"Rack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It seems ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... No master taking his early walk over the grounds. No Lily gathering her flowers before breakfast. No John to open the stable door, and let me in to bark good morning to the horses. No horses; a boy sweeping the deserted stable, and rack and manger empty. No carriage; the coach-house filled with lumber, and the shutters closed in the loft. No servants about. I rather congratulated myself upon the disappearance of Lily's maid, who had a habit of making uncivil speeches if I crossed her path in running to meet Lily. That maid and ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... they will take the bone of some Catholic Saint (?) and admonish the followers of Catholicism to touch this bone, or to kiss it, and declare to them that by so doing they will become entirely cured of any malady that may rack their person ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... it a "Pullman" which is a good name for a car, only it's the engine that pulls the man and the car, too, really. Then we got all comfortable, with another nice colored man who showed his teeth at us, and put our bags up on a rack, and Aunty May gave me some sweet chocolate and a magazine with pictures in it, and Aunty Edith said. "I wish we didn't have to change ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... applicable to the territorial tax. The land proprietors, in order to reimburse themselves, will rack-rent their tenants: the farmer, of course, will transfer the obligation to the miller, by enhancing the price of grain; the miller to the baker, by increasing the price of flour; and the baker to the consumer, by raising the price of bread. The ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... made no impression on my mind. I am extremely busy just now, working up the mayor's next speech." And with a smile and bow in every way suited to his fine appearance, he took his hat from the rack and left the house. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 of Piedmont, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... it was impossible to walk there, till it should be brushed away. Wrapped in their shawls, Henrietta and Charlotte Benson walked up and down the space that the servant swept, and watched and listened for a long half-hour. I took a cloak from the rack and, leaning against the door-post, stood and ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... second Mrs Balwhidder. But still I was far from being right: a small matter affected me, and I was overly given to walking by myself, and musing on things that I could tell nothing about—my thoughts were just the rack of a dream without form, and driving witlessly as the smoke that mounteth up, and is lost in the airy heights of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... later, if you get in the habit of letting old people have a show, and get up and offer them your chair, and run errands for them without expecting them to pay you. This place on the back of your head, where there is a bump as big as a hickory nut, is what we call the hat rack bump, because you can hang your hat on it. The barber ought to have cut a couple of slices off that bump with his lawn mower. Here is a bump that shows that you are color blind. Be careful, or you ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... Master Garret. He is in prison in Lincoln College. He is to be strictly examined after evensong today. If he refuse to give up the names of all to whom he has sold his books, and who have listened to his teachings, they declare he will be sent to the Tower to be examined by the rack." ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... leg, "By George!" he said; "that was enough to put a man on the rack. Mary, you should have told him more ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their limbs or ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... she shrieked, "or thou shalt rue it. Cramps and aches shall wring and rack thy flesh and bones; fever shall consume thee; ague shake ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Rack—If only one person uses it, roller towel rack may be installed. Otherwise, paper toweling or individual hand towels hung on cup hooks near sink ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... fluttering madly to be free. This was the very ecstasy of love, to suffer the extreme torment for the beloved! Ah, he was smitten deep enough at last; if poetry were to be won through bloody sweat, the pains of the rack, the crawling anguish of the fire, was not poetry his own? Yes, indeed; what Dante had gained through exile and the death of Monna Beatrice was his for another price, the price of his own blood. He ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... by some 'a sporting gentleman,' by some 'a thorough-bred Englishman,' by some 'a genuine John Bull;' but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day. He was in the commission of the peace, and could write his name almost legibly; but his greatest qualifications were, that he was more severe with poachers, was a better shot, a harder rider, had better horses, kept better ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... 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 ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the night to lower the topmasts, strike the lower yards, and take every precaution against bad weather. The butterflies no longer hover around us; everything tosses and writhes overhead: on the steep slopes of the mountain the trees shiver, the long grasses bend low as if in pain; terrible gusts rack them with a hissing sound; branches, bamboo leaves, and earth fall like ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... a laugh that rang unnatural and hoarse. "Jest! when for a day and a night my soul hath been on the rack and mocking demons have jeered ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... said they knew of no further mischief of his against his father; but when they were more severely tortured, and were in the utmost extremity, and the tormentors, out of compliance with Antipater, stretched the rack to the very utmost, they said that Alexander bare great ill-will and innate hatred to his father; and that he told them that Herod despaired to live much longer; and that, in order to cover his great age, he colored his hair black, and endeavored to conceal what would discover ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... recalled her youthful disappointment, the failure of her marriage, the wasted years that followed; but those were negative sorrows, denials and postponements of life. She seemed in no way related to their shadowy victim, she who was stretched on this fiery rack of the irreparable. She had suffered before—yes, but lucidly, reflectively, elegiacally: now she was suffering as a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the single fierce animal longing that ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... could not hope to withstand the final rush of ten big-jawed and active animals. Even if he could keep them off in that open space, he could not stay there another day; and if they tackled him in the reeds, he would have no chance. He began to rack his brain for a scheme; but while he thought, the circle closed in until quite plainly he could distinguish the staring eyes all centered upon him. He piled on more fuel, and as the flames sprang up they fell back. As the flames died down, they ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... clothes he told how it was he happened to run out into the garden during the heavy hail storm. He had seen the big frozen chunks of rain coming down, and he remembered what his father had said about it spoiling garden and farm crops. So Hal, when no one was looking, got a big umbrella from the rack and went out to hold it over his corn. Mr. Porter happened to see ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... Philibert,—his voice could not repress the emotion he felt,—"and God bless Amelie! Think you she would care to see me to-day, Le Gardeur?" Philibert's thoughts flew far and fast, and his desire to know more of Amelie was a rack of suspense to him. She might, indeed, recollect the youth Pierre Philibert, thought he, as she did a sunbeam that gladdened long-past summers; but how could he expect her to regard him—the full-grown man—as the same? Nay, was he not nursing a fatal ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... may do something for me. I cannot quite forget; but if I can cease to remember for a few minutes, or even, it may be, for a few hours? O how idle to talk of "indulging grief:" talk of indulging the rack, the rheumatism! who ever indulged grief that truly felt it? to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... time, thoughts worthy to be committed to paper afterwards. Now, as a song-writer, I ask how can one get inspiration while gazing at a row of saucepans, a cullender, a bottle of metal paste, one ditto knife polish and a plate-rack? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... would the strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held it up to ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... and all her small delights! She feels not how the social frame is rack'd. She loves a little scandal which excites; A little feeling is a want of tact. For her there lie in wait millions of foes, And yet the 'not too much' is all ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... is a brief autumn, Fierce storm-rack scrawled with lightning Passed over it Leaving the naked bleeding earth, Stabbed with the ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... was a grove of fragrant Christmas trees waiting to be fitted into little green stands with fairy fences. Within, customers were bargaining, chatting, and bantering the busy clerks. Pedlers offering tinsel and colored candles waylaid them on the door-step. The rack under the butcher's awning fairly groaned with its weight of plucked geese, of turkeys, stout and skinny, of poultry of every kind. The saloon-keeper even had wreathed his door-posts in ground-ivy and hemlock, and hung a sprig of holly in the window, as if with a spurious ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 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 ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... he received a good rent from the English lady for the cottage on Monte Amato. The contadino acknowledged that he received a fair price for the cottage and the land about it; but the house, he declared, would go to rack and ruin with no one ever in it, and the land was lying idle, for the English lady would have everything left exactly as it had been when she lived there with her husband. Artois seized upon this ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Celia, absently. "Yes; he was. But you must remember Lord Heyton is very much upset; when one's nerves are on the rack, the least thing, ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... 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 ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... closes abruptly with a story of a gang of them, which has all the horrors of rack and torture. In the Translator's sequel ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... person in a large felt hat, rose from a business table under the key-rack, and came forward, removing his hat with both hands as he ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... saved poor Joseph, yet I dare say Potiphar's wife was a religious woman. The will of God sanctions many crimes. It tells the Thug to kill travellers; it told the Inquisition to torture and burn heretics; it told the Catholics and Protestants to rack and slaughter witches; it told Christians and Mohammedans to fight each other on hundreds of bloody battle-fields; it tells Christians now to keep up laws against liberty of thought. There never was a time when these things would not ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... Silvio Pellico and Karl Sand cheek by jowl; Pestal, Comte, Cromwell, Garibaldi, Marx, Mazzini, Bem, Kossuth, Lassalle, and many another writer and fighter. A fine engraving of Napoleon as First Consul was hung over the mantel-piece, a pipe-rack intervening between it and a fac-simile of the warrant for the execution ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... despised. They persuaded themselves that the earthquakes, inundations and pestilences were attributable to it. To these incitements was added a desire to seize the property of the faithful confiscated by the law. Of this the early Christians unceasingly and bitterly complained. But the rack, the fire, wild beasts were unavailingly applied. Out of the very persecutions themselves advantages arose. Injustice and barbarity bound the pious but feeble communities together, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... back again. Who is now the day-boys' house-master? Jackson once again—as if anything was Jackson's business! I handed the house back last term in a most flourishing condition. It has already gone to rack and ruin for the second time. To return to Varden. I have unearthed a put-up job. Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Orr are friends. Do you see? It all ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... been honoured with a place beside a rack of special negatives; at least, there were other racks, in the other lockers, not locked up like that; and there was no other treasure that Pocket could see. He had his hand on his own treasure, was in the act of taking it, trembling a little, but more elated, ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... thus close for some seconds. The thirst and hunger of all these days of rack and anguish must be assuaged before either could talk. But at last she drew a little back and looked up ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Neapolitan turned over the pieces of music in the music-stand, and after discussing with the two contessinas, he placed on the rack the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... on, sweet bird, thy gentle strain "Can't cool my brow, or cool my brain;" But yet, thou hast a magic pow'r To lull me in a fev'rish hour; Thy pleasant notes, so sweet and clear, Come soft and mellow'd to my ear. And when my head is rack'd with pain, Burning my brow, throbbing my brain,— When all's tumultuous, toss'd, and wild, And frantic as a wayward child; Roaring as if old ocean's waves Were bursting from their coral caves; Tossing as if old ocean's foam Were rocking to ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... threading uncharted seas; we found it more and more difficult to believe that this empty, lonesome ocean was the Atlantic in the twentieth century. Once we saw a four-master; once a shy, silent steamer avoided us, westward bound; and once in mid-ocean, tossed on a sea sun-silvered under a rack of clouds, we overtook a gallant little schooner out of New Bedford or Gloucester—a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... this form of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... medium sized boys form the elephant. Two four-foot sticks are fastened together with twenty-inch crosspieces, thus: Forming a rack which two boys carry on their shoulders. Cut two pieces from gray cambric like Fig. 6 to form the head, having the trunk about a yard long; sew them together and stuff with rags; sew on white pasteboard tusks, large buttons for eyes and big ears cut out of cambric and lined with one ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... begun, An' all the chores about the farm are done, The critters milked an' foddered, gates shet fast, Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper past, An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp,— I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs Thet's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch Of folks thet foller in one rut too much: Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all doubt; But 't ain't so, ef the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... thoughtful state his father would now be in from the consideration of those dangers and difficulties which he had to encounter, and remarked that upon this account he was much to be pitied, because his mind must be much upon the rack. The Prince replied, that he did not half so much pity his father as his brother;[60] "for," (he said) "the King has been inured to disappointments and distresses, and has learnt to bear up easily under the misfortunes ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... stay'd his rash intent. He knelt.—Cool play'd upon his cheek the wind, And fann'd the fever of his maddening mind, The willows waved, the stream it sweetly swept, The paly moonbeam on its surface slept, And all was peace;—he felt the general calm O'er his rack'd bosom shed a genial balm: When casting far behind his streaming eye, He saw the Grove,—in fancy saw her lie, His Margaret, lull'd in Germain's[3] arms to rest, And all the demon rose within his breast. Convulsive now, he clench'd his trembling hand, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... being so chill'd, do we not chide the sun, And say he wilful hides his face away, Say 'tis his will makes the world drear and dun, And takes the golden glory from the day? The envious rack we rather should reproach, That comes betwixt us in despite of him, Rebellious powers, that on his reign encroach, And, black themselves, his brightness joy to dim. So when the troubling mischiefs of the time, Or baser minds, bent upon marring thee, Stole moments of thy favour, ...
— Sonnets of Shakespeare's Ghost • Gregory Thornton
... seventeen ships to confront the Brest squadron, while eighteen were sent to look for Villeneuve under the command of Admiral Calder. In the public discontent with the latter, it was not reassuring to know that, at a moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he was again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, Nelson called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, on the 23d of August. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... you," he said to Hamilton, "if I have to put every man, woman and child in this town on the rack. It lies, I think, between Miss Roussillon and the priest, although both insistently deny it. I've thought it over in every way, and I can't see how they can both be ignorant of where it is, or ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... needing no music on the rack before her, played the "Miserere" from "Il Trovatore," a Hungarian "Czardas," Mendelssohn's "Fruehlingslied" and the overture from "William Tell." She followed these with the "Intermezzo" and the "Pizzicato" ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of the immigrant, sprung from peasant stock, is to grow up in the slums and tenements of the great city. Such a fate was mine. To exchange the rack-rented but limitless fields of Irish landlordism for the rickety and equally rack-rented tenements, with the checkerboard streets, where all must keep moving, is only adding sordidness to spare sadness. Surely, the birthday's injury is felt in a deep sense by the poor. ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... willows and some one to come back with the mule to carry forward the portion of meat that could not be taken at first. We intended to dry it at the willows, and then we could carry it along as daily food over the wide plain we had yet to cross. Having carried the meat forward, we made a rack of willows and dried it over the fire, making up a lot of moccasins for the barefooted ones while we waited. We were over most of the rocky road, we calculated that our shoemaking would last us ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... was scrupulously swept and dusted; furniture rubbed; little white knitted mats laid on the dressing-table; the chintz curtains taken down and put up again; a new nice chamber set of white china was bought, for the pitcher of the old set had an ugly nick in it and looked shabby; the towel rack was filled with white napery; the handsomest Marseilles quilt was spread on the bed; the stove was blackened and polished. It looked "very respectable," Anne ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner
... the cause of the tempest,—you will see why the fifth vessel is thus perilled, and her sisters are thus wrecked. Mark, four different kinds of animals, who, from their horrid jaws, send forth the winds and storms which torture and rack the sea. The first are the lions, the wolves, the bears. These, the inscription tells you, are the lawless and savage signors of the state. The next are the dogs and swine,—these are the evil counsellors and parasites. Thirdly, you behold the dragons and the foxes,—and these ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... corner and the acid-stained, deal-topped table. There upon a shelf was the row of formidable scrap-books and books of reference which many of our fellow-citizens would have been so glad to burn. The diagrams, the violin-case, and the pipe-rack—even the Persian slipper which contained the tobacco—all met my eyes as I glanced round me. There were two occupants of the room—one Mrs. Hudson, who beamed upon us both as we entered; the other the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blood, with a gaping axe-wound in his forehead. And he whispered: "Denounce him, betray him, save his soul. Leave his body to the pyre, that his soul may be spared. Leave him to the slow torture of the rack, that his soul may ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... hour they sate in council, At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell; I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain— I'm sure my poor head aches again, I've scratched it so, and all in vain Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning
... to a rope, leads her to the rack, and binds her fast. Then Hans goes to his mother. 'Good evening, mother.' 'Good evening, Hans. Where have you been?' 'With Gretel.' 'What did you take her?' 'I took her nothing.' 'What did Gretel give you?' 'She gave me nothing, she came with me.' 'Where have you left ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... and hide. If it hadn't been for the fear of falling to the hard floor, he would have jumped out of Mary's hands and scampered away. But he had no chance to do this. There was another loud racketty-rack-clumpity-bang! First a big tin dish pan rolled all the way down the stairs into the hall; then a set of building-blocks, a wooden hobby horse, a lot of animals from a Noah's ark, tin soldiers, a drum, and a train of cars. Toby came last, sliding down the banisters, and shouting in glee as he ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... DOVE,—I always and always will be most true to you. I would not be such a wicked little girl as to break my word for anything I'm going always to keep it, and tortures, even the Inquisition, and even the rack, wouldn't get it out of me. Did you ever hear of the rack, Mr. Dove? but perhaps you had better not know. Yes, I'll always keep my word, the word that I promised, and no one shall ever know about you and me and the sticky sweetmeats; but I won't keep the word that I didn't ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... dilapidated old coffin-beds, a dresser, a high-backed arm-chair, several three-legged stools, and two tables, of which one could be packed away beneath the other. In one corner stood the wheel at which Cree had to fill his own pirns. There was a plate-rack on one wall, and near the chimney-piece hung the wag-at-the-wall clock, the time-piece that was commonest in Thrums at that time, and that got this name because its exposed pendulum swung along the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict's forehead is punched in, starred across, ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point. In anything which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; while it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing little ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... lodgings announced the hour as close on five, and he mentally noted that the timepiece was inaccurate—three and a half minutes behind Greenwich. As usual, the hall was untenanted, with no servant to answer questions. He searched the dark recesses of a dirty letter-rack, on the chance that he might find a telegram from his wife waiting for him. Then he went gaily up the interminable staircase, making nothing now of its five flights, enjoying their steepness as productive of ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... same evening I was fortunate enough to convey my prize to the asylum I had prepared for their reception. Inexpressible was the rage of Mendoza, when he heard of their elopement. He raved like one deprived of reason—swore he would put all the servants of the family to the rack—and, in consequence of the intelligence he obtained by threats and promises, set on foot a very strict inquiry, in order to apprehend the fugitives and Orlando, who had by some means or ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... ferns. A gas fire flickered in the grate, a wire blind shut out the view, the chairs stood ranged in mathematical order against the walls, the very newspaper was folded into an accurate square and put away in the rack, and Pixie looked round with awed eyes the while she ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ceiling, painted on the blade with the arms of an Oxford college. There was a small prie-dieu, surmounted by a crucifix of Ober-Ammergau workmanship: there was a mahogany writing-table with a revolving chair set before it; there were a couple of deep padded arm-chairs, a pipe-rack, and a row of photographs—his mother in evening dress, a couple of sisters, with other well-bred-looking relations. Altogether, with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, it was exactly the ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... She reached across to the rack, single-handed lifted Conroy's bag, and held it at arm's length. 'I counted ten slowly. And I didn't think of hours or ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... on Aldebaran's wan face. It was as white and drawn as if he had been tortured by the rack and thumbscrew, so he made no answer for the moment. But when the fire was kindled, and they had supped the broth set out in steaming bowls upon the table, he ventured on a word ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Edward could get no more. In the depths of his misery, he accepted it. The gentleman took the collection home, gave it to his boy, and finally allowed it all, for want of care and attention, to go to rack and ruin. And so that was the end of ten years of poor Thomas Edward's unremitting original work in natural history. A sadder tale of unrequited labour in the cause of science has ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Bones swung round on his heel, knocked over Hamilton's stationery rack, stumbled over a chair, and strode gloomily from ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... two stakes of wood, the felon's shame, They see a halo round one matchless Name. To powers of earth, and hell, and torture blind, In death, for Him they love, they rapture find. They joy in agony,—our gain their loss, To die for Christ they count the world but dross: Our rack their crown, our pain their highest pleasure, And in the world's contempt they find their ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... but I would cheerfully chance it for a month rather than do another day's work like this. The palms of my hands feel as if they had been handling a red-hot iron, my arms and shoulders ache as if I had been on a rack. I seem to be in pain from the tips of my toes to the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... to the rage for scientific experiment in 1811: "Never was poor Nature so put to the rack, and never, of course, was she made ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... those that have preceded it. When the proper 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 the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... an ordinary man to have been dealt with by other people; and he would have been careful of managing things well, for fear of being called to account; whereas now he is secure, and hath let things run to rack, as they now appear. That at a certain time Mr. Povy did carry him an account of the state of the Duke of York's estate, showing in faithfullness how he spent more than his estate would bear, by above 20,000l. per annum, and asked my Lord's opinion of it; to which he answered, that no man ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... is unreal, it is also fleeting as the shadows of the flying clouds; and when God awakes, it disappears as they before the noonlight that clears the heavens. All things that are, are on condition of perpetual flux and change. The cloud-rack has the likeness of bastions and towers, but they are mist, not granite, and the wind is every moment sweeping away their outlines, till the phantom fortress topples into red ruin while we gaze. The tiniest stream eats out its little ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... jest nachelly gwine to rack an' ruin! Zack ain' got no moh sense 'bout takin' cyare of a house den ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... our lives. So, my friends, when Pilate would have hesitated, it was the people who shouted "Christ to the cross!" But we bind you not to our safety—no! Betray us to the crowd—impeach, calumniate, malign us if you will—we are above death, we should walk cheerfully to the den of the lion, or the rack of the torturer—we can trample down the darkness of the grave, and what is death to a criminal ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Anthonio: O my deere Anthonio, How haue the houres rack'd, and tortur'd me, Since I haue lost thee? Ant. Sebastian are you? Seb. Fear'st thou that Anthonio? Ant. How haue you made diuision of your selfe, An apple cleft in two, is not more twin Then these two creatures. Which is Sebastian? Ol. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... conclude an address of almost unexampled grandeur, are unfortunately of no interest to us, except as illustrating the character of the priest who wrote them, and the king to whom they were written. The hand of the persecutor was not stayed. The rack and the lash and the stake continued to claim their victims. So far it was labour in vain. But the letter remains, to speak for ever for the courage of Latimer; and to speak something, too, for a prince that could respect the nobleness of the poor yeoman's son, who dared in ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... evidently broad awake, under the lee of the boat. We noticed that each man had his cutlass buckled round his waist—that the boarding-pikes had been cut loose from the main boom, round which they had been stopped, and that about thirty muskets were ranged along a fixed rack that ran athwart ships ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... measured quantity of acid. When solution has been effected, dilution with a measured volume is generally necessary. The assayer sees to this and (whilst the funnels and filters are being prepared) makes any separation that is necessary. The filters are arranged in order on a rack (fig. 11), and need not be marked unless the precipitates or residues have subsequently to be dried. The filters are washed with hot water, and if the filtrates are wanted flasks are placed beneath, ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... stuffy and hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full, and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit reposed on the chronometer-case. There were two settees, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... of their playmates called at your house, to have fun with Arnold or Mirabell," said the typewriter girl, "and they may have dropped the Clown into your pocket as your coat hung on the rack." ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack: Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly. We see the things we do not yearn to see Around us: and what see we glancing back? Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack, Hopes that were never ours yet seemed to be, For which we steered on life's salt stormy sea Braving the sunstroke and the frozen pack. If thus to look behind is all in vain, And all in vain to look to left or right, Why face ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... him, which was on the right side of the ship. This room was about ten feet long, extending from the middle of the ship to the side, and about six feet wide. A telescope was the first thing which attracted his attention. It lay in a rack near the doorway. He took it down, but it fell apart at once, being completely corroded. In the middle of the room there was a compass, which hung from the ceiling. But the iron pivot had rusted, and the plate had fallen down. Some more guns and swords were here, but all rusted like ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... people there, all with gardens of their own, all pointing to things and saying, 'We've got one of those in the east bed,' or 'Wouldn't that look nice in the south orchid house?' and you and I will be quite, quite out of it." I sighed, and helped myself from the west toast-rack. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various
... shows a perspective view of the hoist, Fig. 2 being a longitudinal section. It will be seen that this apparatus is of very simple construction, the motion of the piston being transmitted directly to the winding-drum shaft by means of a flexible steel rack. Referring to Fig. 2, F is a piston working in the cylinder, G; E is the flexible steel rack connected to the piston, F, and gearing with a toothed wheel, B, which is inclosed in a watertight casing having cover, D, for convenient access. The wheel, B, is keyed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... of old Luke and such others as I could now see through the widening crack my hands unconsciously made in the doorway, told me that the rack was at work in this room so lately given up to revelry. Yet the mutterings, which from time to time came to my ears from one sullen lip or another, did not rise into frightened imprecation or even into any assertion of sorrow or contrition. It seemed as if some suspense ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... mentioned him several times; has expected, with a kind of eagerness, he would resemble her Louisa; has hoped he and I should be friends. 'Did not I hope the same?' Oliver, she has tortured me! All benevolence as she is, she has put me on the rack! ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... on his coverings and the rushes of his couch; they are on his table, his seats, along his pillow and his walls; they are playing before his door, running hither and thither through the crevices of his roof, multiplying themselves on his rack and shelf; all biting, gnawing, nibbling—some his seal-skin hat, his tobacco-pouch, the bark ornaments of his furniture; others the handles of his tools, his pipes, his Bible, and ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... clear, and as they rode Ralph said: "Quite clear is the sky, and yet one cloud there is in the offing; but this is strange about it, though I have been watching it this half hour, and looking to see the rack come up from that quarter, yet it changes not at all. I never saw the ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... were the nominees of a great landlord, they were almost entirely composed of landlords, and the score of gentlemen who served on these bodies in many instances imposed taxation, as is now freely admitted, for the benefit of their own property on a rack-rented tenantry. A reform of this system of local government was promised by the Liberals in the Queen's Speech of 1881, but so far was the powerful Government at that time in office from fulfilling its pledges that not only was no Bill to that effect introduced, ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... of the Renaissance, when the human form counted only as a rack on which was heaped crinoline and stiff brocades and chains and gems and wigs and every manner of elaborate adornment, making mountains of poor tottering human forms, all ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... alarm). Stop: it's not fair. You mustn't show her that you suffer, Morell. I am on the rack, too; but I ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... which is provided with movable racks, H, within cooling chambers which are arranged beneath an ice chamber, B, constructed with inclined walls, a a a, a drip pan, D, and an ice-supporting rack, c, substantially as and ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... the spacious room, feeling as though the whole world were sinking into nothingness after the rack of storm and tempest. At first he was merely conscious of having gone through a fearful experience, which threatened to fling him far outside the sphere of everything he was wont to reverence and hold sacred. For love and honor of his guardian angel he had declared war to the patriarch, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to fall against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table until 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
... of repealing the laws which secured property to the owner, and only admitted him to a sort of partnership with the tiller of the soil, old Gill speedily assured them that these were changes only to be adopted in Ulster, where the tenants were rack-rented and treated like slaves. 'Which of you here,' would he say, 'can come forward and say he was ever evicted?' Now as the term was one of which none had the very vaguest conception—it might, for aught they knew, have been an operation in surgery—the appeal was an ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... tyrannies and vast, Tribes frost-bound to their past, Lands that are loud all through their length with chains, Wastes where the wind's wings break, Displumed by daylong ache And anguish of blind snows and rack-blown rains, And ice that seals the White Sea's lips, Whose monstrous weights crush flat the ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... deserve a horrid Limerick, and I shall make one myself. Wait a moment, while I rack my brains. Oh, ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the world—a world very carefully chosen—the attention of his guests was divided between his music and his great portfolios. His bachelor's quarters provided him with an appropriate background. His writing table was dominated by something resembling an altarpiece—namely, a large and ingenious rack, on which was arranged a battalion of invitations to balls and dinner parties; and his blotting book was flanked by two delicate volumes, one being a libro d'oro in the shape of a bulky visiting list, the other being ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... talk if you don't make too much noise. Loud talking always keeps me awake. You may call me when we get to Overton." With these words she bent over her bag, opened it, and drew out a small down cushion. She rose in her seat, removed her hat, and, poking it into the rack above her head, sat down. Arranging her pillow to her complete satisfaction, she rested her head against it, closed her eyes and within five minutes ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... I whispered; and, sitting down upon the howdah seat, I took a rest with the rifle upon the front bar of the gun-rack. A piece of tamarisk kept waving in the wind just in front of the rifle, beyond my reach. The mahout leaned forward and gently bent it down. Now, all was clear. The tiger's eyes were like green glass. The elephant for a moment stood like ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... his shaving-cup. I learned something of the great man's family life, of his character, ways, habits. It proved that he lived quite modestly, and that his income was somewhere between sixty and seventy dollars a week. Mine was three times as large. That I should have to rack my brains, do detective work, and be subjected to all sorts of humiliation in an effort to obtain an audience with him seemed to be a ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the book rack on the window sill, intending to do some studying. On the broad stone ledge outside the casement he kept his bottle of spring water. It was a cooler place than the room. Andy poured himself out a drink, and as he sipped it he ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... widely astray, perhaps their successors have not exactly kept the line, by advancing the leases to a rack rent: It is worth considering, whether the tenant of an expiring lease, hath not in equity, a kind of reversionary right, which ought to favour him with the refusal of another term, at one third under the value, in houses, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... competition, know through what hideous injustice they enrich themselves; but speak to them of fair play, and they flout you from their presence. The wealthy corporations owning these street car lines in New York see that their drivers and conductors are kept on the rack from sixteen to eighteen hours every day of the week, including Sundays; but when a bill is brought into the State Legislature to limit the daily working hours to twelve, they order their hired agents of the lobby to defeat it. These gamblers of Wall ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... by the way he came, went out of the front door, and through the garden to where the pony was made fast, and led him away in search of a stable. He found one behind the house, and filling the rack with hay, returned to the house, and seated himself at a porch which was at the door which led to the back premises, for the keeper's house was large and commodious. Edward was in deep thought, when he was roused by the little girl, the daughter of the newly-appointed ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... should discover stealing his fruit. One day while the stout Dutchman was at his midday meal, his son ran in to tell him that he had seen an Indian squaw enter the orchard. Van Dyck sprang from the table vowing vengeance, and from the rack made of deer's horns he took down his fusee and rushed into the orchard, taking care to conceal himself until he was within easy range. The squaw saw him and, with a yell of fear, wheeled to fly for her life; but Van Dyck was a true shot and, bringing ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... old-pattern cretonnes and chintzes, an etching or two, a Japanese print or two, a reproduction of a John, the poems of Mr. Masefield and Rupert Brooke, a French novel, the New Statesman, and where once had been a gun-rack a Della ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... horse to the rack before the store and entered the crowded place. The fumes of tobacco smoke, vinegar, cheese, and various other commodities gave a distinctive flavor to Caleb Schell's store—and not a pleasant one, to ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the cause, but yet per accidens;[56] For, when we hear one rack the name of God, Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour Christ, We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul; Nor will we come, unless he use such means Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd. Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring Is stoutly to abjure the ...
— The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... really good-tempered little maid-of-all-work, vanished, and Mrs. Home made some fresh toast, which she set, brown, hot, and crisp, in the china toast-rack. She then boiled a new-laid egg, and had hardly finished these final preparations before the rattle of the latch-key was heard in the hall-door, and her husband came in. He was a tall man, with a face so colorless ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... easily pleased, Fyles," she said. "Most of the men I know I have to rack my head to entertain; talk exploring, you know, to explorers, and horses to Derby winners, and what it feels like to be shot—to soldiers—but you entertain ME, and ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... the little bracket-lamp on the wall of his stateroom and lit it. By its light he dragged a life-preserver from the rack overhead and slipped the tapes about his shoulders, reflecting that Alaskan waters are disagreeably cold. Then he opened his traveling-bags and dumped their contents upon the white counterpane of his berth, selecting out of the confusion certain documents and trinkets. The latter he thrust ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... that Eppelein, who for safety's sake had not been suffered to go with him into hiding, had vanished as it were from the face of the earth. Nay, and we knew for what cause and reason, for Dame Henneleinlein had counselled the King's men to seize him, to the end that he might be put on the rack to give tidings of where his master lay hid. If they had caught him his stout limbs would have fared ill indeed; but the light-hearted varlet was a favorite with the serving men and wenches of the court-folk, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the open streets; murderer discoverable by no method,—unless he were a certain CANDIDATUS of Divinity to whom some trace of evidence pointed, but who sorrowfully persisted in absolute and total denial. This poor Candidatus had been threatened with the rack; and would most likely have at length got it, had not the real murderer been discovered,—much to the discredit of the rack in Berlin. This Candidatus was only threatened; nor do I know when the last actual instance in ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... did not smile; she had a look of horror in her blue eyes; she belonged to a peasantry who believed in exorcising the fiend by the aid of the cross, and who not so very many generations before had driven him out of human bodies by rack and flame. ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... so in company with the inevitable soldier, priest, and old lady with a huge umbrella, Paul took a seat in one of the open cars of the little rack-and-pinion railway that runs up the steep hill through the apple orchards to the old cathedral city. In a few minutes the train stopped at a ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... quoting your elder's phrases. Ah, Ivan has set you a problem!" cried Rakitin, with undisguised malice. His face changed, and his lips twitched. "And the problem's a stupid one. It is no good guessing it. Rack your brains—you'll understand it. His article is absurd and ridiculous. And did you hear his stupid theory just now: if there's no immortality of the soul, then there's no virtue, and everything is lawful. (And ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... centre-table, grasped his wrist, and forced him to make several dabs and passes at the fatal newspaper, which still lay there with a bland impassivity between drop-light and book-rack. "That's how we dash off our ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Marais. I acted upon this suggestion and went to Madame Fontanieu, whom I found alone. I was forced to talk to her of the suit of Monsieur and Madame de Lauzun, which I pretended was the business I came upon, and cruelly did I rack my brains to say enough to keep up the conversation. When Fontanieu arrived, for he was soon found, fortunately, I was thrown into another embarrassment, for I had all the pains in the world to get away from Madame Fontanieu, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... a test-tube from a rack on the table, Fo-Hi held it near a lamp and examined the contents—a few drops of colourless fluid. These he poured into a curious long-necked yellow bottle. He began to speak, but without ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... laughing and applauding. Lee and Coralie in their obscure corner were wide-eyed with excitement, and happy. Mr. Polk's chest heaved spasmodically. He screwed up his eyes. His face grinned. He looked like a man on the rack. He opened his eyes and glared about; but he saw nothing, for they were blind with tears. He ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... here, are you going to stretch me on the rack and delve for my opinions on all sorts of subjects? is Miss Susan there going to take them down in shorthand on her cuff and you make a report to Dartrey when ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... taking his fishing gear down from the rack on the porch. Without looking around, he said: "Cooler down ...
— The Destroyers • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The rack is made of any suitable kind of wood, and the sides, A, are cut just alike, or from one pattern. The shelves are made in various widths to fit the sides at the places where they are wanted. The number of shelves can be varied ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... 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
... Bourdon laughing, "when they've no baggonets of their own to make a stand with? You put one in mind of what my father used to say. He was a soldier in revolution times, and sarved his seven years with Washington. The English used to boast that the Americans wouldn't 'stand up to the rack,' if the baggonet was set to work; 'but this was before we got our own toothpicks,' said the old man. 'As soon as they gave US baggonets, too, there was no want of standing up to the work.' It seems to me, corporal, you overlook the fact that ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... He feel kind er saw'y fer 'em w'en He git dat fur, an' He ain' wanter punish 'em too haivy, so He lef 'em dese silk clo'es whar I done tol' you 'bout, an' dese han's whar you kin see fer yo'se'fs is human, an' I reckon bofe dem things putt 'em in min' er w'at dey useter be an' rack 'em 'umble. Uver sence den de moleses bin gwine 'long un'need de groun', 'cordin ter de jedgmen' er de Lawd, an' diggin' an' scratchin' der way thu de worl', in trial an' tribilashun, wid dem po' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the fear, the mystery. All his joy with her, his love and happiness—to leave them;—it was madness; he had always been a sad man; one saw that in his face; the doctors said it was madness. He disappeared without a word one day. For three weeks—nothing. Tante was like a creature crying out on the rack. And it was I who found him by the lake-edge one morning. She was walking in the park, I knew; she used to walk and walk fast, fast, quite silent; and with horrible fear I thought: If I can keep ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... judges could not be trusted to convict Catholics accused of their religion; and counsel was unwilling to prosecute them; therefore the first inquisition was made in the Inns of Court; and almost immediately a copy of the Bull was found in the room of a student in Lincoln's Inn, who upon the rack in the Tower confessed that he had received it from one John Felton, a Catholic gentleman who lived upon his property in Southwark. Upon Felton's arrest (for he had not attempted to escape) he confessed ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... bilboes for ship use, and thumb-screws. Observe also the so-called "Collar taken from the Spanish Armada," which however was here in 1547, and has been in later times filled with lead to make it more terrible. It was only a collar for detention of ordinary prisoners. A conjectural model of the rack is also shown, but the only pictorial authority for this instrument (at no time a legal punishment) is a woodcut in Foxe's Martyrs, the illustrations for which were drawn ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... officers, who had the points of their sheath-knives broken off, who killed and were killed, but who did their work as men. These men, these shambling carcasses at the windlass—I looked, and looked, and vainly I strove to conjure the vision of them swinging aloft in rack and storm, "clearing the raffle," as Kipling puts it, "with their clasp knives in their teeth." Why didn't they sing a chanty as they hove the anchor up? In the old days, as I had read, the anchor always came up to the rollicking sailor songs of ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... cheerful service——. The anticipation produced in me a sensation somewhat between bliss and fear. I rushed through the gate, took the three steps to the house at one bound, threw open the door, and was about to hang my cap on its accustomed peg of the hall rack when I noticed that that particular peg was occupied by a black derby hat. I stopped suddenly and gazed at this hat as though I had never seen an object of its description. I was still looking at it in open-eyed wonder when my mother, coming ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... voice. Joel looked meaningly at Outfield, and as the latter nodded the two rushed at the members of the Sacred Order of Hullabalooloo. But the latter were prepared. Over went the nearest armchair, down from the wall with a clatter came a rack of books, and this way and that swayed the forms of the maskers and the two roommates. The battle was short but decisive, and when it was done, Joel lay gasping on the floor and Outfield ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... seemed to be the black mouth of a tunnel would confront us. Into this apparent pit of darkness we would dash, but the horses never shied. They knew well the ground their fleet hoofs were spurning, and they knew that farther on was home,—a good stall, and a rack full of musky clover hay. Under the trees I could not see Salome. Now and again some sparks of fire would shoot out when a hoof struck a stone. Then out into the open again. The pace our steeds had assumed of their own free will was no mean one, and when scarcely an hour ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... what to me my Loue? and what to me? Ros. You must be purged too, your sins are rack'd. You are attaint with faults and periurie: Therefore if you my fauor meane to get, A tweluemonth shall you spend, and neuer rest, But seeke the wearie beds of ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... first one to whom Bill revealed the news. When he reached home for supper Jeff took his "plug" hat and smoothed it before hanging it upon the hall-rack. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... in. "Hear you how," he says, "Poor Tom the cook is taken! all his joints Do crack, as if his limbs were tied with points. His whole frame slackens; and a kind of rack, Runs down along the spindils of his back; A gout, or cramp, now seizeth on his head, Then falls into his feet; his knees are lead; And he can stir his either hand no more Than a dead stump, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... had somewhat lost its leaden hue, clearing towards the zenith, where one or two odd stars could be seen occasionally peeping down at us through the storm rack that flew overhead like scraps of fleecy wool. This cheery prospect told us to be of good courage, leading us to hope that if we only waited patiently we might expect ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... son and heir of Sir Moyses Hill, hath a brave plantation, which he holds by lease, and which has still forty years to come. The plantation, it is said, doth yield him 1,000 l. per annum. Many Lancashire and Cheshire men are here planted. They sit upon a rack-rent, and pay 5 s. or 6 s. for good ploughing land, which now is clothed with excellent ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... vision Passed before me vague and cloudlike; I beheld our nation scattered, All forgetful of my council, Weakened, warring with each other: Saw the remnant of our people Sweeping westward, wild and woful, Like the cloud rack of a tempest, Like the withered ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various |
