is time that you follow it with ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... and then, and rested; but he did not allow the others a moment's respite. Every time they were about to slack, he urged them on. It was all very well for the gardener who was accustomed to it, but it was obviously killing work for Shiel Davenport, and Gladys—as soon as she had overcome a preliminary outburst of laughter—gave vent ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... the mouth of every sac, A muscle strong, but loose and slack, Will tighten up when it is filled, So that no drink can e'er ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, after wavering awhile, they obeyed and returned. The Roman States, which had received them with so many testimonials of affection and honor, on their retreat were not slack to show a correspondent aversion and contempt. The towns would not suffer their passage; the hamlets were unwilling to serve them even with fire and water. They were filled at once with shame and rage; ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was by the Church in public; but as a reality, not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were tough and their faith weak, had little scruple in applying to a witch, and asking help from the powers below, when the saints above were slack to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold enough to learn the mysteries of nature, Algebra, Judicial Astrology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, and animals, from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville; and, like Pope Gerbert, mingle science and magic, in a fashion excusable ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... transpiercing while erect he rode. Then, while his charioteer, Mydon the brave, Son of Atymnias, turn'd his steeds to flight, Full on his elbow-point Antilochus, The son of Nestor, dash'd him with a stone. 690 The slack reins, white as ivory,[15] forsook His torpid hand and trail'd the dust. At once Forth sprang Antilochus, and with his sword Hew'd deep his temples. On his head he pitch'd Panting, and on his shoulders in the sand 695 (For in deep sand he fell) stood long erect, Till his ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... all as black as his speeches in print! Boys, I know what you'll do: you'll just keep back the Rint. Now down with your cash, never think of the jail, For Erin's true patriots the Virgin is bail; She'll rain down bank notes till the bailiff is blind— Still you're slack! Then I'll tell you a piece of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack water again, when we weighed and made for ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hack, With galls on his withers and sores on his back,— Buckled to circumstance, driven by fate, And chain'd on the pole of a oar that we hate— Yon ponderous Past which we drag fast or slow On the coarse-mended Present, this dull road we go, Hard-curb'd on the tongue and no bearing-rein slack, Ah! who of us ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... But now the Moors, Arabians, Ethiops black, Of the left wing that held the utmost marge, Spread forth their troops, and purposed at the back And side their heedless foes to assail and charge: Slingers and archers were not slow nor slack To shoot and cast, when with his battle large Rinaldo came, whose fury, haste and ire, Seemed earthquake, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... blusheing, The rack cam swiftly rushing from the west; And these presadges of a future storme, Unwillinge for to trust her tendernes Unto such feares, might make him fayle his hower; And yet with purpose what hee slack't last night Howe to make goodd ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... Smith, but as it was the slack time of the year there was little routine work on the station, and much of our time was passed ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... passing away the time between shearings, and we were having a sort of fishing and shooting loaf down the river in a boat arrangement that Jake had made out of boards and tarred canvas. We called her the Jolly Coffin. We were just poking up the bank in the slack water, a few hundred yards below the billabong, when Jake said, 'Why, there's a horse or something in the river.' Then he shouted, 'No, by God, it's a man,' and we poked the Coffin out into the stream for all she was worth. 'Looks ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... through. The doctors feel certain he'll take in the slack on his life-line, now that the Brent girl has suddenly turned up. In fact, the lad has been holding his own since he received a telegram from her some days back. I didn't tell you about that, my dears, not being desirous of worrying you; and since ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... who, steadfast, on her track, Not to be shaken off, untiring bent; And how awhile the fire from each grew slack, The shatter'd masts to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... thinketh good of his own knowledge, whereby two hours are thus commonly spent at this most profitable meeting. When all is done, if the first speakers have shewed any piece of diligence, they are commended for their travel, and encouraged to go forward. If they have been found to be slack, or not sound in delivery of their doctrine, their negligence and error is openly reproved before all their brethren, who go aside of purpose from the laity after the exercise ended to judge of these ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... secured by means of four strong copper bolts. The taper of blow-off cocks is an important element in their construction; as, if the taper be too great, the plugs will have a continual tendency to rise, which, if the packing be slack, will enable grit to get between the faces, while, if the taper be too little, the plug will be liable to jam, and a few times grinding will sink it so far through the shell that the waterways will no longer correspond. One eighth of an inch ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... a very nice hand," he answered, bending forward to Maggie's bridle so that he could look up in Eleanor's face. "Only you let her rein be too slack, as of old. You like her better ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... standing with his back to Angele's grave, was facing the north, facing the line of pear trees and the little valley where the Seed ranch lay. At first, he thought this was because he had allowed his will to weaken, the concentrated power of his mind to grow slack. And once more turning toward the grave, he banded all his thoughts together in a consummate effort, his teeth grinding together, his hands pressed to his forehead. He forced himself to the notion that ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... younger, not rendered so inactive by secular habits. You can act more easily than we. We may have the advantage, in the old world, of the experience of old people and the habit of observation, but we are slack in reform and action. "If youth had experience and old age ability," says one of our proverbs. We must remain united and join your strength to our experience for the greater progress of the studies which are dear to us and for the greater good ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... Drake had given them, and thus deprived them of the means of escape in case other disasters should arrive. They besought Drake to take them home with him; and he, with inexhaustible good humor, agreed to do so. His fleet, with the slack-souled colonists on board, had scarcely lost sight of the low shores of Roanoke, when the supply ship that had been so long awaited arrived with all the requisites for subduing the wilderness on board. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... rarely spent any care in keeping my hair in order, because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now slowly. When I am at home I go with my legs naked as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and reckless in speech, and specially prone to show irritation over anything which ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... to reply. "'Twar onderstood ez Brother Vickers wanted a call ter the church in the Cove, bein' ez his relations live hyar-abouts, an' he kem up an' preached a time or two. But he didn't git no call. The brethren 'lowed Brother Vickers war too slack in his idees o' religion. Some said his hell warn't half hot enough. Thar air some powerful sinners in the Cove, an' nuthin' but good live coals an' a liquid blazin' fire air a-goin' ter deter them from the evil o' thar ways. So Brother ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... disputandi; but habits of society have greatly mellowed it, and though still anxious to gain your suffrage to his views, he endeavours rather to conciliate your opinion than conquer it by force. Still there is enough of tenacity of sentiment to prevent, in London society, where all must go slack and easy, W.C. from rising to the very top of the tree as a conversation man, who must not only wind the thread of his argument gracefully, but also know when to let go. But I like the Scotch taste better; ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... his horse, as he usually did, his left hand holding a slack rein, his right resting on his hip, with bent head and dreamy eyes, he made his first steps along that incline, at once glorious and fatal, which was to lead him to a throne—and to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... you for't! It breaks my chain! I held some slack allegiance till this hour— But now, my sword's my own. Smile on, my lords! I scorn to count what feelings, withered hopes, Strong provocations, bitter, burning wrongs, I have within my heart's hot cells shut up, To leave you ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not believe it practicable just now. The guys with wads are not in the frame of mind to slack up on the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet your variegated socks that the situation is all spifflicated up from ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Vindictive groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... now. A short period of slack water, and the ebb bears us seaward, past the Cowal shore, glinting in the wintry sunlight, the blue smoke in Dunoon valley curling upward to Kilbride Hill, past Skelmorlie Buoy (tolling a doleful benediction), past Rothesay Bay, with the misty Kyles beyond. The Garroch Head, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... A word from me was more to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend hours fixing their faces—rubbing in cold cream and massaging the muscles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of benzoin and electrolyzing moles—to what end? Looking handsome. Oh, what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on. It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than powder, blarney more ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the next train to London with the resignation of a man already chastened by misfortune and fatigue. He went into the waiting-room and after a vain search for the poker—the new stationmaster evidently kept it in a different place—sat down in front of an irritatingly dull fire banked up with slack, and nursed his damaged hand and meditated on ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... For if old Argus come, no doubt, His hundred eyes will find you out." Scarce had the speaker made an end, When from the supper of a friend The master enters at the door, And, seeing that the steers were poor Of late, advances to the rack. "Why were the fellow's hands so slack? Here's hardly any straw at all, Brush down those cobwebs from the wall. Pray how much labour would it ask?" While thus he undertakes the task, To dust, and rummage by degrees, The Stag's exalted horns he sees: Then calling all his folks around, ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... desperate fine, I thowt I wad gie ye a call aboot that young sonnie o' mine. I couldn't persuade him to come, sea I left him behont(1) me at yam,(2) Bud somehoo it's waintly(3) possess'd me to mak a skealmaisther o' Sam. He's a kind of a slack-back, ye knaw, I niver could get him to work, He scarcelins wad addle(4) his saut wiv a ploo, or a shovel, or fork. I've tried him agean an' agean, bud I finnd that he's nea use at yam, Sea me an' my missus agreed ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... grudged The vote and wandered brooding, drawn apart From his room-fellows, seeding in his heart Envy, which biting inwards did corrode His mettle, and his ill blood plied the goad Upon his brain, until the wretch made mad Went muttering his wrongs, ill-trimmed, ill-clad, Sightless and careless, with slack mouth awry, And working tongue, and danger in the eye; And oft would stare at Heaven and laugh his scorn: "O fools, think not to trick me!" then forlorn Would gaze about green earth or out to sea: "This is the end of man in his degree"— Thus would he moralise ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... Indian phrase, he could only become 'pucka' instead of 'kucha'—a permanent instead of temporary judge—he would prefer it to anything in the world. He feels less anxious, and declares that he has 'not written a single article this week'; though he manages when work is slack, to find time for a little writing, such as the chapter in ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... slack and slow in coming, Desire increasing, ay my hope uncertain With doubtful love, that but increaseth pain; For, tiger-like, so swift it is in parting. Alas! the snow black shall it be and scalding, The sea waterless, and fish ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... all. You've seen us in the soft days when we've nothing to do but drill recruits and while away the time as best we can. Think what the monotony means—day after day the same work, the same faces. Who can blame us if we get slack and ready to do anything for a change? I know some of us are rotters—especially here in Marut. Most of us belong to the British Regiment, and are accustomed to luxury and ease in the old country. I haven't got that excuse—I'm in the Gurkhas—and what I do I do because I am a rotter. But ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... conspicuous fitting was a small spar and a block, to which a line and an iron bar were attached. The men looked strange in her eyes at that distance. In the marvellously clear light she could see their features distinctly, and, when Courtenay shouted to a sailor to haul in the slack of the line, she caught a trumpet-like ring that recalled the scene in the saloon when he held back the mob of stewards. His athletic figure, silhouetted against the shimmering green of the water, was instinct with graceful strength. ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... see to it, little lady," said Crayford. "Happen when I'm gone, when the slave-driver's gone, eh, he'll get slack, begin to think he knows more about it than I do! He's not too pleased making the changes. ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... remarkable performance because of the development of an offshore oil industry. Real GDP growth annually averaged 10% from 1978 to 1985. In 1986 Cameroon had one of the highest levels of income per capita in tropical Africa, with oil revenues picking up the slack as growth in other sectors softened. Because of the sharp drop in oil prices, however, the economy is now experiencing serious budgetary difficulties and balance-of-payments disequalibrium. Oil reserves currently being exploited will be ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... against us. In this, however, he was much deceived; as we found, upon making the experiment, that it set to the northward till ten o'clock. The next morning he fell into a similar mistake; for, at five, on the appearance of slack water, he gave orders to get under weigh; but the ignorance he had discovered, having put us on our guard, we chose to be convinced, by our own observations, before we weighed; and, on trying the tide, we found a strong under-tow, which obliged us to keep ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... but I slog along slack at the knees an' don't worry my muscles none, an' I can sure walk every ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... writing the ADDRESS TO A LOUSE. Yet Burns, like most great artists, proceeded from a school and continued a tradition; only the school and tradition were Scotch, and not English. While the English language was becoming daily more pedantic and inflexible, and English letters more colourless and slack, there was another dialect in the sister country, and a different school of poetry tracing its descent, through King James I., from Chaucer. The dialect alone accounts for much; for it was then written colloquially, which kept it ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... or despotism. For speaking against Louis Napoleon in an omnibus, a Frenchman was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and men have been exiled for a less offense. The police are everywhere to detect conspiracy or radicalism, but are more slack in reference to the safety ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... preference," thought Steve; but neither event occurred, for the rope suddenly ceased running, and as Johannes armed himself with one of the great lances which lay along the thwarts, his companion rapidly hauled in the slack line and laid it in ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... horse-pistols, were in good condition, and all loaded. There were additional oars, in case of accident, and that little sail called trinquet, which assists the speed of the canoe at the same time the boatmen row, and is so useful when the breeze is slack. When Aramis had seen to all these things, and appeared satisfied with the result of his inspection, "Let us consult Porthos," said he, "to know if we must endeavor to get the boat out by the unknown extremity of the grotto, following the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to the Official persons, on arriving there,—to Meinertshagen the Prussian Ambassador there, [Seckendorf (Forster, iii. 7).] and to Keppel, Dutch Official gentleman who was once Ambassador at Berlin. Prussian Ambassador applies, and again applies, in the highest quarters; but we fear they are slack. Dumoulin discovers that the man was certainly here; Keppel readily admits, He had Keith to dinner a few days ago: but where Keith now is, Keppel cannot form ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... that that would be very hard on me. I've come here to my native place to settle down, and if I settle I've got to marry, and I have never seen a girl whom I would rather marry and settle with than Miss Mayberry. She may be a little slack about taking care of the baby, but I'll talk to her about that, and I know she will keep a closer eye on him. Now if you want to see everybody happy, don't prejudice Mrs. Cristie against that girl. Give me a chance, and I'll win her into ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... below where I had whipped it with my line. My expectation was that as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It was a good deal heavier than my boat could stand, and I had to ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... gasoline-tractors for the cultivation of the flat lands, he ordered a round score. When he dammed water in his mountains he dammed it by the hundreds of millions of gallons. When he ditched his tule-swamps, instead of contracting the excavation, he bought the huge dredgers outright, and, when there was slack work on his own marshes, he contracted for the draining of the marshes of neighboring big farmers, land companies, and corporations for a hundred miles up and ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... creature, a little stooped, unshaved and dirty; his mouth was slack and loose, and he had a big mobile nose that seemed to move about like a piece of soft rubber. He had hardly any clothing; a cap that must have been fished out of an ash barrel, no shirt whatever, merely an old ragged coat buttoned round him, a pair of canvas breeches and carpet slippers tied ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... slack time till harvest. I thought, mebbe, we could jest haul that lumber from Beacon Crossing. And cut the logs. Parker give me the 'permit.' Seems to me we might ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... he had been sitting on that limb his tail had curled itself around it as tight as if it had grown there. Mr. Painter couldn't have shaken him loose in a week. He hung down just like Somers, only not so far, and he didn't swing much, because that strong medicine had taken up all his slack and there was very little room for play. He didn't care for that, of course, not then. He got brave and very cheerful right off, and called out to Mr. ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... ought to perform, you and I. With a painter's ladder, a slack wire, and a little practice, we should do wonders. On non-matinee days I might even lift you with my teeth. That always goes well, and no one would know you were as light ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... what about it, and haven't the sense to alter it? Couldn't you set up a proper Government to-morrow, if you liked? Couldn't you contrive that the pits belonged to you, instead of you belonging to the pits, like so many old pit-ponies that stop down till they are blind, and take to eating coal-slack for meadow-grass, not knowing the difference? If only you'd learn to think, I'd respect you. As you are, I can't, not if I try my hardest. All you can think of is to ask for another shilling a ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... words of advice to Will, but the lad paid no heed; he merely drew himself up on the ladder, saw that the life-line was slack, and, clasping the leaden back-piece with both hands, with the life-line running loosely between his arms to act as a guide, he once more plunged into the sea, the weight seeming to take him down ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... as that, Ned. She has only to slack away her cables and drift with the tide that turned half an hour ago, we have got to tow out and set sail. However, the night is dark, the wind is off shore, and everything is in our favour. Do you see if there be ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... employment. Watt was then in Cornwall, looking after his pumping engines; but he saw Boulton, who was usually accessible to callers of every rank. In answer to Murdock's enquiry whether he could have a job, Boulton replied that work was very slack with them, and that every place was filled up. During the brief conversation that took place, the blate young Scotchman, like most country lads in the presence of strangers, had some difficulty in knowing what to do with his hands, and ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... dog holes and rocks and dirt hummocks, day or night, waking or sleeping; and since they were riding cross-country anyway, miles from a trail, and since they were headed for water, and Rabbit knew as well as Starr just where it was to be found, Starr held the reins slack in his thumb and finger ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... whalers were invited to man the pumps—namely, two tin basins—and bale the St. Lawrence out as fast as it came in. The maddened animal soon carried us beyond the area of heavy seas, and preparations were made for taking in the slack. The boat was still rushing along at an eight-knot rate; and, as the whale showed no signs of weakening, it was Captain Sam's opinion that nothing short of the lance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... palmy days; the rate at which the practice spread astonished even himself. No slack seasons for him now; winter saw him as busy as summer; and his chief ground for complaint was that he was unable to devote the meticulous attention he would have wished to each individual case. "It would need the strength of an elephant to do ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the same spirit, and were eager to exert themselves with the utmost zeal." Here also, however, he was biding his time for obvious reasons; for to his wife he writes, "I have done them all like honour, but it is because I would not have the world believe that there were officers slack in their duty. Without a thorough change in naval affairs, the discipline of our navy will be lost. I could say much, but will not. You will hear of it from themselves;" that is, probably, by their mutual recriminations. Such indulgent envelopment of good ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... steed,—his slack hand fell; upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place. His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain: His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... both the lads, but into the whole household as well. Mullins, in his later years, had been a dependent about Trinity College, and constant association with books and students had given him a taste for knowledge denied his daughter. Tom had left home when a girl. In the long winter nights during the slack season, after the stalls were bedded and the horses were fed and watered and locked up for the night, the old man would draw up his chair to the big kerosene lamp on the table, and tell the boys stories—they listening ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... them by sawing and cording wood at three shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a pride and satisfaction which I had never known ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... bottom of the title-page, is somewhat superfluously reserved to him. Yet nothing can exceed the patronage which he suffers at the hands of the critic, and is compelled to submit to in sullen silence. When the book-trade is slack—that is, in the summer season—the pair get on together pretty amicably. 'This book,' says the critic, 'may be taken down to the seaside, and lounged over not unprofitably;' or, 'Readers may do worse than peruse this unpretending little volume of fugitive verse;' ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... cord on which we hang for safety will slip through our relaxed palms. And however we may be convinced that there are no hope and no true blessedness for us except in keeping hold of God, we need that grasp to be tightened up by daily renewed efforts, or else it will certainly become slack, and we shall lose the thing that we should hold fast. So my text exhorts us against ourselves, and against the temptations of the world, which are always present with us, and are far more operative in bringing down the temperature of the Christian Church, and of its individual members, than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... I tested each boulder carefully, since any weight placed against an unsteady rock might dislodge it on somebody below. One of the Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I thought—was behind me, separated by ten or twelve feet of slack rope, and twice when his feet slipped on gravel he stumbled and gave me an unpleasant jerk. What he muttered was perfectly true; on slopes like this, where a fall wasn't dangerous anyhow, it was better to work unroped; then a slip bothered no one but the slipper. But I was finding out what ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... after the business of the tea-table was getting rather slack, "and what have they been ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... you expect to get any kind of a gang together, at least a third of them will be girls. A lot of technicians are girls, and when work gets slack, they're always the first ones to get shoved out of jobs. I'll bet there are a thousand girl technicians out of work here—any line of work you want to name. I know what I'll do; I'll make a telecast appearance. I still ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... resulted from it, for the strength and rigid endurance which it gave, but not loved for itself. The Roman nature was fierce, rugged, almost brutal; and it submitted to restraint as stern as itself, as long as the energy of the old spirit endured. But as soon as that energy grew slack—when the religion was no longer believed, and taste, as it was called, came in, and there was no more danger to face, and the world was at their feet, all was swept away as before a whirlwind; there ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... often with a darker border, which seems placed there on purpose to make them conspicuous; and this was a great puzzle to naturalists, because the long coarse gray or greenish hair was evidently like tree-moss and therefore protective. But an old writer, Baron von Slack, in his Voyage to Surinam (1810), had already explained the matter. He says: "The colour and even the shape of the hair are much like withered moss, and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but particularly when it has ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... "That child has a sense of justice, quite elementary, but a true one. If I could get hold of the man who killed Ermsted, I would cheerfully kill him with my own hand—unless I could be sure that he would get his deserts from the Government who are apt to be somewhat slack ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... tell ye!" he cried. "Now she lays steady as a house, all ready to be gutted like a fish. Pass a couple o' lines this way, men. Take in the slack o' the hawser an' make her fast to yonder nub o' rock. Nick Leary, follow after me wid that block an' pulley. Bill, rig yer winch a couple o' yards this way an' stake her down. Keep ten men wid ye—an' the rest o' ye can follow ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... on with deliberation, observing closely, yet half-lazily—for his brain was slack and needed rest—the different types about him, musing on the possibilities of their lives, smiling at the gambols of the intent girls, and the impudent frolics of the little boys who seemed the very spawn of sand ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... perhaps the great fault that is to be attributed to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to contend with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the balance of truth can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand; and that the infusion of a little more visionary speculation, of a little more popular indignation into the great Whig Review would be an advantage both to itself and to the cause of freedom. Much of this effect is chargeable less on an Epicurean levity of feeling ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... country towns where everybody knows everybody, he was made a common sport and jest for the keener, crueler wits of the neighborhood. Now that he was grown to the ripeness of manhood he was still looked upon as being—to use a quaint expression—"slack," or "not jest right." He was heavy, awkward, ungainly and loose-jointed, and enormously, prodigiously strong. He had a lumpish, thick-featured face, with lips heavy and loosely hanging, that gave him an ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... indifference, but living creatures joined together cannot feel indifference for each other. Even two dogs in a leash are compelled to think of one another. A man and wife must love or hate, like or dislike, in degree as the bond connecting them is drawn tight or allowed to hang slack. By mutual desire their chains of wedlock have been fastened as loosely as respect for security will permit, with the happy consequence that her aversion to him does not obtrude itself beyond the ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... Mr Sudberry uttered a roar of astonishment, mingled with alarm, for the line was slack, and he thought the fish had broken off. It was still on, however, as a wild dash down stream, followed by a spurt up and across, with another fling into the air, proved beyond a doubt. The fish was very wild—fortunately it was well ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... lay a-dream With the goblins and the bears Winding like mad arabesques Through my slack ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the room were crumbling. Volumes of smoke were now pouring in underneath the door, and through the yawning fissures of the wall. Little tongues of flame were leaping out dangerously close to the spot where he must pass. He let fall the slack of the rope and leaned from the window to watch it anxiously. Then he commenced to descend, letting himself down hand over hand, always with one eye upon that length of rope that swung below. Suddenly, as he reached the second floor, a little cry from the crowd warned him of ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... honourable caution, Vernon had said things to render Miss Middleton more angrily determined than she had been in the scene with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for her in all of them, made her previous feelings appear slack in comparison with the energy of combat now animating her. And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she was too young, too ignorant to choose. He had wrongly used that word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been brisk during the dinner-hour, and both Cash and Robin considered that we were doing fairly well. Things would be slack at Stoneleigh itself during the afternoon, and the obvious and politic course now was to drive over to the fishing village of Hunnable—I had only time for one, and this was the most considerable—and catch my marine constituents ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... hours in advance of the herds. The horse wranglers were detailed by Priest, and fitting an axle to the spool of wire, by the aid of ropes attached to the pommels of two saddles, it was rolled up to the scene of its use at an easy canter. The stretching of the wire was less than an hour's work, the slack being taken up by the wranglers, ever upholding Texas methods, from the pommels of saddles, while Priest clinched the strands with staples at the proper tension. The gates were merely a pliable extension of ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing and impatience of method will always be pardoned in an illustrator, if ...
— The Building of a Book • Various |
