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verb
Rack  v. i.  To fly, as vapor or broken clouds.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books



... take any hold of them at all, the church had to translate its mysteries and sublimities into a very material and crude ceremonial. It brought in penalties of a substantial sort,—penance and excommunication, the rack and the stake. It constantly appealed to fear. And after all, there remained always an enormous amount of stolid and mostly silent indifference and unbelief. The priest said these things were so,—the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... out, that, What we have we prize, not to the worth, While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost, Why, then, we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us, Whilst ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... the two seamen to be thrown overboard, Selak, the most courageous, entered the cabin, took a couple of muskets from the rack, and some powder and ball from the mate's berth, and returning to his followers, bade them bring the ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke

... while there was such music in the House that made Mercy exclaim over it with wonder—it was at the smell of the supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes seized upon him worse than ever. All the time the others sat late into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces. After William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the Lord's ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... the cliff, all the embarrassment he felt was at this set of emotions that was expected to rack him and did not. He was not yet old enough to have the courage of his lack of convictions, and he feared he had failed in something a finer creature would have responded to. He rolled over on to his elbows and stared at the pale faces of a clump of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... salvation but through Christ, whom they despised on account of the ignominious death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they thundered out the terrors of the law upon that idolatrous, war-making, and slave-holding community. Why were the martyrs stretched upon the rack, gibbetted and burnt, the scorn and diversion of a Nero, whilst their tarred and burning bodies sent up a light which illuminated the Roman capital? Why were the Waldenses hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains of Piedmont, and slain with the sword of the Duke of Savoy and the proud monarch ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... beds, and breakfast were all so good that they reconciled Frances and Bettina to the payment of the extraordinary admission fee, and when we left the next morning, curiosity prompted them to pass near the garter rack in the tap-room, where garters were hanging which had been taken from maids whose great granddaughters had become great grandmothers. The garters that had belonged to Frances and Bettina, being the latest contributions, hung at the bottom of the rack, neatly dated and ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... heaven! that anything in the likeness of man should suffer these rack'd extremities, for the uttering of ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... their child, Dan, living in two tents, among a grove of trees, near the main building of the Health Home. These two tents had, of course, board floors, and there was a woman who kept them in condition ... and there was a rack for towels, and hot water was supplied by pipes from a nearby building. I think the tents were even wired ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... she was apprehensive about facing an audience because of her San Francisco experience, and she wrote Mrs. Stanton, "But to the rack I must go, though another San Francisco torture be in store for me."[273] She spoke on "The Power of the Ballot," on women's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, on the need of women to be self-supporting, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... his back! Look! as Prometheus in my picture here! Quick, or he faints! stand with the cordial near! Now—bend him to the rack! Press down the poisoned links into his flesh, And tear agape that healing ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... seers slept; Her cedar fir, hewed stones, and gold were all Polluted through their fall; And those once sacred mansions were now Mere emptiness and show. This made the angel call at reeds and thatch, Yet where the shepherds watch, And God's own lodging, though he could not lack, To be a common rack. No costly pride, no soft-clothed luxury In those thin cells could lie; Each stirring wind and storm blew through their cots, Which never harbored plots; Only content and love and humble joys Lived there ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... lest in some nice nostril the quotations might savour affected, I do let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and I have only done it to shew my integrity in the story, and save myself in those common torturers that bring all wit to the rack; whose noses are ever like swine, spoiling and rooting up the Muses' gardens; and their whole bodies like moles, as blindly working under earth, to cast any, the least, hills upon virtue. Whereas they are in Latin, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... slanders of the press, and the contumacious epithets, are trivial but very real tokens of dislike. We have the assassin's tongue instead of the assassin's dagger. But yet such things may call for as much heroism as braving a rack, and the spirit that shoots out the tongue may be as bad as the spirit that yelled, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... on the rack. Wild horses should not tear it out of my heart; boiling lead, falling on me drop by drop, should ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... reason, is willing to indulge his master's vices and to sanction his prodigalities to a certain extent, knowing that if he attempts to draw the purse-strings too closely an open rupture will be the result, and then some steward will come in who has no taste for saving, and who will let everything go to rack and ruin. He was the first of the long line of English ministers who professed to regard economy as one of the great objects of statesmanship. He established securely the principle that to make the two ends meet was one of the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... 1st, A refrigerator which is provided with movable racks, H, within cooling chambers which are arranged beneath an ice chamber, B, constructed with inclined walls, a a a, a drip pan, D, and an ice-supporting rack, c, substantially as and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... made an enemy." Asaki stood before a rack of very modern weapons. Now he made his selection, a silver tube with a stock curved to fit a man's shoulder. "Lumbrilo ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... bound volumes of The Christian Treasury, where we wrestled with tales of religious bigotry and persecution until we seemed to breathe the very atmosphere of dark and mouldy cells; and became daringly familiar with the thumb-screw and the rack, the Inquisition and other devildoms of Spain. I used to wonder pitifully why it had never occurred to the poor victims to say their prayers in bed, and thus save themselves ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... he stood up again, and glanced round the room. There was a small dressing-table opposite the bed; beside it was the large glass which had given him such a surprise. Further on a washhand-stand with a towel-rack beside it, but there was no spot on which he could stretch his bulky frame save the middle of the floor. Calmly he lay down on that, having previously pulled off all the bedclothes in a heap and selected therefrom a single blanket. Pillowing his head ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... example, William Pennoyer; how long ago would he have sunk in the tenacious ooze of oblivion, not leaving rack nor even rumor of himself behind. No portrait of him exists, and no living descendant, so far as I know, and yet his name is familiar with all of us who are familiar with the records of the college, and he always presents himself to our ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... could scarcely make an observation, or take a turn about the room, without being implored to "remember"—"not to tell"—not to let papa know this, or mamma that. I was not to let papa know how the boys were going to buy him a new inkstand, with a pen rack upon it, which was entirely to outshine all previous inkstands; nor tell mamma about the crochet bag that Emma was knitting for her. On all sides were mysterious whisperings, and showing of things wrapped in brown paper, glimpses of which, through some inadvertence, were always appearing ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... himself and his charge into a second air-car, set the destination to within a block of the address Wass had given him. Not much later he walked Vye into a small lobby with a discreet list of names posted in its rack. No occupations attached to those colored streamers Hume noted. This meant either that their owners represented luxury trades, where a name signified the profession or service, or that they were covers—perhaps both. Wass' world fringed many different circles, ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... was the cause, but yet per accidens;[56] For, when we hear one rack the name of God, Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ, We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul; Nor will we come, unless he use such means Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd. Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe

... together.' A Colonel Pickering died of it, on whom the chaplain wrote an elegy. One has heard of blank-verse that is merely 'prose cut into lengths,' but his lines suggest that they must have been on the rack to bring them to the right measure. The author feared that it was the lack of action that ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... against the sun, and flash like silver fountains in the assault of the wind. In this young wood of Taahauku all these hues and combinations were exampled and repeated by the score. The trees grew pleasantly spaced upon a hilly sward, here and there interspersed with a rack for drying copra, or a tumble-down hut for storing it. Every here and there the stroller had a glimpse of the Casco tossing in the narrow anchorage below; and beyond he had ever before him the dark amphitheatre of the Atuona mountains and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... could insist no longer: Mrs. Ellmother's reserve had beaten her—for that day at least. "Go into the hall," she said, "and see if there are any letters for me in the rack." ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... 'Near hereunto, Mr. Arthur Hill, son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000 l. per annum. Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted. They sit upon a rack-rent, and pay 5 s. or 6 s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... household is well provided for, and as far as my own inclination goes I am all for going on. But am I only to consider myself? Is it not my first duty to look at the interests of my nation? I have always been, and still am, of the opinion that, before letting the nation go to rack and ruin, it is our duty to parley. We must not let the chance for negotiations slip out of our hands. When our numbers have fallen to only four or five thousand men under arms we shall no longer have that chance, and this will undoubtedly happen if we hold out for another year, ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... into one of the oversized mail cylinders and routed through the tubes like sacks of recorded letters; in ten minutes, with a thump that knocked the breath out of all of us, we were in the switch-rack of Halsey's ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... Aunt Mary!" said Jack admiringly. "Here, Burnett, fish her out that extra cap from the cane rack; there's always one in the bottom. There—now you ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... line in it were familiar to me, I turned over various leaves till I came to another engraving; a new source of wonder—a low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... Carlyle came out of her bedroom to go to her daughter-in-law's room she met Audrey flying up the stairs with a rack of dry toast on a tray. "I remembered that you used to eat toast always for tea, granny, so I thought you might still. Oh, granny, it is so nice to see you in your pretty caps again, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... demonstration, that Captain Cook, in his persevering researches, sailed over many an extensive continent, which, though supposed to have been seen by former navigators, at the approach of his ships, sunk into the bosom of the ocean, and, "like the baseless fabric of a vision, left not a rack behind."[29] It has been urged, that the existence of a southern continent is necessary to preserve an equilibrium between the two hemispheres. But however plausible this theory may seem at first sight, experience has abundantly detected its fallacy. In consequence of Captain Cook's ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... spake his voice: but his sick heart did mighty trouble rack, As, glad of countenance, he thrust the heavy anguish back. But they fall to upon the prey, and feast that was to dight, 210 And flay the hide from off the ribs, and bare the flesh to sight. Some cut it quivering into steaks which on the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... on the rack!" commanded Mrs. Peck. "There's a drop of soup to go in first. And, Columbine, my dear, I don't think it's right of you to go losing your temper that way. Rufus is Adam's son, remember, and you can't refuse to sit ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell

... move from Group to Group along the Hitch Rack on Saturday afternoon, shaking hands with the Rustics and applying the Ointment, remarked that Ves was a young man of Rare Promise and could not be held back from the Pay-Roll for any considerable ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... always keeps me awake. You may call me when we get to Overton." With these words she bent over her bag, opened it, and drew out a small down cushion. She rose in her seat, removed her hat, and, poking it into the rack above her head, sat down. Arranging her pillow to her complete satisfaction, she rested her head against it, closed her eyes and within five minutes ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various

... another word, walked to the hat-rack in the hall and began putting on his coat. Captain Lote watched him for a moment and then put on ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the chalet while you're away?' Lady Georgina asked, when she announced her intention. 'You can't shut it up to take care of itself. Every blessed thing in the place will go to rack and ruin. Shutting up a house means spoiling it for ever. Why, I've got a cottage of my own that I let for the summer in the best part of Surrey—a pretty little place, now vacant, for which, by the way, I want a tenant, if you happen to know of one: and when it's left empty ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... even a little longer, following the sound of Burnaby's footsteps as they died away into the night; finally she walked over to the piano, and, sitting down, raised her hands as if to strike the keys. Instead, she suddenly put both her arms on the little shelf before the music-rack and buried her head in them. The curtains tip-tapped on the window-sill; the room ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... size could swallow it all." The executioner said not a word, but began taking off her cloak and all her other garments, until she was completely naked. He then led her up to the wall and made her sit on the rack of the ordinary question, two feet from the ground. There she was again asked to give the names of her accomplices, the composition of the poison and its antidote; but she made the same reply as to the doctor, only adding, "If ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... days, then strain it off, and to every gallon of liquor put three pounds and a half of sugar, then put it into the barrel, and it will of itself rise to a froth, which take off, and keep the barrel full; when the froth is all work'd off, bung it up for six weeks, then rack it off, and when the lees are clean taken out, put the wine into the same barrel; and to every gallon put half a pound of sugar, made in syrrup, and when cold mix with wine; to every five gallons, have an ounce of isinglass, dissolv'd in a little ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon

... superior to Christianity, have triumphed at Cincinnati, and trampled under foot, with impunity, the soul-stirring doctrine of "converging lines." The next steps with these "enemies of righteousness" will be the rack, the gibbet, and a second edition of the infernal inquisition! Will the friends of the "White Basis" Governor of Tennessee tamely surrender their dearest rights to these Cincinnati crusaders, without a single struggle? Will they allow the saddle ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... point at which a standard-gauge railway reaches the Adriatic, for the railway leading to Ragusa, to which the Italians so repeatedly refer as providing an outlet for Jugoslavia, is not only narrow-gauge but is in part a rack-and-pinion mountain line. The situation is best summed up by the commander of the American war-ship on which I ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... enough; but at the same time I don't see that we can do anything without somebody to help us," Jim said, with a sigh, and then he rolled over as if determined not to rack his brain with the perplexing subject ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad tak' naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... was bad enough, but the torture rack had still another turn left in its screw. After he had sat for awkward hours, as it seemed, though minutes would have measured it, there was a stir on the veranda and he became vaguely conscious of an ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... registering in the round-house, he saw a letter in the rack for him, and carried it ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman

... meat that could not be taken at first. We intended to dry it at the willows, and then we could carry it along as daily food over the wide plain we had yet to cross. Having carried the meat forward, we made a rack of willows and dried it over the fire, making up a lot of moccasins for the barefooted ones while we waited. We were over most of the rocky road, we calculated that our shoemaking would last us through. This was a very ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... with it self, and needs nothing to help it out; it is always near at hand, and sits upon our Lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware: whereas a Lye is troublesome, and sets a Man's Invention upon the rack, and one Trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false Foundation, which continually stands in need of Props to shoar it up, and proves at last more chargeable, than to have raised a substantial Building at first upon a true and solid Foundation; for ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... a man in to-day from somewhere near Ridgeway, I think. He's got a hay rack with him, and that would be just the thing to take your tent and poles. Wouldn't be very comfortable traveling for you, but it would be all right for the tent, if it's ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr. Shorter jerked himself upright again, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and the suspicions which attached to them, rendered it tolerably certain that they were the authors of the crime. But justice demanded more circumstantial information, and the Podesta decided to work upon the two men already in his clutches. On June 4, Carli was submitted to the torture. The rack elicited nothing new from him, but had the result of dislocating his arms. He was then placed upon an instrument called the 'she-goat,' a sharp wooden trestle, to which the man was bound with weights attached to his feet, and where he sat for nearly four hours. In the course of this painful exercise, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... The Major had vanished, dissolved out of mortal ken, melted (one might say) into thin air. "If one may quote the Bard, sir, in this connection"—Mr. Basket wound up his recital—"like an insubstantial pageant faded he has left not a rack behind; that is to say, unless the letter in your hands may be considered ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... passed the door of Philip's hotel. He had not yet received the expected letter from his father—the cruel letter which might recall him to Ireland. It was then the hour of delivery by our second post; he went to look at the letter-rack in the hall. Helena saw that I was anxious. She was as kind again as ever; she consented to wait with me for ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... striped jacket, a high collar, and a necktie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and white and well cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger. When he heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising his eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bringing ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather

... set at certain angles so that the toast could be left in front of the fire for a few moments until it was quite ready to be taken off and put on a plate standing conveniently on the trivet until the dish or rack of toast was complete. (Some scarce trivets are illustrated in "Chats on Old ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... What was the use of losing his temper and throwing away his place, and so, among the consequences which would necessarily follow, leaving the poor lady-teacher without a friend to stand by her ready to lay his hand on the grand-inquisitor before the windlass of his rack had taken one turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... half around, and he could see a faint impression of her view of office details. Then, she went to a book rack. For a few seconds, she glanced over the books, then ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole

... rack with a bilious attack, And your senses with toothache you're losing, And you're mopy and flat - they don't fine you for that If you're properly quaint and amusing! Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day, And took with her your trifle of money; ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... other race, or white or black, When bound as thou wert, to the rack, So seldom stooped to grieving; No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them men So noble ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... centre-table, grasped his wrist, and forced him to make several dabs and passes at the fatal newspaper, which still lay there with a bland impassivity between drop-light and book-rack. "That's how we dash off our ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... hall he kept looking all around as if he expected to see sharpshooters behind all the doors. It was a dandy house, with a nice big wide hall and it had a moose's head for a hat rack. First I guess ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... I was in my sleep I dreamed, and behold the heavens grew exceeding black; also it thundered and lightened in most fearful wise, that it put me into an agony. So I looked up in my dream, and saw the clouds rack at an unusual rate, upon which I heard a great sound of a trumpet, and saw also a man sit upon a cloud, attended with the thousands of heaven—they were all in flaming fire; also the heavens were in a burning flame. I heard then a voice saying, "Arise, ye dead, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... rigging and the hissing of the surges past our lee side, was quiet enough on deck; but below Courtenay and I could scarcely hear each other speak for the noise and clatter; bulk- heads creaking, the crockery in the pantry rattling, the weapons in the rack abaft the table clanking and jarring, and Heaven knows how many other ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... revealed. It was a big wall tent backed up against another of the same size and pattern. Half a dozen plain chairs, two rough board tables littered with books, papers and smoking tobacco, an oil stove and a cheap clothes rack on which were hanging raincoats, ponchos and a cape or two, comprised all the furniture. In a stout frame of unplaned wood, cased in their oilskins and tightly rolled, stood the colors of the famous regiment; and back of them, well ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... do when you overthrow a government, or want to, is to pass the hat. To secure the names of his fellow-conspirators, but more especially their money, the revolutionist was therefore consigned to the torture chamber, where the rack, the thumb-screw, the hot irons, the whip, and other survivals of the Inquisition were applied. When the officers had extorted what they wanted, or had made sure there was nothing to extort, the poor, white wreck of a human being ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... out into the flat, sandy wastes of existence? Oh, that I had never known what treasures the earth conceals! Once to love, and then to be forever alone! Once to believe, and then forever to doubt! Once to see the light, and then forever to be blinded! In comparison with this rack, all the torture-chambers ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... Friend has refused my three-volume novel, and I really have not the heart to try it anywhere else after such repeated rejections. At the same time Skinner & Palm write to say they cannot use my short story, 'On the Rack,' for five or six months, as they have such a quantity ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... hat-rack, and two waste-baskets filled with little things done up in newspaper, and a little table, and a paste-board box filled with hats, and two mirrors about as tall as David, and a maid's wash-stand, and a bundle of pictures tied up in newspapers, and a wooden box full of rubbers, ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... disgust from a musical comedy because "in real life" a bevy of shapely maidens in scant attire never goes tripping and singing blithely though the streets. If then we can establish that Plautus regarded his adapted dramas merely as a rack on which to hang witticisms, merely as a medium for laugh-provoking sallies and situations, we have at once Plautus as he pretended to be, and in large measure the answer to the original question: "What manner of drama ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... throes: whether the bard Display the deeds of heroes; or the fall Of vice, in lay dramatic; or expand The lyric wing; or in elegiac strains Lament the fair; or lash the stubborn age, With laughing satire; or in rural scenes With shepherds sport; or rack his hard-bound brains For the unexpected turn. Arachne so, In dusty kitchen corner, from her bowels 140 Spins the fine web, but spins with better fate, Than the poor bard: she! caitiff! spreads her snares, And with their aid enjoys luxurious life, Bloated with fat of insects, flesh'd ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... in fuel; and be quick, thou'rt best, To answer other business. Shrugg'st thou, malice? If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly What I command, I'll rack thee with old[388-98] cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar, That beasts ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering consciences of his hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the shadows of the world to come, were thus already on all hearts. So much as this. Bourdaloue, too, with his incomparable dialectic, could have accomplished. But there immediately follows a culmination ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... made possible the other hours of pouring out his heart to her, taking her into it all. He told her the story of how it happened, the long, hard story which only covered days, but seemed to extend through years. He told of those hours of the day and night on the rack of uncertainty, of trying with the force of mind and soul to banish that thing which had not claimed him then, but stood there beside him, not retreating,—waiting. He told her of that lecture hour Monday morning when he literally divided himself into two parts, ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell

... declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... a small room, dimly lighted and very disorderly. Scraps of paper were strewn around the floor. Dust had settled on the ink-rollers of the foot-press. A single case of type stood on a rack and the form of a bill-of-fare—partly "pied"—was on a marble slab which formed the top of a small table. On an upturned soap-box was a pile of unprinted menu cards. Josie noted a few cans of ink, a bottle of benzine, and a few printing tools lying ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)

... called daimiyos' rooms, fifteen feet high, handsomely ceiled in dark wood, the shoji of such fine work as to merit the name of fret-work, the fusuma artistically decorated, the mats clean and fine, and in the alcove a sword-rack of old gold lacquer. Mine is the inner room, and Ito and four travellers occupy the outer one. Though very dark, it is luxury after last night. The rest of the house is given up to the rearing of silk-worms. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... to the outer gate where our horses stood at the hitch-rack. That he was reticent in his business matters was well known among all his old foremen, including Forrest and myself. If he had a confidant among his men, Jim Flood was the man—and there were a few things he did not know. As we mounted our horses ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... singular but melancholy sweetness: "have you earned the right to ask me these questions? The clays of torture and persecution are over; and a man may live as he pleases, and talk as it suits him, without fear of the stake and the rack. Since I can defy persecution, pardon me if I do not ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... deftly, grinning with the joy of his hospitable race in "company," and pleased with the richness of the coat he was hanging carefully on the old rack in the hall. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... bewail'd her Virginity. Then we proceeded to the River, which is the South Branch of Rappahannock, about 50 Yards wide, and so rapid that the Ferry Boat is drawn over by a Chain, and therefore called the Rapidan. At night we drank prosperity to all the Colonel's Projects in a Bowl of Rack Punch, and then retired ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... the Renaissance, when the human form counted only as a rack on which was heaped crinoline and stiff brocades and chains and gems and wigs and every manner of elaborate adornment, making mountains of poor tottering human forms, ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... to land to call Indians, as there were villages there, in order to write of his arrival to the Adelantado; having come at midday, he despatched them. Twice there came to the ship six Indians, and one of them carried a crossbow with its cord, and nut and rack,[366-1] which caused him no small surprise, and he said, "May it please God that no one is dead." And because from Sancto Domingo the three ships must have been seen to pass downward, and concluding that it certainly ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... "There will always be problems like that here and there." He turned and stared almost reverently at the long control rack. "Be thankful we have The ...
— Two Plus Two Makes Crazy • Walt Sheldon

... pocket that way, I shouldn't need to stoke for a living now. But if God will give me health and work I shan't come to the workhouse yet awhile! That's where the Fowley's are shaping for. Both drinking, and the children left anyhow, and everything going to rack and ruin." ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... many-colored marbles. At the threshold your eyes fall upon a Latin sentence of welcome, sometimes, or a picture of a dog, with the legend "Beware of the Dog," and sometimes a picture of a bear or a faun with no inscription at all. Then you enter a sort of vestibule, where they used to keep the hat-rack, I suppose; next a room with a large marble basin in the midst and the pipes of a fountain; on either side are bedrooms; beyond the fountain is a reception-room, then a little garden, dining-room, and so forth and so on. The floors were ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... who had been shut in by the mysterious click and turn of the door-handle. The top was crowded with gentlemen looking only less important than the luxurious passengers inside: and behind on a vast rack was such a mountain of-baggage swaying with the stage, but corded firmly to place, and topped with bandboxes, that aunt Corinne believed their moving wagon would not have contained it all. Yet the stage swept past like a flash. All its details ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... sturdy north blows from his cheek A blast, that scours the sky, forthwith our air, Clear'd of the rack, that hung on it before, Glitters; and, With his beauties all unveil'd, The firmament looks forth serene, and smiles; Such was my cheer, when Beatrice drove With clear reply the shadows back, and truth Was manifested, as a star in heaven. And when the words ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... the confiscations of Lord Cornwallis were robberies, his imprisonments were unjust and cruel, and his executions, always upon the gibbet, were military murders. And if, to gain his point, he did not, like the Duke of Alva, (employed in a similar vocation) make use of the rack, the stake, and the faggot, yet Lord Cornwallis resorted to every other mode of punishment, a more improved civilization had left him, to suppress civil liberty. Such was the character of the commander in chief of the British ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... see two stakes of wood, the felon's shame, They see a halo round one matchless Name. To powers of earth, and hell, and torture blind, In death, for Him they love, they rapture find. They joy in agony,—our gain their loss, To die for Christ they count the world but dross: Our rack their crown, our pain their highest pleasure, And in the world's contempt they find their ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... back to the dull, chilly sitting-room, where Jack and Harry still sat at the table, while Georgy was peeping out to catch a glimpse of the new arrival. Mr. Floyd, having put his umbrella in the rack and taken off his hat and overcoat, followed me, casting a look about the room as he entered, as if he missed somebody ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... all my fortunes are at sea; Neither have I money, nor commodity To raise a present sum: therefore go forth, Try what my credit can in Venice do; That shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost, To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go, presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is; and I no question make, To have it of my trust, or for ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... Julia's every need on these occasions: the little heap of discarded apparel was whisked away, band and powder were promptly presented, the bath vanished, the clothes-rack with its tiny hangers was gone, and Julia had a moment in which to hug the weary, sleepy, hungry, fragrant little lump ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... are here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... credit it, and yet it is sooth that when I was taken at Poictiers it was all that my wife and foster-brother could do to raise the money from them for my ransom. The sulky dogs would rather have three twists of a rack, or the thumbikins for an hour, than pay out a denier for their own feudal father and liege lord. Yet there is not one of them but hath an old stocking full of gold pieces hid away in ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not yet the shadow of a plan. That, must be thought of afterwards; but even at that moment was action required. My poor heart was on the rack; I could not bear the thought that a single night should pass and she under the same roof ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... rack and thumbscrew, declaring they could not reach his soul. He knew that death would be the end; he prayed for it, and even thought to hasten it by an aggravating manner and harshness of speech toward his captors, seemingly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... rack her body. She groaned and clenched her fists until the blood stained her palms. But still she hurried on, urging herself with thoughts of her journey's end, which began to loom distant and impossible through the haze of her suffering. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... abandoning your chances. Your love-affair will end—all of that kind do. And yours will end in a bitter, irretrievable quarrel after you have ruined yourself, and because you have ruined yourself. You are already on the rack—make no doubt about it. Oh, I have seen you twitch and jump with irritation—how many times on this yacht!—for trumpery, little, unimportant things she has said and done, which you would never have noticed six months ago; or only noticed to smile ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... Lincoln's supporters took delight in showing their contempt of Douglas's elegance by affecting a Republican simplicity, often carrying their candidate through the streets on a high and unadorned hay-rack drawn by farm horses. The scenes in the towns on the occasion of the debates were perhaps never equalled at any other of the hustings of this country. No distance seemed too great for the people to go; no vehicle too slow or fatiguing. At Charleston ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... on end. 'Ivre de puissance,' says George Sand of him, but 'foncierement bon.' They used to hear him laughing as he wrote, and when he killed Porthos he did no more that day. It would have been worth while to figure as one of the crowd of friends and parasites who lived at rack and manger in his house, for the mere pleasure of seeing him descend upon them from his toil of moving mountains and sharing in that pleasing half-hour of talk which was his common refreshment. After that he would return to the attic and the deal table, ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... sentient being of a very high order of intelligence. You may be quite certain that if you abuse your gun, even when you may imagine it to be far out of earshot, comfortably cleaned and put to roost on its rack, your gun will resent it. Why are most sportsmen so silent, so distraits at breakfast? Why do they dally with a scrap of fish, and linger over the consumption of a small kidney, and drink great draughts of tea to restore their equilibrium? If you ask them, they will tell you that it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... only see risk and detriment. He planted mounts of fir-trees on the bleak and barren tops of the hills of his farm, the which everybody, and I among the rest, considered as a thrashing of the water and raising of bells. But as his rack ran his trees grew, and the plantations supplied him with stabs to make STAKE AND RICE between his fields, which soon gave them a trig and orderly appearance, such as had never before been seen in the west country; and his example ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... down from its rack and put it on. He tested it, reading the tank air-pressure, power-storage, and other data from the lighted miniature instruments visible through pinholes above his eye-level. He fastened a space rope about himself, speaking through ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... lime trees just looking over the grey roofs of the offices. On the ground lay a big black Newfoundland dog, and a couple of graceful greyhounds, one of them gnawing a bone, cunningly watched by a keen-looking raven, with his head on one side; while peeping out from the bars of the bottle-rack was the demure face of the sandy cat, on the watch ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... indwelling goodness swelled up in her like a reviving spring, and she began to be herself again, her old and lovely self. Little Peter, with his beauty and his winsome ways, melted and scattered the last lingering rack of her fog-like ambition for her son. Twenty times in a morning would she drop her work to catch up and caress her grandchild, overwhelming him with endearments; while over the return of his mother, her second Isy, now her daughter indeed, she ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... owing to the avarice of the landlords, who charged the peasantry six pounds an acre for their land, and yet made them work for fivepence per day. It was also found that some landlords had excited their tenants to rob the clergy, for the purpose of adding the value of the tithes to their rack-rents, and that the magistrates had in several instances connived at the outrages. These troubles passed over, but the same spirit of disaffection towards the government still existed in Ireland. And this, perhaps, was increased ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... can polish or supple. Much as old metres delight me, 'tis only where first they were nurtured, In their own clime, their own speech: than pamper them here I would rather Tie up my Pegasus tight to the scanty-fed rack of ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... a man that knew the world, To have been long a peasant. But the rack Will teach him other language. Hence with him! [As the Guards are carrying him away, his peruke falls off. Sure I have seen that face before. Hermogenes! 'Tis he, 'tis he, who fled away with Eubulus, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... makes some difference anatomically;— morally, none whatsoever: we use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property; we use, indeed, the man's own anxieties, instead of the rack; and his immediate peril of starvation, instead of the pistol at the head; but otherwise we differ from Front de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... for it seemed that the agent had not been able to learn anything about her trunk, and was unwilling even to prophesy concerning it. Gaites left him to question at her hands, which struck him as combining all the searching effects of a Roentgen-ray examination and the earlier procedure with the rack; and he wandered off, in a habit which he seemed to have formed, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... then called, and they proved that Mulock aided in dragging Selma to the whipping rack, and witnessed the beating; but they failed to show that he was privy to or participated in the assault on his wife. Others were examined, who saw parts of the two transactions, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... aware that there was sound. In the vast silence beyond the cabin door something had moved. She was on her feet instantly, her senses alert. Her fear had left her. Her face was pale, but her lips closed grimly as she went to the rack behind the door and took down a rifle that Ben always kept there. Then she turned the lamp low and ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... were promised her if she would disclose the names and plans of her associates. The inducements proving of no avail, torture was employed to wring from her the secret, in which so many of the best families of Colombia were interested, but even on the rack she persisted in making no disclosure. The accomplished young lady, hardly eighteen years of age, was condemned to be shot. She calmly and serenely heard her sentence, and prepared to meet her fate. She ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... witnessing our behaviour—not so could any addition be made to the awfulness of the fact that the eye of God was upon us—but witnesses to the truth, people who did what God wanted them to do, come of it what might, whether a crown or a rack, scoffs or applause; to behold whose witnessing might well rouse all that was human and divine in us to chose our part with them and their Lord.—When I came home, I had an early dinner, and then betook myself to my Saturday's resort.—I had never ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... one-time Dark Continent is one of the most prosperous regions in the world, where the home currency is at a premium instead of a discount; where the high cost of living remains a stranger and where you get little suggestion of the commercial rack and ruin that are disturbing the rest of the universe. While the war-ravaged nations and their neighbors are feeling their dubious way towards economic reconstruction, the Union of South Africa is on the wave of a striking expansion. It affords an impressive contrast to the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... exclamation, folding and elevating his wrinkled hands, but without raising his grey head from the pavement; "Oh, holy Moses! O, blessed Aaron! the dream is not dreamed for nought, and the vision cometh not in vain! I feel their irons already tear my sinews! I feel the rack pass over my body like the saws, and harrows, and axes of iron over the men of Rabbah, and of the cities of the children ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... gun—in place of round shot, and, running them forward, mounted them on the topgallant forecastle as being the most commanding position in the ship. Then we loaded the muskets and placed them in the rack on the fore side of the deck-house, which completed our preparations. And now all that remained was to keep a sharp look-out, and, while doing so, determine upon the policy to be pursued when the returning longboat should heave ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... incomplete. Time after time the company had pressed this individual to produce a puzzle of some kind, but without effect. The poor fellow tried his best to follow the examples of his friends the Tapiser, the Weaver, and the Haberdasher; but the necessary idea would not come, rack his brains as he would. All things, however, come to those who wait—and persevere—and one morning he announced, in a state of considerable excitement, that he had a poser to set before them. He brought out a square piece of silk on which were embroidered ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... with heart deprest, A judgment unsustain'd by rest;— Fainting in effort, and at strife With feelings woven into life; And with the chains of being twin'd By links so strong, though undefin'd, They curb or enervate the brain, Weigh down by languor, rack by pain, And spread a thousand subtil ties Across the tongue, and through the eyes; Till the whole frame is fancy vext, And all the powers ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... a towel-rack and a Shaker rocking- chair,' called Philip; 'guess they're going to stay ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... endeavored to change his point of view," the Prime Minister continued, "even if we had to change at the same time the outline of his particularly graceful figure. The age of thumbscrews and the rack was, after all, a very virile age. Just consider for a moment our positions—three of the greatest and most brilliant statesmen of our day—and we can do very little save wait for this young man to declare himself. We are the puppets with whom he plays. It ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... see much ladies' society on the road; at least, I don't. I'm not so easy to make acquaintance as I used to be. I suppose it was being married so long. I can't manage to help a pretty girl raise a car-window, or put her grip into the rack, the way I could once. Fact is, there don't seem to be so many pretty girls as there were, or else I'm gettin' old-sighted, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... the farther end this passage suddenly widened into a half circle, sufficiently extended to accommodate the huge butt of the mizzenmast, which was completely surrounded by an arm-rack crowded with short-swords, together with all manner of small arms. A grimly silent guard stood at either side, and I perceived the dark shadow of a third still farther beyond, while the half-dozen cabins close at hand had their doors tightly closed, ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... areas on the Mediterranean coasts from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bosporus have in essential features duplicated each other's histories, just as the low infertile shores of the Baltic from Finland to the Skager Rack have had much in common in their ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... flying weight to the ground, Claws and jaws, the stink of a lion's breath; Swimming, a white belly, a crescent of teeth, Agony, and a spirting shredded limb, And crimson blood staining the green water; And, horror of horrors, the slow grind on the rack, The breaking bones, the stretching and bursting skin, Perpetual fainting and waking to see above The down-thrust mocking faces of cruel men, With the power of mercy, who gloat upon ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... Godfrey to her astonished uncle, as he entered the house. "For heaven's sake, my beloved Frances what has thus dreadfully alarmed you?" returned the old gentleman. "Tell me I beseech you! I'm on the rack till I know what could possibly have the power of alarming you to this dreadful degree. Come my sweet girl, compose yourself and relate to me this "soul harrowing" tale; for I'm half inclined (seeing you smile) to suppose it some ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... the music-rack and placed his glass upon the keyboard. One leg was crossed over the other, and ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... it was cold, she turned and went into the house, singing a song to herself as she moved. As she went to the piano and sat down she saw upon the rack the little springtime song of Grieg's that was the first thing she had ever heard upon David's violin; she played a few bars of it to herself, and then she stopped and sat still, lost in the memory which ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... thunder-cloud is black, And the wail of the South wings forth; Will ye cringe to the hot tornado's rack, And the vampires of the North? Strike! ye can win a martyr's goal, Strike! with a ruthless hand— Strike! with the vengeance of the soul, For your bright, beleaguered land! To arms! to arms! for the South needs help, And a craven is ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... diversion. To-day he looked about him with new interest, for here were streets and stores that were to become familiar to him. They entered the town from the south and drove directly to its center, where stood the courthouse in a small square surrounded by an iron hitching-rack. Stores faced it on every side, and above the stores were the lawyers' offices. Which one belonged to the man who had charge of the place the widow wished to rent, she wondered, and Pat wondered, as she stood by, while ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger

... from the rack the light articles that evidently belonged to his victim, and threw them ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... waving his flag and his hat, and bowing to the world below, soon pierced a white cloud, and disappeared; then emerging, the balloon looked like a moon, black on one side, silver on the other; then like a dark bubble; then less and less, and now only a speck is seen; and now the fleeting rack obscures it. Never did I feel the full merit of Darwin's ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... in her eyes did not abate. 'O you men!' she cried. 'You think you give us everything with a promise. A war! What is the history of wars? Demolished homes, broken fortunes, rack, ruin and desolation. Is there gold, or honor, or ease in these? A war! It will not be a war. It will be a struggle in which men will fight barefoot and on empty stomachs for the privilege of calling themselves free. I have no sympathy with such a war. It robs ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... bleak domain, 30 Say, what tidings dost thou bring! Shouts, and the noise of battle! and again The winged wind blew loud a deadly blast; Shouts, and the noise of battle! the long main Seemed with hoarse voice to answer as he passed. The moody South went by, and silence kept; The cloudy rack oft hid his mournful mien, And frequent fell the showers, as if he wept The eternal havoc of this mortal scene. He had heard the yell, and cry, 40 And howling dance of Anarchy, Where the Rhone, with rushing flood, Murmured ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... Uncle Rob! three willing ones,—Barbara, who is ever sighing for new worlds to conquer; Betty, who already dotes upon St. Sebastian stuck full of arrows and St. Lucia carrying her eyes on a platter; Madge, who would go to the rack if only you led the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... Coils. Fig. 105. For experiments in resistance (See text-book), a set of standard resistances is necessary. There are many ways in which the resistances may be made; you can arrange them upon a long board, upon a rack, or wind the wires around spools. We generally speak of resistance coils. The Ohm is taken as the standard. If you use copper wire, you may take 9 ft. 9 in. of No. 30 insulated wire as your standard Ohm. You could, of course, take any other length of any size as your standard, but it will be ...
— How Two Boys Made Their Own Electrical Apparatus • Thomas M. (Thomas Matthew) St. John

