"Racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lodged believed that she had gone to London, taking with her her six months old child, and had started to tramp the way on foot. The woman said that she doubted whether she could ever have got there. She was an utterly broken woman, with a constant racking cough, which was like to tear her to pieces, and before she set out her landlady had urged upon her that the idea of her starting to carry a heavy child to London ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... time the Rector had recovered his composure after that nerve-racking day and that terrible landing through the surf, and after he had stopped nursing the bruises received from a fall as the vessel struck, the last wagon was driving off; and the long-shoremen had vanished silently in all directions, as though the beach had eaten them alive. Not a bundle had been ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... touched? Over that question Eleanor had been racking herself for days past. But if so it could be only a passing fancy. It made it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty. Manisty—the soul of caprice and wilfulness—could never make a woman like Lucy happy. He ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... idea of the hardships endured by the plucky men who are watching our coast. This little book may help considerably to enlighten the general public on the work of the branches of the Navy, and prove that the men engaged in this tedious, hazardous, and nerve-racking vigil are going about it with the same old valour befitting the traditions of the Royal Navy. They have fought the savage beasts like true sportsmen. They have rescued enemy sailors, clothed and fed them, without a sign of animus, knowing that ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of his mind toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am uncertain of the run of the line. Will this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the trouble of forswearing yourself and racking your brains to stifle truth with falsehood,' I coldly replied. 'I have trusted to the testimony of no third person. I was in the shrubbery this evening, and I saw and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... vengeance. Certain is my death, Thine is uncertain: but reflect, O queen, To what thou'rt destined, if he spare thy life. And were I seen to enter here alone, And at so late an hour... Alas, what fears Harrow my bosom when I think of thee! Soon will the dawn of day deliver thee From racking doubt; that dawn I ne'er shall see: I am ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the culprit, stared out of the window at the quarters across the court. Frank, broken at last, lay on the hard quartermaster cot and shook with dry and racking sobs. Neither boy knew what the outcome would be. It seemed days before the jingle of spurs in the tiny passageway told of the approach of officers, and the door opened to admit General Marcom, his aide, and the Major. Bill rose and stood at attention. Frank too struggled ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... of a cramped, stiff body, of a dull pain racking his head. He stretched out his limbs—and, suddenly, ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... was satisfied, satisfied not to talk, glad to have his son so heavenly close. The long years of his exile were slipping away. The nerve-racking yearning of tedious days and yet more tedious, sleepless nights was partially quieted. His son, so long, merely, the pulseless image of his dreams, had become a breathing reality, and the child was the living link between its mother and himself. The longer he held the little one, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... rich beside Mrs. Carr, Gabriella soon found out that she was not nearly so rich as her neighbours were, not nearly so rich as her position in society exacted that she should be. She was still not rich enough to be spared the sordid, nerve-racking effort to make two ends meet without a visible break. Her small economies, to Gabriella's surprise, were as rigid as Mrs. Carr's; and though she lived in surroundings which appeared luxurious to the girl, there was almost as little ready money to spend as there had been in Mrs. Carr's household. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... hours alone—I say alone, for one who sits by a sleeper is indeed alone; perhaps more alone than he can realize. My uncle breathed heavily, his deep inhalations and exhalations accompanied by the rain outside, and punctuated by another nerve-racking sound of distant dripping water within—for the house was repulsively damp even in dry weather, and in this storm positively swamp-like. I studied the loose, antique masonry of the walls in the fungus-light and the feeble rays which stole in from the street through the screened window; ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... fleet marking perhaps the opening shots of the main battle. We twisted back into Cth as one of the scanner men doubled over with agony, heaving his guts out into a disposal cone. I felt sorry for him. The tension, the racking agony of our motion, and the fact that he was probably in his first major battle had all combined to take him for the count. He grinned greenly at me and turned back to his ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... a very fairish country-bred, a long, racking high mare with the temper of a fiend, and the paces of an airy wandering seraph—a drifty, glidy stretch. The mare was, as a delicate tribute to Mrs. Reiver, called "The Lady Regula Baddun"—or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... death, laboring at literary work every day with the passion and intensity