"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only more ample, but more important in its essential particulars. When Lord Dorset told him (says the MS. letter) "Mr. Felton, it is the king's pleasure that you should be put to the torture, to make you confess your accomplices, and therefore prepare yourself for the rack:"—Felton answered, "My lord, I do not believe that it is the king's pleasure, for he is a just and a gracious prince, and will not have his subjects tortured against law. I do affirm upon my salvation that my purpose was not known to any man living; but if it be his majesty's ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... have only a small quantity of berries or fruit to can use a deep saucepan with a tight-fitting cover and a few slats of wood. This rack is absolutely necessary to keep the contents of the jars from becoming overheated. Even if they should not break there is a tendency for part of the contents to escape under the cover and be lost. Do not use hay, old clothes, newspapers or excelsior for a false bottom; they ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... dident want to go becaus i was afraid they wood brake down, but father he said i had got to go and so i went. old mister Blake who sets rite behind us droped his hym book and had to bend way over to pick it up when he set up he hit his bald head a feerful bump agenst the book rack. i nearly laffed out loud and had to hold on to ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... is burning on the hearth—small, for the mid-day-meal is not yet on its way. Everything is tidy; the hearth is swept up, and the dishes are washed: the barefooted girl is reaching the last of them to its place on the rack hehind the dresser. She is a red-haired, blue-eyed Celt, with a pretty face, and a refinement of motion and speech rarer in some ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... contradictions latent in popular thought, and in the popular forms of expression which are so apt to be mistaken for thought, and to indicate the only safe mode of investigation and the only trustworthy tests of genuine knowledge; his favourite amusement to put time-honoured commonplaces on the rack, and demanding their raison d'etre, to pass on them summary sentence of extinction if they failed to account satisfactorily for their existence. Unfortunately, in his keen enjoyment of the fun of the thing, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... has an up and down movement checked by an air piston in the tube. An end elevation of the brake wheels and solenoid is given in Fig. 9, where it will be seen that the spindle carrying these wheels also carries between them a pinion engaging with the rack rod, R. The top carbon attached to the rack rod falls by its own weight, and is therefore in contact with the lower carbon before the lamp is switched in circuit. When this is done the core is instantly magnetized, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... animals was some relief to his otherwise gloomy forebodings, when he beheld the erection of his master's suspicious tenement. He superintended the building of a substantial and comfortable stable. He had stalls, a small granary, and a regular rack made for the accommodation of the horses, and procured, with difficulty and no little expense, a supply of provender. The space, including the buildings, which had been cleared of the roots and stones, for the purpose of cultivating ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... hero dealt with as he had dealt with others; Kerkuon, the wrestler, was slain by him in a wrestling bout; Procrustes, who enticed travellers to his house and made them fit his bed, stretching the short upon the rack and lopping the limbs of the over-tall, had his own measure meted to him; and various other plagues of society were abated by the young hero. Not long after his arrival at Athens and acknowledgment by his father, the time came round when the Minoan heralds should come to Athens to claim the victims ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... disease of the Bladder. I had always supposed he would be found dead one good morning, as my Mother was—as I hoped to be—quietly dead of the Heart which he had felt for several Years. But no; it is seen good that he shall be laid on the Rack—which he may feel the more keenly as he never suffered Pain before, and is not of a strong Nerve. I will say no more of this. The funeral Bell, which has been at work, as I never remember before, all this winter, is even now, as I write, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... my fortunes are at sea; Neither have I money, nor commodity To raise a present sum: therefore go forth, Try what my credit can in Venice do; That shall be rack'd, even to the uttermost, To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia. Go, presently inquire, and so will I, Where money is; and I no question make, To have it of my trust, ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... others, but bloody and brutal everywhere. The Church is the only institution that ever attempted to create a machinery of pardon. The Church is the only thing that ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them. The stake and rack were merely the weaknesses of the religion; its snobberies, its surrenders to the world. Its speciality—or, if you like, its oddity—was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... anything to her mother about it, Madeline took her Candy Rabbit, and, with her two little friends, went up to the bathroom. She drew the tub full of water, and while she was doing this she set the Rabbit on a glass shelf near the towel rack. ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... well, and because he was weary, he wished himself a horse: no sooner was his wish ended, but he was transformed, and seemed a horse of twenty pound price, and leaped and curveted as nimble as if he had been in stable at rack and manger a good month. Then wished he himself a dog, and was so: then a tree, and was so: so from one thing to another, till he was certain and well assured that he could change himself to any ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... in the orchestra absolute silence reigned. When the conductor made his appearance he was greeted with a burst of applause, which he gracefully acknowledged with a profound bow. Then he grasped his baton, tapped lightly upon the rack in front of him, and the delightful overture to Donizetti's great ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... their turn, Make their own jealousies high-treason, And fix 'm whomsoe'er they please on? Cannot the learned counsel there Make laws in any shape appear? 330 Mould 'em as witches do their clay, When they make pictures to destroy And vex 'em into any form That fits their purpose to do harm? Rack 'em until they do confess, 335 Impeach of treason whom they please, And most perfidiously condemn Those that engag'd their lives for them? And yet do nothing in their own sense, But what they ought by oath and conscience? 340 Can they not juggle, and, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... interesting to contrast this slovenly and mean sketch with the ass's head in the "Flight into Egypt," on which the painter exerted his full power; as an effect of light, however, the work is, of course, most interesting. One point in the treatment is especially noticeable: there is a peacock in the rack beyond the cow; and under other circumstances, one cannot doubt that Tintoret would have liked a peacock in full color, and would have painted it green and blue with great satisfaction. It is sacrificed to the light, however, and is painted in warm grey, with ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... thing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black little pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would almost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his nose as without his pipe. .. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready loaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever he turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from the other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in readiness anew. For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... minutes afterward a crash was heard. The equilibrium of the rack of dolls had been disturbed, and the whole collection was dashed to the floor. Fortunately, only three or four of the dolls were broken; but, alas! among them was the one Katy had set her heart upon ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... coch bilders, apolstrers, hors dealers, and weddencake makers came pawring in with their bills, haggravating feelings already woondid beyond enjurants. That madniss didn't seaze me that night was a mussy. Fever, fewry, and rayge rack'd my hagnized braind, and drove sleap from my throbbink ilids. Hall night I follered Hangelinar in imadganation along the North Road. I wented cusses & mallydickshuns on the hinfamus Silvertop. I kickd and rord in my unhuttarable whoe! I seazed my pillar: I pitcht into it: pummld ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "such is the freedom of the Christian conference to which Rome's priests so kindly invite us!—the gag—the rack—the axe—is the ratio ultima Romae. But know thou, mine ancient friend, that the character of thy former companion is not so changed by age, but that he still dares to endure for the cause of truth all that thy proud ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... rush in and the wild orgies begin afresh. The divine is mocked and pleasure praised as the only god. Vulcan comes, sent by Jupiter to warn them, but as they only laugh at him, mocking Olympus and the gods, Jupiter himself appears to punish the sinners. An awful tempest arises, sending everything to rack and ruin.— ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... slid into a space under the desk and flipped a switch. Instantly, a view-screen lit up and a three-dimensional picture appeared—the interior of a big room a hundred feet square and some seventy in height. There was a big desk and a radio; tables, couches, chairs and an arms-rack full of weapons, and at one end, a remarkably clean sixty-foot circle on the concrete floor, outlined ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... she had been meeting Mr. Brumley as confidently as though they had been invisible beings, and now she had to rack her brains for just what might be mistaken, what might be misconstrued. There was nothing, she told herself, nothing, it was all as open as the day, and still her mind groped about for some forgotten circumstance, something gone almost out of memory that would bear misinterpretation.... ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... smiling a little wistfully. "It sounds all very well to talk about," he said, "but the world would go to rack and ruin ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... and went down stairs. A letter was on the hall rack which had been sent by a messenger. He broke the seal with nervous haste. It was from Bivens asking him to call his ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... large. Mrs. Cutter had several times cut paragraphs about unfaithful husbands out of the newspapers and mailed them to Cutter in a disguised handwriting. Cutter would come home at noon, find the mutilated journal in the paper-rack, and triumphantly fit the clipping into the space from which it had been cut. Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he had ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... to three plants are put in a pile and tied with binding twine. The bundles are taken to the dry-house on wheelbarrows, made with racks on purpose for carrying the seeds. A cloth is spread over the rack to catch any shelling seeds. A man carries about 100 bunches at a load and passes them up to a man in the house who hangs them on nails driven for the purpose. The seed is allowed to hang a few days to thoroughly ripen ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... fester'd sore, Then justice and religion they forswore, Their maiden oaths debauch'd into a whore. Thus men are raised by factions, and decried; And rogue and saint distinguish'd by their side. They rack even Scripture to confess their cause, And plead a call to preach in spite of laws. But that's no news to the poor injured page; It has been used as ill in every age, And is constrain'd with patience all to take: 160 For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy who can this talking trumpet seize; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine;—and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom,—uprose a thousand phantoms,—in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... swift it looks; and so black. Isn't that man afraid to stand there?" indicating a workman stationed upon the sluice gate, engaged in the endless task of raking fallen leaves away from the rack. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... haggard and miserable; like the faces of men making a last desperate stand, yet fronting inevitable defeat. Such faces one might imagine in a nightmare, staring on a passerby and failing to see him, from a rack ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... until late in autumn, a large, black hunting spider (Lycosa) dwelt in my piano. When I played andante movements softly, she would come out on the music rack and seem to listen intently. Her palpi would vibrate with almost inconceivable rapidity, while every now and then she would lift her anterior pair of legs and wave them to and fro, and up and down. Just as soon, however, ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brain with forebodings of every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in suffering all conceivable varieties of ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... friends, and would confess nothing. She was put to the torture in the most barbarous manner, and continued still resolute in preserving secrecy. Some authors[*] add an extraordinary circumstance; that the chancellor, who stood by, ordered the lieutenant of the Tower to stretch the rack still farther; but that officer refused compliance the chancellor menaced him, but met with a new refusal; upon which that magistrate, who was otherwise a person of merit, but intoxicated with religious zeal, put his own hand to the rack, and drew it so violently that he almost tore her body ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... desk where there was a card index. Thumbing through the records, he found the number and led us to the proper place in the rack. In the box were only two rolls of ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... several yellow-back dime-novels from the book-rack in the corner, pulled the Morris chair over to the window, and started ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... was over. She looked the very image of sorrow and despair. She did not tell me where she was going. I don't believe she even knew herself. There, that's all that I have got to tell you, even if you had the power to put me on the rack, as you used to have in the bad old times!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown, once more folding her arms and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... exclaim over it with wonder—it was at the smell of the supper and at the sound of the psalmody that Matthew's gripes seized upon him worse than ever. All the time the others sat late into the night Matthew lay on the rack pulled to pieces. After William Law's death at King's Cliffe, his executors found among his most secret papers a prayer he had composed for his own alone use on a certain communion day when he was self-debarred from the Lord's table. I do not know for certain just what fruit the young ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... of hard fortune pursue you every day you rise, you desavin' villain, that would have me turn informer, bekase your brother-in-law, rack-rintin' Moore's stables and horses were burnt; and to crown all, make the innocent childre the means of hanging their own fathers or brothers, you rap of the divil! but I'd see you and all your breed in the ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... for a walk with you," he might say, "I will stand stock still with you in Trafalgar Square in the midst of the traffic while you ask me silly riddles, but not if you persist in bringing with you that absurd umbrella. You are too handy with it. Put it back in the rack before we start, or go ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... Whether we force the man's property from him by pinching his stomach, or pinching his fingers, makes some difference anatomically;— morally, none whatsoever: we use a form of torture of some sort in order to make him give up his property; we use, indeed, the man's own anxieties, instead of the rack; and his immediate peril of starvation, instead of the pistol at the head; but otherwise we differ from Front de Boeuf, or Dick Turpin, merely in being less dexterous, more cowardly, and more cruel. More cruel, I say, because the fierce baron and the redoubted highwayman are reported ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... (except the Christian); and there must be no wrangling among sects to the disturbance of the peace of the Empire." Thus while the people in the West, who worshipped the Prince of Peace, in his abused name were cutting each other's throat, destroying each other's property, torturing and proselyting by rack and flames, the islanders on the West Pacific coast were enjoying complete religious toleration. Three religions—Shintoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—lived together in peace. In such a state of unrestricted competition among various religions, the universal law of ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins, and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack. ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... her face a shade paler, and I do not doubt that her mind was on the rack to divine how much I knew, and how far she might deny and how far confess. My tone seemed to encourage frankness, however, and in a moment she said, "I placed it ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... and muscle braced, talked only to the engineer, and that professionally. I recalled the time when I, too, had enjoyed the rack on which he voluntarily ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... black with lies—shut fast your coward doors— And brand the aged chief with crimes his generous heart abhors: When truth avails not, well you know how to supply the lack With secret tales and with wild words extorted by the rack! There is an hour for every power—an hour of darkness this! Spur on, ye slaves of Antichrist! or ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... This was the recompense which it was in my power to make for the benefits that I had received. Would not this procedure bear the appearance of the basest ingratitude? The shadow of an imputation like this was more excruciating than the rack. ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... then, think that it can befall a wise man to be oppressed with grief, that is to say, with misery? for, as all perturbation is misery, grief is the rack itself. Lust is attended with heat, exulting joy with levity, fear with meanness, but grief with something greater than these; it consumes, torments, afflicts, and disgraces a man; it tears him, preys upon his mind, and utterly destroys him: if we do not so divest ourselves of ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... anywhere in a station wagon. The plane was a private-type ship. Plenty of them flying around. It could've been bought easily enough. All they'd need would be a farm somewhere where it could land and they could strap on a rocket rack and put in a radar. And they'd need information. Probably be a good lead, this business. Only just so many people could know what was coming on this ship, and what course it was flying, and so on. Security will have to check back ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... heater is especially designed to dry quickly the test pieces for use in connection with the Scalometer (see Fig. 100) without charring them. It may be attached to any electric light socket of 110 volts direct or alternating current. A metal rack is provided to hold the test ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... himself said proudly, some masterpieces. The ten religious songs that come at the beginning of the collection suggest the delusions of mysticism, and weep tears of blood; they are distressing to the ear and mind alike, for they are the passionate expression of a faith that puts itself on the rack. By the side of them one finds smiling visions of the Holy Family, which recall Murillo. The thirty-four folk-songs are brilliant, restless, whimsical, and wonderfully varied in form. Each represents a different subject, a personality drawn ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... in any one of those many dresses she might feel at home in five minutes—they suited her so well. She could see, well enough, that Mr. Linden not only remembered "her style" but loved it,—in the very top rack, that was first laid open, she had proof of this—for besides the finest of lawn and cambric, there were dainty bands of embroidery and pieces of lace with which Faith could ruffle ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the cabin. I looked across and saw a tumbler in the rack, half full of whisky and water. He noticed ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... dream of peace as it seemed now; but never as now had she been met wherever she turned by another and another lion in the way. She got up very early, with a feeling that movement had something lulling and soothing in it, and that to lie there a prey to all these thoughts was like lying on the rack—to the great surprise of the kind landlady, who came stealing into her room with the inevitable cup of tea, and whose inquiry how the poor lady was, was taken out of her mouth by the unexpected apparition of the supposed invalid, fully dressed, ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Arguing with himself that it was not possible for any man to overdo a fight with the devil, Adams made up his mind to "go well in" for that incident, and spent a whole evening over it, keeping his audience glaring and on the rack of expectation the whole time. Taking, perhaps, an unfair advantage of his minute knowledge as a man-of-war's-man of cutlass-drill and of fighting in general, from pugilistic encounters to great-gun exercise, including all the intermediate ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... further and suggest that, perhaps, in the bold metaphor of my text, there is an answer to the questions which so often rack loving and parted hearts? 'Do the dead know aught of what affects us here? and can they do aught but gaze on Him, and love, and rest?' If it be that there is any such analogy as seems to be dimly shadowed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... other. If they have opened their mouths without endeavouring to say a witty thing, they think it is so many words lost. It is a torment to the hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon the rack for invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little success. They must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit themselves, and answer their character, else the standers by may be disappointed and be apt to think them only like the rest of mortals. I have ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... Be not over-solicitous of wedding-presents. They carry a terrible rate of interest. A silver toast-rack will never leave you a Bank Holiday secure, and a breakfast service means at least a fortnight's 'change' to one or more irrelevant persons twice a year. They have been known to stay a month on the strength of an egg-boiler. So, be warned, I pray you. Wedding-presents ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... the old Corsican custom, his sister, in her indignation, carried away his black clothes, in order that he might not wear mourning for a dead man who had not been avenged. He was insensible to even this outrage, and rather than take down from the rack his father's gun, which was still loaded, he shut himself up, not daring to brave the looks of the young men ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... mind, Moodie cursed in his heart Lord Strathern's fatuity and the facile disposition Lady Mabel had so unexpectedly betrayed. But, though sorely troubled, he was not a man to despair. He resolved to watch L'Isle closely, and to rack his own invention for some way to foil his schemes, while taking care not to betray the least suspicion ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... got a s'ciety smile An' he sho is dressed in scrumptious style, But he keeps 'is own hat off de quality rack By de scan'lous way he answers back. But he ain't by 'isself in dat, in dat— But he ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... from the outside like an innocent, natural crevice. Immediately behind it was a steel grating, firmly embedded in the sides of the tunnel, and on one of the bars the muzzle of the sniper's rifle was laid, its stock resting on an ingenious wooden fork, which could be raised or lowered by a rack and pinion. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... the rack, before the hand of a villain shall lead me to the altar!" answered Emily, unable to control ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... differently given by Spears: p. 26. "When done, the ships were found to have fine models—they rode the waves in a way that excited the admiration of all sailors. But the keelsons under the engines were only 40 inches deep, while the keels were 277 ft. long, and there was 'give' enough to rack the engines to pieces." ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon
... Christ, whom they despised on account of the ignominious death he died. Because at Rome, the proud mistress of the world, they thundered out the terrors of the law upon that idolatrous, war-making, and slave-holding community. Why were the martyrs stretched upon the rack, gibbetted and burnt, the scorn and diversion of a Nero, whilst their tarred and burning bodies sent up a light which illuminated the Roman capital? Why were the Waldenses hunted like wild beasts upon the mountains ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... substantially this: Roman legions shall suffer defeat, rout, and extermination; and Roman power shall cease to terrify. All its might must decay. But "everyone that is of the truth" shall attach himself to me with a love which will brave rack and stake. All your power cannot give a grain of new life. I can and will infuse my own divine life, my own divine self, into men. And this new life is invincible, immortal, all-conquering. I have infused myself into a few fishermen, and they will infuse me into a host ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... was to look after women and children committed to his charge. He carried, also, packages and parcels, and largely what is to-day entrusted to the express. I recall, too, with pleasure, Horace George, another driver, popular with all the boys, because in sleighing-time he would let us ride on the rack behind, and even slacken the speed of his horses so as to allow us to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... and disappointment at seeing the old man's resolution, has excited Romescos' ire. "He's an old rack-not worth much, but he doesn't seem like Kemp's old saw-horse," Romescos remarks to Bengal, as his hawk eye scans the old man perched among the cedar branches. They are not more than forty yards apart, and within speaking distance. Bengal, less excited, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... to the ball to-night? I have not seen Alice yet. I am on the rack, in excruciating torture. Your family and your husband don't fancy me, but you have known me from childhood. You ought to show mercy, rather than cruelty. Will ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... the Children had developed into long Gawks who did not know Anything except to get out and Toil all Day for Pa and not be paid anything for it, and after Henry had scraped together more Money than you could load on a Hay-Rack, an Unfortunate Thing happened. His Wife began to Fail. She was now Forty, but the Fair and Fat did not go with it. At that Age some Women are Buxom and just blossoming into the Full Charm of Matronly Womanhood. ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... folded on the foot, the bright fire in the open stove, the big bureau and glass, the soft carpet, the table for writing and reading standing in the bay, his books on the broad mantel, and his dressing things laid out ready to his hand, not to mention an ample supply of dry towels on the rack. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... will make it decidedly warm for his persecutors when they come up to the desk with their gripsacks and register and ask for a room and a bath, and a fire escape. He will be apt to look up to the key rack and tell them everything is full, but they can find pretty fair accommodations at the other house, down at the Hot Springs, on the European plan, by Mr. Devil, formerly ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... a crack; enough to discover a dozen blacks stretched upon their silks in profound slumber. At the far side of the room a rack held the swords and firearms of the men. Warily I pushed the door a trifle wider to admit my body. A hinge gave out a resentful groan. One of the men stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed myself for a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape; but there ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... completing touch to a civilization that was still in its youth, unkempt, rather savage, and ruthlessly utilitarian. A sign, the work of inexpert hands, announced the somewhat dingy structure of hewn logs that stood nearest the roadside a tavern. There was a horse rack in front of it and a trampled space. It was flanked by its several sheds and barns on one hand and a woodpile on the other. Beyond the woodpile a rail fence inclosed a corn-field, and beyond the barns and sheds a similar fence defined the ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... before—torn papers, emptied bottles, a shattered sign or two, an oil-lamp blown into bits by some well-directed shot, a bat lying in the middle of the road, and a dejected pony or two, still at the hitching-rack, waiting a delayed rider. But, except for these mute reminiscences of past frolic, the long street seemed utterly dead, the doors of saloons and dance-halls closed, the dust swirling back and forth ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... it's bad thrusting any one. Av' he's her agent, however, I s'pose he'll look afther the estate; only, Barry'll be smashing the things up there at the house yonder in his anger and dhrunken fits, and it's a pity the poor girl's property should go to rack. But he's such a born divil, she's lucky to be out of his clutches alive; though, thank the Almighty, that put a good roof over the lone widow this day, he can't clutch her here. Wouldn't I like to see him come to the door and ax for her! And he can't smash the acres, nor the money ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... not his ghost; O let him pass! he hates him That would upon the rack of this rough world ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... jest nachelly gwine to rack an' ruin! Zack ain' got no moh sense 'bout takin' cyare of a house ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... its autumn moan; but—he is coming. The skies hang full and dark—a rack sails from the west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms—arches and broad radiations; there rise resplendent mornings—glorious, royal, purple as monarch in his state; the heavens are one flame; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest—so ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... uppermost bulwarks. And now, loud above the roar of the sea, was suddenly heard a sharp, splintering sound, as of a Norway woodman felling a pine in the forest. It was brave Jarl, who foremost of all had snatched from its rack against the mainmast, the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... were put to death by the sword and stake, but many, many thousands fled to England, to begin anew their lives as manufacturers and mariners; and for years Belgium was one quaking peril, an inferno, whose torturers were Spaniards. The visitor in Antwerp is still shown the rack upon which they stretched the merchants that they might yield up their hidden gold. The Painted Lady may be seen. Opening her arms, she embraces the victim. The Spaniard, with his spear, forced the merchant into the deadly embrace. As the iron arms concealed in velvet folded together, one ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Elizabeth and her partisans, it did not oblige the Catholics to obedience except when the sovereign pontiff should think proper, by a new summons, to require it. Campion was afterwards detected in treasonable practices; and being put to the rack, and confessing his guilt, he was publicly executed. His execution was ordered at the very time when the duke of Anjou was in England, and prosecuted, with the greatest appearance of success, his marriage with the queen; and this severity was probably ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... they have not a conscience which forbids them from acting thus, just as, even three or four hundred years ago, when people burnt men at the stake and put them to the rack they had a conscience which prohibited it; the conscience is there, but it has been put to sleep—in those in command by what the psychologists call auto-suggestion; in the soldiers, by the direct conscious hypnotizing exerted ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... pasturage, for the purpose of feeding more cattle. By this measure, great numbers of the peasantry were deprived at once, not only of employment, but of their cottages. Many small farms were indeed still let to some cottagers at rack-rent, which cottages had the right of commonage, guaranteed to them in their leases; but afterwards the commons were enclosed, and no recompense was made to the tenants by the landlords. Thus provoked, and being joined by the idle and dissolute, these unhappy people sought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... in turtle Bristol's sons delight, 388 Too much o'er bowls of Rack prolong the night. Your turtle-feeder's verse must needs be flat, 393 Though Bristol bloat him ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... was starving! But to me it's insanity, I tell you—I can't take it in; and every one else thinks it's so easy to understand. Why do I tell you this, you ask? You know it as well as I do. No, but you don't know it properly, or you'd have to rack your brains till you were crazy over the frightful insanity of the fact that these two words—bread and crime—can belong together! Isn't it insane, that the two ends should bend together and close in a ring about a human life? That a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Torquatus, governor of Umbria, then residing at Spoletto, about the year 178. The martyr, paying no regard to his promises or threats, in the first interrogatory was beaten with clubs, and in the second was hung on the rack, but in the height of his torments he cheerfully sang: "Glory be to thee, Lord Jesus!" Three days after, two soldiers were sent by Torquatus, to behead him in the dungeon, unless he would offer sacrifice to an idol, which a priest who accompanied them carried with him for ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Would anybody in this trim household care in the very least whether the old Irishman broke his heart or not? whether he and the Irish girl had to go forth from the home of their ancestors? whether the wild, beautiful, rack-rent sort of place was kept in the family ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... decide by show of hands whether they judged them guilty, and if so it should be found, the penalty should be death. When this had been read out, some desired it might be added to the sentence, that Phocion should be tortured also, and that the rack should be produced with the executioners. But Agnonides perceiving even Clitus to dislike this, and himself thinking it horrid and barbarous, said, "When we catch that slave, Callimedon, men of Athens, we will put him to the rack, but I shall ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... was forced to admit that sorrow and virtue sat becomingly upon her. Her mood was in a measure contagious, and he talked gently and gaily about herself, and the day when the world would listen to her with delight and approbation. But while he talked, he was like a man on the rack. He was dragged from different sides, and the questioner was at ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... she would, George would not be drawn into further discussion. She could only show him offended airs, and rack her brains morning and night as to ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may think that the first was sent out by mistake and that the second was too vaguely addressed; but both letters went into the rack to await delivery, for our faith in the wisdom of our Postal Department was great; it makes no mistakes, and to it—in a land where everybody knows everybody else, and all his business, and where it has taken him—an address could never be too vague. The bush-folk love to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... to myself in short order. "I know—but not so loud—they'll hear you!" Aye, his first words, and he smiled into my face. This man on the rack smiled, and thought clearly, whilst I babbled. "Be quick," he bade me. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... when you require, The man of business must retire. The haughty minister of state, With trembling must thy leisure wait; And, while his fate is in thy hands, The business of the nation stands. Thou darest the greatest prince attack, Canst hourly set him on the rack; And, as an instance of thy power, Enclose him in a wooden tower, With pungent pains on every side: So Regulus[5] in torments died. From thee our youth all virtues learn, Dangers with prudence to discern; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... spot—for a moment, and then, breaking the spell with which the sound of Claudia's voice had bound him, he passed into the hall, took his hat from the rack, and said to Jim, who was still ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... to pick it up, when with a decided gesture she stopped me. I looked at her surprised. Her face was flushed, indignant, I thought, and instantly my conscience was on the rack. What had I done, for my lady was ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... "you don't know what they do. There is a punishment here more terrible than the rack." And he whispered to me with white sidelong eyes: "They can drive you mad in a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... and a great deal of mental effort, to steel himself for it. Psycho-rehabilitation was a dreadful thing to face. There would be almost a year of unremitting agony, physical and mental, worse than a Khiftan torture rack. There would be the shame of having his innermost secrets poured out of him by the psychotherapists, and, at the end, there would emerge someone who would not be Salgath Trod, or anybody like Salgath Trod, and he would have to learn to know this stranger, ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... suppose he has, but if I don't hold him, he's going to land me over somewhere in those foothills," said Clara, faintly. "He's got the most awful little rack I ever rode. Henry, do you suppose that fellow ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... stammer out her thanks, but he had pushed back his chair and was leading the way out of the dining-room. In the hall he paused a minute to say that if it suited her they would take the three o'clock train back to North Dormer; then he took his hat and coat from the rack ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... or three napoleons, he had but a word to say; and he said it often. Thus, after a while, he became an excellent billiard-player; he kept his colored meerschaum in the rack of a popular brewery; he took absinthe before dinner, and spent his evenings in the laudable effort to ascertain how many mugs of beer he could "put away." Gaining in audacity, he danced at Bullier's, dined at Foyd's, and at ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... beautifully soft and white, flashed over the board. She dealt rapidly, unfalteringly, with the finish of one bred to the cards, handling chips and coppers with the peculiar mannerisms that spring from long practice. It was seen that she never looked at her check-rack, but, when a bet required paying, picked up a stack without turning her head; and they saw further that she never reached twice, nor took a large pile and sized it up against its mate, removing the extra disks, as is the custom. When she stretched forth her hand she ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... not understand Eve, and no man from anywhere has understood any woman since—I had to rack my brains for a ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... began to be drawn out in a fashion regardless of covers and corners. The large russet trunk with the black "H,"—the two linen-cased ones with "Hadden" in full;—the two square bonnet-boxes,—these, one by one, were dragged and whirled toward the vehicle and jerked upon the rack; but the "ark," as they called Mrs. Linceford's huge light French box, and the one precious receptacle that held all Leslie's pretty outfit, where ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... U.S.S. Plymouth, at that moment lying idle in a British port, that the landsman would commonly associate with sailing orders to a great destroyer. Blowers began to hum in the fire rooms. The torpedo gunner's mates slipped detonators in the warheads and looked to the rack load of depth charges. The steward made a last trip across to the depot ship. Otherwise, things ran on very ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... cork and the wine. Let them stand about five minutes before you drive in the cork, which should always be of rather full size, and made to fit by compressing it with the press at one end. Then drive in the cork with the mallet, and lay the bottles, either in sand on the cellar floor, or on a rack made for that purpose. They should be laid so that the wine covers the ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... farmer's wife or the hired girl, now it is made in the creameries by men. My mother made most of the butter for nearly forty years, packing thousands of tubs and firkins of it in that time. The milk was set in tin pans on a rack in the milk house for the cream to rise, and as soon as the milk clabbered ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... nobody in it, it would all go to rack and ruin; wouldn't it? Had your mamma to pay anything for the lodgings she ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... swain may rack his brain, And tax his fancy's might; To quiz is vain, for 'tis most plain That what I ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... to one of the benches, he picked up a wooden funnel-rack, and tossed it to the crystal disk beneath the violet ray. Slowly it decreased in size, until it had ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... number of sheets is in the accumulator (4 or 5 being the number most employed for afterward facilitating the separation into packets on the receiving table), the two small rollers, a a', advance over the rack, N, and the sheets, instead of continuing to roll over into the accumulator, fall on the rack and are deposited by it upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... of Newgate into the cart, took order to have his arms set up in his last herborough: said was he taken and committed upon suspicion of treason, no witness appearing against him; but the judges entertained him most civilly, discoursed with him, offered him the courtesy of the rack; but he confessed, &c. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... fresh air or the sunshine; no girl should remain undeveloped physically through lack of exercise when she could, through exercise, make herself strong. Even to abuse her feet, the important centre of many important nerves, by tight shoes, is wrong; so is it to rack her spine and upset or throw out of position all the delicate and wonderfully fashioned organs of the abdominal cavity by the wearing of high French heels. Undoubtedly, however, American motherhood and girlhood ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... may tell you and others declare It'll shorten your days and your heart will impair— That nicotine poison will flow through your veins And nervous distraction will rack with its pains; But what cares a feller in slippers and gown, When wintry winds whistle and snow's pouring down, With papers and books, and his feet near the fire, Encircled with ringlets that ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... said this she lifted the old rifle out of the rack over the door and rubbed her hand over the barrel to get the sight clear. 'I am not going to tell ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... one thing and other, for heaviness they fell asleep, and there befell them both marvellous adventures. Sir Gawaine him seemed he came into a meadow full of herbs and flowers, and there he saw a rack of bulls, an hundred and fifty, that were proud and black, save three of them were all white, and one had a black spot, and the other two were so fair and so white that they might be no whiter. And these three bulls which were so fair were tied with two strong cords. And the remnant ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... her a quick glance over the tow yarn rack, but the fair face was very serene, and without a trace of ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... is meatless and is given up largely to asparagus (just beginning, thank God!), you certainly see no toast in the rack, but find that the tender green faggot reposes on a slab of it large enough ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... sank as in death. Dead weary he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains he felt in all his veins were little less than those which one feels that has endured the torture of the rack. But when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up, and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird had given him, and remembering the charge ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... planks may possibly run from stem {84} to stern without a break. In this case the unity of each piece supplies enough longitudinal resistance to strains. But when a vessel is large, and more especially when she is long, the strains known as hogging and sagging are apt to rack ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... Mrs. Bumpkin, on a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly, so as to make it last the longer, with tobacco from his leaden jar; and then, having lighted it, he and his ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the next station, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack and piled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It was ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... a glance, and, seating himself at the piano, threw back his head with an impatient gesture. He turned swiftly the leaves of music that stood on the rack before him. ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... There were a hat-rack, and two waste-baskets filled with little things done up in newspaper, and a little table, and a paste-board box filled with hats, and two mirrors about as tall as David, and a maid's wash-stand, and a bundle of pictures tied up in newspapers, and a wooden ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... Siricus, which had crouched into the kitchen oven, where it was recently found, with its bell still attached to its neck! And the prisoners in the blackhole of the gladiators' barracks, riveted to an iron rack that jammed their legs! And the two lovers surprised in a shop near the Thermae; both were young, and they were tightly clasped in each other's arms.... How awful a night and how fearful a morrow! Day has come, ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... meekly but comprehendingly, for he hastily flung a napkin over the ice and gently set the decanter back in its rack. "But dynamite, it comes in sticks and not in bottles. And it would shake the roots of them old poplars clean ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for the nearest and dearest of our fellow-units. At only five points can we just touch each other, and all that is—and that only by the function of our poor senses—from the outside. In vain we rack them that we may get a little closer to the best beloved and most implicitly trusted; ever in vain, from the cradle ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the old-fashioned coat and hat rack while she went in at the hall door of the back parlor. Soon Roebuck himself came out, his glasses on his nose, a family Bible under his arm. "Glad to see you, Matthew," said he, with saintly kindliness, giving me a friendly hand. "We are just about to offer up ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust and must and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the piston was free to move; but in its downward stroke it was connected with a ratchet, and the partial vacuum formed after the explosion beneath the piston, together with its own weight in falling, operated through a rack, and caused rotation of the flywheel. This engine (which, in an improved form, uses only about 20 cubic feet of gas) is still largely employed, some 1,600 having been constructed. The great objection to it was the noise it produced, and the wear and tear ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... can't make up your mind in twenty-four hours, neither can you in two hundred and forty. I don't want to hurry you, but you must have some consideration for me; imagine my state of mind. Why, I'll be on the rack till we meet again. I fancy a conscientious woman is about the cruellest creature that walks! However, I'll stick to my promise: I will not intrude on you till the day after to-morrow. Then I will come at eleven o'clock for your answer; and, Katherine, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... not say his soul was his own, veiled in mystic language, perfectly understood by each other, theological and philosophical truths, theories, and discoveries, which would have brought them to the stake or the rack, had they been produced openly. "Man was the subject of alchemy, and the object of the art was the perfection, or at least the improvement, of man." These were the real Hermetic Philosophers. After them came men who, not knowing the meaning of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... removed his hat and stood irresolute, expecting some greeting. But nothing happened. On a rack against the wall he saw a gray uniform coat like that which Mr. Quimbleton had worn in the Balloon office, and a similar gray cap with the silver monogram. He glanced at the books. One was The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the other was a Bible, open at the second chapter of John. He was looking curiously ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... esprit who are excessively exhausting to some people. They are the talkers who have what may be called JERKY minds. Their thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. They say bright things on all possible subjects, but their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking the cat in your ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) |
