"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the representation of other "gaits" of the horse than that of the rapid gallop—such as canter, trot, amble, rack, and walk—I have no doubt that instantaneous photography can (and in practice does) furnish the painter with perfectly correct and at the same time useful and satisfactory poses of the horse's limbs. These, though of longer duration than the poses ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... preserved the outward features of the old State religion, such as the calendar, the ritual, and the terminology or vocabulary, and handed these down to a time when they could be of service to a Latin Christian church.[960] Had the old forms been allowed to go utterly to rack and ruin, as they had been already doing for the last two centuries, the Roman State would have been as such without religion, or the worship of the Caesars would have become disastrously powerful and prominent, or maybe the State would have adopted the religion of Isis or Mithras or some ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... horrors shook my shivering soul, Rack'd wish convulsive pangs in dust I roll; And hate, in madness of extreme despair, To view the sun, or breathe the vital air. But when, superior to the rage of woe, I stood restored and tears had ceased to flow, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... evening at Vauxhall, on which occasion Dobbin, George Osborne, and Joseph Sedley escorted Amelia and Rebecca, and the Indian civilian got hopelessly tipsy on a bowl of rack punch. The next morning, which Rebecca thought was to dawn upon her fortune, found Sedley groaning in agonies, soothing the fever of his previous night's potation with small beer—for soda water was not invented yet. George Osborne, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and feathers, as a mode of punishment, I am inclined to think is rather of modern invention; and I am doubtful whether they will be more efficient than whipping, cutting off ears, the rack, the halter, and the stake. Superstition and intolerance have long ago called in all these to their aid, in suppressing reformation in religion; but they were unable to accomplish the end designed; and if I am not greatly ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... stroke the piston was free to move; but in its downward stroke it was connected with a ratchet, and the partial vacuum formed after the explosion beneath the piston, together with its own weight in falling, operated through a rack, and caused rotation of the flywheel. This engine (which, in an improved form, uses only about 20 cubic feet of gas) is still largely employed, some 1,600 having been constructed. The great objection ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... of lounging place, for which it was eminently adapted, since the two open doors caused a constant draught of comparatively cool air through the apartment. There were a few good pictures on the walls, as well as a gun-rack, well fitted with sporting guns and rifles; and a hatstand which, in addition to its legitimate use, formed a convenient support for sundry riding-whips and pairs of spurs. Two passages, leading to right and left out of this hall, gave access, as Jack subsequently discovered, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... be. In India, in addition to its inherent rottenness, it has the merit of being two-thirds sham; looking pretty on paper only. Every one knows every one else far too well for business purposes. How on earth can you rack and harry and post a man for his losings, when you are fond of his wife, and live in the same Station with him? He says, "On the Monday following," "I can't settle just yet." You say, "All right, old man," and think yourself lucky if you pull off nine hundred out of a two-thousand-rupee ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... spun half-way around, and toppled sidewise against a rack of drying garments, which fell with a crash to ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Bodega. Des Esseintes strayed into a large room sustained by iron pillars and lined, on each side of its walls, with tall barrels placed on their ends upon gantries, hooped with iron, their paunches with wooden loopholes imitating a rack of pipes and from whose notches hung tulip-shaped glasses, upside down. The lower sides were bored and hafted with stone cocks. These hogsheads painted with a royal coat of arms displayed the names of their ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... about ten of them as they got into the train, but when they had deposited various objects on the rack, such as rifles, haversacks, and kit-bags like partially deflated airships, the number resolved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... walls of the keep or descended into those strange little subterranean chambers, now half-choked with earth and rubbish, which tradition declared were the dungeons in which prisoners in the old days had been put to the rack, seared with red-hot irons, or submitted ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... 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 gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... finds one's self behaving in bad dreams. When I got home, I climbed in at the kitchen window. I was covered with blood from my nose and lip, but I was too sick to do anything about it. I found a shawl and an overcoat on the hat-rack, lay down on the parlour sofa, and in spite of ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... firm upon his feet once more, took a step forward, the German commander turned and ran toward a rack of rifles. Alexis did not take time to reverse the weapon he still held by the point. Raising it high above his head, he carefully gauged the distance, and let fly. The sword went hurtling through the air, turning once in its flight. Alexis' aim was true, and ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... David and the Missioner sat smoking their pipes, waiting for Tavish. Father Roland was puzzled and yet he was assured. He was puzzled because Tavish's snow shoes hung on their wooden peg in one of the cross logs and his rifle was in its rack ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... then the first thing I knows he shows up at the house last Monday night in the tonneau of one of these big seven-seater road destroyers, all fitted out complete with spare shoes, hat box, and a double-decker trunk strapped on the rack behind. ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... young creatures! How little do you know the effect of rack punch! What is the rack in the punch, at night, to the rack in the head of a morning? To this truth I can vouch as a man; there is no headache in the world like that caused by Vauxhall punch. Through the lapse of twenty years, I can remember the consequence of two glasses! two wine-glasses! ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... nothing but heads of chapters, and I think you tend the same way. Please take the trouble to make the two lines I have scored into a paragraph, so that poor devils who are not quite so well up in the subject as yourself may not have to rack their brains for an hour to supply all the links of your ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... restored tone is upward, the natural has the capacity of a sharp; if downward, the capacity of a flat. A tone is said to resolve when it is followed by a tone to which it naturally tends." How long would novices in the science of music rack their brains before they would comprehend what the teacher meant by a tone tending somewhere "naturally," or by the tendency of a restored tone being destroyed by the "capacity of a flat"? The same writer, speaking of the scale of G flat, says it is a "remarkable feature of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... said Mr. Bloomfield, with the voice of one on the rack. "I regard you with the most sacred affection; and I thank God I am an Englishman—and all that. But not—not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the desert! My wilds do not hold him; Pale thirst doth not rack, Nor the sand-storm enfold him. The death-gale pass'd by And his breath failed to smother, Yet ne'er shall he wake To the voice of his mother Alas! for the white man! o'er deserts a ranger, No more shall we welcome the ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... had dodged below like a frightened rabbit and sought shelter in the shaft alley. He had sufficient presence of mind, as he dashed through the engine room, to snatch a large monkey wrench off the tool rack on the wall, and, kneeling just inside the alley entrance he turned at bay and threatened the invaders with this weapon. Thereupon Hicks and Flaherty pelted him with lumps of coal, but the sole result of this assault was to force Scraggs further back into the shaft ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... shall suffer defeat, rout, and extermination; and Roman power shall cease to terrify. All its might must decay. But "everyone that is of the truth" shall attach himself to me with a love which will brave rack and stake. All your power cannot give a grain of new life. I can and will infuse my own divine life, my own divine self, into men. And this new life is invincible, immortal, all-conquering. I have infused myself into a few fishermen, and they will infuse me into a ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... described it? Nine feet six by seven wide by seven high At the for'ard end a bunk overtopped by two ports looking out upon the main deck. At the after end a settee over which is my book-case. A chest of drawers, a shelf, a mirror, a framed photograph, a bottle-rack, and a shaving-strop adorn the starboard bulkhead. A door, placed midway in the opposite side, is hung with many clothes. A curtain screens my slumbers, and a ventilator in the ceiling chills my toes when turned to the wind. Ceiling and walls are painted dead white, ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... black eyes, and a twisted mouth. Then he saw that he was not alone in the hall-way. Three men and two women, all poorly clad and obviously working people, were seated in meek silence on a bench beyond the hat-rack. They glanced up at him for an instant, then resumed their patient study of the linoleum pattern on the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to my old home? It was beautiful once, Russ, before it was let run to rack and ruin. A thousand acres. An old stone house. Great mossy oaks. A lake and river. There are bear, deer, panther, wild boars in the breaks. You can hunt. And ride! I've horses, Russ, such horses! They could run these scrubby broncos off their legs. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... noble work under every aspect. Dear 'Luria'! Do you remember how you told me of 'Luria' last year, in one of your early letters? Little I thought that ever, ever, I should feel so, while 'Luria' went to be printed! A long trail of thoughts, like the rack in the sky, follows his going. Can it be the same 'Luria,' I think, that 'golden-hearted Luria,' whom you talked of to me, when you complained of keeping 'wild company,' in the old dear letter? ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... move you nothing? No?" he said, with the slightest taint of bitterness. "Well, well, I have found, Esther, the worst reality is never unendurable when it comes out from behind the clouds through which we at first see it darkly—never—not even the rack. I suppose it will be so with death. And by that philosophy the slavery to which we are going must afterwhile become sweet. It pleases me even now to think what a favored man our master is. The fortune ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... rack; cirrus, cat's-tail, mare's-tail; cumulus, stratus, nimbus; cirro-cumulus, cirro-stratus, cumulo-stratus; storm scud, wane cloud; tarnish, blemish; eclipse, obscurity. Associated Words: nephology, meteorology, nubiferous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... comfortable one such as you invariably find with peasants and old-established colonists of most other countries. They cared not for comfort. Their beds, a mass of rags, were shared by masters and hens and dogs. Everything was in an abandoned state, everything had fallen to rack and ruin. All looked as if they were tired of life, too indolent to move. They seldom saluted when you met them on the trail, nor when you entered their houses; if they did, they rapidly touched their dilapidated hats as if afraid to spoil them. Never ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... torture was a new feature of the witchcraft 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
... dictator will deal out a heavy punishment to all who have revolted against his rule, and in all parts of the country people are fleeing from his wrath, leaving their houses and plantations to go to rack and ruin. ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, November 4, 1897, No. 52 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the cigar-stand at one of their hotels, one afternoon, a week before the arrival in Dubuque, to look at a rack of picture postcards. One of the chorus-men came over to buy some cigarettes. She felt him look at her, and she felt herself flush a little. And then he came a step closer to look at the postcards for himself, and sighed and said he wished he had somebody to send postcards to. He supposed she ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... other side, begging to be let in, remained unacknowledged, and the enormous padlocks and bolts having been thoroughly fastened, Seoul was severed from the outer world till the following morning. Adjoining the gate stood the gatekeeper's house, and in front of the door of this, a rack with a few rusty and obsolete spears standing in a row, was left to take care of the town and its inhabitants, while the guardians, having finished the work of the day, retreated to the warm room inside to resume the game or gambling ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... make you comprehend the anguish of my feelings. To be disjointed and torn piecemeal by the rack was a torment inexpressibly inferior to this. Nothing excites my wonder but that I did not expire before the cart had moved ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... go home with you." Putney caught his hat from the rack, and plunged into a shabby overcoat ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... passed into the sitting-room. My father was seated at the open window, but to see him dismayed me. He rose with an uneasy look as I went toward him. He was so wasted that his large features stood out gaunt and prominent. His clothes hung about him in folds, and his vast, bony frame was like a rack from which they seemed ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... became thoughtful, and absently put the note in a little rack over the mantelpiece. Then, recollecting that a prying servant or landlady might misinterpret it, he transferred it to his pocket. After breakfast, having satisfied himself before the mirror that his dress ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... with more delicacy, that is, in a more summary fashion. In truth, such executions are a departure from the approved pontifical method of killing,—which is not by fusillades and in open day, but in silence and night, by the help of the rack and ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... minutes about something, he did not know what, and took his leave. In the intensity of his effort to be resentfully dignified he stumbled over the hall hat-rack. He ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... stronghold, and that none of their band had been captured in the conflict: for they would rather hear of the death of their comrades than that they had been taken prisoners; because, were the latter the case, the tortures of the rack or the exhortations of the priest might elicit confessions hostile to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... cannot fix upon the lack: Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly. We see the things we do not yearn to see Around us: and what see we glancing back? Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack, Hopes that were never ours yet seemed to be, For which we steered on life's salt stormy sea Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack. If thus to look behind is all in vain, And all in vain to look to left or right, Why face we not our future once again, Launching with hardier hearts across the ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... gone and our bacon reduced to the last shred. We had come to expect rain every day of our lives, and were feeling a little the effects of our scanty diet of bread and bacon—hill-climbing was coming to be laborious. However, the way led downward most of the time, and we were able to rack along at a very good pace even ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... You deserve a horrid Limerick, and I shall make one myself. Wait a moment, while I rack my brains. Oh, now ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... rich infusion, Have a barrel, not a huge one, But clean and pure from spot or taint, Pure as any female saint— That within its tight-hoop'd gyre Has kept Jamaica's liquid fire; Or luscious Oriental rack, Or the strong glory of Cognac, Whose perfume far outscents the Civet, And all but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... tell. Time and thirst are two things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!—What is that great bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.—For you to drink,—said the torturer to the little woman.—She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Daisy were hitched to the big lumber wagon. Father and Hobson took the wagon box off and put the wide hay-rack on. ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... wish to provide some account from another pen of my stewardship, for which said stewardship I was falsely called 'the most rack-renting agent in Ireland.' ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... held the yeast, with warm not hot water to finish the mixing. Divide into loaves, put in greased pans, grease lightly over the top, and set to rise, in gentle heat. When risen bake with steady quick heat. Take from pans hot, and cool between folds of clean cloth, spread upon a rack, or else turn the loaves edgewise upon a clean board, and cover ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... me in? I hope you don't suppose that a person of my 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 you do not believe me, you have my ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... absorbed with his own exultation to mark the look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed had he been upon the rack. 'There,' he continued, after a short silence, 'you have your message and can retire—unless you ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... husban' hit am. Her secon' man he got er mighty kinky, woolly head an' he mighty meek, so she got a little white lamb a-settin' on he grabe; an' de nex husban' he didn't have nothin' much fo' to disgueese him f'om de res' 'cep'in' he so slow an' she might nigh rack her brain off, twell she happen to think 'bout him bein' a Hardshell Baptis' an' so powerful slow, so she jest got a little tarrapim an' sot it on him. Hit sho' am a pretty sight jes' to go in dat buryin' groun' an' look at 'em all, side by side; an' now she got Brudder ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... fresh air or the sunshine; no girl should remain undeveloped physically through lack of exercise when she could, through exercise, make herself strong. Even to abuse her feet, the important centre of many important nerves, by tight shoes, is wrong; so is it to rack her spine and upset or throw out of position all the delicate and wonderfully fashioned organs of the abdominal cavity by the wearing of high French heels. Undoubtedly, however, American motherhood and girlhood represent something more and more intelligent; indeed, in physical culture women are beginning ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... very great. The supply-ships on which it had depended fled before the action of the 20th, and the result of course made it impossible for them to return. The sultan's light cavalry harassed their communications by land. On the 25th, the general commanding wrote that his "mind was on the rack without a moment's rest since the departure of the fleet, considering the character of M. de Suffren, and the infinite superiority on the part of the French now that we are left to ourselves." From this anxiety he was relieved ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... sure I could do it," she whispered, studying with eager eyes the open book on the music rack. "I—I'm going to try, anyhow!" ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... President's Cabinet, feeling that. Mr. Arthur would have in this distinguished son of New Jersey, a devout, evangelical, Christian adviser. In October I paid a visit, to Mr. Garfield's home in Mentor, Ohio. On the hat-rack in the hall was his hat, where he had left it, when the previous March he left for his inauguration in Washington. I left that bereaved household with a feeling that a full explanation of this event must be adjourned to the next state of ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... his present-day followers rack their miserable brains over this comforting passage in an effort to save Christ from the fancied insult of being called a curse. They say: "This quotation from Moses does not apply to Christ. Paul is taking liberties with Moses by generalizing the statements in Deuteronomy 21:23. Moses has ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... to look as if he were deciding between the rack and the boiling oil. Brubitsch fidgeted slightly, but ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the rack and the persecuting bands of Louis XIV. tame or subdue the spirit of our fathers. Neither Alva nor Richelieu were able to compass the triumph of tyranny over the innate sentiment of Freedom and Independence in our forefathers. ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... another engineer. The conversation, in which we were immediately engulfed, was so vivacious that we had small chance to examine the surroundings as we would have liked to. But save for the typewriter on the desk and a few books in a rack, there was nothing to suggest literature. "Plutarch's Lives," we noticed—a favourite of Mac's since boyhood; Frank Harris's "The Bomb" (which, however, the Chief insisted belonged to him), E.S. Martin's "Windfalls of Observation," and some engineering works. We envied Mac ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... to my soul. And my nerves, on the rack for these three days, with the culmination of the last six hours seemed suddenly to snap ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Brer B'ar, him er de short tail an' sharp tush—de ve'y one I'm a-huntin' fer! An' dar's Brer Coon! I sho is in big luck. Dar's gwineter be a big frolic at Miss Meadows', an' her an' de gals want Brer B'ar fer ter show um de roas'n'-y'ar shuffle; an' dey put Brer Coon down fer de jig dey calls rack-back-Davy. ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris
... three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at last ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... him, his "thinkers," if only he knew it, are human and have a mind to be pleased. "Very intellectual," may be the verdict with which they leave the church, but people cannot always be on the intellectual rack, and both the Sabbath and the Sanctuary were designed for rest for weary brains. We have known a very learned man to admit, as he came away from hearing an exceedingly thoughtful discourse, that, to him, the preacher's address to the children had ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... for the executioner's axe, who for three years have been stretched upon the rack of your aversion? So I make sure that he has gone before me—so I have the sweet revenge of sending him to Tartarus, what care I how soon I follow ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... sate in counsel,— At length the Mayor broke silence: For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain,— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain, O for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what could hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little though ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... left as bad behind them," Yaspard said quickly. "Men who cheat in trade, who scamp work, evade taxes, rack-rent the poor, are no better than ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... fester'd sore, Then justice and religion they forswore, Their maiden oaths debauch'd into a whore. Thus men are raised by factions, and decried; And rogue and saint distinguish'd by their side. They rack even Scripture to confess their cause, And plead a call to preach in spite of laws. But that's no news to the poor injured page; It has been used as ill in every age, And is constrain'd with patience all to take: 160 For what defence can Greek and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... wife Hildreth, and 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
... walked with us 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 to return to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... 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 ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... which we have we prize not to the worth While we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... and cruelty of Urban presented a more inevitable danger; and they soon discovered the features of the tyrant, who could walk in his garden and recite his breviary, while he heard from an adjacent chamber six cardinals groaning on the rack. His inflexible zeal, which loudly censured their luxury and vice, would have attached them to the stations and duties of their parishes at Rome; and had he not fatally delayed a new promotion, the French cardinals would have been reduced to a helpless minority in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... there was a rattling noise which Roy interpreted, for he knew that the men in the guard-room had seized the pikes from the rack, and that a bristling hedge of steel was being formed in ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Instinct born of habit impelled him to slam down the roll-top cover of his desk before he rushed from the room and down the hall. He snatched his soft hat from a rack as he reached with his other hand for the heavy ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... oars were in the rack in the boathouse, and soon the pair were out on the water. Although but a boy, Jack took to the water naturally and handled the oars as skillfully as ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... night, was suddenly transformed by the light of my lamp into a warm and cheerful refuge from the darkness of the lower floor. The purring of the cat, comfortably settled on the telephone-stand, was as cheering as the singing of a kettle on a stove. On the rack near me my garden hat and an old Paisley shawl ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tomb. Ravenna lies low to west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to east. There is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack of summer clouds seem more attainable and real. What sunsets and sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid afterglows in August, when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of sullen vapour ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... murmured her Father. Already he had crossed the threshold into the hall and was rummaging through an over-loaded hat rack for his fur coat. "Why, yes," he called back, "I quite forgot to ask. Just what kind of a Christmas is it, Flame, that you want to make?" With unprecedented accuracy he turned at the moment to force his wife's arms into the sleeves of her own ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... pendant rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs: They are black vesper's pageants. Eros. Ay, my lord. Ant. That which is now a horse, even with a thought, The rack dislimns; and makes it indistinct, As water is in water. Eros. It does, my lord. Ant. My good knave, Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body: here I am Antony; Yet cannot hold ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... curls, but now shaggy tufts, matted and uneven, altogether a shockingly repulsive physiognomy, and yet an "honest Injin" in every respect and one who would always look on the happy side of life, but for twinges of neuralgia—"monda" he calls it—which rack his head and face with pain. I saw only the peaceful side of Mickie's nature, and therefore this chronicle will be unsensational as well as imperfect. There is a tradition that the Palm Island blacks are of a milder, less bellicose disposition, than those of the mainland opposite. Many years ago ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... giving all our friends an indigestion from a midnight meal, seems to me a very poor investment. Yet if we once begin to give the party, we must have everything that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we live? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to devise new forms of expense and extravagance; and when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel that one is paying a great deal of money for a great deal of nonsense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because our dear friends are in half the cases, not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... with age. 'You can't. It's the one solitary thing I've got to say, as I've said it to myself morn, noon, and night these scores of years. You can't begin again; it's all a delusion and a snare. You say we're alone. So we are. The world's a dream, a stage, a mirage, a rack, call it what you will—but YOU don't change, YOU'RE no illusion. There's no crying off for YOU no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You've got this—this trouble, this affliction—my dear, dear fellow what shall I say to tell ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Delmas in the scrawny Rue Huygens, with its soupe aux legumes at twenty centimes the bowl, its cotelette de veau at fifty the plate. A queer oasis, this, with old Delmas's dog suffering from the St. Vitus and quivering against the tables as you eat; with its marked napkins in a rack, like the shaving cups in a rural barber shop, one napkin a week to each regular patron. Avaunt, ye gauds of Americanized Paris. Here are poor and starving artists come to dine aristocratically on seventy-five ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... Then rack not lovers with disdain, Lest Love on you revenge their pain: You are not free because you're fair: The Boy did not his Mother spare. Beauty 's but an offensive dart: It is no armour ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and hath a mortgage on the whole, and is therefore always ready to feed his vices and extravagancies while there is any thing left. So that if the war continues some years longer, a landed man will be little better than a farmer at a rack rent, to the army, and to the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... the memory of her momentary weakness. "Polly points to the right key with a little stick, and Puttel sits on the stool and pats each key as it 's touched, and it makes a tune. It 's so funny to see her, and Nick perches on the rack and sings as if ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... large-faced clock that kept faultless time, and announced the fact hourly in a mellow, but convincing, voice. Just below the window and over the desk, was a pipe-rack with pipes to fit every mood and fancy of a lonely man. There were the short stumpy ones, with the small bowls for the brief whiff when one did not choose to keep company with himself for long, but was willing to be sociable for a moment. There were the comfortable, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... shrugged his shoulders as he left the room, and returned in three minutes to say that there was no name at all resembling Talboys in the letter rack. There was Brown, and Sanderson, and ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... remained half suspended, and feeling as if all the bones of my limbs were getting pulled out of their sockets. The weight of the body naturally tending to settle down would, I felt, every moment increase the suffering of this terrible torture, which was really a primitive form of the rack. ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... the long living-room after the brazen afternoon sun outside, a livable, lovable room. Stephen Lorimer had an open book on the music rack and he was thumping some ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... it falls, Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd, Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide; But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword[61] The unnerved father falls. But, as we often see, against some storm, A silence in the heavens, the rack[62] stand still, The bold wind speechless, and the orb below As hush as death; anon the dreadful thunder Doth rend the region; So, after Pyrrhus' pause, A roused vengeance sets him new a work; And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne, With less remorse ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... a fancy rack on which three sharp razors were displayed, and a large bandanna handkerchief, in which there were several pockets of the size to hold a razor, the three dull razors being loaded in this. After testing the edge ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... from a rack by the door and prepared to depart for the evening. At the door he stopped and glared back. So fierce was his manner that Louise was frightened and ran upstairs to her own room. The daughters began to speak of their own affairs. "Pay attention ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... Cordova was ordered to Sirmium and there detained. Constantius was not ashamed to send to the rack the old man who had been a confessor in his grandfather's days, more than fifty years before. He was brought at last to communicate with the Arianizers, but even in his last illness refused to condemn Athanasius. After this there was but one power in the ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Langen about this time, was shown. In this engine a free piston was used in a vertical cylinder, the former being thrown up by the force of the explosion. The only work done on the up-stroke was that to overcome the weight of the piston and piston rod, and the latter being made in the form of a rack, engaged with a toothed wheel on the axle as the piston descended, causing the fly-wheel ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... of the ship. This room was about ten feet long, extending from the middle of the ship to the side, and about six feet wide. A telescope was the first thing which attracted his attention. It lay in a rack near the doorway. He took it down, but it fell apart at once, being completely corroded. In the middle of the room there was a compass, which hung from the ceiling. But the iron pivot had rusted, and the plate had fallen down. Some more guns and ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... on us, and your uncle's yard 'll go to rack and ruin; and there was two screws out o' one o' the shutter hinges as I were going to ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... borne to be, really, such a beast as that? Even if the choice had lain, innocently, between her own torture and the Kiddy's, could she have endured to see the little tender thing stretched out, in her place, on the rack? ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... of boats, theatre junks and concert junks and plain junks, and Josiah wuz dretful took with this floatin' city, and sez to once that he should build a house boat as soon as he got home—he and Ury. He said that he could use the old hay-rack to start it—that and the old ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... England so often from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, and tore her in two in the sixteenth, but the determined resistance of an adolescent nation to the tyranny of Rome? What lay behind the religious wars of Europe, behind the fires of Smithfield, the rack of Elizabeth, and the blood of St. Bartholomew's Day but this intolerant and intolerable religion which would come to no terms even with the most reasonable of its adversaries? It is impossible, of course, altogether to apportion ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... as the old woman was gone. "Is the old wretch going to send the whole market here to try to find out what we talk about? What a prying, malicious set they are! Did anyone ever hear before of crumbed cutlets and 'assortments' being bought at five o'clock in the afternoon? But then they'd rack themselves with indigestion rather than not find out! Upon my word, though, if La Saget sends anyone else here, you'll see the reception she'll get. I would bundle her out of the shop, even if she were ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... flew toward the hall—then flew back again, leaving the door closed, and standing still and breathless upon the hearth-rug, in the full light of the fire. Voices were heard in the hall, and the rattle of umbrellas in the rack. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... called for his mail and received none, stepped out of the post-office and ran his eye along the row of horses at the hitching-rack. At the end of the row was an extremely starved-looking animal; and he was being stoutly defended by his owner, Al Todd, against the aspersions of the ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... a good mahogany table in the middle of the cabin. Behind him were a bunk, two chairs and a rack of small arms, containing half a dozen guns, four brace of pistols, and several swords. He had been reading a book, evidently one of the score or more which stood in a case on the right. Jeremy gasped, for he had never seen so many books in all his life. As ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... 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. More cruel, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... was virtually condemning the pastors to death. Brousson was not a pastor. Would he like to return to France at the daily risk of the rack and the gibbet? The Protestant ministers in exile defended themselves. Benoit, then residing in Germany, replied in a "History and Apology for the Retreat of the Pastors." Another, who did not give his name, treated Brousson's censure as that of a fanatic, who meddled with matters beyond his ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... The March rack hurries and hectors, The March dust heaps and blows; But the primrose flouts the daffodil, And here's the patient violet still; And the year's first crocus brought me luck, So hey for ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... 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, ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... hands whether they judged them guilty, and if so it should be found, the penalty should be death. When this had been read out, some desired it might be added to the sentence, that Phocion should be tortured also, and that the rack should be produced with the executioners. But Agnonides perceiving even Clitus to dislike this, and himself thinking it horrid and barbarous, said, "When we catch that slave, Callimedon, men of Athens, we will ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Captain closed the door behind him, shutting out the pound and swash of the sea; took from a rack over his bunk a roll of charts, spread one on a table and with his head in his hands studied it carefully. The door opened and the Chief Engineer again stood beside him. The Captain raised ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in this town there is much people who will defend their houses, and it will cost many of your men their lives, or ye have all at your will; whereby peradventure ye shall not keep your purpose to Calais, the which should redound to your rack. Sir, save your people, for ye shall have need of them or this month pass; for I think verily your adversary king Philip will meet with you to fight, and ye shall find many straight passages and rencounters; wherefore your men, an ye had more, shall stand you in good stead: and, sir, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... what thou toldest me.' Quoth he, 'What I told thee was a trick of mine against thee and the prince. I am he who made this horse under us, and I have long regretted its loss; for the prince made himself master of it. But now I have gotten possession of it and of thee too, and I will rack his heart, even as he hath racked mine; nor shall he ever have the horse again. So take comfort and be of good cheer, for I can be of more service to thee than he.' When she heard this, she buffeted her face and cried out, saying, 'Ah, woe is me! I have neither gotten my beloved nor ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the prisoner of his word;—rather like the donkeys known as married men: rather more honourable than most of them. He had to be present at the ball at the Schloss and behold his loathed Henrietta, suffer torture of chains to the rack, by reason of his having promised the bitter coquette he would be there. So hellish did the misery seem to him, that he was relieved by the prospect of lying a whole day long in loneliness with the sunshine of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seas! on ocean wave Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave; When death, careering on the gale, Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail, And frighted waves rush wildly back Before the broadside's reeling rack, Each dying wanderer of the sea Shall look at once to heaven and thee, And smile to see thy splendors fly In triumph o'er ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... he answered: "thank you for persuading Miss Moore to stay over for another week." Mrs. Tremont smiled, she could smile if she were on the rack; but she assured herself that she was done with poverty-stricken beauties till Grace and Maud were married, at least. For years she had been planning a match between Grace and ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... manner of tortures were freely applied to force confessions. In Scotland "the boot" was used, being an iron case in which the legs are locked up to the knees, and an iron wedge then driven in until sometimes the bones were crushed and the marrow spouted out. Pin sticking, drowning, starving, the rack, were too common to need details. Sometimes the prisoner was hung up by the thumbs, and whipped by one person, while another held lighted candles to the feet and other parts of the body. At Arras, while the prisoners were being torn on the rack, the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey behind ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... what we have we prize not to the worth while we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why, then we rack the value.—Shakespeare. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... detail of it. The clearing of the table, the shaking of the crumpled tablecloth, the setting of the breakfast table, the hot glare of electric light in the cluttered and odorous kitchen, the scraping of congealed plates, the spreading of her damp tea towel on the rack by the sink, the selection of ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris |
