"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dollars each! Why, that would amount to two hundred dollars, and there would be no racking his ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... lap of ease, Grow racking pain and foul disease, And nervous whims, a ghastly train, Inflicting more than corp'ral pain: Oft gold and shining pedigree Prove only splendid misery. The king who sits upon his throne, And calls the kneeling world his ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... women and the lower animals show. These especially who are usually well and robust are a trial to the flesh and spirit of those about them. Moore was not the wonderful exception. His first few weeks in the hospital were not so bad; but when the actual racking pain was over, and nothing remained but that halting of the physical machinery to which we never give a thought during perfect action—the weakness hanging leaden weights to every limb, the unwonted nervousness and irritability, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... upon the wide court-yard, across which Nicholas was walking in the direction of the stables. Notwithstanding his excesses overnight, the squire was astir, as he had declared he should be, before daybreak; and a plunge into the Calder had cooled his feverish limbs and cured his racking headache, while a draught of ale set his stomach right. Still, in modern parlance, he looked rather "seedy," and his recollection of the events of the previous night was somewhat confused. Aware he had committed many fooleries, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... swamps and plunging through the tangled underbrush; alert and listening, darting from tree to tree where the woods were thin; crouching behind some fallen log to catch his laboring breath, then rising again to creep along his way. He did not tell of the racking pain in his weary legs, nor the protest of his pounding heart—the strain—the agony—the puffs of smoke that floated above the pines, and the ping of bullets whining through the trees. He did not tell of the ball that slid along his ribs, leaving a fiery, aching memory behind, ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... lengthwise in the vessel, and also involving two stokeholds and therefore more supervision. At one time great difficulty was found in keeping the bottoms of boilers of this kind tight. Owing to their length, the unequal expansion due to different temperatures at the top and bottom caused severe racking strains on the bottom seams and riveting—so severe in some cases as to rend the plating for a large part of the bottom circumference of the shell. This difficulty has now been to a large extent got over, in consequence of the greater attention given to the form and direction ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... racking my brains to remember anything—surely I never gave you—I am perfectly convinced, I have the best reason for being absolutely certain, that I could not have ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... moments, Lambert felt racking pain, as though something were tearing at his flesh, separating the very atoms. The scientist saw the wriggling figures of the sleuths, in various strange position, but his impressions were confused. His head whirled round and round, he swayed to and fro, and, finally, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... letter of the 31st says, "About six weeks ago, the gout was harassing both my feet; on Christmas-day it shifted its quarters, and got into my left hand; and inexpressible have been the pain and torment I have endured, with sleepless nights, racking pain, and no rest nor relief by day. I hope the worst is over, as I had a comfortable sleep for the whole night last night: but my hopes are like those in a ship in a storm; when one billow is past, another and greater is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... come out with the Princess. Then make a sudden assault and rescue her. In the darkness we can make them think there are a dozen rescuers," he whispered at length. After a while Anguish asked another appalling question, the outgrowth of brain-racking study: ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... djinns, or voodoos, or vampires would swoop down upon you before morning. Think of facing death by famine every winter, by drought or cyclone every summer, and by open war or secret scalp-raid every month in the year; and then say that the racking nerve-strain of the commuter's time-table, the deadly clash of the wheat-pit, or the rasping grind of office-hours, would be ruinous to the uncivilized nervous system. Certainly, in those belated savages, the dwellers ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... shop, those carts which he had lovingly cherished, now seemed unworthy of his affections. He began to attend the local drawing-school, where he formed a connection with a youngster who had left college, and who lent him an old treatise on geometry. He plunged into this study without a guide, racking his brains for weeks together in order to grasp the simplest problem in the world. In this matter he gradually became one of those learned workmen who can hardly sign their name and yet talk about algebra as though it were an ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... normal appearance. For the past month or so Barbara has been most distraite; uncle has so evidently tried to be cheerful that the effort has been distressing; and you, little Lady Betty, have been racking your precious brains for a scheme to ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... tenant, and if not, a fair advertisement, and the best offer and tenant accepted; no screwing of the land to the highest penny, just to please the head landlord for the minute, and ruin him at the end, by the tenant's racking the land, and running off with the year's rent; nor no bargains to his own relations or friends did Mr. Burke ever give or grant, but all fair between landlord and tenant; and that's the thing that will last; and that's what I call the ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... paralyzed tongue. The strain to keep his head above the waters was racking him like a torment of the Inquisition. The horror of the situation grew with every second. Why did they lower so slowly? Would release ever come in time to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... escapes my memory. But yet they are no more the same; they are dulled, and neither trouble nor disquiet me. I perceive all their severity without feeling