"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life—so quiet a part that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was indeed a part of his life. As the figure lay there, its very quietness was what was most lifelike; and suddenly it struck George hard. And in that unexpected, racking grief of his son, Wilbur Minafer became more vividly George's father than he had ever ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... a long pause of nerve-racking effort as she strove to remember. "Who am I?" she cried hysterically. She sprang out of bed and ran to the mirror over the dressing table. The face that looked back at her was familiar, but she could not give it its name. A muffled scream escaped her lips, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... course, among the number, would come there in the course of the morning; so that here he could get into conversation with them, offer them a glass of wine, and, perhaps, get some information from them. The room was large and airy, and was full of customers, most of whom were servants. Andre was racking his brain for a means of getting into conversation with the proprietor, when two new-comers entered the room. These men were in full livery, while all the other servants had on morning jackets. As soon as they entered, an old man, with ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... Arthur's description, and appeared a gentle lamb rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action. He was no gentle lamb, and the part of second fiddle would never do for the high-pitched dominance of his nature. He talked only when he had to, and then his speech was like his walk to the table, filled with jerks and halts as he groped in his polyglot vocabulary ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... 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 he might listen ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... close conversation with an Attorney; and a little further distant, was a hard-featured man taking instructions from the Turnkey how to act. Here was a poor Player, who declared he would take the benefit of the Act, and afterwards take a benefit at the Theatre to reestablish himself. There a Poet racking his imagination, and roving amidst the flowers of fancy, giving a few touches by way of finish to an Ode to Liberty, with the 379 produce of which he indulged himself in a hope of obtaining the subject of his Muse. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... I turn to the last supreme eventful moment of our adventure. As I was racking my brain as to how I should best describe it, my eyes fell upon the issue of my own Journal for the morning of the 8th of November with the full and excellent account of my friend and fellow-reporter Macdona. What can I do better than transcribe his narrative—head-lines and all? I admit ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... well I might, for I felt that looking at our case from his point of view, Bausi, believing us to be slave-traders, was not angry without cause. While I was racking my brains for a reply that might be acceptable to him and would not commit us too deeply, to my astonishment Mavovo stepped forward and ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... opening the war seemed almost belittled by its tame conclusion. Years of nerve-racking experiences, the hardships, and the immutable association which towns like Ypres, Arras and Albert, and the trench-dwellings of Flanders and the Somme possessed, had indisposed the mind to receive new impressions from the last battle of the ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... years after Dickens' death in 1870, indeed, until quite recent years, with only occasional lapses, the "Ministers of the Crown" were wont to dine at Greenwich, as a fitting Gargantuan orgy to the labours of a brain-racking session. ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... there in the small hours alone—I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realize. My uncle breathed heavily, his deep inhalations and exhalations accompanied by the rain outside, and punctuated by another nerve-racking sound of distant dripping water within—for the house was repulsively damp even in dry weather, and in this storm positively swamp-like. I studied the loose, antique masonry of the walls in the fungus-light and the feeble rays which stole ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... had had a racking cough ever since I had known him, but I don't think I ever remembered his having a spasm of ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... devour them with their clothes on? If not, how would they get them off? Then, filled with morbid curiosity, they strained their ears and listened. Again—this time nearer, much nearer—came that cry, dismal, protracted, nerve-racking. Nor was that all, for they could now discern the pat-pat, pat-pat of footsteps—long, soft, loping footsteps, as of huge furry paws or naked human feet. However, they could see nothing—nothing but blackness, intensified by the feeble flickering of ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... full of vexatious delays and nerve-racking demands from his creditors, left its mark on Wiley's face; but in six weeks the mine and mill were running. Three shifts of men broke the ore at the face and sent it up the shaft to the grizzly and from there it was fed down through the enormous rock-crusher and then on through the ball-mills and ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... more dead than alive, with racking pains, shiverings and exhaustion from prolonged insomnia, he was taken ashore in a Southern city and a physician summoned, who, with a promptness characteristic of the profession, administered a preparation ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... as I know, speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements in its general civilization, more free politically than it was before. The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and spending their ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... brightness of its shining." It tried. It tried first at Bethlehem. The first spilling of blood came there. There was the shedding of blood at both ends of Jesus' career, and innocent blood each time. It tried at the Nazareth precipice, and in the spirit-racking wilderness. It tried by stones, then ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... 