that come to few men. Think of Emily, the eldest, with fierce pride refusing help to climb the steep stairway of the parsonage home when her strength was almost spent and her racking cough struck cold on the hearts of her sisters. And think of Charlotte in her terrible grief turning to fiction as the only resource from unbearable woe and loneliness. It is one of the great tragedies of literature, but out of it came the flowering ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... are continually racking imagination to perfect the art of moving from one place to another, and who can drop asleep in a carriage and wake at an hundred mile distance, have no notion of all the difficulties of a day's journey here. In the first place, all the horses of private persons have been taken ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... clever despite the dirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three-gram electroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure of electronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If only he wouldn't answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking 'yeah'! ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... home after service, he told himself that he had never known so long a day. It seemed longer than all the rest of his life. Indeed he felt that some strange and racking change had come upon him since the morning, as though he were not the same person, as though he had been away on a long journey, and saw all things with changed eyes. "I feel as though I'd died," he thought with surprise, "and was ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... horrible, horrific, horrifying; offensive. nauseous, nauseating; disgusting, sickening, revolting; nasty; loathsome, loathful^; fulsome; vile &c (bad) 649; hideous &c 846. sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic; cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing; envenomed; catheretic^, pyrotic [Med.]. ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical; desolating, withering; burdensome, onerous, oppressive; cumbrous, cumbersome. Adv. painfully &c adj.; with pain &c 828; deuced. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to the king for honour's sake, but to those who had not, the king should give; whereby, my lord," he added, "I too may one day have the wherewithal to give thee gifts and honour." Xenophon the while was racking his brains what he was to do; he was not the happier because he was seated in the seat next Seuthes as a mark of honour; and Heracleides bade the cupbearer hand him the bowl. The wine had perhaps a little mounted to his head; he rose, and manfully seized the ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... were pulling at the boat ropes. A jaguar pounced upon another man as he stooped to get water from a stream. An Indian arrow found the heart of another. The sun, fatigue, fevers, bruises, and the endless racking of limbs and brains, reduced the spirits and strength of the men. They became gaunt, hollow-eyed, tattered, unshorn, uncombed, unkempt, yet they toiled on, silent—save when they cursed and railed at fate—dogged, fiercely purposeful, resolved to die rather than turn back. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... what composure and confidence a succession of persons of the greatest genius have launched themselves in illimitable space, with what invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oil, racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dust, in measuring the distance of Sirius and the other fixed stars, the velocity of light, and "the myriads of intelligent beings formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity," that people the numberless worlds of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... evil. The road of genius runs ever close to the black abyss of madness. The human mind ignited with genius is like an old time-weakened building, in which is installed new machinery of startling power. What a racking ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his face he uttered a piercing whoop of triumph and leaned forward on his pony's neck. Twenty leaps farther and the spiteful crack of a rifle echoed from where the foreman was painfully supporting himself on his elbows. The pony swept on in a spurt of nerve-racking speed, but alone. By-and-by shrieked again and crashed heavily to the ground, where he rolled inertly and then lay still. Men like Buck are dangerous until their hearts ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... myself on possessing a singularly retentive memory, more especially for names and faces, but, upon the present occasion, the more I pondered the matter, the more hazy I became. So I walked on through the sweet, wet grass, racking my brain for a solution of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... judge has to notice in the torture-chamber. Witches who have given themselves up for years, body and soul, to the devil, are made by him so insensible to pain on the rack, that they rather allow themselves to be torn to pieces than confess. Fourteenth chapter: Upon torture and the mode of racking. In order to bring the accused to voluntary confession, you may promise her her life; which promise, however, may afterwards be withdrawn. If the witch does not confess the first day, the torture to be continued ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his palms together in a helpless way. Finally he sat down on a chair, and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud, dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... was not burned out. After many minutes of nerve-racking labor they had the equipment together again and were ready ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... had come to an end, Miss Maynard gathered up the scattered sheets, and promising to copy them out for me, took her departure, and left me to muse—so far as a racking brain would allow—on the curious and interesting result of her visit. No cup of tea to thirsty wayfarer was ever surely so ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... trying to pretend to be racking his memory; 'the grape-vine pattern? It seems to me that I do recall something about a design with that name. Did you say we ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... done to make servants better? They are getting worse every day." And the housewife (one might almost call her by Samuel Pepys's pleasing phrase, "the poor wretch") then pours out to any sympathetic ear endless recitals of aggravating, worrying, nerve-racking experiences. Instead of putting an end to such a regrettable state of affairs that would never be tolerated by any business employer, she seems content to bewail her fate and clings still more steadfastly to ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... way of reviving our drooping spirits, I fancy, as she is not usually given to conundrums or puzzles, suddenly propounded a series of brain-racking questions. "Who first said, 'Let us fly and save our bacon;' and 'He would make three bites of a cherry;' and 'Appetite comes with eating;' and 'It is meat, drink, and cloth to ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... his heart-racking struggle ceased. He lowered the long, black rifle. He took one last look at the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... the park, counting the slow minutes,—kissing her hands, looking into her eyes, racking his brain with speculations as to what she might have to tell him, hoping, fearing, and counting the long slow minutes. And his tug at Susanna's doorbell coincided with the very first stroke of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... severe and racking pains through the night, and at about twelve o'clock, Katy went to Mr. Sneed's house, and calling up Simon, begged him to go for a doctor. But the physician's art seemed powerless to soothe her. All night long the devoted daughter, like an angel of ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... need much holding," Joe went on, all the while racking his brain to recall the voice. He wanted to have the man speak again, that he ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... and unriddle those books, been carred into captivity, as Ezekiel and Daniel were, it would greatly have improved their intellects in comprehending the reason for this mode of writing, and have saved them the trouble of racking their invention, as they have done to no purpose; for they would have found that themselves would be obliged to write whatever they had to write, respecting their own affairs, or those of their friends, or of their country, in ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... account of the Norman-French period. The second and shorter question was simply a sentence to be parsed. No one in the class had a good memory for derivations. Fourteen out of the fifteen members spent the half-hour racking their brains and biting the ends of their pens in vain endeavours to complete their answers to Question 1, so that when it was time to hand in their exercise books, they had written very little, and that little was mostly wrong. The exercises ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... sight of her torments, Adrian hung over her, racking his mind in the endeavour to soothe her, her words struck a chill into his very soul. He cast a terrified glance at the doctor who was ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... in all my body, yet miserably sick still, and I remained so, now shivering and now burning, a racking pain in my chest. My couch was filled with fresh straw, but in no other wise was my condition altered from the first time I had entered this place. My new jailer was a man of no feeling that I could see, yet of no violence or cruelty; one whose ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have Marston back to-morrow," said Charles, as the gong began to sound. "We cannot take any step till then, especially if we don't want to put our foot in it. I have been racking my brains all the afternoon without the vestige of a result. We must just hold ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... Sinclair, who was racking his brains for words with which to propound the question he dared not ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... of the poop and chatted with him for fully fifteen minutes. When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming coster songs in a nerve-racking and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... air was heavy with thunder. Consequently Owen's head ached furiously, with one of the neuralgic headaches which since his accident he had good cause to dread; and the fact that he had an important piece of work to finish without loss of time fretted his nerves to racking-point. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... little room upstairs in a noisy tenement house. A pale, thin woman on a shabby lounge vainly trying to quiet a fretful child. The child is thin and pale, too, with a hard, racking cough. There is a small fire in the stove, a very small fire; coal is so high. The medicine stands on the shelf. "Medicine won't do much good," the doctor had said; ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank, motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up, a hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen sat motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the crowd; it eddied and pushed before the doors of the high-roofed building, whence issued a shuffle and thumping of feet in time to the dance music vibrating and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by the tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that can madden a crowd, and that even Europeans cannot hear without a strange emotion, seemed to ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... His racking, scooping, combing insight, into the recesses of man's natural appetites will never be surpassed. How under the glance of his Norman anger, all manner of pretty subterfuges fade away; and "the real thing" stands out, as Nature and the Earth know it—"stark, bleak, terrible and lovely." ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... family counsels, and the authorities could not make up their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession—an idea hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble of racking ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... looked at the deathly pale, convulsed countenance of the magistrate, who renewed his shrill, screeching laugh, he comprehended the racking and terrible torture which the unfortunate man was suffering. He hastened to him, seized him by the arm, and led the tottering ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... reins firmly in his left hand, and with his right aimed his top-heavy lance in a somewhat wobbling manner at his adversary. It must soon be known to all the world of knighthood which was the grimmer champion! At middle distance and well to one side, stood Grand Marshal Valentine, racking his brains for the lines which should give the signal for the shock, but all in vain. Desperation gave him inspiration. "Let 'er go for your girls!" ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... his spirit a great calm. "Oh, God!" he said quietly and with the conviction in his soul that there was One listening, "help me now." He opened the matchbox, took out the match, struck it carefully and laid it among the birch bark. For one heart-racking moment it flickered unsteadily, then, catching a resinous fibre of the bark, it flared up, shot out a tiny tongue to one of the heavier bunches, caught hold, sputtered, smoked, burst into flame. With the prayer still going in his heart, "God ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... a yet more intimate claim upon her was the fact that his heart and lungs were still troublesome, and with any over-exertion on his part, or a sudden change in the weather, his chest became very sore and his racking cough returned. At such times Miss Isobel was in her glory. She would put him to bed with hot-water bottles and mustard plasters and feed him hot lemonade. Quin took kindly to the coddling. No one had fussed over him like that since his mother died, and ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... not know about that! I think I could stand a pretty stiff examination; but perhaps you are talking of the pictures and the names of the artists. Ah, yes! there you are right; with me they go in at one ear, and out at another. Only the other day I was racking my brain to think of the name of the man that painted the other Magdalen—not Guido's—I was telling Algy about it. Bah! what is it? I know it as well ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... where he had established himself, he set about interviewing by telephone the Naudains whose names appeared in the directory. It was a nerve-racking task to Bruce, who was unfamiliar with the use of the telephone, and those of the name with whom he succeeded in getting in communication seemed singularly busy folk, indifferent to the amenities and entirely uninterested ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... bareheaded he bent forward beside the chauffeur, teeth set, every nerve tense and straining as though his very will power was driving the machine forward. Then there came a maddening slowing down through Dartford streets, a nerve-racking delay until Sam Ogilvy's giant brother had stowed away himself and his satchel in the tonneau; then slow speed to the town limits; a swift hurling forward into space that whirled blackly around them as the great acetylenes split the darkness and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... preceding the state of repose. It is the cross that the first and second generations must bear, an involuntary sacrifice for the sake of the future generations. These are the pains of adjustment, as racking as the pains of birth. And as the mother forgets her agonies in the bliss of clasping her babe to her breast, so the bent and heart-sore immigrant forgets exile and homesickness and ridicule and loss and estrangement, when he beholds his sons and daughters ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... picked up the information that Napoleon had sent a messenger to Verona. Victor Emmanuel knew nothing of it, nor did any of the French generals except Marshal Vaillant, but such things leak out, and two or three individuals were aware of the journey to Verona, and spent that night in racking their brains as to what it might mean. Next day at eleven o'clock General Fleury returned; the Austrian Emperor had accepted the armistice. Further secrecy was impossible, and like lightning the news ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... go far. They are still angry and peevish, and they sleep little. He was born at the fall of Babel, the confusion of languages is only in his mouth. All the vacations he speaks as good English as any man in England, but in term times he breaks out of that hopping one-legged pace into a racking trot of issues, bills, replications, rejoinders, demures, querelles, subpoenas, &c., able to fright a simple country fellow, and make him believe he conjures. Whatsoever his complexion was before, it turns in this place to choler or deep melancholy, so that he needs every hour to take physic ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... in a High School. A vast amount of study has to be mastered. There are nerve-racking examinations. It is a tremendously ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby charco after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the morral on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... one was looking, and no one could help. It was clear Jim was racking his brain, and we sat staring desperately at each other across the candles. Everything I had ever known faded from me, eight pairs of eyes bored into me, Mr. Harbison's ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to think of something right now," declared Jack, racking his brains for some way out ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... all occupations of men, log driving stands unique for its hardships of peril, discomfort, and bone-racking toil. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... is this pleasant volume to the soul-racking "Festus," which has been one of my recent passions. That remarkable work has passages of great beauty and power, linked in unnatural marriage with much that is poor and weak. It is ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... been indefatigable in her efforts to relieve what she could of the fearful suffering of those destructive battles of May, 1864, in which the dead and wounded were numbered by scores of thousands. To how many poor sufferers she brought relief from the raging thirst and the racking agony of their wounds, to how many aching hearts her words of cheer and her sweet songs bore comfort and hope, to how many of those on whose countenances the Angel of death had already set his seal, she whispered of a dying and ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... be always searching for and racking his brain about things that either irritate or torment him. The cause of it is an internal morbid depression, combined often with an inward restlessness which is temperamental; when both are developed to their utmost, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... that the little vessel careened until her lee sheer-poles were buried and the water was up to the coaming of the main hatch. But with way on her, her helm hard up, no after canvas set, and the hurricane dragging at her stout foresail, she could not help paying off, and after a long minute of heart-racking suspense, during which we momentarily expected her to keel-up with us, she suddenly righted and went flying away dead before the wind, with the water boiling under her bows up to the level ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... children. They did not think for themselves so long as they lived in the Rue de la Jussienne; they knew nothing of the world; they loved me with all their hearts. Mon Dieu! why could they not always be little girls? (Oh! my head! this racking pain in my head!) Ah! ah! forgive me, children, this pain is fearful; it must be agony indeed, for you have used me to endure pain. Mon Dieu! if only I held their hands in mine, I should not feel it at all.—Do you think that they are ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... defend his head. On the instant his arm was beaten down. It fell helpless at his side, the axe only hanging to his hand by means of the loop passed around the wrist. A spasm of pain crossed his face at the racking agony in the nerves of his arm, yet he retained energy enough to spring back, and still he stood erect. A cry of dismay burst from the followers of the red champion and a keen yell from the whites, unable to suppress their exultation, Yet at the next moment the partisans of either had become silent; ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... and was certainly nerve-racking. The Indians ate everything in the house, and from my seat in a dim corner I watched them while my sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they made in the firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech as they talked ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to his mouth, racking, struggling; and when the convulsive agony had passed he smiled, and there in the shadow by the door the light that crossed his face was ghastly, like a dim smear of phosphorus. And now the Major's ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... oblige a man to drink off a half pint of liquor, and then put him by himself. I would not allow him companions to make merry with so as to make a pleasure of intoxication. I would then wait until next morning when he was sober, and leave him alone with a racking headache until the evening, when I would give him another dose, and so on, forcing him to get drunk until he hated ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... of yore, the sons of men abode From evil free, and labor's galling load; Free from diseases that; with racking rage, Precipitate the pale decline of age. Now swift the days of manhood haste away, And misery's pressure turns the temples gray. The Woman's hands an ample casket bear; She lifts the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... patient she had little to do but reflect on her position, and her thoughts brought her many a sigh, much heart-racking and anxiety. For herself she allowed little thought. Her mind was made up as to her future. Her love was to be snatched away while yet the first sweet glamour of it was upon her. Every hope, every little castle she had raised in ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... soon went to bed. But there was no sleep for the man. He went into the night, and for hours he paced the driveway in racking thought. Then he sat on the step and looked ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... slipping scrambling, literally clawing their way along. Whenever the rope caught, it was the part of the fourth man to slip out of his collar, and disengage it, without stopping the others. It was racking work on the frame of a man; but the feather-headed breeds ceaselessly chattered and shouted, like boys out of school; roaring with laughter when any one of the four came down. In the stern stood the helmsman, ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you do not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Impendent horrors, threatning hideous fall One day upon our heads; while we perhaps Designing or exhorting glorious Warr, Caught in a fierie Tempest shall be hurl'd 180 Each on his rock transfixt, the sport and prey Of racking whirlwinds, or for ever sunk Under yon boyling Ocean, wrapt in Chains; There to converse with everlasting groans, Unrespited, unpitied, unrepreevd, Ages of hopeless end; this would be worse. Warr therefore, open or conceal'd, alike My ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... occurred during the first day is imperishably engraved upon my memory. It was about a week previous to the day appointed for my debut in my new character as an attorney's clerk; and when I arose, I was depressed in mind, and a racking pain to which I had lately been subject, was maddening me. I could scarcely manage to crawl into the breakfast-room. I had previously procured a drachm of opium, and I took two grains with my coffee. It did not produce any change in my feelings. I took two more—still ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... And as for our Corporation—shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine 25 For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease? Rouse up, sirs! Give your brains a racking 30 To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... a word she couldn't at first say, buried her face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort of will, forced her voice to utter ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thy venom'd stang, That shoots my tortur'd gums alang; And thro' my lugs gies mony a twang, Wi' gnawing vengeance; Tearing my nerves wi' bitter pang, Like racking engines! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... backward, forward, and sideways, as if she were expecting some goblin shape to rise suddenly before her and claim her for its own. They were wretched, uneasy days which followed that visit to Frankfort—days of racking headache to Mrs. Worthington, and days of anxious thought to Hugh, who thus was led in a measure to forget the pain he would otherwise have felt at the memory of ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... little guessing how she was racking his heart in her innocent desire to make him understand how deeply she appreciated all he had done for her. "And, O Nat, it's worked so wonderfully! It's made all the girls at school like me, and it's made me understand and like everybody else better; ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... or three saddles were emptied, one on the side of the Diamond X forces. Nort and Dick heard bullets whistling in the air over their heads, and though they may have ducked, instinctively, they did not after the first two or three of these nerve-racking experiences. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... them would have died had not the salt water made them very sick, while the hot stones restored their suspended circulation. Still, I would advise no one to depend on such remedies under similar circumstances. They got better; but still for many days were subject to racking pains, and remained weak and ill. While they were in this state, one morning, as Tom and I were at the top of the peak taking our usual survey of the horizon, in the hopes of a vessel appearing in sight, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... terrible, nerve-racking silence. Colonel Chester had entered. He stood just within the door, pale and stern, whispering to the officer in charge of the men. People stared at him, at each other, at the bridegroom still standing motionless by the chancel steps. And then at ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... Miss Clifford did not know to what an extent Roger was concerned over this matter of Esther's whereabouts. The complete uncertainty, linked as it was with the doctor's guarded implications, had strung him up to a pitch of nerve-racking apprehension. Moreover, not until this had happened did he fully realise what Esther meant to him, how differently he regarded her from any other girl he had ever known. Could it possibly be true that she was in some obscure way slightly unbalanced? If he shut out the thought from ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... to their inn, poor Charlotte paid for the excitement of the interview, which had wound up the agitation and hurry of the last twenty-four hours, by a racking headache and harassing sickness. Towards evening, as she rather expected some of the ladies of Mr. Smith's family to call, she prepared herself for the chance, by taking a strong dose of sal-volatile, which roused her a little, but still, as she says, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the night he had come, out of travail, and brain-racking perplexity and torturing effort, crossing rushing waters and matching his splendid strength and towering will against ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... them I suspected, and took pains to prevail with her to let me into the secret, if it was so; promising that I would do her the best offices in my power to help her out of the difficulties that might be hanging over her: but it was to no purpose. They both died of racking pains in their bowels, and of convulsions. Upon laying out of the dead bodies, in one of the cases a dead child, not come to its full time, was found laying between the unhappy mother's limbs; and in the other, a very large ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... air somewhere before him there came the sound of low, racking gasps, and also the slow noise of feet dragging heavily towards the cubby's door, towards the ladder that led up to the ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... eastern parts of its range. They are one of the most pugnacious and courageous of birds attacking and driving away any feathered creature to which they take a dislike, regardless of size. Before and during the nesting season, their sharp, nerve-racking clatter is kept up all day long, and with redoubled vigor when anyone approaches their nesting site. They nest in any kind of a tree, in fields or open woods, and at any height from the ground, being found on fence rails within two feet ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... he asked I was racking my brain to remember. I have a good eye and a fair recollection for faces, and this was one I had seen several times. The features were so familiar that I suspected the man of being a courtier in disguise, and I ran over the ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... English, a Greek-Turk from the island of Marmora, who, climbing out of the trench in which he and his gang had been hiding, announced that he had lived in New York for five years, in Fortieth Street, and worked for the Morgan Line, and begged that I get, him out of this nerve-racking place and where he belonged, somewhere on board ship. There were crowds like him—Greeks, Armenians, Turks, not wanted as soldiers but impressed for this sort of work. They were unloading fire-wood long after dark that night, when our boat at last got under way. We paused till ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... indeed a very touching and beautiful sight, for all present were inspired with a feeling like that of men who have passed a terrible, racking crisis. Nous avons vaincu! Yes, we had conquered. And the Revolution had marched sternly on through years of discontent unto the year of aggravation, Forty-Eight, when there was thunder all round in Europe—and after all, France at one ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... any sorter use, Mr. Ramy. I don't never mean to marry. I get tired so easily—I'd be afraid of the work. And I have such awful headaches." She paused, racking her brain ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... was impossible to see anything in the oratory, because of the dense cloud of sulphurous smoke wherewith it was filled; but such shrieks and yells of soul-racking terror as came from beneath that black canopy I hope I may never hear again. I waited a little, until this wild outburst had somewhat quieted, and then—placing my mouth close to one of the openings and speaking in a voice that I tried to make like that of Fray Antonio—I ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... by Lord Minto's most kind and friendly communications, were succeeded by the most racking anxieties respecting Malta. Fresh orders had arrived for the recall of the Portuguese squadron; and Captain Ball could with difficulty keep the distressed islanders from joining the French. Lord Nelson, in a state of distraction, wrote letters to the Marquis ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the comfort, but even the devout ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... it was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... us not long after, and we ate it on deck, in a grim silence, each privately racking his brain for some solution of the mysteries. I was indeed so swallowed up in these considerations, that the wreck, the lagoon, the islets, and the strident sea-fowl, the strong sun then beating on my head, and even the gloomy countenance of the captain at ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... necessary to effect that end, and a good hunter like Makarooroo knew he could speedily obtain possession of his bride, but to get her removed from her tribe and carried to the coast was quite a different affair. While the perplexed negro was pondering this subject and racking his brains to discover a way of getting over the difficulty, our arrival at the village occurred. At once he jumped to the conclusion that somehow or other he should accomplish his object through our assistance; ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... it may appear, that very question has been racking my brain for the last ten minutes. Now, what would you do in ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... phantom silence more nerve-racking than any clamor, I stepped outside the door—and my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... were still traveling, and Mrs. Vane had asked Vera to bring Dorothy and Nancy home with her for the week. Already they had planned enough pleasure to last a month, and Vera was still racking her busy brain to think of other ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking deliberation; "quite good. How did ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the nerve-racking period of waiting for the signal to go over the top that a seasoned old sergeant noticed a young soldier fresh from home visibly affected by the nearness of the coming fight. His face was pale, his teeth chattering, and his knees tried to touch each other. It was sheer nervousness, ...
— Best Short Stories • Various |