... persecutions characteristic of the Civil War period. There is little evidence that before that time such methods were in use. A schoolmaster who was supposed to have used magic against James I had been put to the rack. There were other cases in which it is conjectured that the method may have been tried. There is, however, little if any proof ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... totally inadequate price, but Edward could get no more. In the depths of his misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... continued he, striking the table a blow which made the tapers dance, "if it hath aught to do with those—even though they be kings—whose unholy hands would snuff our altar lights, thou canst count on Master Guy to twist the rack or carry faggots." ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... The winter-storm may rack and roar; We do not fear its blast; And we'll bear with faith and fortitude The lot ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... owing to the surprise she was in, I easily seized her by the mane, and notwithstanding her resistance, led her into the stable, where I put a halter upon her head, and when I had tied her to the rack, reproaching her with her baseness, I chastised her with a whip till I was tired, and have punished her every day since in the manner which your ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with sketches of equal skill,—but these last were mostly subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the human figure in every variety of suffering,—the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were sufficiently ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a cat is killed, he who takes its life, will in the next world, be called upon to carry and pile logs of wood, as big as cocoa-nut trees, to the number of the hairs on the beast's body. Therefore cats are not killed; but, if they become too daring in their raids on the hen-coop, or the food rack, they are tied to a raft and sent floating down-stream, to perish miserably of hunger. The people of the villages, by which they pass, make haste to push the raft out again into mid-stream, should it in its passage adhere to bank or bathing hut, and on no account is the animal ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... says, sagely, "There is a good deal of human nature in Ireland." That would not so much matter if there were less of inhuman nature—as exemplified in "carding" women, "houghing" cattle—and ruthlessly evicting rack-rented tenants. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various

... coat, he was half led, half dragged down the steps by the bedral, shrunken together like one caught in a shameful deed, and with the ghastly look of him who has but just revived from the faint supervening on the agonies of the rack. Home they crept together, speechless and hopeless all three, to be thenceforth the contempt and not the envy of their fellow parishioners. For if the vulgar feeling towards the home born prophet is superciliousness, what must the sentence upon failure be in ungenerous natures, to which every ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... for me to go! I don't understand anything, and yet I long to understand. I do not even understand myself. On my way to you I knew what to say, and here all is confused. You have put me up on the rack, you have set me on edge. And then you tell me—'I am as a ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... measured out in a bowl, and broken eggshells for the settling process were standing near. The cold potatoes and corned beef were in the wooden tray, and "Regards of Rebecca" stuck on the chopping knife. The brown loaf was out, the white loaf was out, the toast rack was out, the doughnuts were out, the milk was skimmed, the butter had ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... in his own home. This note of realism in dealing with national types of character has always been a distinguishing characteristic of Irish fiction, from the days of Miss Edgeworth down to our own days, and it is not difficult to see in Ismay's Children some traces of the influence of Castle Rack-rent. I fear, however, that few people read Miss Edgeworth nowadays, though both Scott and Tourgenieff acknowledged their indebtedness to her novels, and her style is always admirable ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... proprietors of some villages along the road mentioned, "that the fine state in which we saw them was owing to their being strong, and able to resist the Government authorities when disposed, as they generally were, to oppress or rack-rent them; that the landholders owed their strength to their union, for all were bound to turn out and afford aid to their neighbour on hearing the concerted signal of distress; that this league, 'offensive ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... his operations, working the quick fire of cannel which Macauley had started into a glowing bed of hot coals. He improvised from the andirons a rack for his broiler, and set the steak to cooking. While he heated plates, sliced bread, and brought knives, forks, and napkins, he kept an experienced eye upon his broiler, and saw that it was continually ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... supported the ceilings were brilliantly banded in various colors and flowered out below their pediments into iron branches of oak leaves among which blossomed the bulbs of many electric lights. By each column stood a severely plain hat-rack. In the middle of the room were four billiard tables, around its sides numberless small marble-topped stands where beer was being served galore. Against the walls were fastened several of those magnificent mirrors which testify so loudly to the reasonable price of good ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner

... others; no otherwise than as the master of ancient days lived on the labour of his slave, or as the baron lived on the labour of his serf. If the capital of the rich man consists of land, he is able to force a tenant to improve his land for him and pay him tribute in the form of rack- rent; and at the end of the transaction has his land again, generally improved, so that he can begin again and go on for ever, he and his heirs, doing nothing, a mere burden on the community for ever, while others are working for him. If he has houses on his land he ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... haunted by a tuneful spirit that came and went unseen. She never knew that Mr. Laurence opened his study door to hear the old-fashioned airs he liked. She never saw Laurie mount guard in the hall to warn the servants away. She never suspected that the exercise books and new songs which she found in the rack were put there for her especial benefit, and when he talked to her about music at home, she only thought how kind he was to tell things that helped her so much. So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped. Perhaps it was ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... their hands, with a richly embroidered towel, all white and clean, with which to dry their hands. No valets, servants, or squires were to be found or seen. The knight, removing his shield from about his neck, hangs it upon a hook, and, taking his lance, lays it above upon a rack. Then he dismounts from his horse, as does the damsel from hers. The knight, for his part, was pleased that she did not care to wait for him to help her to dismount. Having dismounted, she runs directly to a room and brings him a short mantle of scarlet cloth which ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... alleviating circumstances in his case to make him a fit object of mercy. Or to take an instance from the higher tragedy, what else but a mere assassin is Glenalvon? Do we think of anything but of the crime which he commits, and the rack which he deserves? That is all which we really think about him. Whereas in corresponding characters in Shakspeare, so little do the actions comparatively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind in all its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... madness by that first baptism of fire and blood, and expanded the simple and grave warnings of the gospel into a lurid poetry of physical torture. Hence, while Christianity brought multiplied forms of mercy into the world, it failed for many centuries to humanize the savage forms of justice; and rack and wheel, fire and fagot were the modes by which human justice aspired to a faint imitation of what divine justice was supposed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various



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