"Slack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... number would be sufficient to last, at this rate, one per second for 5,600 years! This, however, is not probable; but Mr. Sorby's remarks has completely removed all doubt as to its physical possibility from the Darwinian theory; "and they prompt us," says Slack, "to a wonderful conception of the powers residing in minute quantities ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... grounded Driscoll got on board and picked up a pole. As there was not another, Thirlwell paddled in the stern while they pushed the craft through the slack. It was hard work and he noted how slowly the pines rolled past. By and by they reached an angry-white rush of current between an island and the bank, and as they could scarcely make progress Scott suggested putting down the poles and ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... diamond sparkle. Let the lamb, the dove, and the life-loving eel writhe and die; it shall not disturb me, while I enjoy the viands. The five senses are my deities; to them I pay worship and adoration, and never yet have I been slack in the ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... writing materials, and put a pen into the slack hand, with a block of letter-paper ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... wheels revolve with speed, Yet faster still we urge our steed, And scarcely slack the reins to feed Or ease its breath, The journey seems but short indeed, ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... slack—falling off, as you say. Catering is not what it used to be. You see, 30 or 40 years ago, people's homes were grand and big; big dining rooms, built for parties and banquets. But for the big affairs with 500 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... him as soon as she entered, and her table was next to the one at which he sat with three others, who watched him while he talked, and said little. He was a fair youth, with a bland, rather vacant face, and a weak, slack mouth. Miss Gregory knew such faces among footmen and hairdressers, creatures fitted by their deficiencies to serve their betters. He had evidently been drinking a good deal; the table before him was sloppy and foul, and there was the glaze of intoxication ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... of those faces which begin well and end badly. He had a fine forehead, lofty and broad, a well-cut, gently-curving-nose, a slack, thick-lipped mouth, always a little open, a heavy, animal jaw, and the chin of an eagle. His fine, black hair was thin on the temples. His moustache was thin and straggled. His black eyes were as ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... an ordinary sea. The water rises fifty feet with the spring tides, and twenty-five with neap tides. Here we are in slack water. I thought ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... enemies to God and the covenanted work of reformation, and punished as such, according to our power and the degree of their offence.... Let not any think that (our God assisting us) we will be so slack-handed in time coming to put matters in execution as heretofore we have been, seeing we are bound faithfully and valiantly to maintain our covenants and the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... out for an inch in depth, and afterward refilled. Mortar protected in the same way, or even unprotected, is often used for the purpose, but it is not equal to the paint and sand. Mortar a few days old (to allow refractory particles of lime to slack), mixed with blacksmith's cinders and molasses, is much used for this purpose, and becomes very ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... therefrom reliable, seasoned fighters who could keep their heads in the most embarrassing of official positions, and at times when older and wiser men, distracted with the annoyances of life, had either abandoned everything or, grown slack and indifferent, had surrendered to the bribe-takers and the rascals. In short, no ex-pupil of Alexander Petrovitch ever wavered from the right road, but, familiar with life and with men, armed with the weapons of prudence, exerted a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... again warming to her subject. "I don't believe in imported labour. If you have men by the week, they must lodge. And the lodger is as the ten plagues of Egypt in a village. If a man comes by the day, he is tired and slack. His heart is not in his work. He does as little as he can. Moreover, in either case, the wife and children suffer. He's certain to take them home short money. He's pretty safe, being tired in the one case, or, in the other, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... barely dipping his oars. It was slack tide now and the pea-pod just held her own. Down on the breeze floated a distant, melancholy note, the voice of the whistling buoy south of Roaring Bull Ledge, two miles from Isle au Haut. Was it ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... only to take in the slack line of the sheet, and no hard pulling was required. The boat was now headed to the westward, which was the opposite course from that which she had been sailing when he headed her to ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... is, the lustre of whose eye Can blot away the sad remembrance Of all these things: Oh my Evadne, spare That tender body, let it not take cold, The vapours of the night will not fall here. To bed my Love; Hymen will punish us For being slack performers of his rites. Cam'st thou ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... reply; "but before we do that I'd like to drop down to the ground for a bit. I can see several slack guys that will be all the better for being tightened a little. Like every other new machine, this needs constant attention to bring things ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... employers and believers in the survival of the fittest doctrine. But it will scarcely appeal to the numerous unskilled workers eliminated, or the still more numerous workers whose employment is thus lessened at every slack season. Mr. Edmond Kelly shows how the principle acts—"Where there is a minimum wage of $4 a day the workman can no longer choose to do only $3 worth of work and be paid accordingly, but he must earn $4 or else cease from work, at least in that particular trade, locality, or establishment."[254] ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... the Opposition of the Feathers; wherein, tho' it was expected he would have curst the Engine it self and all the Feathers to the Devil, on the contrary, he lays equal blame on the Prince, who guided the Chariot with so unsteddy a hand, now as much too slack, as then too hard, turning them this way and that so hastily, that the Feathers could not move in their proper order; and this at last put the Fire in the Center quite out, and so the Engine over-set at once. This Impartiality has done great Justice to the Feathers, and set things in a clearer ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... we did the same old squad-drill every day, at the same time, on the same old square, until at last we all began to be unbearably "fed up." The sections became slack at drill because they were over-drilled and sickened by the awful monotony of ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... he put his fut on the deck when we brought the Ludovico into Shields from Nikolaeff, ses he, 'Honna, look at them slack funnel stays; Honna, look at that spare propeller shaft, not painted; Honna, don't keep pigs on the saddle-back bunker-hatch—'tis insanitary.' Honna this, that, and the other all in one breath. And we'd had the blessed stern torn out of her, runnin' foul o' the breakwater, to say nothin' ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... rapid progress that she soon lost all sense of disadvantage, and conducted herself behind the counter very much as if she were back in her old store in Polotzk. It was far more cozy than Polotzk—at least, so it seemed to me; for behind the store was the kitchen, where, in the intervals of slack trade, she did her cooking and washing. Arlington Street customers were used to waiting while the storekeeper salted the soup or rescued a loaf ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a great mistake to suppose the two qualities are incompatible; and the supposition that they are so, has done much mischief; the error arises not from the extent, but from the narrowness of our capacity, To aspire is our privilege, and a privilege which we are by no means slack to use, without considering that the operations of infinitude are even more incomprehensible in their minuteness than in their magnitude, and that, therefore, to be always looking from the minute towards the vast, is only a proof of the finite nature of our present capacity. The loftiest intellect ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... advanced outposts had their head-quarters. The flash revealed to me every point of the situation. I saw at once where I was, and how I got there: that the tide had turned while I was swimming, and with a much briefer interval of slack-water than I had been led to suppose,—that I had been swept a good way down-stream, and was far beyond all possibility of regaining the point I had left. Could I, however, retain my strength to swim one or two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... tortures—the Khwajah and the Zikris are found, as well as the "Biadhiah," who are despised as heretics by both Suni and Shia Mussulmans, and who fully reciprocate the hatred. Unlike other true Mussulmans, these Biadhiahs indulge in intoxicants and are very slack in ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... That men should be slack, When their bosoms lack An object of passion, To look such a lass on, Her patience distressing, The bestial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... I say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence I feel myself reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, "it is so easy to fall into a slack way with life. There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits—and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive needs, to work ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... take in the significance of it. She could think of nothing but a frightening sensation all over her body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived. She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone. Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... turn about the horn!" he shouted. "Hang to the end yo'se'f!" He sent the line jerking back, whistling as it streaked across the girl's shoulders. She clutched for it, with plenty of slack, snubbed it about the saddle horn, clung to the end, made a bight of it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... I had breakfasted and read (with indescribable sinkings) the whole of yesterday's work before the sun had risen. Then I sat and thought, and sat and better thought. It was not good enough, nor good; it was as slack as journalism, but not so inspired; it was excellent stuff misused, and the defects stood gross on it like humps upon a camel. But could I, in my present disposition, do much more with it? in my present ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... moment it stops to rest it throws down as much of the load as it can. When it gets moving, regularly under way, it has to pick it up again. But the longer it stops the more it throws down; and the slower it moves the less it picks up again. Inside the tub it is always slack water, so whatever falls there stays there. That's why the tub has filled up so quick. Nearly a foot and a half in three weeks! Why, Ted, a raise of a foot and a half along the outer slope of this cove, and we could dike in ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his pony and waited until Benson came up. The man moved with a slack heaviness and his face was worn and tense. He was tired with the journey, for excess had weakened him, and now the lust for drink which he had stubbornly fought against had ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... self-defense. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and the danger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg. This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost a breast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sir, if you'd like summat to eat, as they're a goin' to have a morsel; we are getting into slack ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... a slack day before them on the morrow, there being a temporary lull in the form-work which occurred about once a week, when there was no composition of any kind to be done. The Sixth did four compositions a week, two Greek and two Latin, and except for these did not bother themselves very much about overnight ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... 18-19. gubernatorem ... passus est. 'Quid times? Caesarem vehis!' was Caesar's famous exhortation to the pilot. (Florus.) 21-22. Cum ... hostia: if the victim even tugged at the rope when being led to sacrifice, it was considered unfortunate, and hence a long slack rope was used. Cf. Juv. xii. 5Sed procul extensum petulans (butting) quatit hostia funem. 24. According to Frontinus his words were 'Teneo te, ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... mushroom in shape, come to within a few feet of the surface of the water. Through these passages, the tide, especially the ebb, rushes with great velocity—six or seven knots at least—and vessels when leaving the lagoon, generally waited till slack water, or the first of the flood, when with the usual strong south-east trades, they could stem the current and avoid the dangerous "mushrooms." But no shipmaster would ever attempt either of these passages, except in the morning, ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... this, and, d—- me, just to make sure of it, the first good opportunity that offers, I'll—ay, I'll just introduce them all over again!—Let the people ship their hand-spikes, Mr. Leach, and heave in the slack of the chain.—Ay, ay! I'll take an opportunity when all hands are on deck, and introduce them, ship-shape, one by one, as your greenhorns go through a lubber's-hole, or we shall have no friendship during ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... quietly as possible, the moment you hear a splash. I will leave this bag here, so as to know exactly where you have gone in and—as the rope is plenty long enough—you keep hold of it here, at sixty yards from the dummy; and I will fasten the slack end to the stone so that, when I go in, I have only to hold the rope in my hand, to be able to join you. I will take this heavy coping stone in my hand; will crawl along on this shelving bank, till I arrive at the dummy; and will then throw ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... wheeling days Until the cord goes slack, Until the very heartstring frays, Until the stiffening back Can ply no more; keep then the door, And, thankful in the sun, Watch you the same unending ...
— The Village Wife's Lament • Maurice Hewlett
... hold my train while you hunt up a lost kid, there's something in you that don't work right! Why didn't you take care of him while you had him? Now you've got just four minutes by the watch; either hustle around and hunt, or drop off the train and hunt—what's that? Now don't you give me any slack, you black-muzzled tarrier, or I'll have the fear of God thrown into you too quick. Get out of here now! ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and in the middle we had a length of mooring chain that would stick to the bottom. We kept two small boats, to which this was attached, a quarter of a mile apart and pulled on parallel lines, and at last felt a drag; then we pulled together, gathering in the slack, and when we met, the schooner, under charge of Gleason, came up ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... of a few yards long, made of fine black silk, with a small mesh, are used in some parts of the country for taking kingfishers. These nets are stretched across a small watercourse or the arch of a bridge in such a manner that, a little "slack" being allowed, the bird is taken to a certainty in attempting to pass. So fatal is this net when skilfully set, that I know one man who adds several pounds to his income in the course of a year by ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... a sudden the lines slackened, and all hands frantically hauled in slack, as the devil-fish turned and dashed toward the boat. He came up almost under the craft, one great wing actually lifting one side of the heavy launch well out of the water and giving everybody ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... Weary said with brisk decision. "Take Dunk down to the ranch till the sheriff gets here—if it's straight goods about Dunk sending for him. If he didn't, we can take Dunk in to-morrow, ourselves." He turned and fixed a cold, commanding eye upon the slack-jawed herders. "Come along, you two, and get these ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... was the end of their conversation, for Brendon frowned in silence and Giuseppe began to slack the engines as they reached the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... was a spice of fear in it all: was that Pa coming back? No, a carpenter or scene-shifter, perhaps, or else the Martellos, brother and sister, going to practise slack-wire, head and hand balancing. Their father, old Martello, a famous name, lived in London, it appeared, alone with his Bambinis, mere babes still. His other children and his apprentices had all run away, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... objects that are 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, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... shall pass vague and dreary days, until the seed of life again quickens within me, and till I know again that I have conceived another creature of the mind. Dreary days, because the mind, relieved of its sweet toil, flaps loose and slack like a drooping sail. I am weary, too, not with a pleasant physical weariness, but with the weariness of one who has spent a part of life too swiftly. For the joy of such work as mine is so great that there seems nothing like it in ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... 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 ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... to carry out their good intentions fully—or Bacon or Bungay, if the author, wearied in well-doing. The work is least ill done in the Comedies, and grows worse and worse as the Editor, or Bacon, or Bungay becomes intolerably slack. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... snarling jaws. Then it settled—clean and true about the tawny neck it settled, and Tarzan, with a quick twist of his rope-hand, drew the noose taut, bracing himself for the shock when Sheeta should have taken up the slack. ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... currants in the window as you come in—I have an idea for something artistic in the way of patterns there; but, as you love me, do not offer to buy any. We grocers only put the currants out for show, and so that we may run our fingers through them luxuriously when business is slack. I have a good line in shortbreads, madam, if I can find the box, but no currants this evening, I ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... troubles in a momentary exhilaration, that burns only to chill and to destroy! Evil angels are always active and indefatigable, and there must be good angels enlisted to face them; and here is employment for the slack hand of grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier in the field. They have lived only to work,—and in place of one ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... 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? Now?" The Maestro sat down beside Kirk The slack length of it flew suddenly aboard "Phil—Phil!" ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... fractures of the leg. When employed in the form of an immovable case, they are open to certain objections—for example, if applied immediately after the accident they are apt to become too tight if swelling occurs; and if applied while swelling is still present, they become slack when this subsides, so that ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... this discourse cool your charity; lest, seeing the souls enjoy so much comfort in Purgatory, your compassion for them grow slack, and so continue not equal to their desert. Remember, then, that notwithstanding all these comforts here rehearsed, the poor creatures cease not to be grievously tormented; and consequently have extreme need of all your favorable assistance and pious endeavors. When Christ Jesus was in ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... now the Moors, Arabians, Ethiops black, Of the left wing that held the utmost marge, Spread forth their troops, and purposed at the back And side their heedless foes to assail and charge: Slingers and archers were not slow nor slack To shoot and cast, when with his battle large Rinaldo came, whose fury, haste and ire, Seemed earthquake, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Neewak sent greeting and invitation to his igloo. Moosu went, but I sat alone, with the song of the still in my ears, and the air thick with the shaman's tobacco; for trade was slack that night, and no one dropped in but Angeit, a young hunter that had faith in me. Later, Moosu came back, his speech thick with chuckling and his ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... bustling, capable, the crinkled grey hair pushed back above those bright eyes of hers with a prideful hand, entering upon the administration of her new realm. Oh, it had not been easy for one of her spirit to be a poor little widow, living out on the Edge, with nobody but slack Doss Provine to do for her, hardly dishes enough to set the table, often not much to put in them, eking out a scanty living by weaving baskets of white-oak splits. When Judith rode up to the cabin on the Edge that evening of late March, it was the hardest time ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... chanced to be very dark. Rain fell in torrents, and wind in fitful gusts swept among the tombs, chilling the prisoners to the very bone. It is probable that the guards would, for their own comfort, have kept a slack look-out, had not their own lives depended a good deal on their fidelity. As it was, the vigil was not so strict as it might have been; and they found it impossible to see the whole of that long narrow ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... take his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. He would go for a few days, he said, thus keeping the door ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... fair of a very miscellaneous description, and totally destitute of the features that have earned for the wool market the title of "Character" Fair. There are blood colts running chiefly to stomach, splints and bog spavins; ponies with shaggy manes, trim barrels, and clean legs; and slack-jointed cart-horses nearly asleep—for "ginger" is an institution which does not seem to have come so far north as Inverness. Business is lively here, the chronic "dourness" of a market being discounted ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... squire, dye see, in plain English, and thats my native tongue, that if-so-be he is thinking of putting any Johnny Raw over my head, why, I shall resign. I began forrard, Mistress Prettybones, and worked my way aft, like a man. I was six months aboard a Garnsey lugger, hauling in the slack of the lee-sheet and coiling up rigging. From that I went a few trips in a fore-and-after, in the same trade, which, after all, was but a blind kind of sailing in the dark, where a man larns but little, excepting how to steer by the stars. Well, then, dye see, I larnt how a topmast should be ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... credulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neither excessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing of the Carlyle papers; and he may have failed - who that has done so much has not? - in keeping his balance on the swaying slack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In his own line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly, the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recent essayists. The man himself in manner ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... shore; from which it would follow that the motion is only propagated in the water, like sound in air, and not the mass of water protruded. A similar species of motion is observed on shaking at one end a long cord held moderately slack, which is expressed by the word undulation. I have sometimes remarked however that a body which sinks deep and takes hold of the water appears to move towards shore with the course of the surf, as is perceptible ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... elected, but John did not know his strength. He recognized his own weakness, after a fashion. He knew that he would work violently for a month or two at a time, giving the vigorous hired man a decent test in holding his physical own, and he knew that after that he would become what the people called "slack," and a little listless; and it was in his slack times that the squirrel and grouse most suffered. Between him and the wife of his bosom had grown nothing, so grave as to be described as an armed neutrality; but more and more he hesitated ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... soothe him when irritable. He used to say of them, "Ah, there's no deceit in children. If I had had some, I should not have been the arch-rogue I am.". The industrious poor of Edge-hill found in Williamson a ready friend in time of need, and when work was slack many a man has come to the pay-place on Saturday, who had done nothing all the week but dig a hole and fill it up again. Once, on being remonstrated with by a man he had thus employed, on the uselessness of the work, Williamson said, "You do ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... white foam curled from her bows. I thought every moment we should be dragged under; but whenever this seemed likely to happen, the line was let run a bit, and the strain eased. At last the fish grew tired of dragging us, the line ceased to run out, and Tom hauled in the slack, which another man coiled away in its tub. Presently the fish rose to the surface, a short ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... diner, and cabage, and potato and appel sawse, and rice puding. I do not like rice puding when it is like ours. Charley Slack's kind is rele good. Mush and sirup ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... of the Abbey seems to have been very slack, especially for the big girls. This is how Mary describes it: "The liberty which the first class had was so great that, if we attended our tutor in his study for an hour or two every morning, no human being ever ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws fixed, and the beak plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence? Arise! he said, even in what appeared most fatal hours of darkness. The slack limbs moved; the body rose and fell. The cost of the effort was the breaking out of innumerable wounds, old and new; the gain was the display of the miracle that Italy lived. She tasted her own blood, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Underground railway station. She was delayed, and I stood for a quarter of an hour at the bottom of a flight of steps, watching the continuous stream of descending passengers, mostly women, and generally young. Some among the less young were swollen, heavy, and awkward; most were slack, drooping, limp, bony, or bent; a few were lithe and lissom; one or two had the emotional vivacity and muscular tone of abounding vitality. Not one plainly indicated that, stripped of her clothing, she would have transformed those Underground steps into ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... "but lo' thou, when our Lord Himself did heal one that had leprosy, what quoth He? 'Show thyself to the priest,' saith He: not, 'I am the true Priest, and therefore thou mayest slack to show thee to yon other priest, which is ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... girl. "Don't take the slack so fast. Hard a port. Now kick your stern over. That's the stuff. Pay out. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... close under the quay wall, and make fast to the ring down there,' came down from above, followed by the slack of the sodden painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. 'All fast? Any knot'll do,' I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and then a big, dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the dinghy. It was my portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... prayers. I do not think They will pester me. Look you, I have noticed in my long life that those who eternally break in upon Those Above with complaints and reports and bellowings and weepings are presently sent for in haste, as our Colonel used to send for slack-jawed down-country men who talked too much. No, I have never wearied the Gods. They will remember this, and give me a quiet place where I can drive my lance in the shade, and wait to welcome my sons: I have no less than three Rissaldar—majors all—in ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... eleven-hundred pounds plus the momentum of his speed, plus the weight of Applehead and the saddle, hit the wires fair and full. They popped like cut wires on a bale of hay—and it was lucky that they were tight strung so that there was no slack to take some of the force away. It was not luck, but plain shrewdness on Applehead's part, that Johnny came straight on, so that there was no tearing see-saw of the strands as they broke. Two inch-long cuts on his chest and a deeper, longer one on his foreleg was the price Johnny paid, ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... moment of leaving the "New York" an old catamaran had been thrown on the "Merrimac's" deck, as a possible aid to the crew in extremity. This float lay on the roof of the midship house, a rope fastening it to the taffrail, with enough slack to let it float loose after the ship had sunk. It was a fortunate thought for the crew, as it afforded them a temporary refuge in place of the ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... comin', an' he can't afford ter eat, An' he's in a fix fer lodgin', an' he wanders up an' down, An' you'd fancy he'd been boozin', he's so locoed 'bout the feet; When he's feelin' sneakin' sorry, an' his belt is hangin' slack, An' his face is peaked an' grey-like, an' his heart gits down an' whines, Then he's apt ter git a-thinkin' an' a-wishin' he was back In the little ol' log cabin in the ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... From the time of Fichte and Scharnhorst downward to the end of the century, the whole nation had learned, as a sort of gospel, that the German education produced a most superior engine of economic competition, whereas the slack education and frivolous amusements of English civil and military life alike, had gradually created a society apt to crumble. And it is only needful for any person who has the curiosity, to glance at the light literature of the Victorian age, which deals with the army, to see ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... to morality, was there ever a period when the national character was so slack and corrupt as in the ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... 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
... a horse's hoofs were heard clattering along the road, and a fine-looking lad in a midshipman's uniform cantered up on a pony, holding his reins slack, and sitting with the careless air of a sailor. He had a noble broad brow, clear blue eyes, and thick, clustering, brown curls, his countenance being thoroughly bronzed by southern suns and sea air. His features were well formed ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... paid out the riding cable and tripped it, and hove in the slack of the other, I stood, carried away—foolish boy!—by the thought that here at last I was a seaman among seamen, until at my ear the second mate cried sharply, "Lay forward, there, and lend a hand ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Muriel, "that Jim was head over ears in love with Cicely, or did you think, like everybody else, that he was slack about it?" ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... and stopping of compressor during the slack months the maximeter charges will be higher and therefore it must be assumed that 60 K. W. hours will be required per ton of ice instead of 55 K. ...
— Manufacturing Cost Data on Artificial Ice • Otto Luhr
... Slack Jaw," says Captain Night. "I shall be thirstier anon from listening to your prate. Will you hurry now, Gadfly, or is the sun to sink before ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the brake, McGonnigle went on humorously, gesticulating spaciously while the slack of the lines swung ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... "In with her chain-anchor slack," I calls, "and then up with her jibs," which they did. "And now her fores'l—up with her fores'l." Then we broke out her chain-anchor. I was to the wheel and knew the second the anchor was clear of the bottom by the way she leaped under me. "Don't stop to cat-head that ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... Her mooring ropes were slack, and the little breeze, hardly strong enough to be felt, had yet been strong enough to drift her stern against the bank. Bobbie was first—then came Peter, and it was Peter who slipped and fell. He went into the canal up to his neck, and his feet could not feel the bottom, but ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... comfortable, is not at all heroic. It certainly narrows and damps the spirits of generous men. In marriage, a man becomes slack and selfish, and undergoes a fatty degeneration of his moral being. It is not only when Lydgate misallies himself with Rosamond Vincy, but when Ladislaw marries above him with Dorothea, that this may be exemplified. The air of the fireside withers out all the fine ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cover them an inch or more above the meat, but wash not off the other things by pouring it on. Rub the lid of the pan with garlic, and cover it so close that no steam can escape. Make a brisk fire under it, and, when the cover is so hot that you cannot bear your hand on it, then a slack fire will stew it, but keep it so that the cover be of the same heat as long as it is stewing. It must not be uncovered the whole time it is doing: about three hours will be sufficient. When you take it up, be careful not to break it; take out the loose bones; pour the liquor on the ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... advanced we all began to think of going home, making sure that peace would soon be concluded. And never did more welcome message come anywhere than that which brought us intelligence of the armistice, and the firing, which had grown more and more slack lately, ceased altogether. Of course the army did not desire peace because they had any distaste for fighting; so far from it, I believe the only more welcome intelligence would have been news of a campaign in the field, but they were most heartily weary of ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... even Mr. Bevan did not like St. Matthew's (because it was not slack or easy), and he too could believe anything of Clement. No doubt poor Felix found those great brothers getting too much ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... counts in writing books just as much as it does in washing dishes. I guess Andrew's books must be some good after all because he surely does mull over them without end. I can forgive his being a shiftless farmer so long as he really does his literary chores up to the hilt. A man can be slack in everything else, if he does one thing as well as he possibly can. And I guess it won't matter my being an ignoramus in literature so long as I'm rated A-1 in the kitchen. That's what I used to think as ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back;— Their shots along the deep slowly boom:— Then ceased—and all is wail, As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or in conflagration ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... diet of the poor. These were all attended to with a tenderness and patience that spoke well for the charity of Sister Anne and her assistants, and indeed before long Dame Lilias perceived that, however slack and easy-going the general habits might be, there were truly meek and saintly ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from one to two gallons each time according to the heat of the bed, and temperature of the weather. If the season is fine and the heat good they will require water every other day, but if the weather is dull, and the heat slack, be very cautious in applying the water lest they should get the canker, which is a dangerous disorder, and very difficult to be removed. The best thing in such a case is to give a strong heat, and be very moderate in the ...
— The art of promoting the growth of the cucumber and melon • Thomas Watkins
... fish in gently, then suddenly gave it plenty of slack line. These tactics were repeated, while Dave and Greg almost ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... wishes to do too much, and falls into those exaggerations which have lent truth to the saying, "Absolute right is absolute injustice." "He who would rule well," runs an ancient aphorism, "must rule with a slack hand." We must not hold our horse's bridle over tightly, for though we may save him from stumbling we hinder him ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... if you want impulsive, unreflecting, violent people, where do you look for 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 that they had not ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... my weak and faint desire Strive against God most high— Never be slack in service, never tire Of sacred loyalty; Nor fail to wend unto the altar-side, Where with the blood of kine Steams up the offering, by the quenchless tide Of Ocean, Sire divine! Be this within my heart, indelible— Offend not with thy tongue! ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... around and see me a week from now. And leave your address with Rosey. I don't know, though, as we can afford to pay you quite the same salary at first, even if we can work you in—the season's been very slack. But I'll do what I can for you. Come in and see me in about a week. ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was one boiling convulsion of fish and tentacles and ink, Little Sword simply stabbing and stabbing at the soft mass under his weapon. Then, all at once, the tentacles relaxed, falling away as slack as seaweed. The barracouta, nearly spent, swam off without even waiting to say 'Thank you.' And Little Sword coming to his senses as he realized his victory, rose slowly out of the area of the ink cloud. He knew that the Inkmaker's flesh was very good to eat, and he ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... me the bonny black, Gae saddle sune, and mak' him ready, For I will down the Gatehope-slack, An' a' to see my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fight for it, eh, Luke? You're rather apt to slack when I'm not by." Was there a hint of wistfulness in the words? ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... I will teach you, if you like to bring your work to me, for half-an-hour on Saturdays; I'm generally slack the first half-hour after I have given your sister ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... managers of Covent Garden have lately entered. His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory [4] says, "I defy him to extort that damned muffin face of his into madness." I was very sorry to see him in the character of the "Elephant on the slack rope;" for, when I last saw him, I was in raptures with his performance. But then I was sixteen—an age to which all London condescended to subside. After all, much better judges have admired, and may again; but I venture to "prognosticate a prophecy" (see the 'Courier') ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Tacony, or produce one false step: he flew round the course, every stride like the ricochet of a 32lb. shot; his adversary broke-up again and again, losing both his temper and his place, and barely saved his distance, as the gallant Tacony—his rider with a slack rein, and patting him on the neck—reached the winning-post—time, 2m. 25s. The shouts were long and loud; such time had never been made before by fair trotting, and Tacony evidently could have done it in ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... relish for his porridge, dashed a handful of salt into it with an instinctive sense that it was his duty as a father to prevent his son enjoying himself. Ruskin's mother gratified the sensual side of her maternal passion, not by cuddling her son, but by whipping him when he fell downstairs or was slack in learning the Bible off by heart; and this grotesque safety-valve for voluptuousness, mischievous as it was in many ways, had at least the advantage that the child did not enjoy it and was not debauched by it, as he would have been by transports ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... 'nd flowers. Ain't it kind 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 nest in ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... Bass and Weak Fish, laid in a stock of cold provisions—among other things a Cold Shoulder—plenty of exhilarating beverages, and, with Buoyant Spirits, (every Man of us,) and plenty of ice on board, started on the slack of the Morning Tide. I regret to state that by the time we were ready to start our Skipper was half way "Over the Bay," being provided with a pocket pistol charged to the muzzle. He and his two subordinates were pretty well "Shot in the neck" by ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... the tide of population swept out. For the gulch hamlets between the Timanyonis there was still an industrial reason for being; but the railroad languished, and Angels became the weir to catch and retain many of the leavings, the driftwood stranded in the slack water of the outgoing tide. With the railroad, the Copperette Mine, and the "X-bar-Z" pay-days to bring regularly recurring moments of flushness, and with every alternate door in Mesa Avenue the entrance to a bar, ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Razors"; to a poor scholar, subject, "Flunk on,—flunk ever." Colloquy, to a joker whose wit was not estimated, subject, "Unappreciated Facetiousness." When a play upon names is attempted, the subject "Perfect Looseness" is assigned to Mr. Slack; Mr. Barnes discourses upon "Stability of character, or pull down and build greater"; Mr. Todd treats upon "The Student's Manual," and incentives to action are presented, based on the line "Lives of great men all remind us," by students who rejoice in the Christian names, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... the iron-horns, ripping, racking, Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking. Way down the road, trilling like a toad, Here comes the dice-horn, here comes the vice-horn, Here comes the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... alongside he 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 ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... month with Smith, but as it was the slack time of the year there was little routine work on the station, and much of our time ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... very slender one, was thrown up, and Bob, gathering in the slack, and noticing that it led from somewhere ahead of the schooner, bowsed it well taut and securely belayed it. He knew at ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... John!" said Carter in a resigned tone to the elderly seaman in the bow. "Slack away and let us ride easy to the full scope. They don't seem ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c. There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times. Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate. The small holder, pure ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... is keeper of the peace on his domains. He is therefore subject to the expenses of maintaining it. A criminal prosecuted to sentence and execution costs M. de Laye about five thousand livres. This is so burthensome to the Seigneurs, that they are slack in criminal prosecutions. A good effect from a bad cause. Through all Champagne, Burgundy, and the Beaujolois, the husbandry seems good, except that they manure too little. This proceeds from the shortness of their leases. The people of Burgundy and Beaujolois ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... it. A case with a large lid, covered by the lashing, gives constant trouble; the whole lashing has to be undone for every little thing one wants out of the case. This is not always convenient; if one is tired and slack, it may sometimes happen that one will put off till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, especially when it is bitterly cold. The handier one's sledging outfit, the sooner one gets into the tent and to rest, and that is no small consideration on ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... ay, Captain Bonnet!" came in a broken chorus, as the crew, partially sobered by the words, hurried to the long-boat, where a line of small kegs lay in the sand. A moment later they were gone, plowing up the hillside. Jeremy stood where he had been left. A tall, slack-jointed pirate in the most picturesque attire strolled over to the boy's side and looked him up and down with a roguish grin. Under his cloak Jeremy had on fringed leather breeches and tunic such as most ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... managers attended at the opening, but the attendance of all others was cruelly slack. To hear the attack, the people came in crowds; to hear the defence, they scarcely came in t'ete- 'a-t'etes! 'Tis barbarous there should be so much more pleasure given by the recital of guilt than by the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... 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 in ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... otherwise, I appeal to the common sense of mankind. One late writer defines it thus: "LANGUAGE is any means by which one person communicates his ideas to another."—Sanders's Spelling-Book, p. 7. The following is the explanation of an other slack thinker: "One may, by speaking or by writing, (and sometimes by motions,) communicate his thoughts to others. The process by which this is done, is called LANGUAGE.—Language is the expression of thought and feeling."—S. W. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... well in a yard, with a rope and a windlass, and an old wooden bucket all over trailing green mosses. Off the yard there was a blacksmith's shop, with a disused anvil and disused tools in it, and a cold hearth covered with scattered slack and iron filings. A dog, whose chain allowed him to come within a yard of the door of this workshop, woke up at the clank of the tools and barked. The child cried until his mother came and took him away with some show of angry impatience, not with his father's gentleness. He knew her ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... 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 the ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... of fact, it was by trying to lean on it that Spencer Clay got hold of the facts of the case; and when young Clay got hold of anything, Marois Bay at large had it hot and fresh a few hours later; for Spencer was one of those slack-jawed youths who are constitutionally incapable of ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the Jaybird bent to their paddles and presently passed in turn about the sharp bend and came up alongside the dugout, which lay along shore in some slack water. Rob was ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... the slack season in London, Mr. Murray made his promised visit to Edinburgh. He was warmly received by Constable and Hunter, and enjoyed their hospitality for some days. After business matters had been disposed of, he was taken in hand by Hunter, the junior partner, and led off by him to enjoy ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... magic was by the Church in public; but as a reality, not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were tough and their faith weak, had little scruple in applying to a witch, and asking help from the powers below, when the saints above were slack to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold enough to learn the mysteries of nature, Algebra, Judicial Astrology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, and animals, from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville; and, like Pope Gerbert, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... nephew—a round-cheeked, blue-eyed rogue who takes my thumb in all his fingers when we go walking. His jumpers are slack behind and they wag from side to side in an inexpressibly funny manner, but this I am led to believe springs not from any special genius but is common to all children. It is only recently that he learned to walk, for although he was forward with his teeth and their early sprouting ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... sense of the term, what embraced; signif. of do., as now used —in opposition to some grammarians, BROWN confines the term to speech and writing —loose explanations of the word by certain slack thinkers; WEBST. notion of —SHERID. idea of; KIRKH. wild and contradictory teachings concerning —Language, PROPRIETY of, in what consists; IMPROPRIETY of, what embraces —PRECISION of, in what consists; Precepts ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... course decreased the more steam increased. We obtained the best practical results by introducing about two tons of steam for every ton of fuel consumed. We experimented upon numerous kinds of fuel, common slack and burgy of the Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Nottinghamshire districts. We found not much difference in the amount of nitrogen contained in these fuels, which varied between 1.2 and 1.6 per cent., nor did we ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... tide passed, and then the ship began to swing idly as the slack came. Then with the turn of tide came little flaws of wind, and we hoisted the sail, and Kenulf hove the anchor short. Yet we heard no more sounds from ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... giving true response, on your word as a knight and as a churchman. Yet, brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and Eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. Cedric the Saxon, if offended,—and he is noway slack in taking offence,—is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. And be careful how you look on Rowena, whom he cherishes ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... had no liking for Squires, a harsh, arrogant man, notorious for his relentless persecution of any director or officer who, in Squires' opinion, had become slack in his duties to the Machine. But he had a large following in the upper echelons, and ...
— Oneness • James H. Schmitz
... authoritative selection has been made for the Somerset and Devon districts, but the following varieties of cider apples are held in good repute in those parts:—Kingston Black, Jersey Chisel, Hangdowns, Fair Maid of Devon, Woodbine, Duck's Bill, Slack-my-Girdle, Bottle Stopper, Golden Ball, Sugar-loaf, Red Cluster, Royal Somerset and Cadbury (believed to be identical with the Royal Wilding of Herefordshire). As a rule the best cider apples are of small size. "Petites pommes, gros ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of such a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual conclusiveness, and clear-shining moral illumination, and, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... a protracted interview with a polite native clerk, so the toil had to be done twice! Then to the post office at the docks; borrowed a rusty pen there from another native clerk and did a home letter. What a fine building it is, and what a motley slack lot of people you see there! Near me a group of half-naked natives were concocting and scratching off a wire between them, others squatted on the floor and beat up their friends black hair for small game. One man made netting attached to the rail round the ticket ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... rumbled on; then it went from half speed to a stop with one jerk that brought a cry from the coaches. During the next second there was the successive crashing of couplings as the coaches took up their slack. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... not be imagined that governments and magistracies were slack in their pursuit of criminals. Repressive statutes, proclamations of outlawry, and elaborate prosecutions succeeded one another with unwearied conscientiousness. The revenues of states were taxed to furnish blood-money and to support spies. Large sums were invariably offered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... you think. If you expect to get any kind of a gang together, at least a third of them will be girls. A lot of technicians are girls, and when work gets slack, they're always the first ones to get shoved out of jobs. I'll bet there are a thousand girl technicians out of work here—any line of work you want to name. I know what I'll do; I'll make a telecast ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... English knights, were so strong that he dared not express his discontent. He himself had twice been engaged with pirates, but had gained no particular credit, and indeed had, in the opinion of his comrades, been somewhat slack in the fray. He was no favourite in the auberge, though he spared no pains to ingratiate himself with the senior knights, and had a short time before been very severely reprimanded by the bailiff for striking one ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... goods, my maids, and my great high-roofed house—and thus revere my husband and heed the public voice, or finally to follow some chief of the Achaiians who woos me in my hall with countless gifts. My son, while but a child and slack of understanding, did not permit my marrying and departing from my husband's home; but now that he is grown and come to man's estate, he prays me to go home again and leave the hall, so troubled is he for that ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... them mother cut them down for me; She took the slack in fore and aft, and hemmed them at the knee; They fitted rather loosely, but the things that made me glad Were the horizontal pockets that ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... back on her heels, her arms, falling slack by her sides, her wide eyes fixed on the ground in a surprise too complete for speech. Nobody spoke; the stupor in her own brain must surely have communicated itself to the guests crowding around, for while one might have counted fifty there was blank, ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sort were in all her loving letters. Often and often when I have been slack in fucking a woman, and my prick not answering when called on, I had only to conjure up some of these scenes with my mother when my cock would spring to the stand instantly, to the immense satisfaction of my momentary fouteuse, and it is so yet, a thought ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... meantime, being determined to mortify his rival Parrah More by a superior display of hospitality, waited upon that parsonage, and exacted a promise from him to come down and partake of the dinner—a promise which the other was not slack in fulfilling. Phaddhy's heart was now on the point of taking its rest, when it occurred to him that there yet remained one circumstance in which he might utterly eclipse his rival, and that was to ask Captain ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton |
