"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or ten tons." The State kept its weather eye open in this matter, however, for a small minority felt that these men would not ruin themselves. Accordingly, the act of grant reserved to the commonwealth the right to compel the adoption of a complete system of slack-water navigation from Easton to Stoddartsville if the service given by the company did not meet "the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... hand of a foreign lady; Serve a proud rival." Lo, behind her back Slyly laughed Venus, and her archer minion Held the bow slack. ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... Capital which the owner does not employ in purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. All capital is, from the variations of trade, occasionally in this state. A manufacturer, finding a slack demand for his commodity, forbears to employ laborers in increasing a stock which he finds it difficult to dispose of; or if he goes on until all his capital is locked up in unsold goods, then at least he must of necessity pause until he can get paid ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... typical well-groomed, well-trained, American girl, long-limbed, slender, rounded; in her carriage a girlish air of consciousness; the poise of her broad shoulders and slender hips expressing at once hygienic and fashionable ideals that reproved slack gaits and outlines. As they walked, as they talked, watching the slow advance of the great steamer; as their eyes rested calmly and intelligently on each other, one could see that the girl's relation to ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Opposite was a rocky wooded point, and between the two the river bodily fell away. Altogether it was a beautiful, though a startling picture. The whole set of the current was towards this drop with headlong fury. There were no eddies, no slack water of any kind. But we could not do such a foolhardy thing as to go into it without knowing what it was and therefore a landing was imperative. Accordingly we headed for the right bank, and laid to our oars till they bent like straws. We almost reached the ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... During slack hours it was easy, too easy. In rush hours you had to keep your head. Six waiters might breeze by in a line not one second apart, each calling an order, "Half a cantaloupe!" "Two orders of buttered toast!" "Combination salad!" ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... him, give him the "Abolition" kiss, write an article on slavery, like Dickens; marry him to a white gall to England, get him a saint's darter with a good fortin, and well soon see whether her father was a talkin' cant or no, about niggers. Cuss 'em, let any o' these Britishers give me slack, and I'll give 'em cranberry for their goose, I know. I'd jump right down their throat with spurs on, and ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... he said to her once, "if it's a boy it will be my job eventually to train him up to be first-class in the distinctively man's part of life. No woman can ever do that. I mustn't let myself get slack." ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the long beams sticking outward from the table, running the ends of all the cords through another cord that could, upon being pulled, adjust their height by pulling or releasing, thus controlling the distance between the upper and the lower beams, and changing the amount of slack in the carpet that was stretched between them. I then removed the legs from the tabletop, leaving just it and the beams together, the carpet being attached to ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... decorously the hardships of his present situation, and contented himself by looking forward to a reversion which would amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been made up of vague professions ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for the slack rein running from her father's hand to Diablo's mouth. "Missed! She's got it!" he cried, eagerly. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... 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 ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... 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 than bloom that counts—the ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... felt the fascination of that humble printer's workshop, I never ceased to regard myself as in a special degree a child of the printing-press. How delightful were the hours which I and David, the journeyman aforesaid, spent together when business was slack—and it was often slack! Then it was that together we would compose the most wonderful announcements of the great enterprises to which I was to commit myself in after life. Now it was the prospectus of a "genteel academy" of which I was to be the principal, and again it ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... good battle you are righting against alcoholism, are examples for us. You are the new world, 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 ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... years are short, they filled The house with children; four were born to them. Then came a sickly season; fever spread Among the poor. The curate, never slack In duty, praying by the sick, or worse, Burying the dead, when all the air was clogged With poisonous mist, was stricken; long he lay Sick, almost to the death, and when his head He lifted from the pillow, there was left One only of that pretty flock: his girls, His three, were cold beneath the ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... they presented,—the German, erect, well-poised, plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American, lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from under his old ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... ended we can do nothing," said his father. "Meantime, Cicely child, we shall be here at hand, and be sure that I will not be slack to aid thee in what may be thy duty as a daughter. So rest thee in that, my wench, and pray that we may be led to know ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mysteries of High Finance I don't presume to plumb; So year by year my back they shear, Sure that they'll find me dumb. But the oft-trodden worm will turn; "Demand Notes" never slack; And "Schedule D" fast at twice three, Breaks the wage-earner's back. So please give me a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... begins generally the last of March; it lasts, with various modifications and interruptions, until the actual spawning season in November; the time of running and the proportionate amount of each of the subordinate runs, varying with each different river. In general, the runs are slack in the summer and increase with the first high water of autumn. By the last of August only straggling blue-backs can be found in the lower course of any stream, but both in the Columbia and the Sacramento the quinnat runs in considerable numbers ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... went into the tent, and brought out the remainder of the hemp line, the same from which he had cut the bridle. This, he bent on to it, and, giving the end into our hands, bade us go back with it until all the slack was taken up, he, in the meanwhile, steadying the kite. Then, when we had gone back to the extent of the line, he shouted to us to take a very particular hold upon it, and then, stooping, caught the kite by the bottom, and threw ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... having drawn down more than a thousand fathoms of rope, the whale slackened its speed, and Parr, taking another coil round the loggerhead, held on until the boat was almost dragged under water. Then the line became loose, and the slack was hauled in rapidly. Meanwhile Grim's boat had reached the spot, and the men now lay on their oars at some distance ahead, ready to pull the instant the whale should show itself. Up it came, not twenty yards ahead. One short, energetic pull, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was the most natural thing in the world ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... easily. He rattled away, and attacked this person and that; sneered at Lady John Turnbull's bad French, which her ladyship will introduce into all conversations, in spite of the sneers of every body: at Mrs. Slack Roper's extraordinary costume and sham jewels; at the old dandies and the young ones; at whom didn't he sneer ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then the trees before them on the other side, with the cleared fields in one or two spots, began to shew in more distinct forms and colours. The sun was very hot! So hot, that it seemed to kill the breeze. As they drew near their place of disembarkation, the motion of the vessel grew slack; the sail fluttered now and then; the propelling force just lasted till they got to shore, and then nobody said anything more of any air felt to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... the sheet, Tom. That is right; now the sail is over. Slack out—slack out all it will go; the wind is nearly dead aft. Ease off the jib-sheet, Jack. That is it. Now she ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... slack, his face, dark and grim, Grows gentle with memories tender, As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, And their mother—"may heaven ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... boiler, made of wrought iron, with brass tap and steam-pipe. In other respects it resembles Fig. 4, with which it possesses similar advantages of construction. Either maybe had at varying prices, according to size, from L5. 15s. up to L23. 10s. They are supplied by Messrs. Richard & John Slack ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... they were to be reckoned as sold when they were in his hands: but would the factor truly represent to them the state of the market—that there are great quantities of goods in hand unsold, and no present demand, desiring them to slack their hands a little in making; and at the same time back their directions in a plain and positive way, though with respect too, by telling them they could accept no more bills till the goods were sold. This would bring the trade into a better regulation, and the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... "Kind of slack, aren't you?" inquired Peter, his deep-set blue eyes twinkling with humor. "I've eaten two hours back. This lying a-bed is mighty bad for your ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... be done," Stubby grinned. "There aren't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmon packers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen have made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But the number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So that a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If you can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... many of the British who survived to desert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and better paid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemy to fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to make the British get slack. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... from the eastward. We had our whole sail set, and as the sun shone on it, I hoped that we might now possibly be seen. I was not so sanguine as some of the men had suddenly become on seeing the ship. I knew that too often a very slack look-out is kept on board many ships, and even then only just ahead to see that no vessel is in the way or likely to get there. The topsails and more than half the courses of the stranger had already appeared above the horizon. We rose them rapidly. By the time that we could ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. The small holder, pure and simple, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... employment and growing dubious of obtaining it during the slack industrial season which then hovered over California, he turned to the serried shelves of the city library. Once started along this road he became an habitue, spending in a particular chair at a certain table anywhere from three to six hours a day, deep in a book, not to be deterred therefrom ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in the oven, slack the fire! O worm of black earth, O worm of bright earth, fresh water, sea water, heat of the oven, red of the oven, support the feet of the walkers, and fan away the fire! O Cold Beings, let us pass over the middle of the oven! O Great Woman, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... hope that every day things will get better. Besides, all the vessels that have been lying in the Pool since June will want painting up and getting into trim again before they sail out of the river, so things may not be so slack after all. You will find everything in order in the store. I have had little to do but to polish up brass work and keep the metal from rusting. When do ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... didn't 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 secesh fellers'll wait on women ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... 83. Nor are we slack in our companionship in these courses. Our imagination is slower and clumsier than the French—rarer also, by far, in the average English mind. The only man of power equal to Dore's whom we have had lately among us, was William Blake, whose temper fortunately ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... months on the voyage, and this is certain, and on his return he saw two islands[423-3] but would not land, so as not to lose time, as he was short of provisions. The King is much pleased with this. He says that the tides are slack and do not flow as they ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... where everything was sold, from a nail or a spool of 'slack' to a keg of spirits or an almanac: sold for money when it could be had, for flour or wool or potash when it couldn't; likewise a post-office, whither a stage came once a week with an odd passenger, or an odd dozen of newspapers and letters; likewise the abode of a magistrate, where justice was occasionally ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. 'Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don't much signify: it's only tight-rope and slack- rope. You were going to give me ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... thinking of putting any Johnny Raw over my head, why, I shall resign. I began forrard, Mistress Prettybones, and worked my way aft, like a man. I was six months aboard a Garnsey lugger, hauling in the slack of the lee-sheet and coiling up rigging. From that I went a few trips in a fore-and-after, in the same trade, which, after all, was but a blind kind of sailing in the dark, where a man larns but little, excepting how to steer by the stars. Well, then, dye see, I larnt how a topmast ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... work is slack and members are unemployed, will advocate shorter hours at the same rate of pay so as to make room for their ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... him a tribute. Ambassadors accordingly were sent; and the invaders, satisfied with the offer of submission, remained in the position which they had taken up, waiting for the tribute, and keeping slack guard, since they considered that they had nothing to fear. Varahran, however, was all the while preparing to fall upon them unawares. He had started for Azerbijan with a small body of picked warriors; he had drawn some further strength ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... was not believed, and even the wisdom of the Jupiter sometimes falls on deaf ears. Though other plans did not put themselves forward in the columns of the Jupiter, reformers of church charities were not slack to make known in various places their different nostrums for setting Hiram's Hospital on its feet again. A learned bishop took occasion, in the Upper House, to allude to the matter, intimating that he had communicated on the subject ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... greatly with you and give thanks with our whole heart to God and to your fatherly care. And because there is still need of great watchfulness, because the place is new, and the land unaccustomed to the monastic life, yea, without any experience of it, we beseech you in the Lord,[970] that you slack not your hand,[971] but perfectly accomplish that which you have well begun. Concerning our brothers who have returned from that place,[972] it had pleased us well if they had remained. But perhaps the brothers[973] of your country, whose characters are less disciplined ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... to Van der Kemp, who deftly caught it and held on tight. Another was flung to Moses, who also caught it and held on—slack. At the same moment, Nigel saw a large block with a hook attached descending ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... was among them, but it was to get a surprise. Finding themselves overtaken, the muskrats turned in desperation and attacked the common enemy with courage and fury. Rolf leaped over the first, but the second sprang, caught him by the slack of the trouser leg, and hung on. The third flung itself on his foot and drove its sharp teeth through the moccasin. Quickly the first rallied and sprang on his other leg with all the force of its puny ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 colonists wore. The pirate, seeing the rough moccasins and deerskin ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... 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 ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... dogs that snarl about a bone, And play together when they've none, As by their truest characters, Their constant actions, plainly appears. 30 Rebellion now began, for lack Of zeal and plunders to grow slack; The Cause and covenant to lessen, And Providence to b' out of season: For now there was no more to purchase 35 O' th' King's Revenue, and the Churches, But all divided, shar'd, and gone, That us'd to urge the ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... virtues; in certain respects he believed that it had finally determined the bias and color of his life. Now, however, it seemed that his inward peace was hardly more than that of republican Florence, and his heart no better than the alarm-bell that made work slack and tumult busy. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... have 2 or 3 Generals to dinner you can give us nice white table cloths but at other times it is only bare boards", "Well Sir," he hesitatingly replied, "they were two of Stewart's sheets." Sundays were usually fairly slack days. I sometimes thought that they could have been even slacker, it being so absolutely necessary to have one day's rest a week. Church Parade would be held in the early morning, and another service at 6 in the evening after the sun had ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... 