it; or, if I feel it, it is only by representation, which turns a former smart and racking pain into a kind of sport and diversion, for the image of past sorrows rejoices me. It is the same with pleasures: a virtuous mind is afflicted by the memory of its disorderly unlawful enjoyments. They are present, for they appear with all their softest ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... less keenly to heart and brain, to the imagination and to pity. Happy they were not, and could not be. When we read of Swift and Stella the mind naturally turns to that luckless pair of lovers whom Dante saw in the third circle of hell, blown about forever on the racking wind, and finding comfort through the lapse of eternal twilight in the companionship of their common doom. They, too—Swift and Stella—seem driven by the pitiless wind of fate; they have fallen upon evil days; they ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... pieces of lace. Since then he's wheedled most of the jewellery out of me, but the wedding veil I mean to keep always, and a Point d'Alencon scarf and some handkerchiefs he has probably forgotten. I had forgotten them, too, but when I was racking my brain how to get the Selfridge dress, the remembrance tumbled down off its dusty ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... that of themselves in their relentless tension spoke what no words could. Fleda's trembling prayers were in vain, in vain. Poor nature at last sought a woman's relief in tears—but they were heart-breaking, not heart-relieving tears—racking both mind and body more than they ought to bear, but bringing no cure. Mrs. Rossitur seemed as unconscious of her niece's mute agony as she had been of her agony of words; and it was from Fleda's own self-recollection alone that she fought off ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the fevered blood, darting like liquid fire through the veins, mounts to the throbbing brow, and, pressing like molten lead upon the brain, crushes out thought and feeling, leaving but a dull consciousness of the racking agony which renders each limb a separate instrument of torture. If, on the other hand, it be the mind that is pestilence-stricken, the disease becomes well-nigh unbearable, as it is incurable; and thus it was with me on the night in question. The suspense and anxiety I had undergone during ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... querulously demanding of anyone who would listen to him what he himself could mean by having an "out-dacious pain" under his shoulder-blade. "I feel like I hev been knifed, that's whut!" he would declare. This symptom was presently succeeded by a "misery in his breast-bone," and a racking cough seemed likely to shake to pieces his old skeleton, growing daily more perceptible under his dry, shrivelled skin. A fever shortly set in, but it proved of scanty interest to the local physician, when called by the boss of the construction ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the thermantidote, the Ayah and Bearer dare not leave their charge. So Sunny Baba must sleep, and the Bearer has in the folds of his waist-cloth a little black fragment of the awful sleep-compeller, and Baby is drugged into a deep uneasy sleep of delirious, racking dreams. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... meditate with his feet on the hobs of the empty grate; the other man went down for the liquor; while I, between the brandy and exhaustion, fell fast asleep, and never stirred till I woke the next morning with a racking headache, and saw the big student standing by my bedside, having, as I afterwards heard, sat by me till four in ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... mine did not last long, for I soon understood what the matter with me was, and remained lying on the sofa with a racking headache and my limbs relaxed as I stared dully at the stamp on the package of tobacco, the Pipe-tube coiled on the floor, and the odds and ends of tobacco and confectioner's tartlets which were littered ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... don't believe I can remember any more old saws," said Buddie, after racking her small brain for a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... part of the afternoon found Tom many miles from Bridgeboro, and the trail which had passed through such sordid and pride-racking surroundings back in his home town, now led up through a quiet woodland, where there was no sound but the singing of the birds and an occasional rustle or breaking of a twig as some startled wild ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... himself alone. Their jeers and banter were giving place to cold distrustful looks, which were far more trying to bear. How he longed to be able to burst upon their astounded minds with the pent-up intelligence that was silently racking and splitting his little bosom! But if he did—the terrible firm of Quirk, Gammon, and Snap—Oh! the very thought of them glued his lips together. There was one, however, of whom he might surely make a confidant—the excellent Huckaback, with whom ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... performed had given him ample opportunity to commune with himself. The master of the ship had been lord of Martin's time; but here the manager of the hotel was lord of Martin's thoughts as well. He had no thoughts save for the nerve- racking, body-destroying toil. Outside of that it was impossible to think. He did not know that he loved Ruth. She did not even exist, for his driven soul had no time to remember her. It was only when he crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, that she asserted herself to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... family counsels, and the authorities could not make up their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession—an idea hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble of racking their brains about me. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... mad savage hatred of ship and crew, died aboard her and was buried in latitude 8 deg. 20'. The chief-mate, who got the vessel back to port and remained under her new captain, is convinced that the dead man haunts her vengefully; and one desperate accident after another, racking a crew overwhelmed with fever, almost persuades the captain to share the mate's illusion that 8 deg. 20'—The Shadow Line (DENT)—is possessed by the dead scoundrel. I found the book less interesting as a yarn than as an example of the astonishingly conscious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... The nerve-racking work was beginning to tell upon him. His orders condemned him to a forlorn hope, for the English Channel was known to be a death-trap for the under-sea blockaders. The sight of a trawler filled him ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... That God took him, Savyeli,' I said,—'but the insult They did him torments me, It's racking my heart. Why did vicious black ravens Alight on his body And tear it to pieces? Will neither our God 450 Nor our Tsar—Little Father— ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... another spell of nerve-racking silence. Then the outlaw said slowly, "I reckon yo' speaks ther truth. Yo' haint smart ernough fer er revenuer. One er them wouldn't come er still-huntin' 'thout er rifle-gun, an' ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... shaken as the culprit, stared out of the window at the quarters across the court. Frank, broken at last, lay on the hard quartermaster cot and shook with dry and racking sobs. Neither boy knew what the outcome would be. It seemed days before the jingle of spurs in the tiny passageway told of the approach of officers, and the door opened to admit General Marcom, his aide, and ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... in depths of woe, Upon the Tree of scorn Hangs the Redeemer of mankind, With racking ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... most wild, a queer metallic sound, and the airs were full of unexpected harmonies and nerve-racking chords. It fired the sense, in spite ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... at him,—let him have one long look into those deep, strange eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied and quite reasonable after that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania with him, to want that long look from Maggie; and he was racking his invention continually to find out some means by which he could have it without its appearing singular and entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for Maggie, she had no distinct thought, only the sense of a presence like that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird in the darkness, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... water made them very sick, while the hot stones restored their suspended circulation. Still, I would advise no one to depend on such remedies under similar circumstances. They got better; but still for many days were subject to racking pains, and remained weak and ill. While they were in this state, one morning, as Tom and I were at the top of the peak taking our usual survey of the horizon, in the hopes of a vessel appearing in sight, we saw a white speck to the westward, the rays of the sun glancing brightly ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... glib again," said Boylan. Peter's reserve had interposed. His absence had something to do with her, but he could not remember. "Where is she?" had got away from him as he crossed the border back into the racking physical domain. He didn't ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... talking eagerly yet cautiously. Then there were heavy steps, distinct yet slow, followed, after an interval, by the tramp of shuffling feet, like those of people carrying an awkward burden, and stumbling under it. But always, before Beth could think what the noise meant, the gust came again, racking her nerves, rattling the windows, making the doors creak; then dying away, to be followed by more mysterious sounds, but ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... While he was racking his brain sudden orders were shouted through the building. The lounging groups came up with a jerk, there was a rattle of arms, and in ten seconds the farm boys had resolved into a machine, a set of rigid blue lines that ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... only kept under fire for four days. At the end of that time, they are sent back a few miles in shifts to the nearest village where they find quarters, and rest from the nerve-racking, soul-shaking clamor of guns and buzz of bullets. The trenches were wonderful. Zaidos and Velo, the Red Cross badges on their arms giving them free passage, soon explored every inch until they were perfectly familiar with them all. Zaidos drew a sketch of the plan to send to the fellows ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... was his nest still; and before fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range on his own flight—to sing his own song—and to seek his own home and his own mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in her friend, Laura once said to Helen, "If Pen had loved me as you wished, I should have gained him, but I should have lost you, mamma, I know I should; and I like you to love me best. Men do not know what it is to love as we do, I ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pint of liquor, and then put him by himself. I would not allow him companions to make merry with so as to make a pleasure of intoxication. I would then wait until next morning when he was sober, and leave him alone with a racking headache until the evening, when I would give him another dose, and so on, forcing him to get drunk until he ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... and staggered away. He did not go very far round the corner he gave out completely, and sat down on the steps of a saloon, and hid his face in his hands, and shook all over with dry, racking sobs. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Sack, putting his hand to his forehead. "Excuse me, but I've got such a racking headache ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... upon the words; a racking cough shook him from head to foot; he staggered back and dropped upon her overturned chair, his arms beating the table in front of him, his head jerking spasmodically backward and forward ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... calls me back for a moment, reminding me how he turns glossa into glotta, half robbing me of the tongue itself. Ay, you are a disease of the tongue in every sense, Tau.) But I return from that digression, to plead the cause of mankind and its wrongs. The prisoner's designs include the constraint, racking, and mutilation of their utterance. A man sees a beautiful thing, and wishes to describe it as kalon, but in comes Tau, and forces the man to say talon he must have precedence everywhere, of course. Another man has ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... A dark dreary little room upstairs in a noisy tenement house. A pale, thin woman on a shabby lounge vainly trying to quiet a fretful child. The child is thin and pale, too, with a hard, racking cough. There is a small fire in the stove, a very small fire; coal is so high. The medicine stands on the shelf. "Medicine won't do much good," the doctor had said; ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... executing little skips of transport. "How sweet you are, Katy! I mean to love you next best to Cousin Helen and Papa! And"—racking her brains for some way of repaying this wonderful kindness—"I'll tell you the secret, if you want me to very much. I guess ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... after the stormy meeting in the Commune room, Molly, racking her brain over "The Theory of Mathematics," heard Otoyo's tap at the door. She knew it was the little Japanese. Nobody else could knock so faintly and ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... set no limits to his folly. If a word be destined to represent to him an object that has not the capacity to act on any one of his organs; of which, it is impossible for him to prove either the existence or the qualities; his imagination, by dint of racking itself, will nevertheless, in some measure, supply him with the ideas he wants; he composes some kind of a picture, with the images or colours he is always obliged to borrow, from the objects of which he has a knowledge: thus the Divinity has been represented by some under the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... week, next month. Ah! yes, but to-morrow never came; or rather, when it did come, it was no longer to-morrow with its promise of renewed health. It was to-day, with the same disappointment, the same pains, the same racking cough, which he had endured on so many other to-days that had come and gone ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... Sam looked on, very much interested and racking his brain to devise some means of gaining a further entrance to the house. From its outside appearance he knew he must be in one of the rear rooms, and if Chip was not behind the curtain he must be in an upper ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... tinkering and planning homely improvements. This sort of work is a healthy, wholesome occupation and just the kind necessary to people of sedentary occupations or those whose misfortune it is to be engaged in some of the nerve-racking business peculiar ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... the old religion before they had ceased to belong to it. That is one of the transitional complexities that can only be conveyed by such contradictions. A person of the type and time of Elizabeth would feel fundamentally, and even fiercely, that priests should be celibate, while racking and rending anybody caught talking to the only celibate priests. This mystery, which may be very variously explained, covered the Church of England, and in a great degree the people of England. Whether it be called the Catholic continuity of Anglicanism or merely the ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Ireland close their report by expressing their hope that Europeans, panting after the sweets of Liberty and Independence will flock thither. "Here," say they, "are no griping and racking Landlords to oppress you; no avaricious Priests to extort from you the Tenth of all your increase and labors and whom you must pay for the liberty to come into the world, of being married, of having children and likewise of leaving the world. * * * Send ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... his key into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of his throat in ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... they won't need much holding," Joe went on, all the while racking his brain to recall the voice. He wanted to have the man speak again, that ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... unversed in the ways of women, was crushed by her changed air. He looked away, racking his brains to hit on what he could have done to offend her. She glanced at him out of the tail of her eye, and a wicked little dimple appeared in one cheek. He was sufficiently punished. She was mollified. But it was so sweet to feel her power over him, that she ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... must choose between his visions, for alike come purity and evil. The road of genius runs ever close to the black abyss of madness. The human mind ignited with genius is like an old time-weakened building, in which is installed new machinery of startling power. What a racking upon ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... little all to join the expedition—were stricken by the sun, and dropped dead as they were pulling at the boat ropes. A jaguar pounced upon another man as he stooped to get water from a stream. An Indian arrow found the heart of another. The sun, fatigue, fevers, bruises, and the endless racking of limbs and brains, reduced the spirits and strength of the men. They became gaunt, hollow-eyed, tattered, unshorn, uncombed, unkempt, yet they toiled on, silent—save when they cursed and railed at fate—dogged, fiercely purposeful, resolved ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... to be the most ardent wish of my soul to leave England; you know that I cannot enjoy a moment's peace of mind whilst I am here; yet in this racking suspense it is your pleasure to detain me. No, it shall not be—this shall not go on! It is in vain you tell me that the delay originates not with you, that you must wait for instructions, and I know not what—paltry ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said to herself, "does ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... been too much of a rake, lately; I am racking out my nerves," said I, speaking aloud, with a view to reassure myself. I rang the bell, and, attended by old Martha, I retired to settle for the night. While the servant was, as was her custom, arranging the lamp which I have already stated always burned during the night in my chamber, ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... how many its burdens and how heavy; not knowing on the other hand the equalising, tempering effects of time; the first great pain comes crushing. The shoulders are not adjusted to the burden, and they feel as if they must break. Dolly's sobs were so convulsive and racking that her father was startled and shocked. What had he done? Alas, the man never knows what he has done; he cannot understand how women die, before their time, that death of the heart which is out of the range of ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... up the creek as far as Discovery and back, panning dirt at various places with resulting colors in some cases. The trail was full of men racking to and fro with heavy loads on their backs. They moved in little trains of four or five or six men, some going out of the country, others coming in—about an equal number each way. Everything along the creek was staked, ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... went on placidly eating her hashed chicken, Trent tossed off a glass or two of claret, which he was perfectly aware, taken on his empty stomach, would immediately produce a racking headache. Since his passion was not sincere, it occurred to him that it might at least become dramatic; but he saw presently, with aggrieved surprise, that the impression made upon his mother by his violent behavior was far slighter than he had brought himself ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... emperor, he facetiously compared himself to those quacks who, themselves plagued by a perpetual cough, offer to sell an infallible remedy for one. Sir THOMAS MORE, in his "Utopia," declares that no man ought to be punished for his religion; yet he became a fierce persecutor, flogging and racking men for his own "true faith." At the moment the poet ROUSSEAU was giving versions of the Psalms, full of unction, as our Catholic neighbours express it, he was profaning the same pen with infamous epigrams; and an erotic poet of our times has ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... first love. Sir John had told her that, she remembered. "He loves her still and he pretends to care for me because I am rich," she said to herself as she lay tossing sleepless during the night, a dull pang racking her heart with a real physical pain. In the early morning she arose and looked out of the window over toward Geoffrey's house, down over the lawn and the cliff path and the leafy ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... suffered the most severe and racking pains through the night, and at about twelve o'clock, Katy went to Mr. Sneed's house, and calling up Simon, begged him to go for a doctor. But the physician's art seemed powerless to soothe her. All night long the devoted daughter, like an angel of mercy, hovered around the bed, and did all he could ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... turned away, Jane had for an instant closed her eyes in a prayer of happy thankfulness; but then a torture, a tearing and racking mortification because she had proved herself so weak before the mountain man so strong—and in contrast to Brent! (ah, God, what sacrifice would he not make for her!)—thrust its claws into her sensitive nature, and she blindly ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... them—held him tongue-tied, for how could he confirm this blunt-spoken sailor's statement, knowing that if he did so he would be condemning his dearly-loved mother to an indefinite period of heart- racking anguish and anxiety that might well end in destroying her reason if indeed it did not slay her outright? He was as strictly conscientious as most of his contemporaries, but he could not bring himself to condemn his mother to the dreadful fate he foresaw for ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... he said quietly and with the conviction in his soul that there was One listening, "help me now." He opened the matchbox, took out the match, struck it carefully and laid it among the birch bark. For one heart-racking moment it flickered unsteadily, then, catching a resinous fibre of the bark, it flared up, shot out a tiny tongue to one of the heavier bunches, caught hold, sputtered, smoked, burst into flame. With the prayer still ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... angry boatswain was yet rolling his quid within his capacious jaws, racking his brain for the strongest language wherein to give vent to his indignation, his ears were suddenly saluted by a low but clear "Hilloa!" from the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... As Dr. Dale looked up and smiled a greeting, he placed his finger on his lips. Steve Strong, Captain in the Solar Guard, gazed around the room at the backs bent over busy pencils. He did not smile, remembering how, only fifteen years before, he had gone through the same torture, racking his brains trying to adjust the measurements of a magnascope prism. He was joined by a thin handsome young man, Lieutenant Judson Saminsky, and finally, Warrant Officer McKenny. They nodded silently in greeting. It would be over soon. Strong ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... McNutt drove the sad-eyed sorrel mare over to the Wegg farm again. He had been racking his brain for a way to get more money out of the nabob, for the idea had become a veritable passion with him and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... consciousness, his first distinct sensation was that of racking, sickening, splitting headache, accompanied by a feeling of acute soreness and smarting. He also felt dazed, confused, and harassed by a vague but intense anxiety about something, he knew not what. Then he became aware that he was lying recumbent on his back, with his head propped high ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... abhorrent; horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying; offensive. nauseous, nauseating; disgusting, sickening, revolting; nasty; loathsome, loathful^; fulsome; vile &c (bad) 649; hideous &c 846. sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic; cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing; envenomed; catheretic^, pyrotic [Med.]. ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical; desolating, withering; burdensome, onerous, oppressive; cumbrous, cumbersome. Adv. painfully ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... element of her mother to be considered. Millie Stope had known very little about her, principally the self-evident fact of the latter's "brave heart." It would have needed that to remain steadfast through the racking recitals of the long, waking darks; to accompany to this desolate and lonely refuge the man who had had an apron tied to his doorknob. In the degree that the daughter had been a prey to the man's fear she would have benefited ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... conversation followed, and Dacres finally took his departure, full of thoughts about his new acquaintance, and racking his brains to devise some way of securing ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... I could do him any service, were it a bishopric, by George! he should have it. He says I was interrupted by the watchman rhapsodising verses beneath the loved one's window. I know not. I know I awoke joyfully and rapturously, in spite of a racking headache ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cries Eleanor impatiently, putting her hands to her racking head, and stamping her foot impatiently. "I would rather not hear. It is all so petty, so stupid, so mean. What have I or Carol ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... pins, "who gave up a good position as cashier in a city glove store, to keep house for her brother when his wife died. She was always telling me how grateful he was. Seemed like he couldn't do enough for her. She used to say it 'most made her uncomfortable to see that man racking his brains to find some way of showing her how he appreciated what she'd done for him. Please walk to the end of the room, Mis' Thompson, slow and graceful, till I see how that skirt hangs. Just a trifle long on the seam. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... think of that other girl? Sitting there with that strange smile upon her face, the smile that is neither mirth nor sadness, but a poignant, haunting compound of both, did she remember her and the Urge that had always been upon her, racking her like actual pain, driving her with a whip of scorpions, flaying her on and on with a far more vivid sense of suffering than the actual beatings laid on by her mother's heavy hand, the thing that found articulation ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... because I must," he said. "You have had a tiring day, and you will end it with a racking headache ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... The labor was muscle-racking. In most cases there were stairs to climb. He stood, sagging under his burden, till chests were cleared by the housewives or sluggish maids. He discovered that the iceman was considered a fair and logical butt for all the forenoon ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... It was horrible—horrible! They dragged him kicking to the door. The woman looked over her shoulder at him and her mouth gaped. I heard nothing, but I knew that she was screaming. And then, whether it was this nerve-racking vision before me, or whether, my task finished, all the overwork of the past weeks came in one crushing weight upon me, the room danced round me, the floor seemed to sink away beneath my feet, and I remembered no ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... need of its atonement. And now, upon the very edge of eternity and brink of doom, he proposes to make his own atonement, to be his own redeemer and save his own soul, by offering up to the eternal nemesis that was racking his conscience a few hours of finite suffering, instead of betaking himself to the infinite passion and agony of Calvary. This is a work; and, alas, a "dead work," as St. Paul so often denominates it. This is the method of justification ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... forgotten stores and profiteers waxed fat and prices soared, whilst the vitals of the working world were vastly underfed. The ranks of labour, depleted of its men, were filled by females uninured to toil and dangerous nerve racking environments. Relentless time brings its revenges fast; but still they worked and suffered while malnutrition sapped the life-blood of the race. In the homes of the fighting men fear reigned supreme—ever ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... thunder. Consequently Owen's head ached furiously, with one of the neuralgic headaches which since his accident he had good cause to dread; and the fact that he had an important piece of work to finish without loss of time fretted his nerves to racking-point. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... mind searched a thousand channels, but these were blind and led nowhere. Blunder, wrong? What did Grumbach mean by that? What kind of a blunder, and who was innocently wronged? No use! And while he was thus racking his mind he heard steps on the stairs. These steps were hurried. The ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... while she sobbed out the last agony of alarm. There were no tears in her eyes; racking sobs shook her slender body; every nerve was aquiver, he could see. Patiently he waited, never taking his firm, encouraging gaze from her face. She grew calmer, more rational. Then, with the utmost gentleness, he persuaded her to rise and walk about the little ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... West Side Boys' Lodging-house ticked out the seconds of Christmas eve as slowly and methodically as if six fat turkeys were not sizzling in the basement kitchen against the morrow's spread, and as if two-score boys were not racking their brains to guess what kind of pies would go with them. Out on the avenue the shopkeepers were barring doors and windows, and shouting "Merry Christmas!" to one another across the street as ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... old wall drooped more low, Whilst faster came down the sleet and snow, Sharply chilling the blood in his veins, Racking his frame with rheumatic pains; "No matter," he thought, "I'll soon lie low, Calm—quiet ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... the tramp, sitting against the haystack; and his musings were, ever and anon, disturbed by his racking cough. He felt indisposed to move. As he brooded over the past, his mind became uneasy, he was conscious of a vague desire to make confession of the evil he had done. Did he feel that the sands of his life were almost sped? And was conscience ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... particularly prized words and phrases until they were worn entirely out; and a peculiarity that conspicuously marked and marred them was the inveterate and intolerable sermon that wagged its crippled tail at the end of each and every one of them. No matter what the subject might be, a brain-racking effort was made to squirm it into some aspect or other that the moral and religious mind could contemplate with edification. The glaring insincerity of these sermons was not sufficient to compass the banishment of the fashion from the schools, and it is not sufficient to-day; it never will be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of her brother. He would help her in all things, even in the tragedy that now covered her life. Of that Teola felt sure, but the humiliation would be too great. Better die apart from her child. With another racking cough, she turned her face toward home, two hectic spots shining clear and red upon the white cheeks. Rebecca ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... an age that is past. Good health is not necessary to achievement. It is not even a positive influence for achievement. It is merely a negative blessing. With good health you may hope to reach your highest mental and spiritual development free from the harassment of soul-racking pain. But without good health men have reached the summit of Parnassus and have dragged their ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... against the masonry round the grating, and we could hear the nerve-racking sound of a file working on the iron bars; and farther away, below the window, those awful yells of human beings transformed by hate and fury ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... cracked, we escaped with nothing but a bad scare, but I can assure you it was a terrific and terrifying experience to feel that old house rocking, jolting and jumping under us, with the most terrible roar, dull, deep and nerve-racking. It calmed down after that and we went back to bed, only to get up at six o'clock to find that neighbors had suffered by having vases knocked from tables, bric-a-brac knocked around, tiles knocked out of grates and scarcely a chimney left standing. We ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... there, Barry did not know. He remembered only the falling, dizzy moment, the second or so of horrible, racking suspense, when, breathless, unable to move, he watched the twisting rebound of the machine from which he had been thrown and sought to evade it as it settled, metal crunching against metal, for the last time. After that had come agonized hours in which he knew neither wakefulness nor the quiet ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... brother at the door in a kind of fury. "Something must be done for that girl. I have had a perfectly nerve-racking time. We must get her out of that house before they drive ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... nerve-racking period of waiting for the signal to go over the top that a seasoned old sergeant noticed a young soldier fresh from home visibly affected by the nearness of the coming fight. His face was pale, his ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... side. Both were bent down, with hands on the butts of guns at their hips. Nels's piercing yell seemed to divide Monty's roar of rage. Then they ceased, and echoes clapped from the crags. The silence of those three men crouching like tigers about to leap was more menacing than the nerve-racking yells. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... had nothing for it but to try to induce the lender to let him have another fifty pounds, pending the investigation of title—another fifty, of which he was to get, in fact, eighteen pounds. Somehow, the racking off of this bitter vintage from one vessel into another did not seem to improve its quality. On the contrary, things were growing ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of forswearing yourself and racking your brains to stifle truth with falsehood,' I coldly replied. 'I have trusted to the testimony of no third person. I was in the shrubbery this evening, and I saw and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... well seasoned to care what amount of liquor he drank; Philip had what was called a weak head, and disliked muddling himself with drink because of the immediate consequence of intense feelings of irritability, and the more distant one of a racking headache next day; so both these two preserved very much the same demeanour they had held at the beginning of ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... as it always was to her. The long respite from nerve-racking misunderstandings had allowed her to see more clearly the real beauty of his faulty character, and a wave of compunction came over her as she thought how little she, with her bad qualities of jealousy, selfishness and cruelty, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... her; but Catherine, a gossip in the centre of a family, and a thick neighbourhood? One spark of hope remained. Catherine had spoken kindly, even lovingly. The situation admitted no half course. Gerard's mother thus roused must either be her best friend or worst enemy. She waited then in racking anxiety to hear more. No word came. She gave up hope. Catherine was not going to be her friend. Then she would expose her, since she had no strong and kindly feeling to balance ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... accomplish, for I was still in the dark as to its nature. I knew that intruding into the private affairs of ducal and princely houses is often a most unthankful business. I have ever found it more satisfactory and less nerve racking to undertake a mission into some foreign country than to become involved with some petty local affair of royalty. For some such affair I judged to be the dilemma of the house ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... as it may appear, that very question has been racking my brain for the last ten minutes. Now, what would ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... emitted a low groan. This was the fourth comprehensive check—grueling, close, meticulous, nerve-racking work. ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... the earth out spadeful by spadeful. Despite the numbing cold mud they knelt in, the men, stripped to shirts with rolled sleeves and open throats, streamed rivulets of sweat as they worked; for the air was close and thick and heavy, and the exertion in the cramped space was one long muscle-racking strain. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... taught Buddy trick after trick; they matched each other in feats of strength and agility. They wound up finally on opposite sides of the Briskow kitchen table, elbows planted, fingers interlocked, straining furiously in that muscle-racking, joint-cracking pastime of the lumber camps known as "twisting arms." Here again Gray was victorious, until he showed Buddy how to gain greater leverage by changing the position of his wrist and by slightly altering his grip, whereupon the boy's ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... inflexibly formal tactics of the British army. Again and again he had seen those tactics proved of no avail in the face of an invisible enemy and an almost inexpugnable country. He had learned the nerve-racking tension of being exposed to a storm of bullets that came apparently from nowhere to cut down the British lines as the hail cuts down the standing grain; he had learned the shock of seeing the level veldt, over which he was marching, burst into a line ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... It was fetched; nerve-racking blows rained on the grille; puffing servants applied it as a lever, as a battering-ram, as a club. The house rang like ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... marked dial with a movable indicator, containing in its scope every order and answer required in handling the massive hulk, either at the dock or at sea—which eliminated, to a great extent, the hoarse, nerve-racking shouts ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... as Folwell ran to join the others in their place of safety. Then from without there came a most nerve-racking and terrifying crash. It seemed as if the very mountain would be ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... finally, with fearful crash into the rocky bed at the bottom, sending a shower of fragments hurtling in every direction, oft dislodging some section of parapet, yet never reaching the depths of the cave. Add to this nerve-racking siege work the instant, spiteful flash of barbed arrow or zip and crack of bullet when hat or hand of one of the defenders was for a second exposed, and it is not difficult to fancy the wear and tear on even the stoutest heart ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... Makarooroo knew he could speedily obtain possession of his bride, but to get her removed from her tribe and carried to the coast was quite a different affair. While the perplexed negro was pondering this subject and racking his brains to discover a way of getting over the difficulty, our arrival at the village occurred. At once he jumped to the conclusion that somehow or other he should accomplish his object through our assistance; and holding this in view, he the more willingly agreed ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... never-failing companion, was by her side, and as she mused mopingly over her sins, she took from time to time copious draughts of the potent spirits, regardless of its power to do otherwise than to rob her of these racking memories of the past. In about two hours the promenaders returned and found her lying back speechless in her chair, the bottle and glass by her side; her eyes rolled wildly as she gazed vacantly on her children, but she was unable to utter ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... Medicine is a very pleasant study. But how do you think practice would be? How would you like being called up to ride ten miles in a midnight snow-storm, just when one of your raging headaches was racking you?" ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... it was excellent advice, but I did not seem able to follow it just then; the throbbing and aching of my arm and the racking pain of my sore head were altogether against it, to say nothing of the continuous groaning and moaning of the injured men round about me, and the occasional sharp ejaculations of agony extorted from the unfortunate individual who happened at the moment to be under the surgeon's ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... center of the crank-shaft is a large reversing friction clutch, which drives, through miter gear, a vertical shaft placed just in front of the post; from the latter the slewing, racking, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... beholden to the admiration of a foreigner, Monsieur de Meryionnet, French consul at Lisbon, for a decent grave and tombstone. There he lies, sleeping after life's fitful fever. No more care, no more duns, no more racking pain, no more wild midnight orgies and jovial laughter. Of the women who are weeping for him a pious friend takes care. Here, indeed, it seems as if his sorrow ended; and one hopes and fancies that the poor but noble fellow's spirit is at last pure ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... days, Washington had been suffering much from fever, attended with a racking headache, which had obliged him to travel in a covered wagon. By the time they reached the great crossings of the Youghiogeny, his illness had so increased, that Dr. Craik, his good friend and physician, declared it would be almost certain death for him to travel further; at the same ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... suffered in consequence! I used to hide myself in corners, shedding many tears, and racking my brains to find some means of pleasing the obdurate fair one. Labour in vain, a thankless task, at eight years ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... more, and he was regretting that he had been so liberal in his use of the provender, and racking his brains for a means of keeping up the conversation without risk to his companion, when about half a biscuit fell at his feet, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... satisfied my peevish expectations. When at last the sun sank behind the fort upon the hill and twilight marked the end of another wretched day, I used to walk up and down the courtyard looking reflectively at the dirty, unkempt 'zarps' who stood on guard, racking my brains to find some way, by force or fraud, by steel or gold, of regaining my freedom. Little did these Transvaal Policemen think, as they leaned on their rifles, smoking and watching the 'tame officers,' of the dark schemes of which they were the object, or of the peril in which ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... he admitted. "Nothing crooked about them, of course. You see, a stock-broker's life is a nerve-racking, rather ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sight of her torments, Adrian hung over her, racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... The racking misery which tortured the mind of Mr. Somerset was not borne with equal resignation. Conscious of his having inflicted fresh wounds on the breast of his truest friend, his spirits were so ill adapted to any conversation, that he was pleased rather than disappointed when he found the ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... had become a nerve-racking tragedy of mind and action. His desperate desire for success after his self-acknowledgment that he loved Miss Presby, and then the blows that had been rained on him and the mine, the failure of the green lead to hold out when ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton |
