"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at the speaker as if to reply, then suddenly catching sight of a strapping-looking fellow in blue overalls, a trunk on one shoulder, a carpetbag in his hand, called out: "John, dear, come here! I want ye. Here, Mike! You and Bobby get that steamer baggage out on the sidewalk, and don't be slack about it, for it goes to Hoboken, and there may be a block in the river and the ferry-boats behind time. Wait, I'll ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... closed. Archie waited a few moments, then went to the window and hauled in the slack. Presently the bag appeared over the edge of ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... their princes that they have looked pale upon those assemblies. Nor was there anything now wanting to the destruction of the throne, but that the people, not apt to see their own strength, should be put to feel it; when a prince, as stiff in disputes as the nerve of monarchy was grown slack, received that unhappy encouragement from his clergy which became his utter ruin, while trusting more to their logic than the rough philosophy of his Parliament, it came to an irreparable breach; for the house of peers, which ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... slack day. The strain of meeting Simpson will be sufficient for us. I do hope he comes in a yachting cap—we'll send him back if ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... fellows I have now," he went on as he led the way toward the men's quarters. "Not a trouble maker in the bunch, except a half breed that I'm not particularly stuck on, and that I'm going to get rid of as soon as work gets slack. But take them all together I haven't got ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... this admired work of St. Chrysostom the moral instructions are most beautiful, on prayer, especially that of the morning, meekness, compunction, careful self-examination every evening, fasting, humility, alms, &c. In Pa. 43, p. 146, he thus apostrophizes the rich: "Hear this, you all who are slack in giving alms: hear this, you who, by hoarding up your treasures, lose them yourselves: hear me you, who, by perverting the end of your riches, are no better by them than those who are rich only in a dream; nay, your condition is fair worse," &c. He says that the poor, though they seem so ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and one o'clock. Mary and Captain Shadrach, having had an early dinner, had returned to the store. Zoeth, upon their arrival, went down to the house for his own meal. Business, which had been very good indeed, was rather slack just then and Shadrach and Mary were talking together. Suddenly they heard the sound of rapid footsteps in the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to them. Let them not cool o'er the liquor, or their calls will grow slack. Keep feeding the fire while it blazes, and the blaze will ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... were those in the final stages of the disease, wandering vaguely about the street, their faces blank and their jaws slack as though they were living in a silent world of their own, cut off from contact with the rest. "One of them almost ran into me," Jack said. "I was right in front of him, and he didn't see me ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... Nine P.M. is slack tide in a morning newspaper office. The afternoon news is cleared up; the night wires have not yet begun to buzz with outer-world tidings of importance; the reporters are still afield on the evening's assignments. As the champion short-distance sleeper of his craft, which distinction ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... stronger passions are their words address'd; To pain, to fear, to terror, their appeal, To those who, weakly reasoning, strongly feel. What then our hopes?—perhaps there may by law Be method found these pests to curb and awe; Yet in this land of freedom law is slack With any being to commence attack; Then let us trust to science—there are those Who can their falsehoods and their frauds disclose, All their vile trash detect, and their low tricks expose; Perhaps their numbers may in time confound Their arts—as scorpions give themselves ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... a paper, opened it, and began searching the columns. He had not far to look. It was a slack season for the newspapers, and his little trouble, which might have received a paragraph in a busy week, was set forth fully ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... now dip their level wings, And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave. Others, afraid of tardiness, return: Now, entering the still harbour, every surge Runs with a louder murmur up their keel, And the slack cordage rattles round the mast. Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears Had Gebir risen ere the break of dawn, And o'er the plains appointed for the feast Hurried with ardent step: the swains admired What so transversely could have swept the dew; For never long one ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... to himself, said Chung-kung, and slack in his claims on the people, might do; but to be slack himself and slack with others ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... Plausible to the world, to me worth naught. Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction else Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne! My time, I told thee (and that time for thee Were better farthest off), is not yet come. When that comes, think not thou to find me slack On my part aught endeavouring, or to need Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome 400 Luggage of war there shewn me—argument Of human weakness rather than of strength. My brethren, as thou call'st them, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... making a visit to her youngest daughter. Louisa was the only one of my family whose funeral I wasn't able to attend, but 'twas a mere accident. All the rest of us were settled right about home. I thought it was very slack of 'em in Lynn not to fetch her to the old place; but when I came to hear about it, I learned that they'd recently put up a very elegant monument, and my sister Dailey was always great for show. She'd just been out to ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... gamblers, in a neighbouring street below the rooms of the Board of Trade. The lift used by members of the Board of Trade would be sent down to bring up from the open Board what was known as a "bucketful" of the smaller speculators, when business was slack. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... complained of this, and the Sheikh, to do him justice, has ordered the Sarkee to seize any Bornouese committing these misdemeanours, and execute what justice he pleases upon them. The Sarkee, now, will not be slack to obey his master's commands. Still it is not surprising the people ran away from ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear. And it's a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact. They've nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much. It's like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii—eating, drinking and physical love-making. One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can't ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... that one morning, arriving from a delayed journey, I dropped into the restaurant. It was that slack hour between the lingering breakfast and coming luncheon when the tables are partly stripped and unknown doors, opened for ventilation, reveal the distant kitchen, and a mingled flavor of cold coffee-grounds and lukewarm soups hangs heavy on the air. To this cheerlessness was added a gusty rain ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and properly laid, is preferable to a loft for keeping malt, and in this situation might be heaped to any depth without injury or danger of breaking down. Malt thus kept, if well dried before coming off the kiln, is never in danger of heating or getting slack. The common mode of keeping malt is in bins situated on upper lofts, often injured by leaks from the roof, and at all times liable to the depredations of rats, which in the other way can be effectually guarded against, and is a ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... whether their sons went or not, and he had scarcely five boys who appeared there regularly, and of them one was the butcher's son, who came rather in spite of his parents than with their consent. Attendance at church was more slack than ever; and when he lectured the defaulters, and gave them additional tasks in the week, it was resented as an injustice. To crown all, Mr. Ramsbotham had called, and had been extremely insolent about a boy whose ears had been boxed for reading Pickwick in school, under cover of ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now and then she said, 'Keep it up, Boy, keep it up, sweetheart; we'll save him!' I kept it up. Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills, that poor little chap had been tearing around in the saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack knee-pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got dreadfully afraid; but every time I tried to slow down and let her go to sleep, so I could stop, she hurried me up again; and so, sure enough, at last over ...
— A Horse's Tale • Mark Twain
... in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... help; down tumbled the nearest hands, and hauled on the tackle in vain. Destruction was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But meantime the captain, with a shrewd guess at the general nature of the danger he could not see, had roared out, "Slack the main sheet!" The ship righted, and the port came flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed hard, up to their waists in water and floating boxes. Grey barred the unlucky port, and went aft, ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Weldon, anyhow?" another of the group queried, as dispassionately as if the subject of discussion had been absent in Rhodesia. "His face is a yard long, and his lips hang down in the slack of ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... of the whistle for switches, a jamming of the whistle lever to set the canyon echoes yelling in the hope of arousing Gallagher, and Graham slammed his engine into the forward motion without pausing to close the throttle. There was a grinding of fire from the wheels, a running jangle of slack-taking down the long line of empties, and the freight train shot ahead, snatching its rear end out of harm's way just as Gallagher, dreaming that his boiler had burst and that all the fiends of the pit were screeching the news of it, came to life ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the present with a slack hand, so as to be ready to fold our tents and take to the road, if God will. We must not reckon on continuance, nor strike our roots so deep that it needs a hurricane to remove us. To those who set their gaze on Christ, no present, from which He wishes them to remove, can be so good for them ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... none of your milk-and-water chaps who'll let butter melt in their mouths, of that you may be assured; but he knows what ought to be done, and what man can do; and he makes them do it too. There's no shirking work or being slack in stays when he carries on the duty, and there's not a smarter ship in the service, nor a happier one either, though he won't allow an idler on board. The fact is, my boy, both officers and men know that no one can shirk their work, so it comes easy to all, and we have more leave and less ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of falling back as she naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow. Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up the slack cables. A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway with a jerk as the men slipped the cables ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... applied, for he drew the rope in slowly, till the slack was all gathered in, tightened it more and more, and the loop glided off the projection ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... not the kind of man from whom is expected hesitancy of speech. The girl spared him a swift glance from the out-flocking stream of passengers. His fixed gaze and slack lower jaw betrayed even more uneasiness than ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... long slender threads of spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo spittals on them that will leave a mark like froth on the knees of a horse. To the pebbly ford above the "Waulk Mill" came Bryde, riding loosely with slack rein, for he was thinking much these days. In the burn his horse halted to drink, and then rested a little from the water—his head high and his ears forward—Bryde looking to his path for the South End, for he was on some errand of grazing beasts. Then there came that fine sound, ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... meek of heart; work day by day; Tread, ever tread, the knightly way; Make lawful war; long travel dare; Tourney and joust for lady fair; To everlasting honor cling, That none the barbs of blame may fling; Be never slack in work or fight; Be ever least in self's own sight;— This is the rule for ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Panhandle was then purely a cattleman's town. It was a great shipping point—at one time the greatest in the world—and was becoming a railroad centre. I was there a good deal, and for amusement during the slack season went to work to fix up a polo ground. No one in the town had ever even seen the game played, so the work and expense all fell on myself. I was lucky to find a capital piece of ground close to the town, absolutely ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... o' curious how sometimes we find a great, big, awkward man who loves sech things? Bill had the biggest feet in the township, but I'll bet my wallet that he never trod on a violet in all his life. Bill never took no slack from enny man that wuz sober, but the children made him play with 'em, and he'd set for hours a-watchin' the yaller-hammer buildin' her ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... all suitable slaves were to be taken into armed service, especially for garrison duties. Before the end of 1863, a hundred thousand coloured men were already serving, as combatants or as labourers, on military work in about equal number. They were needed, for volunteering was getting slack, and the work of guarding and repairing railway lines was specially repellent to Northern volunteers. The coloured regiments fought well; they behaved well in every way. Atrocious threats of vengeance ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... tells us to go over and possess it. Dear brother, are you at Kadesh Barnea today, and afraid of the giants? God has given the land to us. The message of reproof comes to you with this solemn and important question, "How long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... it came to an evening in September when Daniel and Jennie had not seen each other for as many as three days, the longest period of absence in the history of their attachment. Work was slack with the trust company that day, and Daniel had seized the opportunity to leave the Equitable Building early and see the Baltimores inflict a defeat on the Buffalo nine at Union Park, in the homestretch of the pennant ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... upon the face of the earth cannot put a stop to that course, until the sun or the moon have recovered their glory. And thus it shall be now, the Lord is returned to visit the earth, and his people with his primitive lustre; he will not go back, nor slack his hand, until he has recovered what Antichrist has darkened of his. 'The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... speculation; some running for office; some starting a bank; and others lending money at two per cent. a month, and leading in the prayer-meeting. So Samp kind of hitched up his ambition and took the slack out of his habits for a few months and went to the legislature. They say that he certainly did have a good time, though, when he got there. They remember that session yet up there, and call it the year of the great flood, for the nights they were filled with music, as the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... from the work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges were, they were always ready for use; high waves and the caprices of the sea could not throw them out of working order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to present to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, the immortal creator of the harbour at Cherbourg. Against this cunningly devised line the angry surge is powerless; the law of that curve was a secret wrested from Nature ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... over, ghastly loose and slack, and the plump one caught sight of a ragged gash in ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... out of the fashion—a category including always many of the best things—and if approached in slack times, the great dealers will occasionally afford bargains, but in general the economically minded collector, who is not necessarily the poor one, must intercept his prey before it reaches the capitals. That it makes all the difference from whom and where you buy, let a recent example ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... I have said, have worked loyally and well, there have, I regret to say, been instances where absence, irregular timekeeping, and slack work have led to a marked diminution in the output of our factories. In some cases the temptations of drink account for this failure to work up to the high standard expected. It has been brought to my notice on more than one occasion that the restrictions of trade unions have undoubtedly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... speed until within range, when with that wonderful dexterity no other race has quite equalled, each pushed his bent right knee into the slack of the hair rope, seized bridle and horse's mane in the left hand, curled his left heel tightly into the horse's flank, and dropped down on the animal's right side, leaving only a hand and a foot in view from the left. Then, breaking ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... many of the British who survived to desert the hard work against Napoleon for the easier, safer, and better paid work under the Stars and Stripes; while the mere want of any enemy to fight for the command of the sea after Trafalgar had tended to make the British get slack. ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... put fire in the oven, slack the fire! O worm of black earth, O worm of bright earth, fresh water, sea water, heat of the oven, red of the oven, support the feet of the walkers, and fan away the fire! O Cold Beings, let us pass over the middle of the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... are made abroad. Beech is also an important handle wood, although not in the same class with hickory. It is not selected because of toughness and resiliency, as hickory is, and generally goes into plane, handsaw, pail, chisel, and flatiron handles. Recent statistics show that in the production of slack cooperage staves, only two woods, red gum and pine, stood above beech in quantity, while for heading, pine alone exceeded it. It is also used in turnery, for shoe lasts, butcher blocks, ladder rounds, etc. Abroad it is very extensively used ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... in both hands now, with Muskingon paying out the slack behind him; and if the hook held—the line had no gut—he felt confident of his fish. By the feel of him he was a salmon—or a black bass. John had heard of black bass and the sport they gave. A ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one curious circumstance, that all city-people must have noticed, which is often illustrated in our experience of the slack-water gentry. We shall know a certain person by his looks, familiarly, for years, but never have learned his name. About this person we shall have accumulated no little circumstantial knowledge;—thus, his face, figure, gait, his mode of dressing, of saluting, perhaps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... them? Do you go to the top, or to the bottom?"] I declared that so far was I from agreement with these calumnies, that I was of opinion that those homely and truly English qualities which had to some slight extent grown slack among the upper classes were to be met with in all their strength as much in the more intelligent portion of the now unrepresented classes, as among those familiarly styled "their betters." With regard to the question of the fitness of the artisans for the franchise, I argued ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the deck work. We would outfit our grub and water in the morning, hoist the big mainsail (which was a bigger piece of canvas than any I had ever sailed under), and beat our way out the estuary on the first of the seabreeze and the last of the ebb. Then we would slack sheets, and on the first of the flood run down the bay to the Asparagus Islands, where we would anchor miles off shore. And at last my dream would be realised: I would sleep upon the water. And next morning I would wake upon the water; and thereafter all my days and nights ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the Captain; "'cause then you had too much slack on your pins, and now you've got too much pins in your ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... business from the navigation in the slack waters of the bayous. The current of muddy water ran with great swiftness, and great swirls, as of a whirlpool, sometimes ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... you hain't seed yet, I'll jist explain the use of it to you in case you want the loan of it. If this here frigate, manned with our free and enlightened citizens, gets aground, I'll give you a ride on the slack of that 'ere rope, right up to that yard by the neck, by Gum.' Well, it rub'd all the writin' out of his face, as quick as spittin' on a slate takes a sum out, you may depend. Now, they should rig up a crane over the street ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Slack up, if you please, and let me have all the line you can, without casting off from your body. Keep fast the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... caution, Vernon had said things to render Miss Middleton more angrily determined than she had been in the scene with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for her in all of them, made her previous feelings appear slack in comparison with the energy of combat now animating her. And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she was too young, too ignorant to choose. He had wrongly used that word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting the same ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stepped in without further urging and sat down in the stern. I rowed ashore. Fortunately for the tender feelings of my cousin there wasn't a soul in sight when we landed. I fastened the boat, and then, with the oars on my shoulder and the slack of the codline in my hand, start him up ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... archipelagos of light made by groups of candles in front of great pale images. The church was comparatively empty, and most of the people present were kneeling in the chapels; for Christine had purposely come, as she always did, at the slack hour between the seventh and last of the early morning Low Masses and the High Mass ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... is!' said Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause. 'Look at the light of day. Day? the light of yesterday week, the light of six months ago, the light of six years ago. So slack ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... stream in summer, meandering aimlessly between wide banks, the river now ran a full half-mile wide, splitting the town with its yeasty race. An annual occurrence, this was a matter of small moment to the severed halves. Each would pursue the even tenor of its way till the slack of the rains permitted communication by canoe and the rebuilding of the bridge. But it had special significance now in that Andrea lived ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... in Norfolk were in a very slack state—rectors and vicars lived away from their parishes, subscribing amongst them to pay the salary of a curate to undertake the church services. As his duties were consequently manifold some parishes were without his presence on Sunday for a ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Starkad in the myth, or some of the men of the Icelandic Sagas. But he is an adventurer with something strange and not altogether safe in his disposition. His youth was like that of the lubberly younger sons in the fairy stories. "They said that he was slack." Though he does not swagger like a Berserk, nor "gab" like the Paladins of Charlemagne, he is ready on provocation to boast of what he has done. The pathetic sentiment of his farewell to Hrothgar is possibly ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... from 210 sail, with 36,000 men,' to 400 or 500 ships, and 80,000 soldiers and mariners; and yet Drake was not ready with his squadron. "The fault is not in him," said Howard, "but I pray God her Majesty do not repent her slack dealing. We must all lie together, for we shall be stirred very shortly with heave ho! I fear ere long her Majesty will be sorry she hath believed some so much ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of the brothers but lately, their father, Major Barry, who had been a staunch old royalist, having died. There were acres of tobacco, and whole fields of locust for the manufacture of metheglin, and apple orchards from which cider enough to slack the thirst of the colony was made. But the brothers were far from content with such home-made liquors for their own drinking, but imported from England and the Netherlands and Spain great stores of ale and rum and wines, and held ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... the tent! Its slack ropes all undone, Its pole all broken, and its cover rent,— Its work is done. But mine—tho' spoiled and spent Mine earthly ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... a comrade in that fashion was abhorrent even to the slack conscience of this desperado. So he grudgingly hefted the burden of the senseless figure and plodded under its weight to ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... be dead than praised," he said, That hero, like a hero dead, In this slack-sinewed age endued With more than ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... replied sadly; "but then, you know, Skinner, the good Lord must certainly hate a bootlicker! Skinner, I simply cannot afford to lose those two damned scoundrels in the Retriever. They're good men! And a good man who knows he's good will not take any slack from man or devil; so I cannot afford to lose those two. Skinner, I've got myself into an awful mess. Here I've been running by dead reckoning and now I'm on the rocks! What'll I do, Skinner? I'm licked; but, dang it all, sir, I can't admit ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... very long journey, when he has got squaws and baggage with him, a red-skin never goes at a walk, and the horses will keep on at this lope for hours. That is right. Don't sit so stiffly; you want your legs to be stiff and keeping a steady grip, but from your hips you want to be as slack as possible, just giving to the horse's action, the same way you give on board ship when vessels are rolling. That is better. Ah! here comes Pete. I took this way because I knew it was the line he would come back by—and, by gosh, he has got ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Nor was Franklin slack. Hovering with his great division in the plain below and knowing that he was beaten, he nevertheless turned one hundred and sixteen cannon that he carried with him upon Jackson's front and swept all the woods and ridges everywhere. The Union army was beaten because it had undertaken the impossible, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... discover the line; keep it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you, till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack-rope; and, therefore, a good performer shines so much ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... it, as far as the slack of the telephone wire of the receiver at my ear would permit. Annenberg had worked with amazing care and neatness on the list, even going so far as to draw at the top, in black, a death's head. The rest of it was elaborately prepared in ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... but it may not bend truly; so file a notch with a small round file in each tip half an inch from each extremity, running the groove straight across the 'back,' and slanting it across the sides away from the tips toward the middle or handle of the bow. Make a strong string of slack-twisted shoe-maker's thread, with a loop in each end, so that when the string is put on the bow by slipping the loops into the nocks, it will bend the bow so much that the middle of the string is five inches from the handle. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... beneath the weight Our own weaknesses create; Crook the knee and shut the lip, All for tamer fellowship; Load our slack, compliant clay With the ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... not better that a man should accept the first pains and mortifications of this sort, which nature is not slack in sending him, as hints that he must expect no other good than the just fruit of his own labor and self-denial? Health, bread, climate, social position, have their importance, and he will give them their due. Let him esteem Nature a perpetual counsellor, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... we embarked in a goufa, and floated down the rapidly flowing river, keeping close to the left bank and taking advantage of every eddy and corner of slack water made by projecting buildings, lest we should be swept down too far and lose control of our curious and difficult craft. The level of the water was far above the usual height and came up to the very thresholds of these riverside ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... now evidently classified as belonging high in the spectacular drama; when the horse, having finished the meal of cracked corn he had been enjoying by the roadside, with the reins thrown slack over his neck, suddenly lifted his head with an air of arriving at some instant conclusion and started ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... we are in a great fright about Plunket's motion on the 16th. The Opposition are fortunately split upon it, but our country support is very slack upon it, and if Plunket don't make a better case than he did before, we shall be in a scrape—in fact, it will come to the question of whether the Irish Government is to stand or fall, or whether the Catholic or Protestant is to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the mate asked, hearing the main-sail chafe against the runner block. "Slack it off, and take a turn or two at the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... became slack in the district, Telford undertook to do small jobs on his own account such as the hewing of grave-stones and ornamental doorheads. He prided himself especially upon his hewing, and from the specimens of his workmanship which ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... he talked to you and kept himself looking right up to the mark. His salary wasn't very big, but he had such a persuasive way that he seemed to get a dollar and a half's worth of value out of every dollar that he earned. Never crowded the fashions and never gave 'em any slack. If sashes were the thing with summer shirts, why Charlie had a sash, you bet, and when tight trousers were the nobby trick in pants, Charlie wore his double reefed. Take him fore and aft, Charlie looked all right and talked all right—always ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... humble printer's workshop, I never ceased to regard myself as in a special degree a child of the printing-press. How delightful were the hours which I and David, the journeyman aforesaid, spent together when business was slack—and it was often slack! Then it was that together we would compose the most wonderful announcements of the great enterprises to which I was to commit myself in after life. Now it was the prospectus of a "genteel academy" of which ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... [and the day was spent in] efforts to pull the cable off through the sand which has accumulated over it. By getting the cable tight on to the boat, and letting the swell pitch her about till it got slack, and then tightening again with blocks and pulleys, we managed to get out from the beach towards the ship at the rate of about twenty yards an hour. When they had got about 100 yards from shore, we ran round in the ELBA to try and ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the lariat a foot or two away. Then with a snake-like wriggle I grasped it, and there was a cry of relief from the watchers. I got a bight around Ormond's shoulders, and after some difficulty fastened it. One cannot use ordinary knots on hide. Ready hands gathered in the slack, and my rival was drawn up swiftly, while they guided him diagonally around instead of under the jutting shelf from ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... day. There is "absenteeism," which has always been affected by a reduction of hours, and which amounts to 6.6 per cent. of the working time of the mines, and there is the margin of stoppages through slack trade and other circumstances, which at present aggregates 7 per cent. of the working time of the mines. Taking these last two alone, they aggregate 13 per cent., or considerably more, as a margin, than the reduction of working time which ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... Sam; you haven't given your kite all the slack she wants," said others. So the talk ran on, while each contestant did the best to make his kite mount higher. In the meantime the wind kept increasing in violence, making each ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... line; keep it always in your eye, and learn to walk upon it; rest upon Mr. Harte, and he will poise you till you are able to go alone. By the way, there are fewer people who walk well upon that line, than upon the slack rope; and therefore a good performer shines ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a brave enough man, but the ordeal of those last five minutes especially had brought his nerve to near its breaking strain. His lips twitched and quivered, his jaw hung slack, and at Macalister's invitation he tittered hysterically. There was a stir and a movement at the back of the spectators that by now thronged the trench, and an ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... farm process, the making of cider vinegar utilizes an otherwise waste product, the culls or unmarketable varieties. It can be done on rainy days or when other work is slack. For the best results, however, as in any form of marketing, some vinegar should be made each year so that the market may be supplied regularly, and, further, to give the necessary experience which will mean ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... "Anyhow, what else is there to do? We MAY keep things together.... I've got to do my bit. And if only I could hold myself at it, I could beat those fellows. But that's where the devil of it comes in. Never have I been so desirous to work well in my life. And never have I been so slack and weak-willed and inaccurate.... Sloppy.... ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... of course, and do your best to place this most exacting, but most necessary adjunct, just behind the centre of the foot of the bridge on the E side—the distance of about a good sixteenth of an inch behind the side next to the tail piece. When fitted, it must be neither slack nor tight, but between ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... lobby wore a strangely deserted look. December is a slack month for actors and traveling men. Mrs. McChesney registered automatically, received her mail, exchanged greetings ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... gnawing him with the fierce fury of a Bredin customer gnawing a tough steak against time during the rush hour. He had long worshipped her from afar, but nothing more intimate than a 'Good morning, Miss Jeanne', had escaped him, till one day during a slack spell he came upon her in the little passage leading to the kitchen, her face hidden in her apron, her ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... present state of my practice," as he glanced at the solitary brief, "I should be the last to wish to turn away work. Let me suggest that you should go and consult my brother John, in the Poultry. I believe business is rather slack with him just now, so I think it probable that you will find him disengaged. Indeed, I dare say that I may go so far as to make an appointment for him here—let us say in an hour's time. Stop! I will consult my ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... summer time again, and as business was slack, I had ridden over to see my friend, Dr. Tom. I had spent a good part of the day there, and it was past four o'clock when I rode leisurely into Bradford. I was in a particularly joyous mood and no premonition of the impending ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the windlass, which was a new one, and thereafter, whenever a suspicious-looking party (that is to say, a digger) hove in sight, Dave would let down about forty feet of rope and then wind, with simulated exertion, until the slack was taken up and the rope lifted the bucket ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... discovered later on in the day. He was a fairly intelligent type of laborer, who obtained a more or less precarious livelihood as a docker. As a rule, he worked hard enough four or five hours a day when things were brisk, and, in slack periods when money was scarce, he spent the best part of his day in bed. He had one room in a large tenement house, where the friends found him partially dressed and reading a sporting paper. He was not disposed to be communicative at first, but the suggestion of something ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... y'r nonsense 'bout England's great navy, And take in y'r slack about oak-hearted tars; For frigates as stout, and as gallant crews have we, Or how came their "Macedon" decked with our stars? Yes, how came her "Guerriere," her "Peacock," and "Java," All sent broken-ribbed to old Davy of late? How came it? Why, split me, than Britons ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot |