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. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... proper name to call thee by, expressive Of all thy horrors?—Pregnant womb of ills! Of tempers so transcendantly malign, That toads and serpents of most deadly kind Compared to thee are harmless.—Sicknesses Of every size and symptom, racking pains, And bluest plagues, are thine.—See how the fiend Profusely scatters the contagion round! Whilst deep-mouth'd slaughter, bellowing at her heels, 630 Wades deep in blood new-spilt; yet for to-morrow Shapes out new work of great uncommon daring, And inly ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to make servants better? They are getting worse every day." And the housewife (one might almost call her by Samuel Pepys's pleasing phrase, "the poor wretch") then pours out to any sympathetic ear endless recitals of aggravating, worrying, nerve-racking experiences. Instead of putting an end to such a regrettable state of affairs that would never be tolerated by any business employer, she seems content to bewail her fate and clings still ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... billet in his vital parts, for the beggar rolled over and remained motionless. There he now lies where he was shot down in the dust and dirt, and his white beard and his rotting rags seem to raise a silent and eloquent protest to high Heaven against the devilish complots which are racking Peking. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... land and water nearly ever since leaving Whitehall, but she was too much worn out by her nights of unrest, and too much battered and beaten by the tossings of her voyage, to feel anything except in a languid half-conscious way, under a racking headache; and when the curious old house where they were to rest was reached, and all the rest were eating with ravenous appetites, she could taste nothing, and being conducted by a compassionate Frenchwoman in a snow-white towering cap to a straw mattress spread on the ground, she slept the twenty-four ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... legal business required his absence from the city, and would detain him, probably, ten or fifteen days; and she parted with him, bestowing so affectionate, and apparently loving farewell, as almost to remove the bitter and heart-rending suspicions which were then racking the breast of the injured husband. But, resolved on carrying out his intent, he simulated departure; but instead of leaving the city he remained at the house of a trusty friend, deliberating upon and ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... that the fancy took possession of him, to show the letter to Tregarva? I hope not—perhaps he did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I wish to make them, face manfully a real awful question now racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able to answer the sophist fiend—for honestly, such he is—when their time comes, as come it will. At least he wanted to test at once Tregarva's knowledge and his logic. As for his 'faith,' alas! he had not so much reverence ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... will take Frank's religion and your poor mother's, and go into a nunnery, and end like her. Shall I wear the diamonds then?—they say the nuns wear their best trinkets the day they take the veil. I will put them away as you bid me; farewell, cousin: mamma is pacing the next room racking her little head to know what we have been saying. She is jealous, all women are. I sometimes think that is the only womanly quality ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... and haste, and littered papers, and nerve-racking bustle seem indispensable to the sending of a telegram; but when the bush-folk "shake hands" with Outside all is sunshine and restfulness, soft beauty and leisurely peace. With the murmuring bush about us in the clear ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... double-jacking at a "swimmer", had their backs turned. Onward—until Harry and Fairchild were within ten feet of the "high-jackers", while Anita waited, stone in hand, in the background. Came a yell, high-pitched, fiendish, racking, as Harry leaped forward. And before the two "high-jackers" could concentrate enough to use their sledge and drill as weapons, they were whirled about, battered against the hanging wall, and swirling in a daze of blows which seemed to come from everywhere ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... frazzle, And Fritzie is clipped in the comb, We're holding a big razzle-dazzle To welcome our soldier boys home. They bore themselves brave in the battle They kept themselves clean on parade, They herded the Bosches like cattle In many a nerve-racking raid. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... had brought her face into order, a sharp racking trot came down a cross-road, and Kitty Fisher ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... camouflage, and one temperamental cheese man. (It turned out afterward, however, that the janitor could make the best cheese of them all.) Developing a cheese business is a good deal like conducting a love affair—it blows hot and cold in a nerve-racking way. It is "the Public." You never can tell about the Public! Sometimes it wants small packages for a small sum, or large packages for more, but mostly, what it frankly wants is a large package for a small sum! ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... was satisfied, satisfied not to talk, glad to have his son so heavenly close. The long years of his exile were slipping away. The nerve-racking yearning of tedious days and yet more tedious, sleepless nights was partially quieted. His son, so long, merely, the pulseless image of his dreams, had become a breathing reality, and the child was the living link between its ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... it, all his tremours, all his incredulities must end here. He felt a distinct surprise at his collected coolness, his almost amused grasp of the situation. Except for the tense, guarded muscles that a month's racking, overworked strain had left conscious of their possible trickiness, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Mollett senior awoke with a racking headache. My belief is, that when men pay this penalty for drinking, they are partly absolved from other penalties. The penalties on drink are various. I mean those which affect the body, exclusive of those which affect the mind. There are great red swollen noses, very disagreeable ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... minute or two racking my brain—it seemed to me that once, some months back, I had used that convenient term ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... and bewildering and nerve-racking and delicious and myriad-adjectived soul-condition," I interrupted, "known generally as love. Ninety-nine point nine repeater per cent of the world's literature has been devoted to its analysis. It's therefore of some importance. It's even the vital principle of the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... met and suddenly there descended on Ashe confidence. He felt cool and alert, sure of himself, as in the old days he had felt when he ran races and, the nerve-racking hours of waiting past, he listened for the starter's gun. Subconsciously he was aware he had always been a little afraid of Joan, and that now he was ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not answer. The plain fact was that they were both thoroughly tired out, with that dog-tiredness which comes suddenly as a reaction after days of nerve-racking apprehension and hard physical effort. For the first two days their nervous excitement had kept them up. But now they were fagged and the tempting invitation to remain at the hovel had been too strong for Archer. Moreover, this new scheme ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... against than sinning. Every line in the boy's fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange mood of longing for a son. As an end to this nerve-racking night, there was work to do—for the remainder of it, at least for a brief moment, he had a companion ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... agency to which she finally applied, after weeks of soul-racking suspense, was one of those disturbingly human implements which many are not opposed to using on occasion, when it is the only means of solving a troublous problem of wounded feelings or jeopardized interests. Aileen, being ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, we'll get thee shorn and into minor orders, and who knows what good preferment thou mayst not win ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... contentedly to trimming up her doll with dandelions. Buz, the indolent, curled himself at her feet and was asleep inside of five minutes, but Huz looked up longingly into the tree at Jane. He seemed to be racking his doggish brain as to the best method of reaching her. He kept making little futile leaps, whining impatiently. Finally, he stood up on his hind legs, planted his fore paws against the tree trunk, and barked dolefully. Jane bent down and mischievously dropped a cherry ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... wife, Foster-mother, and Head-nurse had been racking their brains how to find out where either the Heir-to-Empire or Foster-father were imprisoned until little Bija had said, "Tell Tumbu to seek for them. If you show him Mirak's cap and say, ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... yet at all diminished, he recognized those who stood around, having been collected by the chamberlains with great promptitude, to prevent any of them being suspected of having murdered him. And as on account of the fever which was racking his bowels it was necessary to open a vein, yet no surgeon could be found, because he had dispersed them all over different districts to cure the soldiers among whom a dangerous ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... He stepped to the range finder, quickly figured the speed of the jet liner, their own speed and the angle of approach. Racking them up on the electronic tracker, he turned back ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby charco after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the morral on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... he walked home after service, he told himself that he had never known so long a day. It seemed longer than all the rest of his life. Indeed he felt that some strange and racking change had come upon him since the morning, as though he were not the same person, as though he had been away on a long journey, and saw all things with changed eyes. "I feel as though I'd died," he thought with surprise, "and was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... what Kupfer had told him the evening before. It is true that his meditations, too, were of a fairly tranquil character. He fancied that this strange girl interested him from the psychological point of view, as something of the nature of a riddle, the solution of which was worth racking his brains over. 'Ran away with an actress living as a kept mistress,' he pondered, 'put herself under the protection of that princess, with whom she seems to have lived—and no love affairs'? It's incredible!... Kupfer talked of pride! ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... morning. In addition, they were granted a week-end every three months. These women did their bit during the war—and are still doing it—as truly as did the men at the front. Their work was hard, nerve-racking, and often of a disagreeable kind; and it must be remembered that many of them had never so much as dusted off their own pianos before taking up their ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... for years, body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible to pain on the rack, that they rather allow themselves to be torn to pieces than confess. Fourteenth chapter: Upon torture and the mode of racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary confession, you may promise her her life; which promise, however, may afterwards be withdrawn. If the witch does not confess the first day, the torture to be continued the second and third days. But here the difference between continuing and repeating ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... his horses out of town, But there again! what an ungainly sight! A man lay on the road-side, weak and helpless, With trembling frame and feverish cramps. I shut mine eyes to so much racking pain, Still I could hear his groaning and his moaning. "Oh, Channa," said I to the charioteer: "Why does this happen? How deserves this man The wretchedness of his great agonies?" "How do I know?" said Channa, "for we all Are ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... 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 ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... 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
... turned 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
... griefs, vanities, triumphs into her willing and tender embrace; when her home was his nest still; and before fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a melancholy mood, when suddenly she heard the old nurse begin the conversation about Chia Yn, which unconsciously so affected her heart that she hastily returned, quite disconsolate, into her room, and lay herself down on her bed, giving herself quietly to reflection. But while she was racking and torturing her brain and at a moment when she was at a loss what decision to grasp, her ear unexpectedly caught, emanating from outside the window, a faint voice say: "Hsiao Hung, I've picked up your pocket handkerchief in here!" and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... her senses she was conscious of a racking headache, and, placing her hand to her forehead, brought it away wet and sticky. It was quite dark, and she groaned feebly. The pain was excruciating, and the motion of her body ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... of necessity? Given a righteous God, how can He allow sin to exist for ever, so that evil shall be as eternal as good, and Satan shall reign in hell as long as Christ in heaven? Worst of all puzzles, perhaps, was that of the existence of evil and of misery, and the racking doubt whether God could be good, and yet look on the evil and the misery of the world unmoved and untouched. It seemed so impossible to believe that a Creator could be either cruel enough to be indifferent to the misery, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... flowers and kissed her, and said "Good-night" to them in a low tone. But he went home racking his brains to see if something could not be ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... every branch of the British Government, and, in fact, nearly every thinking person in the British islands, had been racking his brains, or her brains, that night, over the astounding situation; and the note of the Syndicate only added to the perturbation of the Government. There was a strong feeling in official circles that the insolent little enemy must be crushed, if the whole British navy ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... 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 ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... paralyzing Bannister football by refusing to allow Freshmen to try for athletic teams, unless their demands were granted. Hicks, when his inspiration finally smote him, smashed the Votes-for-Freshmen crusade, and quelled Roddy, Futilely racking his brain for a counter-attack, having blithely told the troubled campus, "Just leave it to Hicks," he had ceased to worry, and then the inspiration had come, By The Big Brotherhood of Bannister giving ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... "At one time I felt sure that the thought of the pets he had left behind at the house would take him home soon. But since Miranda brought him word last August that everything was all right there, that hope's gone. For months and months I've been racking my brains to think up a plan. If we could only hit upon something that would turn his thoughts back to natural history again—I mean something big enough to get him really excited—we might manage it. But how?"—she shrugged her ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... he sobbed and beat his portly bosom over the grief which was racking the loyal African heart. The Duke of Alva went to the captain to ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Tom paused perplexed, racking his brains.—For who, the deuce, was it? Where had he seen, and that as he could have sworn quite recently, this same forceful countenance lit by russet-grey eyes at once dauntless and sad, deep-set, well apart, the lids ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... over us in showers from the curling manes of the roaring waves. But overhead, all this while, it was as clear as a lovely winter moon could make it, and the stars shone brightly in the deep blue sky; there was not even a thin fleecy shred of cloud racking across the moon's disk. Oh, the glories ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... mistake, changing a full chord into a dissonance so harsh and nerve-racking that Allison shuddered, then frowned. When they had finished, he turned to her, saying, kindly: "You're tired, Rose. I've been a selfish brute and let ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... he wag dying. I believe both of them would have died had not the salt 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, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... hours the 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 some one ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Verona. Victor Emmanuel knew nothing of it, nor did any of the French generals except Marshal Vaillant, but such things leak out, and two or three individuals were aware of the journey to Verona, and spent that night in racking their brains as to what it might mean. Next day at eleven o'clock General Fleury returned; the Austrian Emperor had accepted the armistice. Further secrecy was impossible, and like lightning the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... nerve-racking moment. It demanded the leadership of a strong man, and there are few gatherings in Anglo-Saxondom which cannot produce ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... particular, and his manners were brutal. There would be many witnesses able to prove this. In one small room at the end of a corridor he was particularly brutal. He made the mere unlocking of the door a nerve-racking sound, and stamped in swearing under his breath. Three women drew back into a corner, trembling. They were women of a coarse bourgeois type, their chief crime misfortune. They knew only imperfectly of what they were accused, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... course events would have taken had he but known that the mysterious jewel which had cost old Mackwayte his life, had been in his, Desmond's, possession from the very day on which he had assumed the guise and habiliments of Mr. Bellward. He was racking his brains to think what he had done with the box of cigarettes he had purchased at the Dionysus shop on the afternoon of the day he had taken the ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... They had all been racking their brains to think of a punishment that would fit Philip's crime, or at least some warning that would bring it home to him. He had been led by Viola, subdued and courteous, to tell Miss Addison that he had deceived her. He did, ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... solemnly trooped out, leaving Carmichael bewildered. Alone, his 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
... a chorus of sounds from the cataract, the river, the wind, the trees, and the birds, a mighty music of elements of the earth and of life, rising and falling rhythmically, and inspiring, but nerve-racking. Fragrance of the Jasmine seized my hand and ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. "Who first said, 'Let us fly and save our bacon;' and 'He would make three bites of a cherry;' and 'Appetite comes with eating;' and 'It is meat, drink, and ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... invention?" Gladys asked, "I know he wants some one who is—some one who can help him devise fresh tricks. This everlasting racking of the brains to think of something new is beginning to ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... I, Stephen," said Mercy. "I am often racking my brains to think what I shall say next. Half the people I meet are profoundly uninteresting to me; and half of the other half paralyze me at first sight, and I feel like such a hypocrite all the time; but, oh, what a pleasure it is to ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 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 pain, and roused herself ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the starting place of the University Boat Race, and on the left the great reservoirs and the bend of the river behind which lay Mortlake, the finish of the boat-race course. Each morning, when I rose and dressed, I looked out upon the wide and somewhat uninteresting vista, racking my brains how to further proceed with my campaign against the great intriguer who could, by his immense ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... 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 of age or ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... country by the Normans, the land in Norfolk was so light and fine, that the farmers usually plowed with two rabbits and a case knife!—Jones's Wonderful Changes, p. 86.—Weep at this ye who are now racking your inventive powers for improvements in agricultural implements. See what your forefathers could accomplish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... he faintly said when he reached the fireside again, "is right nerve-racking. It's like one of them ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... to tell me? If it is, seeing I've just made my choice and decided to return to civilization and mingle with human beings of whom you have such a poor opinion, I think we may as well go back. Mamma and I have been racking our brains for two days to find a place for the china, and ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... marked for sure and early death, laboring at literary work every day with the passion and intensity that come to few men. Think of Emily, the eldest, with fierce pride refusing help to climb the steep stairway of the parsonage home when her strength was almost spent and her racking cough struck cold on the hearts of her sisters. And think of Charlotte in her terrible grief turning to fiction as the only resource from unbearable woe and loneliness. It is one of the great tragedies of literature, but out of it came the flowering ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... soliloquized to himself, between the pangs of a racking headache brought on by his outburst of temper, "time sometimes brings its revenges, and, if it does, you may ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of fluency in the language might trouble him in his weakness. Yet as she heard the poor man's cry, "Lieber Heiland, hilf mir" (Dear Saviour, help me), her prayers, too, rose for him to the compassionate Saviour. Now it is a little boy with a bad back, terrible sores, and a racking cough, who would let no one else touch him. "Every night," she says, "I used to pray with Otto after they were all in bed, and he used to put his poor little arm round my neck as I knelt beside him; but last night (the night before ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... these answers, M. Patrigent was racking his brain to imagine what could have occurred between M. Bertomy and his son, to cause this transformation ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... and Olive stood under the shelter of the porch, the children vainly hoping that it might clear up before nine o'clock—the hour the train left—and Olive racking her brain for something that would soothe their feelings. "We might ask mammy to let us go into the kitchen and make candy," she said. "The weather is too damp and sticky for molasses candy, but butter-scotch will harden if we put it in the dairy." Even this did not seem to be very ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... head and pretended to be racking his memory; for it would have been quite easy to say that the party had left on Saturday, on their way to Bologna. That was the answer the gentleman expected, and the innkeeper generally found that it served best to tell people what ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... share his opinion. "No doubt, no doubt," said he, "but one must have a natural disposition to remain a child. For my part, unhappily, I'm consumed by a desire to learn and know. It's deplorable, as I'm well aware, but I pass my days racking my brain over books.... I shall never know very much, that's certain; and perhaps that's the reason why I'm ever striving to learn a little more. You must at all events grant that work, like idleness, is a means of passing ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... thing on this particular evening was gone through with in deadly silence, which was nerve racking, particularly to Polly. Not for worlds would she have confessed what it meant to her, but ever since her Freshman year, she had wanted to be captain. She had condemned the wish as foolish, but she had continued ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... note of Lewiston's would be protested, and then—the burning pain of failure gripped him in its racking clutches once more, though he strove to fight it off. He would have to get well quickly, so as to begin to hustle for a small clerkship somewhere, to get bread for Lois and the babies. Men of his age who were successful were sought for, but men of his age who were not ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... passed. Nothing but the fitful beating of hearts came to the ears of the fugitives—ears that strained to the stealthy approach of the red foe—ears that throbbed prayerfully for the tramp of the troopers' horses. But only silence ensued, a horrible silence, more nerve-racking than the clash of swift, ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... To think, merely to think, was to suffer excruciating agony; yet, never before was thought so intrusive—it haunted her in every spot, in all discourse or company: sleep was no shelter—she never slept but her racking dreams told her—"she had ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... was impossible to see anything in the oratory, because of the dense cloud of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled; but such shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as came from beneath that black canopy I hope I may never hear again. I waited a little, until this wild outburst had somewhat quieted, and then—placing my mouth close to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I tried ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... 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 ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... acceptance of the butler's suggestion without a thought as to its possible consequences. He was racking his brain in a frenzy of uncertainty as to how he should frame his words when he heard quite clearly a woman's footsteps on the parquet flooring, and caught Evelyn Forbes's voice saying to Tomlinson: "How fortunate! Mr. Theydon is the very person I wished to speak to, but I simply dared not ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... It ain't any sorter use, Mr. Ramy. I don't never mean to marry. I get tired so easily—I'd be afraid of the work. And I have such awful headaches." She paused, racking her ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... everywhere, but little peace in the heart of the mother to whose lips was raised once more the self-same cup that she had drained so long ago. Peace everywhere but for Phyllis climbing the stairs to her own room and flinging herself upon her bed in a racking passion of tears. God help the women in the days of war! Peace from the dome of heaven to the heart of the earth, but a gnawing unrest for Judith, who walked very slowly down the gravelled walk and to the stiles, and sat looking over the quiet fields. Only in her eyes was the light ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he decided that any subject ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... housekeeper, to order what we have to eat. Oh, how I hate inventing dinners! and how I admire the enviable slowness of mind and laziness of body which have saved Eunice from undertaking the worries of housekeeping in her turn! She can go and work in her garden, while I am racking my invention to discover variety in dishes without overstepping the limits of economy. I suppose I may confess it privately to myself—how sorry I am not to have ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... remained in my own bed until I heard her heavy breathing, denoting that she slept, before I dared to leave my own room to go to my sisters. The desire of racking me off, as dear charming Mrs. Benson used to call it, might have seized her, and my absence ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... returned to wait for the clerk's reappearance. This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and solitude of the great saloon became a nerve-racking impossibility. When it went past endurance, she rose and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... to experience one of her cyclonic shifts. Tears came raining down her face, her sobbing cleft with great racking gulps. Then she dropped to her knees beside her daughter, and, before Lilly could prevent, reached up to drag down her face against ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... A generous though nerve-racking crash of thunder changed the current of conversation. It drifted from the weather immediately, however, to a one-sided discussion of the escaped ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... girl's life has she a greater right to work out her own salvation in fear and trembling than during the period known among girls as "making up her mind." If she is the right kind of a girl, honest and delicate minded, it is nerve-racking to be talked about, and sacrilege to be talked to. Then the bloom is on the grape, which a rude touch ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... This racking fuss on every hand, It gives me great vexation; And, for the first time, here I stand ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... suddenly released, the two girls locked their arms around each other in a half-hysterical outburst of relief. Margaret's meaningless words and Dorothy's incoherent praises of her lover and Crane mingled with their racking sobs as each ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby |