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 with wide-open eyes, Cully interrupting the narrative ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... going through to the Draytons in Hampshire. It is a new freak. Four or five horses are to be sold, and Gustavus thinks of buying the lot. If you are in town, come to us. You must not think that we are slack about you because Gustavus would have nothing to do with the money. He will be at home to-morrow till eleven. I shall not go out till two. We leave on ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... long swayings to and fro, the fight closed with advantage to the allies.[373] It was not without reason that Napoleon on that night received his Marshals rather coolly at his modest quarters in the village of Reudnitz. Leaning against the stove, he ran over several names of those who were now slack in their duty; and when Augereau was announced, he remarked that he was not the Augereau of Castiglione. "Ah! give me back the old soldiers of Italy, and I will show you that I am," retorted ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... who had just pulled in all the slack of the rawhide lariat, and had made it fast about his own left arm, seemed wholly unaware of his ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... purring and winking in the light, and falling every now and then into an idle doze, as from excess of comfort. Toby looked on from a tall bench hard by; one beaming smile, from his broad nut-brown face down to the slack-baked buckles in his shoes. The very locks that hung around had something jovial in their rust, and seemed like gouty gentlemen of hearty natures, disposed to joke on their infirmities. There was nothing surly or severe in the whole scene. It seemed impossible that any one of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... remained upon the wharf. As he saw the rush coming he had ordered his men to abandon their load; then he ran to the after-mooring, and, taking slack from a deck hand, cast it off. Back up the dock he went to the forward hawser, where, at a signal, he did the same, moving, toward the last, without excessive hurry, as if in a spirit of bravado. The ship was clear, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... there seemed to come a slack in the storm. The ship rode more easily, and Bob began to take heart. A little later Mr. Carr came down into the cabin. He breathed a sigh of relief as ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... time the Sunday newspapers contained many and many exciting reports of boxing-matches. Bruising was considered a fine manly old English custom. Boys at public schools fondly perused histories of the noble science, from the redoubtable days of Broughton and Slack, to the heroic times of Dutch Sam and the Game Chicken. Young gentlemen went eagerly to Moulsey to see the Slasher punch the Pet's head, or the Negro beat the Jew's nose to a jelly. The island rang as yet with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches; a gay sight was the road in merry ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lack of conscience is back of all manner of crimes, from murder down to careless, slack work; whose cruelty, lust, and selfishness operate unhampered by restraint. On the other hand there are others whose hypertrophied conscience works in one of two directions. If they are zealots, convinced of the righteousness of their own decisions ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... leaped up on his lap with the rabbit. The man gave a great shout and start of terror, and sprang, and the Cat slid clawing to the floor, and the rabbit fell inertly, and the man leaned, gasping with fright, and ghastly, against the wall. The Cat grabbed the rabbit by the slack of its neck and dragged it to the man's feet. Then he raised his shrill, insistent cry, he arched his back high, his tail was a splendid waving plume. He rubbed against the man's feet, which were bursting out of ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... for the other. The "hole-in-the-wall" or "blind tiger" provides a rendezvous for all the outcasts of society. "Boot-legging" is a common subsidiary occupation for the pander, the thief and the cracksman. Where it flourishes, it serves to bridge over many a period of slack trade. Franchises whose validity is subject to political attack, bring to the aid of the underworld some of the most powerful interests in the community. The police are almost helpless when confronted by a coalition of persons ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... we'll have a slack day. The strain of meeting Simpson will be sufficient for us. I do hope he comes in a yachting cap—we'll send him ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... reasons for not thinking too harshly of the Devil. Most of it was an abridgement of some verses Jurgen had composed, in the shop when business was slack. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... November 6, 1793, we find the members dining at Wise's inn, "the dinner to be on the table at three o'clock."[102] For the better entertainment of the guests, "Mr. Card performed wonderful feats at the Tavern every evening during the races. Feats in cards, slack-wire, celebrated equilibrist, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... was soon applied, for he drew the rope in slowly, till the slack was all gathered in, tightened it more and more, and the loop glided ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... find cheap vacation homes in the country, and by establishing vacation banks to help the girls save for their summer outings, the committee hopes to discourage some of the haphazard picnic park dissipation. In summer many trades are slack, girls are idle, and out of sheer boredom they hang around the parks seeking amusement. It is only a theory, perhaps, but Mrs. Israels and the others on her committee believe that if many of these girls knew that a country vacation were within the possibilities, they would gladly ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... Worcester in such labors as these. When work at his trade became slack, or when he had earned a little more money than usual, he would spend more time in the library; but, on the other hand, when work in the shop was pressing, he could give less time to study. After a while, he began to think that he might perhaps earn his subsistence in part by his knowledge of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... between Mr. Liversedge and his relative allowed Glazzard to keep silence, save when he exchanged a few words with his hostess or Miss Pope. He had a look of extreme weariness; his eyes were heavy and without expression, the lines of face slack, sullen; he seemed to maintain with difficulty his upright position at the table, and his eating was only pretence. At the close of the meal he bent towards Mrs. Liversedge, declared that he was suffering from an ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... to the wild forest, to hunt the hart or hind, The roebuck, the wild boar, the fallow-deer, or hare: But how poor Ragan shall dine, he hath no care. Poor I must eat acorns or berries from the tree. But if I be found slack in the suit following, Or if I do fail in blowing or hallooing; Or if I lack my staff or my horn by my side: He will be quick enough to fume, chafe, and chide. Am I not well at ease such a master to serve, As must have such service, and yet will let me ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... had fallen and the sails hung slack Tristan dropped anchor by an Island and the hundred knights of Cornwall and the sailors, weary of the sea, landed all. Iseult alone remained aboard and a little serving maid, when Tristan came near ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... 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 day. That's as far as your imagination carries you. And perhaps you get sevenpence ha'penny, ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... widowed mother and a large family of brothers and sisters by shoveling snow and, I think, laying brick or something of that technical nature. After this lapse of years I won't be sure about the bricklaying, but at any rate, work was slack in his regular line, and so he went to the proprietor of this vast retail establishment and procured a responsible position on the strength of his easy and graceful personal address and his employment ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in some measure and are hurt by it as well as the sufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies as they see him do, and as they feel that they themselves must do if in his situation. Persons of delicate fibers and a weak constitution of body complain that in looking on the sores and ulcers which ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... am not going anywhere in particular," Captain Wilson replied. "The chief says he thinks that things have got rather slack, since I have been away. There are several bands of bush rangers, who have been doing a deal of mischief up country; so to begin with, he wishes me to make a tour of inspection, and to report generally. After that, I think I ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack. Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words. "Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... your stomach vexed? Pray slack your rage, and hearken what comes next: I have a writ to take you up; therefore, To chafe your blood, I bid you ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... melancholy (and in later years prone to self-analysis). At preparatory school was fairly forward in studies, at public school somewhat backward, at University suddenly took a liking to intellectual pursuits. Throughout he was slack at games. Has never been able to learn to swim from nervousness. Can whistle well. Has always been fond of reading, and would like to have been an author by profession. He married at 24, and has had two children, both of whom ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... warmly sheltered by spruce woods and sloping to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that all the slack management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it. Here Old Man Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish, watching and tending it until he came to know each tree as a child and loved it. His neighbours laughed at him, and said that ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Dead languages, so called, may at least be left at rest, if not honored; and must not be torn in mutilation out of their tumuli, that the skins and bones of them may help to hold our living nonsense together; while languages called living, but which live only to slack themselves into slang, or bloat themselves into bombast, must one day have new grammars written for their license, and new ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, "it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits—and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive needs, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... also, not only working days but also festivals. And, to speak concisely, rest is the sauce of labour. And we can see this not only in the case of animate, but even inanimate things, for we make bows and lyres slack that we may be able to stretch them. And generally the body is preserved by repletion and evacuation, and the soul by rest and work. We ought also to censure some fathers who, after entrusting their sons to tutors and preceptors, neither see nor hear how the teaching is done. This is ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... proposes not only to guard against periods of unemployment which extend to all industries in the case of industrial crises, but also to provide more steady employment for those who are unoccupied during the slack seasons of the year or while passing from one employer to another. Above all he plans that the youth of the nation shall not waste their strength entirely in unremunerative employment or in idleness, but that every ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... as usual, on one of these swindling expeditions, and demanded of me the loan of some fine slack. Not knowing what she meant by fine slack, and weary of her importunities, I said I had none. She went away in a rage. Shortly after she came again for some pepper. I was at work, and my work-box was open ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... It is precisely in time of depression that the men of business ought to press their selling and organise their sales organisation to the utmost limit. If finance, commerce, and industry could only be persuaded to take this course in the slack times, then every action in this direction would cure the evil by lessening the duration of the bad times. Not till the surplus stocks have been unloaded will the winter pass and the summer come again in the enterprise of the world. Selling is ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... Nor was Franklin slack. Hovering with his great division in the plain below and knowing that he was beaten, he nevertheless turned one hundred and sixteen cannon that he carried with him upon Jackson's front and swept ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... one of those faces which begin well and end badly. He had a fine forehead, lofty and broad, a well-cut, gently-curving-nose, a slack, thick-lipped mouth, always a little open, a heavy, animal jaw, and the chin of an eagle. His fine, black hair was thin on the temples. His moustache was thin and straggled. His black eyes were as good as his brow, intelligent, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... in Norfolk were in a very slack state—rectors and vicars lived away from their parishes, subscribing amongst them to pay the salary of a curate to undertake the church services. As his duties were consequently manifold some parishes were without his presence on Sunday for ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... closely-set confused mass of mountains altering in form as you view them from different angles, save one, Kangwe—a blunt cone, evidently the record of some great volcanic outburst; and the sandbanks show again wherever the current deflects and leaves slack water, their bright glistening colour giving a relief to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... arose, which wrecked the ship that 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. She found the place deserted, and, putting about, sailed for home again. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... her every little detail of a man's past life. Not that I've been a Don What's-his-name. Far from it. Costs a bit too much, that game. You simply can't do it on sixty quid a year, paid monthly, and that's all there is about it. Not but what I don't often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It's the loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once, when Tommy Milner hasn't been there to talk to, I tell you I've half a mind to take out some girl or ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... occasion we embarked in a goufa, and floated down the rapidly flowing river, keeping close to the left bank and taking advantage of every eddy and corner of slack water made by projecting buildings, lest we should be swept down too far and lose control of our curious and difficult craft. The level of the water was far above the usual height and came up to the very thresholds of these riverside houses. We floated on, sometimes under the walls of dark gardens, ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... I have said, have worked loyally and well, there have, I regret to say, been instances where absence, irregular timekeeping, and slack work have led to a marked diminution in the output of our factories. In some cases the temptations of drink account for this failure to work up to the high standard expected. It has been brought to my notice on more than one occasion that the restrictions of trade unions have undoubtedly added ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... quarters of a pound of brown sugar, a large spoonful of pounded ginger, one tea-spoonful of powdered cloves—sift it, melt half a pound of butter in a quart of rich molasses, wet the flour with it, knead it well, and bake it in a slack oven. ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... instant did the full, crushing horror of the affair come home to the American, for events had crowded one another so closely that his mind was confused; but when, in the halting yellow glare, he saw those two slack forms and the crooked, unnatural postures in which death had left them, his consciousness cleared and he strained at his bonds ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Ain't it kind o' curious how sometimes we find a great, big, awkward man who loves sech things? Bill had the biggest feet in the township, but I'll bet my wallet that he never trod on a violet in all his life. Bill never took no slack from enny man that wuz sober, but the children made him play with 'em, and he'd set for hours a-watchin' the yaller-hammer buildin' her nest ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... dry river, and thick rattan jungle bordered the opposite side; he thought he was safe, and he plunged down the crumbling bank. We were a little too quick for him, by taking a double turn round a tree with the slack end of the rope just as he descended the bank; the effect of this was to bring him to a sudden standstill, and the stretching of the hide rope threw him upon his knees. He recovered himself immediately, and used extraordinary efforts to break away; tightening the rope to its utmost ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... O'er Wibsey Slack aw coom last neet, Wi' reekin heead and weary feet, A strange, strange chap, aw chonced to meet; He made mi start; But pluckin up, aw did ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom:— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or in conflagration pale Light ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... now was travelling towards his native home. 425 This heard, I said, in pity, "Come with me." He stooped, and straightway from the ground took up An oaken staff by me yet unobserved— A staff which must have dropt from his slack hand And lay till now neglected in the grass. 430 Though weak his step and cautious, he appeared To travel without pain, and I beheld, With an astonishment but ill suppressed, His ghostly figure moving at my side; Nor could I, while we ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Mary if one was buried in the field of battle and the other was minced up in a saw-mill, and he couldn't clasp her to his bosom unless he threw a lasso with his teeth and hauled her in by swallowing the slack of the rope. As for the piano—well, you know as well as I do that an armless man can't play a Beethoven sonata unless he knows how to perform on the instrument with his nose, and in that case you insult the popular ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... extremity. Besides, she was wearing it in direct opposition to his expressed wishes. This I must tell you, to show how imperative it is for us to recover it; also to account for the large reward she is willing to pay. When he last looked at it he noticed that the fastening was a trifle slack, and, though he handed the trinket back, he told her distinctly that she was not to wear it till it had been either to Tiffany's or Starr's. But she considered it safe enough, and put it on to please the boys, and lost it. Senator ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green |
